Thanks! That Listia post is exactly what these are. They are ultra pro (I have another picture here), but the dot is in the top-left corner, not the bottom like most ultra pro card sleeves. They aren't Fantasy card sleeves though, I looked up a picture of the fantasy ones and they aren't the same.
They could be ultra pro as you can read in the comments here.....or some immitation
There was a very very short time period Ultra-Pro didn't put the dot on their sleeves. When they introduced their sleeves, the dot was too far to the right covering the P/T. Clear sleeves would be flipped to put the dot on the back. The dotless sleeves were only available for a short time before U-P introduced sleeves with the dot moved to the left (still to the ire of some players for some reason). Somewhere, I have a box or two of the dotless sleeves I never used up.
I remember because, like an idiot, I sleeved my entire Ice Age set at the time in Ultra-pro sleeves because I thought it would actually go up in value. Had to travel to several different LGSs before I found a box of the "older" sleeves.
I don't think U-P had anything other than clear and a few basic colors (if any) in those days though so I think it's unlikely that U-P would have done holographic backs without the dots.
Aww, I had it multiple before but I had to delete that poll because it screwed up when I deleted the three out of origins. Oh well. There are only 5 options now (the original had 7, but I added one and deleted 3.)
Not something that should be done too often by WotC but I like when they draw on mythos that actually exist in our world. It creates a sort of "connection" between the game and my experiences in life.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely think WotC design should focus on creating new worlds and new mythos. But once in a while, when they ground a set in something that's already familiar, it makes the suspension of belief that much easier.
Maybe it's not my place but isn't MtG intended for 13 and up?
Not to say that one shouldn't allow anyone <13 play Magic. However, MtG does contain ideas and elements that parents might have to think about.
If he asked someone else to help her pull the money cards, then we know who the cards are really for. Either he can do it himself and recuse himself from FNM for the night or leave instructions with his kid and hope for the best.
I'll bet a fake Mox (that's all I can afford atm) that if he really spoke to someone at DCI he didn't bother telling DCI how old his kid really is.
There is a tutorial on Youtube to make water proof bags for.... something....
They basically cut up a shower curtain (I think) and fabric and stitched them together. Obviously shower curtain might not be thin enough but there's gotta be something on that flavor at the fabric store. Disposable rain slickers? Those super thin aluminium blankets?
In addition, you can look at the little icons along the top of your reply box whenever you reply and check them out. The ones on the right side should be of interest.
I admit that at first icons would cause a problem, but over time, if the icons are well designed, people will remember what each icon means. Symbols stick in the memory better that words.
No they wouldn't. Even to this day, correct UI design specifies descriptive text reminder on mouse over on computer UI. This is something that can't be done on paper cards, period. Even if experienced players "get it" what about the new ones?
Second, the game is ever changing so creation of said symbols would literally require years of testing to get right for every symbol. That means a ton of real world user testing by people who has never seen said symbols. WotC already admittedly screwed it up with because they plumb forgot about the color blind players. I feel bad for the players with degrading vision having to look at . The portal symbols were just downright screwed up. Those symbols need to be obvious and I can guarantee WotC will get it wrong a few times. Imagine the errata on symbols or the Oracle searches involved. You already have to do convoluted searches such as {R} to search for mana symbols.
I included all three Portals because I was curious about how they were affected.
I parsed both the original card text and the oracle text using the same improved algorithm.
My previous post (about three up) blindly included reminder text. The new algorithm properly discards characters and words that are enclosed by both {} and (). This, I believe, removes both symbols and reminder text. I don't bother verifying if the text removed is intended to be text so if the card text has {}() anywhere, then everything between the two will be lost. This is obvious with the Dual Lands since the Oracle text condensed the entire text into a single reminder. Dumb but whatever. I didn't bother fussing with hyphens. If a word is hyphenated, it'll count it as two words.
It took me longer because I had an annoying bug where the parser was adding 1 to the word count if it discarded an entire block (such as reminder text). Took me near forever to figure out what was going on.
The numbers I came up with are rather revealing. Revised shrunk the most at nearly 22.7%, Exodus grew the most. What was surprising, even to me, was the total number of sets that increased. Not as many as I thought.
edit: fixed the cruddy formatting. It's a fixed width format.
Great work man, it got way easier to see once you fixed the formatting. It doesn't seem that it would affect the lack of trend though, since the changes are, as you said, minimal. Just out of curiosity, what language/program did you use to code the algorithm?
I used Perl 5.20 because of the insanely flexible RegEx engine. The actual RegEx(simplified for your viewing pleasure) is
scalar (grep { $_ ne '' } $text=~ /[\(\{][^\{\}\(\)]*[\)\}]|\b(\w+)\b/g);
I could probably make it far more elegant, like removing the possibly redundent \b's, but I wasn't really in the mood.
Let's look at your example of Birthing Hulk. How do we make this card have less words on it?
Some possibilities come to mind:
1) Devoid can become an icon.
2) Regenerate can become an icon.
3) "When Birthing Hulk enters the battlefield" can become an icon.
4) "put two 1/1 colorless Eldrazi Scion creature tokens onto the battlefield. They have "Sacrifice this creature: Add Colorless to your mana pool." can be shortened to:
"[2] Token (Creature - Eldrazi Scion - 1/1 - Sacrifice: add <> to your mana pool)"
The basic idea is that keywords and major concepts like ETB can become icons and where it isn't absolutely necessary for a card to refer to itself, it can be omitted. ETB's are one such area. When a card ETB's it is obvious what card is ETB'ing, no need to refer to the card name. When a card can only Regenerate itself, again no need to refer to it by name. As to #4 above, it should be possible to remove words where the meaning can be implied. "Sacrifice this creature" can be reduced to "Sacrifice". "creature" is redundant because it doesn't matter to the ability that the card is a creature. "this" is also redundant because if not referring specifically to some other card, the only thing that can be sacrificed is the card itself.
Try studying UI sometime, you'll change your tune.
Sacrifice X is literally a requirement set down by other cards. If you include Sacrifice X on other cards, and not on Birthing Hulk then you've introduced inconsistency into the text, something WotC has been striving to reduce for some time.
More importantly, the more your text looks like code, the more likely you're going to scare away new people and, quite possibly, annoy existing ones. Not everyone can process and understand information that's been condensed so much that much of the information has to be inferred, such as in your example for Birthing Hulk. Toss in icons for keywords and you're just making the whole thing a mess.
And quite honestly, I for one, do not want to carry around a list of rarely used icons just so I can remember what they do. Nor do I want to spend time trying to infer information that should be on the face of the card anyways. I already spend enough time using my phone for rule verification and Oracle text.
I included all three Portals because I was curious about how they were affected.
I parsed both the original card text and the oracle text using the same improved algorithm.
My previous post (about three up) blindly included reminder text. The new algorithm properly discards characters and words that are enclosed by both {} and (). This, I believe, removes both symbols and reminder text. I don't bother verifying if the text removed is intended to be text so if the card text has {}() anywhere, then everything between the two will be lost. This is obvious with the Dual Lands since the Oracle text condensed the entire text into a single reminder. Dumb but whatever. I didn't bother fussing with hyphens. If a word is hyphenated, it'll count it as two words.
It took me longer because I had an annoying bug where the parser was adding 1 to the word count if it discarded an entire block (such as reminder text). Took me near forever to figure out what was going on.
The numbers I came up with are rather revealing. Revised shrunk the most at nearly 22.7%, Exodus grew the most. What was surprising, even to me, was the total number of sets that increased. Not as many as I thought.
edit: fixed the cruddy formatting. It's a fixed width format.
I don't think strictly looking Oracle would be a very good measure per se since the OP is complaining that cards are becoming too wordy. A number of older cards have had their actual word counts change because of Oracle and no other reason. I think you would get more relevant statistics if you use the actual printed wording of each set.
For example, Alpha and Beta show little change at about 2.75% and 1.83% increase in word count between printed and Oracle text respectively for the entire set. Weatherlight shows the largest change of at 21.88% more. Because Ice Age was mentioned, it has a 9.96% increase.
Portal and Portal: Second Age are at the bottom of the count showing a decrease in word count of ~23& and ~24% for the entire set. Nearly a quarter of the text discarded. I would bank this is due to the higher than usual reminder text present on these two sets. Antiquities is at the bottom as well with 11.3% fewer words in the Oracle compared to the printed cards. Conversely, Legends went up over 10.8% so age isn't strictly a factor.
On a nutshell, you're going to get different statistics if you look at the actual printed card since... well... that's what most people actually see when they play. Especially if they've been playing for any length of time.
I'm too tired to create a spreadsheet and a chart, I'll do that tomorrow if people are really interested in my results....
I'm interested man! Please post your results here. Just to be clear, you think that using the original printed text instead of oracle text may change the trend significantly? If that is the case, I can see it happening, but I find it unlikely. Maybe there is a greater chance of finding a trend if you 1) cut out the reminder text, not because it doesn't make the card wordy, but because it doesn't make it mechanically clunky (which was another of my points) and 2) take a look at the same graphic without core sets. Core sets were designed to be easier to digest, so they might be bringing the trend down.
In any case I don't think the changes would be that significant, but I'm curious about your results.
I can post properly formated results when I get home.
I can parse and process the text any way I like. I just did a QAD program by looking for non-character boundries. This captures things like mana symbols as text and counts hyphenated words as two. It would just a few moments to parse them out seperately.
Are you guys pulling that data from Oracle wording or actual printed card wording?
The data is oracle text. So some of the older cards that had keyword abilities spelled out (ie Vigilance) would have less words now than originally printed.
I don't think strictly looking Oracle would be a very good measure per se since the OP is complaining that cards are becoming too wordy. A number of older cards have had their actual word counts change because of Oracle and no other reason. I think you would get more relevant statistics if you use the actual printed wording of each set.
For example, Alpha and Beta show little change at about 2.75% and 1.83% increase in word count between printed and Oracle text respectively for the entire set. Weatherlight shows the largest change of at 21.88% more. Because Ice Age was mentioned, it has a 9.96% increase.
Portal and Portal: Second Age are at the bottom of the count showing a decrease in word count of ~23& and ~24% for the entire set. Nearly a quarter of the text discarded. I would bank this is due to the higher than usual reminder text present on these two sets. Antiquities is at the bottom as well with 11.3% fewer words in the Oracle compared to the printed cards. Conversely, Legends went up over 10.8% so age isn't strictly a factor.
On a nutshell, you're going to get different statistics if you look at the actual printed card since... well... that's what most people actually see when they play. Especially if they've been playing for any length of time.
I'm too tired to create a spreadsheet and a chart, I'll do that tomorrow if people are really interested in my results....
That's funny. I always thought people were sleeving them upside down to avoid the dot covering the P/T. I never bought them myself to find out.
Fantasy Deck Protector Sleeves by Ultra-Pro perhaps? Looks like it's discontinued but a Google turns up a few places selling them.
There was a very very short time period Ultra-Pro didn't put the dot on their sleeves. When they introduced their sleeves, the dot was too far to the right covering the P/T. Clear sleeves would be flipped to put the dot on the back. The dotless sleeves were only available for a short time before U-P introduced sleeves with the dot moved to the left (still to the ire of some players for some reason). Somewhere, I have a box or two of the dotless sleeves I never used up.
I remember because, like an idiot, I sleeved my entire Ice Age set at the time in Ultra-pro sleeves because I thought it would actually go up in value. Had to travel to several different LGSs before I found a box of the "older" sleeves.
I don't think U-P had anything other than clear and a few basic colors (if any) in those days though so I think it's unlikely that U-P would have done holographic backs without the dots.
Assuming the opponent has no creatures to tap, is that because mode 3 isn't actually targeting creatures?
That's alright. I think I got my point across.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely think WotC design should focus on creating new worlds and new mythos. But once in a while, when they ground a set in something that's already familiar, it makes the suspension of belief that much easier.
Can't pick more than one so Rabia it is.
Maybe it's not my place but isn't MtG intended for 13 and up?
Not to say that one shouldn't allow anyone <13 play Magic. However, MtG does contain ideas and elements that parents might have to think about.
If he asked someone else to help her pull the money cards, then we know who the cards are really for. Either he can do it himself and recuse himself from FNM for the night or leave instructions with his kid and hope for the best.
I'll bet a fake Mox (that's all I can afford atm) that if he really spoke to someone at DCI he didn't bother telling DCI how old his kid really is.
There is a tutorial on Youtube to make water proof bags for.... something....
They basically cut up a shower curtain (I think) and fabric and stitched them together. Obviously shower curtain might not be thin enough but there's gotta be something on that flavor at the fabric store. Disposable rain slickers? Those super thin aluminium blankets?
In addition, you can look at the little icons along the top of your reply box whenever you reply and check them out. The ones on the right side should be of interest.
No they wouldn't. Even to this day, correct UI design specifies descriptive text reminder on mouse over on computer UI. This is something that can't be done on paper cards, period. Even if experienced players "get it" what about the new ones?
Second, the game is ever changing so creation of said symbols would literally require years of testing to get right for every symbol. That means a ton of real world user testing by people who has never seen said symbols. WotC already admittedly screwed it up with
I used Perl 5.20 because of the insanely flexible RegEx engine. The actual RegEx(simplified for your viewing pleasure) is
scalar (grep { $_ ne '' } $text=~ /[\(\{][^\{\}\(\)]*[\)\}]|\b(\w+)\b/g);I could probably make it far more elegant, like removing the possibly redundent \b's, but I wasn't really in the mood.
Try studying UI sometime, you'll change your tune.
Sacrifice X is literally a requirement set down by other cards. If you include Sacrifice X on other cards, and not on Birthing Hulk then you've introduced inconsistency into the text, something WotC has been striving to reduce for some time.
More importantly, the more your text looks like code, the more likely you're going to scare away new people and, quite possibly, annoy existing ones. Not everyone can process and understand information that's been condensed so much that much of the information has to be inferred, such as in your example for Birthing Hulk. Toss in icons for keywords and you're just making the whole thing a mess.
And quite honestly, I for one, do not want to carry around a list of rarely used icons just so I can remember what they do. Nor do I want to spend time trying to infer information that should be on the face of the card anyways. I already spend enough time using my phone for rule verification and Oracle text.
Enjoy.
I included all three Portals because I was curious about how they were affected.
I parsed both the original card text and the oracle text using the same improved algorithm.
My previous post (about three up) blindly included reminder text. The new algorithm properly discards characters and words that are enclosed by both {} and (). This, I believe, removes both symbols and reminder text. I don't bother verifying if the text removed is intended to be text so if the card text has {}() anywhere, then everything between the two will be lost. This is obvious with the Dual Lands since the Oracle text condensed the entire text into a single reminder. Dumb but whatever. I didn't bother fussing with hyphens. If a word is hyphenated, it'll count it as two words.
It took me longer because I had an annoying bug where the parser was adding 1 to the word count if it discarded an entire block (such as reminder text). Took me near forever to figure out what was going on.
The numbers I came up with are rather revealing. Revised shrunk the most at nearly 22.7%, Exodus grew the most. What was surprising, even to me, was the total number of sets that increased. Not as many as I thought.
edit: fixed the cruddy formatting. It's a fixed width format.
I can post properly formated results when I get home.
I can parse and process the text any way I like. I just did a QAD program by looking for non-character boundries. This captures things like mana symbols as text and counts hyphenated words as two. It would just a few moments to parse them out seperately.
I don't think strictly looking Oracle would be a very good measure per se since the OP is complaining that cards are becoming too wordy. A number of older cards have had their actual word counts change because of Oracle and no other reason. I think you would get more relevant statistics if you use the actual printed wording of each set.
For example, Alpha and Beta show little change at about 2.75% and 1.83% increase in word count between printed and Oracle text respectively for the entire set. Weatherlight shows the largest change of at 21.88% more. Because Ice Age was mentioned, it has a 9.96% increase.
Portal and Portal: Second Age are at the bottom of the count showing a decrease in word count of ~23& and ~24% for the entire set. Nearly a quarter of the text discarded. I would bank this is due to the higher than usual reminder text present on these two sets. Antiquities is at the bottom as well with 11.3% fewer words in the Oracle compared to the printed cards. Conversely, Legends went up over 10.8% so age isn't strictly a factor.
On a nutshell, you're going to get different statistics if you look at the actual printed card since... well... that's what most people actually see when they play. Especially if they've been playing for any length of time.
I'm too tired to create a spreadsheet and a chart, I'll do that tomorrow if people are really interested in my results....
Intuitively I knew I was right but couldn't cite any specific rule or find the answer searching.
My Search-Fu has its good and bad days.