The MtG Star Trek set's first reveals have locked me into thinking about a single common card for an hour. I think this card is depicting an episode of Star Trek Enterprise that doesn't exist. The right side is plausibly Dear Doctor, but the left side doesn't look like ANY episode of Enterprise.

The Historia and Gaffgarion sets being recent in FFXIV means that every group of players has one or two people that look like Dark Souls cover art, and it's fantastic. I love walking past a player that looks like they're gonna give me an Estus Flask and tell me where the tutorial boss is.

Seeing the cropped version of this on my feed and going 'no, that can't be right'

You'd think that's just because Dawntrail is set in more bright locations, and that does help a lot, but even the darker scenes and areas are just SO MUCH better lit.

Because the only thing searching for 'THE Doctor' is the Doctor's Companion keyword, Doctor Strange works for Twice Upon A Time and Gallifrey Stands. By my estimation, after Star Trek we can trigger Gallifrey Stands' wincon with no other Doctor Who cards or creature type changers.

The actual funniest thing I've found to do with Valgavoth is just to keep him around long enough that the things exiled under him becomes its own unwieldy pile. For actual synergy, though? Aetherdrift Gonti is a great way to rev up to paying that 9 mana that also itself benefits Val afterwards.

My preferred ridiculous pull from Marvel is... different. "Yeah, I've got Heroes."

Oh, everyone thinks of the one-piece-ish suits, those are great! But I saw that glam and thought of the astronaut-style jumpsuits from Enterprise, the prequel that went for a very grounded and realistic aesthetic. I like the ship from that one, it's very 'submarine'.

Cosmic Exploration is full of good options for Star Trek glams! Even and ESPECIALLY if you're willing to cut a little deeper.

A friend of mine found a new weird niche tier list, so I couldn't resist the opportunity to chart my opinions! That's right it's time to rate EVERY RAID THEME IN THE GAME

Okay, I'm curious if anything sings out to Ein for this one!

I SAID IT AND I MEAN IT I love Porygon-Z so much, it's so rad and I will try to make this thing work in any context.

For people who don't know: The final boss of Eureka Orthos is Excalibur, a weapon made by Allag to control a would-be resistance leader. Excalibur is also the ARR PLD relic. So if you ask an NPC about the boss Excalibur while owning the WEAPON Excalibur, they explain how they're connected.

This wasn't for glam or gpose purposes--although I do use it--but instead, something far stupider: I got the ARR Paladin relic solely to see if it would trigger optional dialog for one specific Endwalker NPC. ...the weirdest part is that I WAS RIGHT, THERE IS DIALOG FOR IT

OKAY FUCK THE REST OF EVERCOLD I'M FUCKING IN GET OUT OF THE FUCKING ROBOT, SHINJI, IT'S MY TURN

The 30s-40s FFXIV fans instead get the FFXIV-brand camping gear

I do not turn my brain off, and I do not play games with friends! Other than that, I stand by this whole thing and GOD DAMN was it hard to make all these picks, although I will happily speak at length about every single one.

It's a tease for the NEXT next in-universe set, which is a color-shifted set where every color gets stuff other colors wpuld normally do. This is a color-shifted version of the original Ral Zarek.

I've been stuck on this card from the next MtG set. It's GROSS AS HELL, but in ways that are hard to articulate. Objectively speaking, 'opponent loses X turns' is either exactly the same or much less effective than 'you gain X turns'... but holy shit does it feel so much more toxic in practice!

On one hand, I would say that Transpose is slightly overcosted for what it does. It's not bad, but if you're really crunching numbers you can find better in an 'all things equal' context. On the other hand... guess who LOVES 'slightly overcosted' noncreature spells?

By extension, this does mean that you shouldn't play Okaun's partner, because on average it WILL cause you to lose by deckout.

Side content collides, Ocean Fishing visits the Island Sanctuary!

Everyone clear your calendars for the next Ultimate raid! And remember to stay tuned after the world-first clear for the real race: how long until we find out they cheated! Can we beat the 40 minutes from last time? Can we get a sub-30 incriminating leak?

Okay, everyone, we had a good run, FFXIV is done. The next alliance raid WILL kill us all, there will not be survivors

For what it's worth, 'axe and shield' classes this as the same kind of Beastmaster as Lyon and his proteges, Clarricie and Pagaga, in Bozja. This style actually originated with an Ala Mhigan gryphon trainer, Ganpp, so this is probably an Ala Mhigan job!

The oldest picture of Ein I have is genuinely formative to how she ended up. A clash of recommended gear options produced what I described as 'a high fantasy version of a 1970s drug dealer', which is the ENTIRE reason she became an alchemist. These days she's MUCH more professional, though.

The appearance of this card in the anime roughly coincided with the movement to instead call it by its indigenous name, Uluru, which was an unfortunate bit of timing. They kinda righted that by introducing Uluru the Guardian Spirit later in GX, but that one didn't make it to the card game.

Fair enough! I admit I have very little experience of it all. For what it's worth, for some reason Faris' Dancer outfit changes completely between concept art and the game; here's the sprite. (Easily her worst design, by the way.)

The new variant dungeon's mount is based on the Amano art for the Final Fantasy III Djinn boss! (Real III, not VI.) Swapping out the chest hair for the ornate chest crystal and arm markings is new, but I think it improves the design here, make it more mystical and less 'just a guy'.

You know what, this one seems fun! (And reposting to fix BAD typos!) Fair warning, Ein is not the WoL, so she's not exactly someone who's met everyone. More likely to know OF a lot of major characters than to actually KNOW them.