Abzan Ascendancy

Ravnica's Nephilim minis

These weirdos are quite a while in the making, I finished Glint-Eye Nephilim back in September of last year and the Yore-Tiller Nephilim earlier this week.

All of them need new cards as they are some of the cards with the worst Dissonance between card art and card abilities.

You can download the models for free from Thingiverse and Printables

If you want to help me keep making free models or want to tell me what I should make next please check out my Patreon

Azorius: if you're going to be doing anything gender or sexuality around these people you're gonna end up filling out a form. And possibly having to explain it to the clerk. 3/10 at least they're not gunning for you actively, you just complicate their paperwork and they hate you for it.

Boros: I would normally say 6/10 you know how it is with tight quarters and sweaty sparring sessions and barracks humor and communal showers but it's gotta be 0/10 because ACAB. Sorry you guys you're my favorite two-color combo but no cops at pride

Dimir: they don't care who you are or who you love but they will take notes for kompromat if they think they can use it against you. 2/10 I guess, because it's no different from anything else about you they'd use for blackmail I guess

Gruul: FUCK WHO YOU LOVE, WRECK WHAT YOU DON'T, 10/10

Golgari: 5/10 we know you're cool but please shower first

Izzet: I'm torn about Izzet. On the one hand they are super down for anything and super enthusiastic for anything that pushes the boundaries of society, but best of luck with anything sex or gender related because they will brainstorm it for you and they will come back with ideas and if you don't use them, they will, and the experiments will be atrocious. At least one Izzet polycule has undergone nuclear fission. They are still cleaning up the blast site. 9/10 for enthusiasm 4/10 for follow through.

Orzhov: Azorius is dispassionately bureaucratic about LGBTQ+ but Orzhov is maliciously so. Easily the most fucking corporatized Pride Month Merch style guild. They'll charge you extra for rainbow shit (plus tax) and the moment July rolls around all the color bleaches out of them and you have to buy them again next year. Transing your gender? Fill out a form and pay a deposit and you had better fucking believe they're gonna hit you with Premium Content Surcharges. -1/10 they're dogshit.

Rakdos: it is illegal to be straight in Rakdos. 9/10 but if you're not into kink then hoo boy.

Selesnya: look. Other guilds might be more loud and supportive and enthusiastic about LGBTQ+ stuff. But Selesnya's the one making safe community spaces. They're keeping folks together, doing the groundwork for equality, fighting intolerance, being the change. No matter what guild you think is friendliest to queer folk you're gonna come back to a home in a neighborhood that was made safe because Selesnya fuckin' pounded the pavement and forced the powers that be to make it safe. 11/10 solidarity forever

And like, this isn't that big of a problem. Just program something in to where if you were to target your own creature, a little pop-up appears asking "You're about to target your own creature! Are you sure?" It's not that hard.

Or, here's a thought, you have Alchemy! You can just edit the "bad" effects to not target one's own things! It was purposefully designed to rebalance cards!!!

This is gonna be a bit lengthy but first I want to establish a timeline. Note the only real info we have is from the Youtuber in question, so it's not unreasonable that some of this is wrong, either intentionally or just because this guy likewise doesn't know all of what happened.

A Youtuber with about 5000 subscribers, oldschoolmtg, ordered booster boxes of March of the Machine.

2. The person he ordered them from mistakenly gave him boxes of March of the Machine: Aftermath.

3. oldschoolmtg cracked the Aftermath packs and posted videos of that online. It does sound like he was aware of difference between MOM and MOM Aftermath before he posted the videos. He said he doesn't believe the person who sold them was aware as that person isn't really into Magic (I personally know a store like this--the owner is really into Warhammer but does Magic stuff too because it pays bills).

4. Wizards says they tried to contact him but couldn't reach him. As far as I know we have no context for how they tried to contact him, how many attempts they made, or how long they waited before hiring the Pinkertons to shake him down.

5. I believe Sunday April 25 in the morning the Pinkertons showed up at this guy's house to recover "stolen" product. They threatened jail time and the Youtuber refers to them as "law men" in his video so I'm not sure if he misunderstands their role or if they misrepresented themselves.

6. After getting the cards, the Pinkerton agents provided a phone number to a person at Wizards for oldschoolmtg to call. He said this person was apologetic and cordial and said they don't believe anything was stolen but they needed the product so they could figure out how this happened to prevent it in the future. oldschoolmtg also says they said they'd send him some product to compensate for the cards the Pinkertons just took from him.

7. oldschoolmtg removed the Youtube videos of him opening the Aftermath packs. They also asked him to ask everyone else to take those vids down, claiming some sort of copyright infringement.

That's all the info I'm aware of, mostly just straight from the person who experienced this.

So why is this wrong?

First, MOM Aftermath is an embargoed product. Which means Wizards ships it out to retailers (be they big box store or LGS or online space or whatever) under a contract that they won't sell it before a certain date and time. oldschoolmtg believes the person he purchased from simply mixed up the two sets because of the similar names. He says he purchased the product and according to his recollection of the phone call, the rep at Wizards likewise didn't think he had stolen it.

That's important because the embargo agreement is between retailers and Wizards. oldschoolmtg had no contractual obligation with regard to the embargoed product. It leads me to believe the Pinkertons were involved because they'd willingly insinuate the product was stolen and oldschoolmtg had committed a crime when in actuality there was no grounds to take any legal action against the man. There was no grounds to get a warrant to search for the product. He had committed no crime. He bought Magic cards from a guy who sells Magic cards. The only actual recourse Wizards would have had if the cards weren't stolen was to pursue the guy who sold them for breaking the embargo.

The only theft that actually occurred was when the Pinkertons raided this guy's home to take cards he purchased.

That's my take given what info we know. The Youtube videos aren't actually relevant in a meaningful way--that's just how Wizards found out.

But it's actually even worse. It would have been shitty to seek out a warrant or just sic lawyers on him. Of course I don't think they had grounds for it, so instead they went extrajudicial instead. That is they took a course of action that didn't involve courts.

For those who don't know, the Pinkertons started in 1850 and operated largely as violent strikebreakers. They're still helping break strikes today. They've been hired by Amazon and Starbucks within the last three years to spy on unionization efforts. Their history is bloody and murderous. No exaggeration. Their response to workers striking and unionizing in the past has been to beat them and shoot them.

I think you can put two and two together here. What does it say for a billion dollar multinational company to send these violent thugs to the private home of a small a guy operating a small Youtube channel?

It's a threat to this guy and anybody else; if you leak our cards we will find where you live and we will come after you. Specific use of the Pinkertons is part of this intentional message. There are other security firms without the history and notoriety. And while any such action would be just as disturbing, I doubt using almost any other agency would have had quite the effect as hiring Pinkertons.

I watched the Professor chatting with someone else about the Pinkerton thing.

One thing they expressed was that there was no way to act in an immediate way that influences sales number to send a message to Wizards. Like with the DnD stuff recently people could cancel DnDBeyond to send a message and that did something.

I think Magic players do have a medium to send a message. The medium is online play. We should blanket boycott all Magic apps, especially MODO and especially Arena for at least 30 days. They can't take back what has happened but we can send a message that they will feel. I think we should also throw FNM and all physical sales including the secondary market in as well, but digital play is big and more immediate.

This is unacceptable though I don't expect players to stay away forever. A month long boycott for the entirety of May would send a strong message and make them reconsider how they handle future leaks. Backed up with plenty of emails and public messages to say this is why it's happening.

#NoMagicMay

hes desperate to be loved!! he'll do anything and everything for his partners!!

being a telepath means he knows exactly what his partners want and can link their minds in an infinite feedback loop of sensation. also his illusion powers allow him to bend reality to whatever fantasy he/his partners want.