The next set has been out for a while, so I'm doing my MTG set recap for Murders at Karlov Manor!

Arena Limited Stats

Set Notes

• The previous set Lost Caverns of Ixalan was my all-time worst limited performance for an Arena premier set. I was actually doing much better with MKM, at least until I hit Platinum! Oh well, I'm just happy to finish at an above 50% win rate!
• Despite having trouble at Platinum rank, I still kept drafting because honestly, MKM is a fun draft format. Disguise is a great upgrade to morph and I love those hybrid discard cost creatures that fit in multiple decks. The format felt very aggro/tempo focused and you wanted to be playing as many cards as possible each turn (well, this is generally true of MTG) and having disguise cards definitely helped with that. Two drops that could compete vs the 2/2 morphs were high value!
• I kind of favored the controlly-side of the limited format though, favoring black decks in general with their plentiful removal. I really liked Extract a Confession since it could easily handle the inevitable turn 3 disguise plays from your opponent.
• This was the first set that replaced draft boosters with play boosters, and that was certainly an adjustment and a challenge, since you are likely to be getting multiple rares per pack, so the temptation to raredraft and wreck your draft was pretty strong!
• Flavor-wise, I get the complaints; I certainly did not instinctively feel like this was a Ravnica set. But I think they hit the "murder mystery" flavor out of the park!

7-x Sealed/Draft Decks

Premiere Draft 7 Trophy Deck - WU

Premiere Draft 8 Trophy Deck - UB

Magic Arena Stats

(Waiting on the email)

Streaming videos

I did NOT stream any MKM!

Related Links

• Overall Arena Limited Stats

Outlaws of Thunder Junction is already out! This one gives even more rares per pack, so I am once again having trouble lol.

Premiere Draft 7 Trophy Deck - WU

Premiere Draft 8 Trophy Deck - UB

Spoiler-free Review

The final episode of FX's Shogun miniseries aired today and I watched it as soon as it was available on Disney+. The original remains one of my favorite books, so I had been looking forward to this adaptation and it did not disappoint. While I have my nitpicks here and there and overall I wish the series had been longer and had retained more details from the book, I am generally happy with it as an adaptation and must note the fantastic performances by the main cast. The costuming and set design and everything was generally on point and very immersive. The show had so many great moments as well.

One concern is that people who haven't read the book may have built up some wrong expectations for how the show ends and may find the eventual ending anticlimactic. More on that later!

In addition to watching the show itself, I also listened to the official podcast which gives some BTS details for each episode (YT playlist here). Aside from giving insights to some of the decisions behind changes in the show, the podcast also gave me a greater appreciation of the historical context and characters upon which the novel was based.

Spoliery Show Notes

I have been wanting to talk about this show since it started, especially the differences between the book and the show, and I think I'm going to get into some detail. Liberal and unmarked book and show spoilers follow.

The first couple of episodes already had me very impressed, as I felt they were very faithful adaptations of the book's plot, if a bit compressed in terms of timeline, understandably because they only had 10 episodes to work with. While the events of the show generally follow the pace and tone of the book, there are some notable differences:

• a lot of the names, both of places and major characters, have been changed. I understand from the official podcast that many of the changes were made for the sake of historical accuracy, as the many of the names in the book would not have been appropriate for the time period
• in the book, Blackthorne's main task for Toranaga is training a regiment of musket-bearing soldiers. In the show, this is changed to training the regiment in the use of Blackthrone's cannon, which is superior to anything the Japanese had ever seen before. Again from the official podcast, this is because historically the Japanese had already been using firearms for at least 70 years, so training a musket regiment didn't make sense
• the book has a lot of internal dialogue, the sort of thing that doesn't really translate well to a visual adaptation. They sort of work around this a bit, but overall I felt like a lot of detail and nuance in the characters' decisions was lost due to being unable to expound on their motivations via internal dialogue.

Blackthorne

• the show shifts Blackthorne's character arc significantly, in a way de-emphasizing his relationship with Mariko. In the show Blackthrone and Mariko are only "together" a couple of times, despite how close they are. In the book, their affair goes on for a long time and they have a lot more open, intimate conversations discussing their relationship. In the book, Blackthorne's primary motivation for the second half of the book is primarily to protect Mariko and hence he was loyal to Toranaga. Show Blackthorne is much more useless in the second half of the show and attempts to find his own path separately from Toranaga.
• I was also surprised that they cut Blackthorne's sepukku attempt in Anjiro when Yabu threatens to punish the villagers. This whole subplot of requiring the villagers to help him learn Japanese does not exist in the show and it felt like they cut out an important part of Blackthorne's charater arc since it was that point that book Blackthorne began to understand the Japanese perspective on life and death
• Instead, the sepukku attempt happens in the very last episode and Blackthorne's whole character arc was shifted to end here with his "rebirth" and acceptance of everything he has lost and his fate in Japan. Having Toranaga himself quickly step in to save him was a nice touch, though I wish he hed acknowledged Blackthorne's chutzpah a bit and not just suddenly smack him around with the idea to build a new ship and fleet, which kind of came out of nowhere. I wish they had instead kept that part of the book where Mariko left a letter behind for Blackthorne, giving him the idea of building a new ship; I think it would have given Blackthorne more closure.
• Cosmo Jarvis gave an excellent performance here, playing the fish out of water trying to make the best of his situation very well.
• Also, they kind of butchered the context of my favorite Anjin quote! (See below)

Unless you win! - Blackthorne

Toranaga

Tomorrow is tomorrow - Toranaga

• I feel like the inability to use internal dialogue has affected the character of Toranaga the most. Show Toranaga (played masterfully by Hiroyuki Sanada) feels a lot more serious and constantly with a grim expression on his face, coldly making all his decisions. Book Toranaga felt more like a full person, since we read about all the things and plans he considers, and all of his internal joys and turmoils. Book Toranaga is often internally so excited and joyful when he gets new information that could help his cause, while show Toranaga can only show the outer stoicness required of him.
• I was worried about how they would handle the book's second "climax": Toranaga's internal monologue where he admits to sacrificing Erasmus and manipulating Blackthorne and Mariko and everyone else and that he had been plotting to become Shogun all along. The show works around this by having Toranaga be Yabu's second at his sepukku, allowing him to admit all his plans and monologue to Yabu, just as a classic Bond villain would!
• Without the internal monologue, show Toranaga also feels less hyper-competent compared to book Toranaga; events like Naga's surprise death make it seem like he's simply getting lucky and stumbling along instead of taking advantage of long-running machinations bearing fruit. In the book, I believe he machinated Sugiyama's defection from the council instead of it happening independently of him.

Mariko

Flowers are only flowers because they fall - Mariko

• In many ways, Mariko is a more important character to the book and the show than Blackthorne, and sometimes even Toranaga himself. Aside from cutting back her relationship with Blackthorne, show Mariko retains all of the depth and background of the character, losing very little in the adaptation, and in fact getting additional backstory as she is revealed to have been childhood friends with Ochiba, a relationship that was not in the book.
• Mariko is involved in some of the most tension-filled scenes in the show, and not just the action-y ones (though she gets those too!). I easily predicted that the climax of her character arc, and arguably the main climax of the book itself, would happen in episode 9: her attempt to free the hostages from Osaka castle and sepukku attempt and the subsequent shinobi attack. Everything that comes after is simply tying up lose ends. The show acknowledges this when Toranaga says that's what Crimson Sky actually was - Mariko prying open Osaka castle - and not the grand war plan that the book describes.
• Anna Sawai easily gives the best performance in the entire show, perhaps an award-winning performance even.

Yabushige

I don't have time for this Christian nonsense! - Yabushige

• If Mariko was the character who had retained most of her depth from the book, Yabushige (or Yabu, as I still refer to him in my head) is arguably the breakout star and most improved character from the book. The scheming, treacherous, and self-serving lord was already an interesting character in the book but the show and Tadanobu Asano's portrayal gave the character even more idiosyncrasies like putting together a book on the best death and making outrageous statements constantly being befuddled and surprised by the show's events and the nonverbal chemistry between him and Blackthorne is just great. Show Yabu feels a bit less cunning and mean than book Yabu (though still every bit the psychopath), and even provides a bit of comic relief throughout some of the most tense moments of the series.

Other Characters

• Fuji (Fujiko in the book), although mostly a minor character, is also vastly improved from the book, with Moeki Hoshi's quiet reaction faces adding a lot to every scene she's in. The character even gets a different ending in this one, opting to move on from her family's shame to become a nun instead of the implied "accidental" death she is granted in the book.
• Notably missing: Toranaga's eldest son and heir Sudara, whose wife is actually Ochiba's sister in the book. The first episode mentions that Ochiba went to Edo to visit her pregnant sister (Toranaga's daughter-in-law), but she and Sudara are never shown on-screen. Instead, Ochiba's childhood relationship with Mariko is used as a way to expound on her character.
• Hiromatsu and Nagakado surprisingly get killed off where their book equivalents did not. Nagakado's accidental death gives Toranaga time to scheme and is kind of ironic given his dreams of glory, while Hiromatsu's seppuku is a tense moment that takes the place of Toranaga disowning Sudara as the climax of the meeting where trason is discussed. I guess this was appropriate, because their book equivalents weren't actually very relevant to the second half of the book.

The ending

As mentioned, some show viewers may be disappointed if they were expecting a big showdown with Ishido in the series finale. During Toranaga's monologue to Yabu he implies what he expects to happen at what will eventually be the battle of Sekigahara, but it was never going to be the sort of show or series that would end with a huge setpiece battle. I do wish that the ending had given us a more solid hint of where Toranaga's story was going, even with a short text blurb at the end (mirroring the short text intro at the start of episode 1). In the book we at least see Toranaga making his initial plans and giving out orders for the first skirmishes of the coming war and how he plans to deal with the regents, and we get the short blurb at the end describing what happens when he and Ishido eventually meet on the field.

That being said, the rest of the ending was pretty good, with callbacks to earlier episodes and giving good conclusions for each of the major characters (and even some minor ones), even giving us a fake-out in Blackthorne's "flash forward" dream sequences.

That's It

I have already written way too many words about this show! I honestly held back from commenting on the many excellent scenes and details otherwise this post might never have gotten done!

I consider myself a fully-functioning adult, but sometimes I still get hit with episodes of anxiety that just seem silly right afterwards. This is a story about one of those episodes.

Sometime last month, I had a voucher worth P1000 (a bit less than 20USD these days) for a certain popular drug store chain; let's reference them by the thinly-veiled "MD". This voucher was from a credit cards rewards program; that isn't really relevant. The voucher consists of a QR code that I'm supposed to show when transacting at MD. The QR code is actually a string code representing my voucher.

Anyway, I wanted to use the voucher so I went over to my nearby MD branch to buy my meds. I have been transacting at this branch often, and the employee who handled my order (let us call him "D") knew me by face at the very least. When I tried to use the voucher, his scanning device had an issue connecting to the network to validate the code. He tried a couple of times, but when it still failed, he suggested I just try it another time as their network was being wonky that day. Okay! I paid via credit card instead and resolved to use it at another time.

Fast forward around 20 days (a week or so ago), and I was on my way home from one of my many errands and it was a bit late but the MD branch was still open and I had to buy meds so I decided to try using the voucher again. This time, I was surprised when they scanned it and told me the voucher had already been used! I was a bit flummoxed, but I still needed to buy the meds so I just paid with cash and started walking home.

On the way home, I felt incredibly frustrated and annoyed, because it felt like I had just been robbed of P1000! And I wasn't sure what to do, or whether it was still worth the time trying to get my voucher code back. Who do I complain to? The MD branch? The head office? The IT company that handles the vouchers? The credit card company whose rewards program I got it from? It's not like I could prove that I did NOT use the voucher (you can't really prove a negative). Overall I felt like it would be a waste of effort to try to complain as it might be unlikely that the voucher amount could be recovered. It felt like the sort of situation where there was a bug in the redemption system somewhere and the MD branch would blame the voucher company and vice versa and nothing would come out of it.

When I got home I ranted at some people and asked for advice. Some people suggested it was still worth pursuing, some people said it might not be worth it. Someone suggested escalating publicly via social media (this seemed excessive). Some people agreed that it seemed unlikely to have any positive outcome. Someone suggested that maybe the employee "D" used the voucher code himself later after I tried to use it, but I didn't want to accuse anyone.

I also tried to access the original URL from when I generated the QR code for the voucher and found a status message saying it had already been used on the date I first tried to use it, at that specific branch, so definitely a problem happened there!

In the end, I resolved to go back the next day and talk to the manager (or anyone) at the MD branch to see if it could be sorted out. Might as well try, right? Well, here's where the anxiety comes in. One of the underlying reasons why I was hesitant to pursue it is that the idea of complaining and being a Karen of sorts just gives me a lot of anxiety. It was troubling me enough that it made it hard to sleep that night, and I may have even had a nightmare about it.

It's not like I haven't been able to do customer service interactions before; I have certainly complained to my ISP any times in the past. But those felt like more structured, official complaint channels, where I was talking to a CS person specifically trained to handle particular complaints and has access to my records and whatnot. This one felt like it would be an "unhandled case" where the manager at the MD branch might not know what to do and may or may not have access to records to check what I was claiming. It was an interaction with an uncertain outcome that I was unsure how to navigate. The unknown-ness of it all was worrying me. I'm not like this all the time, but sometimes the anxiety just hits me hard for no reason!

Even while running the morning's errands the next day, I was internally hemming and hawing over whether I should push through with going back to the MD branch to complain. In the end I did. And one advantage of going there in the morning was that the employee "D" was there again this time (he was not there the previous night), and I spoke to him and told him the whole story.

Long story short, everything turned out peachy. While he was processing other orders, "D" got the scanning device and confirmed that they did not process any such vouchers on the date in question. I showed him the status message that said it was used at this branch. He tried scanning it again, and I think it also told him the code was used at this branch. He spoke to the manager, and after a while they got back to me and said they need to report it to the head office and asked me to leave my contact details so they could call me back when there's a resolution. I agreed and wrote down my deets and walked back home with a sigh of relief, anxiety overcome. They called me again after a few hours and told me I could just come in to use the voucher at any time, and I went back later that day and used it for my mom's meds. I was just happy to be able to recover that lost value! Also super thankful to the MD branch staff for being helpful and handling everything easily and quickly, no fuss.

I suspect what happened was that the scanner device scanned the code and one of the attempts got through and the backend still processed it even though the frontend had already timed out. Which would be a major bug on their backend side, they should await confirmation before committing a transaction!

In the end, I realized I got anxious for nothing, mostly because I was overthinking things. I was worried that they would take things negatively or think I was trying to scam them and I would have to prove myself or whatever. Maybe I was just lucky that the staff turned out to be very helpful?

It probably helped a lot that I came in with my complaint with a good attitude; I didn't make a scene or accuse anyone of wrongdoing or otherwise raise my voice or anything like that. I calmly told them what the problem was and asked if they could help. It's probably good that I did not immediately come back to complain the previous night when I was tired and frustrated and annoyed! I think in the future I need to remind myself that it is totally okay to raise concerns and try to navigate uncertain scenarios as long as you remain calm and rational and try to assume the best of humans.