IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early.
The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster.
In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly.
The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged.
Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms.
The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist.
The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale.
‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing.
It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment.
Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge.
That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted.
The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions.
Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge.
Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it.
Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales.
Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others.
This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse.
Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away.
These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk.
If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced.
If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober.
The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs.
The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them.
This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame.
Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier.
There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language.
What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand.
That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough.
If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses.
As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial.
The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt.
Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame.
This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’
So Stokes punches him.
It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road.
Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks.
Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him.
Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended.
Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop.
Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance.
‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’
The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’.
The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back.
After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed.
If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence.
Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued.
‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass.
A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’.
The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now.
Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa.
It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’.
The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.

The results are in for Match 10. The winner is…
Ananas “Agnes” Bayley, with a score of 72 to Guy Manuel-Mota’s 69!

Category	Winner	Point Totals	Comments
Popularity	BADD GUYS	18-12
Quality	Suburban Regalia	22-23	Reasoning
JoJolity	Suburban Regalia	22-24	Reasoning
Conduct	Tie	10-10

Amidst the sea of concrete snow that the stage had become, egged on by Agnes’ unusual encore request that Metra had agreed to, the killing intent of the self-styled villain and master mixologist had won out against the comparable brutality of the affable mercenary who had tried to take his life with just as much brutality.
The crowd, though annoyed by being utterly doused in carbonated everything, literally tossed around, literally watching their fellow partygoers exsanguinated and turned into meat puppets, did not allow it to ruin their fun, cheering on for Metra and her eclectic song choices. Agnes hopped off the makeshift surfboard he’d constructed, his opponent cut to pieces and speared and speared to hell, and it a testament to the sheer resilience of Guy-Manuel Mota that, even in such a gored, pulverized state, his opponent wondered if he was actually dead.
Regardless, he wasn’t getting back up, or reassembling, or pulling any more surprises or attempts to play possum. Realizing that it was over, Agnes was shaking. Breathing heavily. Hints of tears started to form in his eyes… but before he had a chance to cry, he arched back, laughing into a sea of concrete snow.
He’d won again.
“There you go, Metra, your show is saved or whatever,” he said with a mocking flippancy as she left the crowd to meet him backstage, “and I didn’t even kill any of these guys who paid to see you… They’ll just have to deal with sticky-wet clothes and some broken limbs.”
“Can’t believe this happened again… And I just had no choice but to keep singing and dancing.” Metra rubbed her hands on her arms, shaking her head. “I’m sick of this shit… I thought it was all almost over, but it’s just going to be forever in this city, huh?”
“Probably,” Agnes said, still half-laughing through a strained face, “just a constant, encroaching wave of ‘despair’ every waking moment… Way I see it, either you ride that shit as far as you can, or you let yourself drown. Doesn’t make a difference to me which you do.”
He glanced up at the ceiling then, cupping his hands. “Hey, fuckers! I won now! I beat the guy you sent! Get on the biggering or I’ll burn your casino down again!”
The game had, in fact, been won, and Agnes and Metra were the first to start to be free of its grasp, along with the spiked and bloodied separated bits of Guy, still pulsating ambiguously.
“He’s out for blood.” Tigran declared, warning the others Entertainment District highrollers observing, as he produced a deck of cards. “My Stand can’t hold him at that size much longer… But this whole place is about to be flooded with people, too. Duck into somewhere, and get away in the confusion.”
He spoke authoritatively, and even his sole superior, Fox, complied with his wishes after an urgent glance. “I… I’ll come for you! I promise I will!”
Tigran didn’t hear much more of that, then, beyond the sounds of Pork Soda’s Stand cry amplified by sonic boosts courtesy of Metra Doria. He fought impressively with little more than a deck of cards, but even then, could only buy his friends the seconds they needed to get away, live to gamble another day.
Tigran “Golden” Sins, User of ‘The Grid
Retired!
Face broken in nearly a dozen places by Agnes and TD/MD, the 48 year-old owner of Heartache Casino would be very quickly interned at Red Clay penitentiary, Metra insisting that her ally not kill him.
As thousands of confused concertgoers suddenly grew to full size and began to flood the halls of the Alexander Dickinson Amphitheater, the rest of his accomplices were able to escape the authorities yet again. Despite his extremely infamous protectiveness towards his face, he almost seemed to wear the damage with pride, knowing that this time, it represented having allowed the only man he considered greater than himself to run free yet again.
Red Clay Penitentiary - Industrial District
“Well, well, well, isn’t this a small world now? Tigran Sins, now in my care… Certainly less of a looker than I’d heard.” A dark-wavy-haired twenty-something sat snickering in the warden’s big swivel-chair, clad in a sleeveless velvet minidress, what of her flesh was exposed covered in flickering tattoos resembling closed eyes, flanked by uncanny-looking guards. “You don’t know me, but I’ve certainly heard of you… Of how you treated someone I hold dear very cruelly. Don’t you understand we’re all Stand Users trying to live our best life, Mr. Golden? I’m not the one who hurt you and threw you in here, and you’re not the one who said that I needed to be kept half-starved at all times so I couldn’t create anything.”
“Wh… Wait. Who the hell’re you?”
“Did my sweetheart never mention me, or do you just not pay attention to anyone but you and yours?” She leaned forward, bridging her fingers together. “I’m Palmer. I was a drama teacher at a small-town high school, but they kept overfunding football, one thing led to another, and now… I’ve got some serious vision.”
Tigran would be the last inmate admitted to Red Clay before a coup months in the making finally came to fruition.
Hey, yeah, Palmer! Remember that fun NPC? She was dating Mr. Jones and killed four people for him! Anyway, yeah, adjacent to him, an all-out meanspirited brawl in a sewer is taking place, feat. two chaotic clowns and two very frustrated young women.
What rotten luck this had been.
That leak, now of all days, when Being So Normal, Cairo Satori’s pet project that they had been slaving away at ever since setting foot in this series, had the deals with the devil that it had been built upon from the very beginning exposed for the world to see, and the city, which had loved every second of it before, had now been divided sharply between the loyal fans remaining and those protesting the entire thing, demanding the resignation of their producer, the cancellation of a show which had been picked up by so many streaming platforms, had already begun to make so much for the people who had made a livelihood of it all.
With the connection to Andrew Tiffany’s demise, even the oh-so-loyal Purple Flying Man resigned with only a short argument, and even the damage control removal of Caroline Jeffords, responsible for the worst of it, did little to contain the fact that Cairo knew about this, and Cairo allowed this to proceed nonetheless.
What, were they going to just throw it all away at the last minute? Ruin lives, tank companies, get how many people laid off? All over the failures of those close to them? Of course not.
“Cairo, dear,” the voice of that ever-troublesome producer, Million Dollars, muttered into a cell phone for them, “I’m going to need to go under the radar for awhile… People are beginning to look into my own affairs as well. But know that, as always, no matter what, you have my support. This show isn’t just a cash cow, Cairo… It’s an example. An example for the world to look to, and something for Stand Users to aspire to be better. I know you’re probably mad at us as well, but… You know that, don’t you?”
“Dollars… You’ve got a lot of nerve, trying to plead with me right now,” Cairo answered, tense in what had been their green room, sitting in the mall their producer had owned, “we definitely need to talk about our future… But we need to have one, too. Of course the show must go on… Nothing’s gonna jeopardize that!”
Free Viper Strip Mall, Suburban District
In recent times, the atmosphere at Free Viper was… somewhat dire. In fact, it had been on a rapid decline since that fateful day a couple months ago when Bert hijacked a ritual meant to challenge fate and did so, while murdering tens of thousands of people and injuring far more than that at the same time. Actually, Black Knight Penitentiary Album’s death and the realization that Remix was a serial killer came before that and weren’t very uplifting either, but what Bert did was somewhat hard to top.
Either way, the realization that he found one of the most morally bankrupt groups of people to team up with in Los Fortuna was one that Arthur Lifeson had reached not too long ago, and though it was somewhat of a painful thing to come to terms with, he had no choice but to do so and simply carry on. Bert had died, and the least Arthur could do from here on out would be to do his best to assist the city of Los Fortuna and bring justice to those who deserved it. The city certainly needed it, given all that was occurring right now.
For all the time Arthur spent in the city, he hadn’t gotten enough of note done yet… but that was soon to change. He had a plan in mind, one that would help keep the city and the world of stand users as a whole from devolving into further chaos. Before he could put it in place, however, he’d have to get some help.
Los Fortuna Shopping District, Sweet FA Mall - The Next Day
Nix Ripa had been in this city for months now, and in that time, all he had done was tear down walls, break buildings, break people who had dared to step all over the safety of others, of those too weak to bend fate to their whims.
It was despicable to him, and the icy Stand User was seething with hot rage. Those without the power to change the world themselves were pitiable, in their ways, yet at once, he knew they were not above help… That they needed to be driven higher, reach for the stars rather than wave to the heroes they saw in them!
When Arthur Lifeson discovered and contacted him, he did not hesitate to make his way to the megamall in which this was all set to culminate. Rather than in the comfortable solitude of the Black Hill Estate, where he could train without disruption, he’d even spent the night in an alley nearby, wanting to be able to spring out first thing in the morning!
When he did, then, as if on schedule, the older bearded man who had requested his help stood at the foot of Sweet FA, looking himself quite regal with that increasingly modified Medieval Times getup.
“Sir Ripa… It is an honor to meet in person, with yet another warrior of great acclaim.”
“Heh… I’ve seen you around,” Nix answered, stretching off the sleeping-on-a-dumpster aches and forcing out his hand, which Arthur, in turn, grabbed firmly, the pair locking fingers tightly and staring one another down intensely. “Did a damn fine number on those guys at this very mall awhile back… And it takes some guts to drive out into the Middle Finger for any reason! The mountains are where I do my most intense training of all!”
“Aye, I regrettably was fooled into following the glorious allure of Being So Normal… I lack even your good reason, of how you and your fallen brother-in-arms, Sir Rains, apprehended a true villain in the process of this fight, and even a black knight who would have put a past companion of mine to shame with her depravity.” He looked towards the space and shuddered. “The show, it refused to show the truth, but the wounds from that grueling battle, the burns… They were excruciating. That witch Jeffords, nothing she’s touched can be trusted as a truth to show the world.”
“So we’re in agreement then!” Nix said, finally letting the handshake go as Arthur’s hand began to grow numb, rolling his arms around and turning to face Sweet FA. “I looked into this place, their mission statement, their show, their producer… Set a good example my ass! They just want the whole damn world to think there’s nothing better than being a Stand User! That the ground we walk on should be kissed just for what we’ve got! Well… I’m no goddamn celebrity!”
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” Arthur agreed, “and this mockery… It will not do good for the world to learn of us this way. A knight’s honor is not something we seek for glory, for congratulation, but because there is no greater purpose than to slay evil, to protect those who cannot for themselves!”
“Heh… I like you. After this, we’re sparring ‘til one of us can’t move!”
Nix led the way in there, then, Arthur feeling pause for a moment at the sheer intensity of his companion. This was not of fear, however, or of a sudden feeling of inadequacy at someone so much younger, yet so much more driven than him.
Nay, he had been filled with more righteous determination than ever, and with a battle cry that led to a family with two kids in a stroller staring his way, he ran in after him!
…
…
As soon as they reached the main foyer of the mall, both of them realized, in tandem, and Nix spoke first, “…this place is huge as hell! Where do we even go to smash shit up?”
“I… That. That is a good point! Perhaps we should conduct a map kiosk, one which says ‘you are here!’ Ugh, those are always a pain to read…”
“I’ll help you.”
Both turned, then, to see a very fashionable teenager, clad in a purple aviator cap and goggles, slim and bearing a dour expression on his face. All who had hung around Cairo would recognize the Purple Flying Man from someplace or another, as well as all the extremely online and influencer-following of Los Fortuna.
“This show… They’ve done so much to capitalize on my uncle’s death. They’ve actively stopped the truth of whatever might have happened to him from being investigated with their frameup… And this conflict, I have lost two of my brothers to it all over again.”
He paused, then, and the two men seemed to trust him.
“You won’t be able to erase the show completely… It’s already had a limited run in this city. But masters, extra footage, content they were going to actually send out… There’s a storage space nearby… Most of the show’s data is backed up, of course, but that’s where everything is being saved. If your wish is to sabotage Being So Normal, to ruin its international release before it can cause any more harm to the outside world, that is where you go.”
“So you’ve had a change of heart yourself… I am thankful to hear that, Purple One…” Arthur snapped his fingers, then, as if remembering his name. “Right, now I remember! ‘Afton,’ wasn’t it?”
Purple’s face faulted. “Erm… N-no, eheh. It, uh… It wasn’t that. I haven’t been anything but ‘Purple’ for a very long time.”
“No matter what you’re called, an enemy of this show’s from within is just what we need to make this a little less of a pain in the ass!” Nix declared. “Lead the way!”
A Series of Backstage Halls Deep Within Sweet FA
Acrobatic and stealthy as he was, after leading the way in for those who had sought out this quest to begin with, Purple hurried along deeper inward, well aware that it was likely this place would not be unguarded, and meaning to scout ahead, maybe even fight a bit if he absolutely needed to.
He really, really did not want to, and so far, it wasn’t reassuring to him that nobody had interrupted them. No show staff, no Stand Users, not even some rent-a-cop had yet gotten into the way of this.
As he made his way to a security room, quietly bemoaning the fact that he would never live down infiltrating a security room with that damned nickname Bad Apples had given him, his worst fears were confirmed.
His friend, his confidante, Cairo Satori was sitting in a swivel chair, watching screens displaying the entire mall and idly leaning their head into a metal baseball bat.
“Purp…” They spoke up without even turning to face him. “Wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon! I mean, with everywhere you’ve blocked me, privated your accounts… I was under the impression you needed some time away from the show.”
Purple hopped down, then, walking closer towards the chair, clearing his throat and pondering his words clearly.
“The show needs time away from the show, Cairo… You know damn well why I brought myself back. Come on. You know this isn’t right… It doesn’t have to be this, and even just delaying could save-”
“Delay, huh?” They stood, twirling that bat they’d always carried around. It didn’t worry Purple. He’d never seen them actually using it. “C’mon… You know it’s not that simple, buddy. I’m just trying to make sure everyone has a good time… Already, I’m cutting toxic people out of the show! Even when they’ll make it harder to make anything going forward, Caroline is gone! I’ll keep that producer on a really short leash! I am doing everything in my power to make sure that this goes well… C’mon, can’t you look on the bright side?”
“You… You already know my answer to that. You’ve betrayed my trust, Cairo. The trust of my uncle, of everyone you’ve worked with… Of this whole city!” He shifted in place, then, becoming a much more avian humanoid figure with its pose. “I am its lavender courage, and I am your friend! And as both, I cannot abide by-”
Cairo swang their bat, and as they did, the arms of a Stand emerged from their own hand and struck it as well, multiple times in quick succession.
By the time the bat impacted Purple, it was with enough force for the deeply resilient eternally-young ghost to be sent hurtling towards a wall, literally impacting it hard enough to leave an impression in its form, embedded and unconscious in a single swing. He was alive, and would walk this off, but he wouldn’t be getting back up today.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” they said, standing with the bat over their shoulder, ‘Peach Pit’ manifesting more fully by their side (drawn by the artist Boy George, as usual), “but I can tell we don’t have time to chat… I’ll send you a gift basket from the launch party, yeah?”
Then, their attention turned towards the others on the security room screens, addressing their Stand in the meantime, “uh, hey, Peach…”
“I’m on it,” the Stand answered, “Arthur Lifeson and Nix Ripa… I’m excited for this, honestly.”
“And you don’t need to know that I am to, honestly…” Cairo moved to press the intercom button.
“I heard violence!” Nix called out, balling his fists. “Purple found someone!” He began to rush forward, then, Arthur preparing to make a blade, only to be stopped by the crackling of an intercom button.
“Hello again! Wow, it really isn’t all that often that Being So Normal has repeat appearances, but that’s, what, twice in this promotional cycle alone?” Cairo’s voice rang through, then, and they continued, “I figured we’d see some trouble here, so I gave most of staff the day off… I knew it’d be types like you two who showed up, and honestly, I gotta say, despite the circumstances, I’m a bit psyched!”
“Cairo Satori!” Arthur spoke up then, waving his hands. “Put this madness to a close, before I have to put you to my blade! You need not fall victim to this any longer… To fight us is a waste of time!”
“Well, I’ve got time to kill, and nobody to talk to, now that my friend’s taking a bit of a nap. And besides, you think I’m gonna just let you destroy everything we’ve been working to build up because you don’t like a couple of the crew members? C’mon, have a reality check here! No way I’m gonna allow that… Especially not right now! Look, why not come talk to me after I’ve completely closed this Netflix deal?”
There was silence, then, and then they spoke up again.
“Oh, who am I kidding? We both know that this is only gonna end one way! If you wanna stop me from sending this show out for the whole world to know and love, and not just be another little piece of Los Fortuna’s super storied, super amazing history, then STOP me! I’m already sending Peach your way, and there’s no way the two of us will just get walked all over!”
Arthur shut his eyes in frustration, but Nix shook his shoulder. “We knew from the start it’d come to this. C’mon… Any more talking this through will be a waste of all our breaths.”
“Yeah! This pre-battle stuff goes on way too long, I swear! So much to cut down in post without missing the meat of it… But enough talking shop, yeah? Let’s get to what we’re here for… You wanna say it with me? …no? Okay, suit yourself!”
“OPEN THE GAME!”
Location:
A hallway to several storage rooms in Sweet FA Mall. The area here is 40 by 80 meters with each tile being 2.5 by 2.5 meters. The white tiles are completely out of bounds for this match. The light magenta tiles are the main hallway, the purple tiles are side hallways, and the red tiles are the rooms. Each room has a number associated with it for convenience, as shown by the purple numbers. The ceiling is 8 meters tall. The doorways are denoted by the dotted lines between the rooms and hallways.
The players start at the left end of the hallway and Cairo starts in the security room (room 5) to the right of the bottom center. Cairo’s Stand starts in the middle of the main hallway.
The grey X marked circles are security cameras on the ceiling that connect to the monitors that are represented by the yellow notched rectangles in room 5. The light blue rectangles in the main hallway are 4 meter tall metal shelves that house stage set up equipment such as stepladders, light fixtures, microphones, extension cables, construction tools, and anything else needed to set up or tear down a stage. All shelves are bolted to the ground.
The yellow stars are disks, tapes, harddrives and other recordings of the footage shot by Cairo’s show.
The walls are drywall while the floor is ceramic tiled.
Now onto the different rooms:

• Room 1: Contains racks and cardboard bins of merchandise. The brown rectangles are cardboard bins of plushies and hats. The red circles are racks of clothing merchandise.
  
• Room 2: Contains a mountain of chairs and other furniture within a 5 meter tall metal storage fence as represented by the light blue rectangle and the junk inside it. Each side of the fence has a chain locked door.
  
• Room 3: Contains various cooking appliances and peripherals. The white rectangles are 4 meter tall metal storage shelves and the magenta rectangles are 5 meter tall metal storage containers. Basically any appliance that doesn’t fit on a shelf is put into one of the three containers.
  
• Room 4: Contains two long tables as represented by the grey L-shaped rectangles. On these tables are neatly laid out items that were used in Round 2 Match 4, this means Riot Shields, Fireworks Cannons, Magnetic Ray Guns, Grappling Hook Guns, smoke bombs, Tar filled paintball guns, mannequins, body armor, skateboards, net launchers, fire extinguishers, step ladders, marbles, bowling balls, trampolines, shovels, steel chairs, and blankets. Only the crystal ball is missing. The blue circle is a barrel of fencing foils and the yellow rectangle is a banged up motorcycle that while not completely totaled is in pretty bad shape.
  
• Room 5: The security room. It is rather bare, only housing the monitors set-ups to the security cameras and three swivel chairs to go with them.
  

Goal: RETIRE your opponents!
Additional Information:
As a reminder, White Tile areas are out-of-bounds for this match. If you willingly traverse through them you will be retired by a pair of mall cops.
Here is a shortened version of Cairo’s character sheet with all relevant information, the full sheet is linked below
Name: Cairo Satori
Age: 21
Gender: None, whose business is that anyways?
Species: Human
Occupation: Beloved Media Icon
Equipment: The newest smartphone, two sets of wireless earbuds for communicating directly with [Peach Pit] quietly, a bag of weed mints, and a baseball bat.
User Stats:
Strength: 3 (Too much effort to get properly strong- Cairo can throw as much effort into a hit as they need to in order to finish someone off after being brought to near-retirement by [Peach Pit], and that’s about the maximum they need.)
Agility: 2 (Never had to run after or from anything.)
Endurance: 2 (Not one to hold up under sustained pressure for very long, hoping to duck back from any conflicts except where absolutely necessary.)
Conduction: 2 (Able to personally carry their Stand’s damaging energy through them, and has a general knowledge of how to apply it.)
Vibing: 3 (It's for vibe checks- the necessity of finishing an opponent off personally, in a fast and hard strike. The full force of their strength, loaded into one moment rather than a series of fests. Also, they do have good vibes.)
Stand Name: [Peach Pit]
Stand Appearance: On the bulkier side of stand builds, Peach Pit has some resemblance to a knight in plate armor- big, dark metallic pauldrons, a chestplate, an assortment of straps and buckles, etc. The surface of the stand looks very much like a sunset with its colors flipped around. Its face is smooth except for a simple minimalist icon of the sun, and the rest of the head is mostly covered by a knight's helmet as well. A gradient of sorts goes from the head of the stand down to its armored feet, starting with an orange-red and ending in black with white specks like stars in the night sky.
About/Oddities: The stand is dangerous, outright. The manifestation of an incredible will for a very specific life gave it incredibly high offensive might, and although Cairo has depleted its very low ‘potential,’ nothing else has decreased in the slightest.
Additionally, [Peach Pit] is sentient, and thinks of itself as a close friend and bodyguard to Cairo. Despite being able to dish out high damage, it is very much a friendly, calm and collected individual, having respect even for those it has to fight. As such, [Peach Pit] leaves RETIRING opponents up to its user completely. An enemy can be beaten down, but will still be able to pull together and carry on albeit impeded until Cairo personally finishes them off. This isn't simply a choice- if instructed to keep pressure on an opponent who's down but not out, its strikes can indefinitely inflict serious pain and yet never be quite enough to injure a foe to the point where they're considered RETIRED.
Due to the bold weakness in this, for how combat inefficient and easily hurt its user is, Peach doesn't have full damage transference. Instead, it can be destroyed repeatedly- Cairo takes one instance of C power damage upon its destruction, and it can be resummoned from Cairo's position after ten seconds.
Peach's presenting identity has been influenced by Cairo's insistence against defining things that way, to the point of being comfortably seen subjectively as anything. Peach will respond to any pronouns without questioning it.
Stand Stats:
Power: A(The stand can exert a great amount of power in its attacks)
Speed: A (Its movements are very fast and its attacks can travel just as quickly)
Range: B (50 meters)
Durability: E (Subpar durability, however when destroyed the user takes C power damage and the stand can be summoned back to Cairo’s side after 10 seconds.)
Precision: C (Generally decent in its movements, but its projectile attacks only move in a straight line once fired and can only be stored within conductive materials. In non-conductive materials it would keep traveling)
Ability: Peach Pit lacks a complex ability, as far as one would expect. Rather than intricate effects, its hits themselves can simply be conducted through material similarly the way that electricity does, with distinct variation based on the conductivity of the material. Within conductive material, damage is stored up much like a battery - the moment someone touches the "battery", the damage transfers directly to it on the point of contact. This means that if Peach were to punch a metal rod and someone were to touch it, they would feel the full brunt of Peach's attack the moment they do so. A battery remains charged for up to fifteen seconds, and at any point if it hasn’t been touched and discharged already, Cairo can pick any direction from where the battery is in contact with non-conductive materials to activate the next type of attack.
Within non-conductive material, either deployed through battery or direct strike, damage "travels", moving forwards in a straight line at A speed in the same direction it came from. This wave of damage can be seen as it travels, with slight shimmers of light and a crackling sound emanating from where it's currently positioned.
Damage cannot travel further than B range from Cairo.

Team	Combatant	JoJolity
Black Hill Regalia	Arthur Lifeson and Nix Ripa	“The thing in Hayato's hand was definitely a handy cam. It doesn't seem to be in this room right now...” This show is a sweet-sounding idea, but it’s so corrupt to its core that you can’t allow it to spread any further than it has. Destroy as many physical backings of the recordings Cairo has made for their show as you can over the course of your strat!
Being So Normal	Cairo Satori	“I even took a video of the cat-like plant you've got in the attic!” This show… You know it’s been an unsavory road, one you wish you could have managed differently, but the good it can do, the way the world might finally begin to understand the ugly and wonderful truths of Stand Users and appreciate them more as a part of their lives… You will celebrate that. Take creative inspiration from actions that took place in matches related officially to ‘Being So Normal!’ That is to say, these 5 matches, R1M5,R1M23,R1M29,R2M4, and R3M8!

Link to the Official Player Spreadsheet
Link to Match Schedule
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Cait. Sith. Is. Valid. Also, buckle up, this is a long one.
For those who dont remember, Cait Sith is a playable character in FFVII who appears as an anthropomorphic black and white cat wearing a small red cape and a gold crown. In later installments, he has a Scottish accent and no longer rides on that huge moogle robot thing. Cait Sith is a character that is tied directly to Reeve Tuesti, his creator and the man who is able to assume control over him from time to time. In so many videos and articles and such, Cait is often pinned as the "worst thing about FFVII" or "the most useless Final Fantasy character". As for me, personally, I actually like Cait, but I have come up with a few ways to get more on the fence people to warm up to him. Behold, my FFVII Remake Cait Sith Theory/Speculation.
First things first, all of those people who think Square will entirely cut Cait out of the game are wrong. No, seriously, he's already in the Remake. He made a short cameo when the Sector 7 Plate fell. So many people were confused as to why he seemed so upset. One person, I don't remember who, wondered "Why would Reeve make Cait be all dramatic like that???" So, firstly, I thought it was common knowledge that Cait wasn't entirely remote-controlled, but oh well for the sake of this theory I'll have you know that I'm looking at it as though Reeve is not puppeteering Cait 100% of the time. He has an AI, at the very least, but for now, AI does not mean sentience, by the way. But Cait has a programmed personality, voice (the reason that Cait has a Scottish accent and Reeve doesn't), and movements. He may or may not become sentient but that's a story for another time.
Also the reason Cait would have a personality and programmed "emotions" is so 1, he can calm people who are distressed during a crisis so they can get to safety, 2, he can further convince people of things using emotion in his voice to appeal to their sympathy, and 3, I dunno Reeve wants him to be more than just a robot.
Now, this programming is the reason he spies on the group. I doubt Reeve has the time to sit and watch everything that happens, so maybe Cait sends a sort of report to him about any important info he gets in the day, if any. The thing is, maybe you can have a few scenes where Cait is showing uncharacteristic reluctance or regret over being a spy. Making him more sympathetic. The reason Reeve would even use Cait as a spy? Well, Avalanche is still the cause for the plate falling. If Avalanche hadn't bombed the reactor, Shinra wouldn't have viewed them as a threat, the plate wouldn't have been dropped. Reeve most likely doesn't know about the reactor being Shinra's fault moreso than Avalanche. You can see that Heidegger and President Shinra are the only ones in the room during that scene. Now, Reeve was in the room for the plate falling, he knows Shinra caused that, and he attempted to stop the President (to no avail).
By the way, it is my theory that during that conversation or immediately following it, Reeve dispatched Cait to go to the pillar to stop the Turks, or maybe to issue an evacuation. Reeve was not controlling Cait at this time, so Cait's despair was his own, he was upset that he failed his mission and failed to save Sector 7. Another reason why he has programmed emotions, so he can have determination and investment in his mission, and the regret experienced when failing will make him figure out a different way to solve similar problems.
So, while Reeve knows Shinra caused the plate falling, he probably does not know that Shinra caused the reactor 1 bombing to be much more deadly that it would have been. So, in Reeve's and subsequently in Cait's eyes, Avalanche is a threat just as much as Shinra is (and you could say that's kinda true, looking at being a threat to people, not the planet btw). Both hurt innocents. So Reeve could be trying to help the Turks get Avalanche out of the way so he could focus again on trying to mitigate the damage Shinra causes on it's own. Also, maybe it just isn't up to Reeve. If he refuses to do what Shinra wants him to, he will lose his job. You would think that losing your job could be survivable, but with Shinra and Reeve's position in the company, actually it isn't. Reeve knows company secrets, so he would be a very major threat. The Turks would probably have to either assassinate him or imprison him somewhere where he can't spread the truth.
So, with that being said, there's your motives for Cait being a spy. Now, onto making Cait himself more likable and more useful. Firstly he can have a manipulate ability. In OG, he joins the party with a manipulate materia, though that materia never really became useful. I think, in Remake, manipulation can be simular to that thing Aloy can do in Horizon Zero Dawn. Basically, Cait can make monsters fight for us for a period of time. So using one monster to kill the others for you or distract them while you are healing or running away. That could have some use, especially in the Remake.
Now, Cait fights by using a giant moogle as a sort of... mech. He rides on top of it and shouts commands... using a megaphone... This concept is pretty goofy and kinda cute, but I don't really think they should keep it in the Remake. So, remove the moogle mount. Now, what to do with his weapon? Sure, you can still kinda make him fight with a megaphone but why would you do that? So, inspired by an original concept (so it's not that far fetched), Cait can fight using whips and/or cards. The way this can work is when you purchase weapons for him, the name will be something like "Iron Whip" and the card deck that comes with it will be grey cards. Basically, the cards will be a color, the whips will be of different materials. But when purchasing, it'll just name the whip, the cards aren't named. That is thinking that the cards will even change. Maybe Cait can equip different whips. And the cards part of it will be abilities/movesets. Like, an ability can be named after a card game and he can fling a bunch of cards at the enemies simular in style to 1,000 needles.
His abilities can be themed after casino based things and slot machines and all that, but they aren't actually slot machines. Example, his limit break, Slots, isn't randomized. It does the same attack every time, like Cloud's Cross-Slash. But the animation involves a slot machine. A slot machine appears with a bunch of fancy lights and Cait hops onto the switch, the slots roll, all three land on Cait's face, then I dunno, it explodes onto the enemies or sends projectiles at them or something. Another idea I had for his "Dice" attack could be him rolling a bunch of dice, and flinging them at the enemies, the dice exploding on impact kinda like grenades or something.
Another thing to make him better in the eyes of those who dislike him, he can have some minigame uses. When at an inn or resting place, and all of the characters are just chillin, doin their own thing, you can walk up to Cait, and when you talk to him, after his dialog, there's an option to play a game. When you click it, Cait hops up all happy and more options pop up. You can unlock mini games as you progress, so there can be things like darts. They can do a card game as a reference to Tetra Master and Triple Triad (from FFIX and FFXIII, respectively), a memory game, anything really. So, there you go, another use for Cait Sith.
In regards to level design, Cait can actually come in really handy. He is a robot created by someone in Shinra, so he would be able to hack into some Shinra tech to open doors and proceed through dungeons. This could come into play in part 3, or whenever the party gets arrested by Shinra and are brought to Junon. So, he's a hacker. Nice. Aslo, Cait is a lot smaller than the rest of the party, so he could squeeze into spaces that the others couldn't. Just a thought, and also another reason why he shouldn't have the giant moogle.
Okay, now, this is a lot, but I have one last thing to talk about. His intro. So many people don't like Cait that I really don't think anyone would mind if his intro would change. Unlike the points people made in my post about Vincent, where some people pointed out that a lot of fans feel an attachment to his OG introduction, there's not much thats really... iconic about Cait's. Yes, I know, the way he joins the party is supposed to be sudden and weird because he's a spy and your supposed to be all like "oh that is... that's suspicious". But hey, I just wanna see who else thinks a new intro could be nice. This is purely for funzies and I don't actually think they're gonna introduce him like this. It's too specific for a theory so this is more of a "hey wouldn't it be cool if" kinda thing.
Alright, for the sake of this, I'm assuming Remake part 2 goes up to at least Gold Saucer. Long story short(er), we find Cait in a casino. Maybe he runs the casino, maybe he's a prominent member. Anyway, he claims that you can win a better amount of GP (special points that work as currency in Gold Saucer) by playing his card game then with any other game. So, Cloud sits down to play. After you play the game, or maybe it's interrupted, there's some commotion at the entrance of the casino. Cloud looks over and almost everyone has stopped playing to look as well. None other than Elena of the Turks walks in, spotting Cloud. She is obviously looking for Avalanche, and has found them. (Also you can assume that Cait pretty much set up this whole thing.) They get ready to fight, when Cait springs up and says "Wait, you can't fight here, there's not enough room! You'll break things or hurt people! If you have to fight, do it in the Battle Square!"
So, you go to the battle square and beat up Elena (also yay! She gets a solo boss fight! Next is Tseng getting a boss encounter and we'll be able to fight all of the Turks solo). When your about to defeat her, reinforcements arrive and... yeah, there is just way too many of them. Then suddenly, a smoke bomb goes off, and Cait rescues Cloud. They regroup at that Haunted Hotel, and Cloud explains everything. Everyone decides that it would be a good idea to leave, but then they hesitate. Where's Barret? Tifa says that he could be at the battle square, where else would he go? So, reluctantly, the group moves back to the battle square, avoiding the Shinra troops that are now crawling everywhere. The park has a completely different vibe to it, the music is no longer blaring, and instead someone from Shinra is on the speakers telling everyone to keep a lookout and report any strange individuals.
Once we get into the Battle Square, we see that all of the Shinra infantrymen that were in there are all dead. Shot to death, each one. Then Barret runs in. So it wasn't Barret? Anyway, Dio, the owner of Gold Saucer, emerges, blames you for the deaths of not only the soldiers but a few staff members as well, and throws you into the desert prison, also notifying Shinra of your presence. This leads into Dyne's story and eventually Cait will convince Dio to let us go, or maybe we highjack a Shinra vehicle and escape the prison that way.
*long exhale
So, to wrap this all up, Cait has a good reason to be a spy, he can make enemies fight for him, he fights with whips and cards, when talking to him at an Inn or resting place you can play minigames like a card game similar to Tetra Master from FFIX or darts or maybe a memory game, and lastly he has a more interesting and memorable intro at Gold Saucer.
ALL RIGHT! I'M DONE WOOOO I'M TAKING A BREAK!

Prior to this year, it’s no exaggeration to say that the only game I’d played in full since about 2010 was the original BioShock. Not really sure why I stepped away from gaming - probably just some usual combination of life getting in the way and dodgy prioritisation. Then, like many others, I became acquainted with a boatload of surplus indoor time this year, and chose to find my way back with an N3DS and a Switch. Turns out I really missed it. I’ve been slowly playing through a variety of titles I missed the first time around, as well as various others I’ve stumbled across along the way.
In compiling this list, I have learned that my gameplay times are crushingly slow, people have extremely strong opinions about the Paper Mario series and actually it turns out a really poorly specced PC was holding me back from gaming all this time. Would love to hear what others thought of this selection of games, especially those who hold dissenting opinions about my DNF list (I expect plenty in support of Xenoblade, lol). Be warned this is all through the lens of someone who is plainly just thrilled to be back in the fold and has zero concerns spending way more time than necessary to complete games! I suspect I have more patience and rosier-tinted glasses as compared to the average weathered gamer, so would also be interested to hear how my experiences stack up in the wider gaming context.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds Total play time: ~30 hours
Zelda factored little in my adolescent years, and apart from renting OoT a handful of times for the 64 (and spamming bombs in SSB) this is pretty much the only Zelda experience I've had. It's kind of a blessing and a curse, from what I can tell: I have none of the hangups but equally none of the emotional connection that often seems to accompany the franchise. I really only played this because it had been given to me and came highly recommended.
But this was about as good as introductions get - sure, it helped that this was essentially the first console game I'd played in its entirety in over a decade, but the game is clearly exceptional by all accounts. It seems I love a good gameplay mechanic where it doesn't tip into gimmickry, and the wall merge system I found novel, baffling and satisfying without ever being too frustrating.
I obviously can't speak to the nostalgia aspect of it, but coming to it fresh was a charming experience. It's pretty hard not to be at least casually familiar with aspects of Zelda lore, and I liked that there weren't any lengthy cutscenes (looking at you, Ōkami) or tedious tutorials to slog through. The storytelling is a little naff but not distractingly so, and for me the pretty predictable ending was offset by the fun final boss battle. And you sure do feel good solving some of those puzzles.
I'm not yet game to branch out into the open world of BotW, but I'm pretty glad my maiden Zelda foray was this one instead. More games ought to allow one to become a painting.
Highlights: big bomb flower lols, boss battles that were satisfying / a great relief to complete
Ōkami HD Total play time: 50:57:29 Completion %: 50/100 stray beads
I remember seeing promo material for this game back when it was first released and thinking the brush mechanic was dope - a hype disproportionate to the amount of PS2 I owned (none). So regardless I was probably always going to be predisposed to like this game.
This was the first game I finished on the Switch and I enjoyed it immensely. The art style is killer and helps it look great for a game of its age into the bargain, the brush mechanic and the puzzle element it introduces feels integrated rather than gimmicky, and the storytelling is rich and humorous. I know others have commented that the game is overly long, but I enjoyed being in the world enough that it never felt a slog. (This coming from someone who has played 100+ hours of Picross but…)
I will agree that the combat system was pretty whatever, though. I am a pretty rubbish gamer by conventional skill standards and even I found this game wildly easy, but I think that also speaks to my enjoyment of the game as an all-round narrative experience rather than pure mechanics. An additional dishonorable mention for having to fight Orochi no less than three times?! Sure, going back in time was a pretty neat narrative arc and I could forgive repeating the fight in that context, but by the Ark I was sure they had to be taking the piss.
Unlocking the additional skins gives this game some replay potential for me, especially the photorealistic wolf, laughable only in hindsight. The existence of about twice as many stray beads as I collected also means I may dip in and out in future, but mostly I have minimal desire to bring my dragon-head-whacking count up to 48. Nevertheless, a pretty inimitable experience, even if it took me a decade and a half to get there.
Highlights: the dang art style, drawing an emoji face for my demon mask and seeing it show up again in Sei-an City
Paper Mario: Sticker Star Total play time: ~30 hours
I can understand the criticism of this game: the combat system sucks and makes traversing through the world often not very fun, the characters are unmemorable, the necessity of having certain stickers to win certain fights is infuriating, the plot is generic, the lack of levelling up is nonsense. None of that stopped me from enjoying this game, though! Take that! As always, this was probably helped immensely by the nostalgia I carry for the original Paper Mario on the 64 and the fact I hadn’t really had any other Mario games to compare it to for a long time.
The super vitriolic abuse it seems to cop online feels a bit disproportionate but. From poking around the series, it looks like one that people are particularly vocal about, with the only correct answer being “TTYD is the best game in the series and all other future titles will be held against this specific benchmark”. Honestly I’m just glad I played this game without the knowledge of what the gaming community thought of it, because I don’t think this is a genuinely bad game.
Kirby: Planet Robobot Total play time: ~20 hours Completion %: 81%
Evidently I rather enjoy the cute-thing-in-a-mech-suit genre, between this game and Gato Roboto. But I have very fond memories of playing The Crystal Shards and am a Kirby main (lol) in SSB so I could probably be coerced into playing literally any Kirby game. I don’t have too much to say about this game; I think anyone familiar with the franchise will understand pretty much how it plays, but the mech suit mechanic is a heap of fun, with copy abilities possible both in and out of the suit.
There were some little details that I thought were quite fun: the collection of stickers that you can use to decorate your mech was bonus entertainment, the variety of gameplay styles in the final boss battle, the remote control Kirby in the casino levels. It looks great, it’s charming, and as mentioned, I like an idiosyncratic feature that isn’t gimmicky, and I think the mech suit ticks that box. I picked up Extra Epic Yarn off the back of this, too - it just looks so dang sweet.
What the Golf? Total play time: 08:24:56 Completion %: 97% Total strokes: 11656 Games I subsequently want to play: Superhot
If there ever was a time for escapism, the middle of a pandemic seems to be a pretty good candidate, and I am certainly guilty of using this game as a bit of a feel-good salve. But what the golf, it was a grand old time, and I think we can all use the laughs it provides. I bought the game off the expectations set by the trailer and was happily not disappointed.
This is a pretty straightforward game by all standards: simple overworld, three levels per stage, emphasis on silly in "silly physics". It feels like the schtick should get old pretty fast, but there's enough sly nods and references (and straight-up gameplay duplication) to keep it fresh and consistently funny. Caveat: pun disdainers avoid.
It's the perfect game to dip in and out of - none of the stages are particularly long, and while some of the pacrown levels can be a bit frustrating, you're not at all forced to complete them in linear fashion. Nevertheless, I played this game in pretty lengthy stints, so the format isn't a barrier in that sense either.
I know this is a fairly new game to the Switch, but it's been out on PC for a while it seems. I bought it only having seen it in the eShop, so if there was a hype train, it did not make a stop at my station.
Highlights: the Superhot levels, WHAT?, the constant anticipation of what a button press would do in a new level
Ori and the Blind Forest Total play time: 14:44:46 Completion %: 96% Total deaths: 488
It’s something of a classic, and evidently with good reason - I think I would have played this game for its art alone, but of course its reputation has since come to precede it. It runs really smoothly on the Switch, and the platforming is tight and enjoyable. Not sure how common it is in the wider world, but I really liked the save mechanic - as a chronic saver, I rather appreciated being responsible for setting my own save points, especially when it came to some of the more challenging sequences. I expected to struggle a lot with this one but I found the challenges fair, even the escape sequences, much as I may have wanted to burn down the Ginso Tree on the first few attempts.
Feels like most people who’ve had an eye on it have played it by now, and there’s plenty of reviews out there for those on the fence to decide either way, but personally I’m very glad to have played and finished it. I’ve since been told that both the sequel and Hollow Knight eclipse this game, though I do have some idea of what to expect from both. Now if Will of the Wisps could just get a Switch port...
Mosaic Total play time: ~3 hours
I’d been wanting to pick this game up because a friend of mine had a hand in its creation, but I kind of could not have picked a worse time for it. Without spoiling anything, the premise of the game is being stuck in a very boring corporate dystopia, and a lot of the gameplay revolves around the repetition of your daily routines. Obviously this kind of experience can already be a little harrowing at the best of times, but in the middle of a global pandemic where time feels completely immaterial it was often a bit much.
Certainly the gameplay won’t be for everyone; there is a lot of walking around in this game, and you can interact with various depressing billboards and your smartphone in ways you think might have some kind of a purpose but ultimately formally contribute nothing to your game - so in that sense, it’s kind of a bang on expression of its premise, though its messaging can be a little on the nose at times.
If you’re into the visual style and can get down with the premise, this is a unique gaming experience which is both lovely and deeply unsettling at times. If you’re at all curious, the website gives a fairly clear mission statement of the game.
Gato Roboto Total play time: 05:23:28 Completion %: 78%
Short and sweet, this one, and looks and feels great. I’d never really picked myself as one for metroidvanias, but this game came onto my radar after Ori and I was looking for a shorter, punchy game in a similar style, and this delivered on expectations.
As mentioned, I’m kind of crap at games, so the difficulty for this one felt about right for me. There were a handful of times the boss battles threatened to tip into frustration, but mostly it was just my timing being off (second stage of the mouse battle in the heater core comes to mind) as well as in the earlier parts of the game where I had just been lax in picking up healthkits.
I’ve seen some complaints about it being too much of a Metroid clone, but you can’t get down with that criticism if you’ve never played Metroid *taps head*. Its short length seems to be another frequent comment, but if you’re going in with expectations suitably managed then I think there’s not too much to fault otherwise. But of course this is coming from someone who has played basically no metroidvanias in their life lol.
And finally, my DNF list:

• Katamari Damacy; abandoned after ~4 hours Heartbreaking for this to be on my list, but I am part of the small percentage that gets enormously motion sick from this game. A huge shame, because it’s one of those games I’ve wanted to play for literal decades now - I pushed through the first couple of levels but I just can’t make it work for me. The theme song has nevertheless taken up plenty of real estate in my brain.
  
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3D; abandoned after ~2 hours This is probably a contentious choice to have on a list like this, though I clearly haven’t really given this a fair shake either. I think it’s probably partly to do with the learning curve of its rather involved format? Thinking of swapping this version out for the Switch one instead in the hope that might make it a bit more accessible to me.
  
• Where the Water Tastes Like Wine; abandoned after ~2 hours The premise of this game is great, and I like its rather non-standard approach in defining what a game should look like, but it just plays so goddamn slow. I found travelling across the country extremely frustrating - none of the options were really any good - and it’s unfortunate because that makes up far and away the largest part of what you spend your time doing in this game. The voice acting is also great, but it never takes anywhere near as much time to scan the dialogue as it does to read it aloud, so most of the acting gets lost behind an A button mash anyway. I want to love this game, but I just never find myself wanting to reach for it.
  
• Child of Light; abandoned after ~2 hours Call me petty, but I just could not manage to get past this game’s unbelievably naff rhyming dialogue. It made me want to skip through all the cutscenes and gave me no desire to attempt to follow the story. I thought the battle mechanic was quite interesting and enjoyable - not sure if this is common to other games in the genre, but it was new to me - but between the dialogue and an art style I didn’t really care for, this one’s been left by the wayside.
  
• Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap; abandoned after 01:48 I played the original Wonder Boy on a Sega Master back in the day and figured a remake of another game in the series might be fun, but I couldn’t really get into this one. Felt like it was going to be a bit grindy for my tastes. I do think it looks great and switching between the art styles is cool, but I don’t think I’ll be doing much more than dipping in and out, if even that.
  

THIS POST HAS BEEN FLAIRED AS UNAVAILABLE AND WILL BE LEFT HERE JUST AS A REFERENCE. ALL 15 DIFFERENT ORDERS YOU CAN SEE HERE WERE DELIVERED AND POSITIVE FEEDBACK GIVEN. ABOUT 15% OF THE ITEMS ON THE LIST HAVE BEEN SOLD. I WILL MAKE ANOTHER POST IN THE FUTURE WITH AN UPDATED LIST. CHEERS!
 
TL;DR: you can find the link for the decks and accessories list (and another link for a way less nicely formatted list of 100+ books about magic, sleight of hand and card tricks) at the end of this post. Feel free to rush there, get the decks names (or just books names and author in case you are also/only getting books) and respective items conditions (M, A, B or C - more on that later) and create a top-level comment with your list of wishes. Example:
 
Mint 2 Set (Blueberry, Cucumber, Frost, Foiled Frost) (M)
Dynasty Jade Green (A)
Smoke and Mirros V6 Rouge (M)
Seasons Set (Verana, Inverno)(A)
The Amazing Miracles of Shigeo Takagi - Richard Kaufman
 
After that, YOU MUST READ THE WHOLE POST. It is crucial you read the post and understand that, if you still want to go ahead with negotiations, you agree with the conditions I wrote. It is extremely important we are on the same page regarding this. I am here to try to sell cards, not to create an unnecessary mess because of miscommunication. It is absolutely fine if you don't agree with some condition, but all of this needs to be worked out before we proceed to payment stage. I hope no one minds too much me saying "hey, that information was available on the post" :)
Note 1: DO NOT edit your top-level comment, if you want to add decks or subtract decks from your list answer to your own comment and we will go from there. I will have to prioritize non edited comments because that is the only reliable timestamp I have.
Note 2: On the (now locked) post on playingcards there was only one instance of a deck many people wanted (the "Verum Videre Christmas Edition (Signed)"). I have been pming for the last few hours everybody who reserved decks there to come here again and make a top-level comment with what they have reserved, so I will only keep reservations done here and the waiting list for the "Verum Videre Christmas Edition (Signed)" as it stood there.
Note 3: it goes without saying I reserve myself the right of not trading with or selling to anyone I don't want to, whatever the reason might be.
 
 

Hello there, everybody!

The day has finally come! After almost four months, the work on this list has come to an end. Quick shout-out to everybody who helped by checking prices, conditions of the decks, gathering information on the internet and with people in the industry, helping me coming up with clever solutions for Sheets automation and so on. Thank you all! Unfortunately for me, from now on this is basically a one man mission :)
A lot of consideration went into deciding on how to do this, how to tackle a project this size. There are around 1550 decks and a few accessories all bundled up in, as it stands right now, 1350 different items (plus the books on the secondary list).
So, who am I (regarding cards, that is)? I am a card collector based in the woods in Sweden (yeah, I live remote even for Swedish standards). Been collecting for two and a half years, worked in the casino industry as a dealer for quite some time (though I don't deal that frequently anymore I am more involved in logistics, inspecting and training) even with my "actual" profession being in a completely different field. I admin the only group of card collectors in Sweden on Facebook (trying to push fellow swedes to engage and participate a bit more - it was kind of a miracle we had a fairly successful Secret Santa last year haha) and been a contributor at Portfolio 52 basically since I started collecting (fixing tons of info and pictures there whenever I can and spot something). Also, because of circumstances, I ended up getting involved with some Kickstarter creators and still work with some of them on the background of their campaigns :)
 

The List!

I would like to believe all the relevant information is right there, easy to see, search and find.
All the decks are listed in alphabetical order (company>deck name) and color coded differently by different company's name. There are individual entries for every single deck (i.e. 10 copies of lets say "Saturn Red October" will have 10 different entries) that is not bundled up (example: Ellusionist's Prohibition Case V1 is one "item" only even though it has six decks).
 
Shelf/Box | Item# | Deck/Set/Accessories | Company/Designer | Printer | Year | Price (USD) | Condition | Status
 
When you decided for something you want, specially if that item has copies of it (but also when it doesn't), it is essential that you also write down the condition (M, A, B or C - more on that later) of that item so I know which one exactly do you want.
A bit of patience is required with it; it takes around five minutes for the published document to be update from the master list whenever I make a change (example: marking a deck as reserved or sold).
 

Available / Reserved / Sold!

Another thing that is very easy to see on the list is if a certain item is still available or if it has been reserved or sold already (check the "Status" column).
How do you "reserve" an item? Just make a top-level comment bellow with the items names and condition (M, A, B, or C - more on that later) and you are good to go! In case someone has already reserved a item you want to reserve and there are no copies of it, you can still make a top-level comment saying "I want item X condition Y" and I will let you know you are on that item's waiting list, you don't need to do anything else.
I am gonna give myself a buffer of two days from the time of posting this to see how things went and then start working on individual requests, pictures, etc. That doesn't mean I won't do that before two days, it is just so people don't expect it. During this time, whenever I am available, I will be answering things that are not on this post (this post will NOT be updated for transparency sake, I will make an addendum in the comments about anything that needs to be corrected) or any other questions you guys and girls might have about the decks, conditions, pricing, shipping, etc. After this period I will check all the wish lists and put them in order (first come, first served of course), and grind the data from there.
 

Pricing / Condition

This is literally a "BUYER BEWARE" section of this post, but first things first.
 
Pricing: as you will see, there many, many different items with prices lower than what it is being offered everywhere else on the internet, but there are also decks priced pretty competitively towards the market, and a few decks have a higher compared to other places. Are you free to make me an offer because you saw an item somewhere else for cheaper but you still want to buy it from me? Absolutely, but it won't be often this might go through. Am I open to trades? Absolutely, but then again, do not have high hopes for it. I am in no way expecting most of it to be sold in the coming one, or even two years. There will be a bunch of decks left after this, and that is ok. Also, everything is priced in USD.
 
Condition: big disclaimer here so this is as clear as it can possibly be: EVERYTHING BEING SOLD HERE (DECKS, SETS, ACCESSORIES AND BOOKS) ARE SOLD "AS IS". As per Wikipedia: "As is" denotes that the seller is selling, and the buyer is buying an item in whatever condition it presently exists, and that the buyer is accepting the item "with all faults", whether or not immediately apparent." There is no way to put this out without sounding like an ass (maybe?) but this needs to be understood by both you and me.
Having said that, I have done all I could, to the best of my abilities, to condition every single item fairly, but of course this is still subjetive and it only represents the way I would see them. Basically the "M" decks are decks with no faults whatsoever (or nothing that I could possibly bother or notice to begin with), the "A" decks are minor imperfections I would not bother with even if it is a deck I had no intentions of opening it, "B" are decks I would probably contact the store / seller to talk about it, even if it was not my intention to request a refund (example: decks I would be opening anyway I still contact them but just to let them know and give some feedback) and "C" decks I would definitely contact the store / seller to know what could be done about it regarding some sort of compensation.
On the list you will see four different letters representing the conditions of the decks (and the respective discounts to each):

• M: Mint (base price). Some decks have no cellophane (signed, etc) or came with no seal but are still considered "M", it just depends on the condition of the tuck/cards.
• A: Almost mint (10% discount). Minuscule dents, minor issues with the cellophane or with the seal or other minor issues with the tuck. Basically no possibility of damage to the cards.
• B: Either bigger dents or issues or more quantities of minor dents or other issues. Very low possibility of damage to the cards.
• C: Bigger damage to tuck. Possibility of damage to the cards.

 
This was not an easy (or fun) run at all. I considered everything I could regarding the condition of all the 1550 decks: dented corners, dented sides, pressed bottom, pressed top, pressed seal, opened, no cellophane, cellophane broken, cellophane opened, scratched, smudged edge, seal partially broken inside the cellophane, no seal, issues with the bottom or top flap, etc etc etc.
As of now, these are the quantities of items with each condition (to a total of 1350 different items):

• M: 993
• A: 266
• B: 80
• C: 11

Obviously nobody wants to buy anything in the complete darkness, but neither could I take individual pictures of 1550+ decks and match each and everyone with the respective conditions (with the "free" time I have this would take years hahaha). Having said that, I will upon request (which might take some time but I am 100%, of course, willing to do so) take pictures of specific decks (matching condition/item#/etc).
I made a small Imgur album with a few pictures of some of the decks and my username on it (please don't mind the mess of this new VERY OLD house with tons of renovation to be done we just moved in). Again, feel free to ask for additional info or pictures.
 

Shipping

It doesn't make it easier that one I live in Sweden and two I live in the middle of b$%f#&* nowhere in Sweden :) Basically the only shipping option I have here is Postnord, and I will absolutely not charge anything "a bit extra on top of shipping just to be sure but then people end up paying a bit more every time". If you want to have an idea of how much shipping would cost to you, go ahead and check Postnord's own website.
Yet again, a lot of consideration went into this, and it is unfortunate but I have to say that I can not and won't be responsible for any lost packages or packages damaged during transportation, in any stage of it. The responsibility I am taking here is to agree on a price for items + shipping, pack everything in a way that the parcel could probably take a severe beating and the itens would still arrive on the same way they were shipped (I am talking hard boxes and unethical - I don't remember which redditor said this but I promised myself I would take it for a future use so here I am - amounts of bubble plastic, paper, tapes, boxes inside boxes like a good old matryoshka, etc). I have sent close to a hundred parcels on the last two and a half years (to Sweden, Europe, US, Taiwan, etc) and not ONCE a single deck arrived in a different condition they were shipped in. Depending on location and kind of parcel, Postnord offers some "sort of insurance" I can claim if a package gets lost or damage. We might talk about it if you are interested but I will only be able to refund any amount whatsoever after, and only if I am compensated by Postnord first.
 

Payment Methods

Making this as short as I possibly can: buyer is responsible for all and any fees from Transferwise or Paypal (or any other payment method we agree upon - Swish in Sweden but I think it will be hard to find someone here that is not part of "Svenska Kortlekssamlare" already).
Transferwise you say? Yes, I use a lot of Transferwise.
Why? Cheapest fees charged by a service that accepts Swedish Crowns and deposits it directly on my bank account. Works in most countries, worth checking them out.
Does Transferwise has a buyer protection program like Paypal does? No, Transferwise, because I only use a personal account and not a traders account, has no buyer protection at all, whatsoever. It works like Paypal's Family and Friends, sort of.
I am not sure I feel comfortable using that, do you understand me? Absolutely, if you don't feel comfortable using a service like Transferwise (even though it is cheaper for you and easier for me), you are free for us to TRY to work something else out (like Paypal), but you have to remember my responsibility here is to send the decks we agreed upon, for the price of items + shipping we agreed upon, and packed very, very well; yet again, I can not and won't be responsible for any lost packages or packages damaged during transportation, in any stage of it. If you rather use Paypal Family and Friends (I think inside Europe we don't pay fees to use that option but please someone correct me if I am wrong), you are also free to do so but ONLY if you understand what it entails and are comfortable with that.
Remember: NO REFUNDS OR COMPENSATION FOR ITEMS DAMAGED OR LOST DURING TRANSPORTATION, IN ANY STAGE OF IT.
 

Final Considerations

Again, I think there is a lot of important and specific information here and because of that I won't edit this post for transparency sake. Any correction or new information will be posted in the comments.
I will have to let pass all my English mistakes I am sure I made so please, bear with me :)
 

HEY, YOU FORGOT THE LISTS!!!

• Decks and Accessories
  
• Books and Dvds
  
• Album with some pictures of the decks and my username
  
• Portfolio 52 Profile: From now on I will be removing from this profile decks that have been SOLD (but not reserved) already. Remember this profile has only entries for different decks, but a lot (if not most of them) have more than one copy of each. Check the "Decks and Accessories" links above to see exactly what I still have in stock!
  

 
Cheers! :)

Hello, you may know me from DD posts about IVZ and 3DP. I'm still heavily in these. But today I bring you SBW.
Ok for real, this might be the laziest DD you've read because it was copy pasted direct from hotcopper. But it will also be the best DD you've read (no offence to u/bigjimbeef recent DD on this but he's always drunk and while his DD did get me interested in this, I think maybe some people didn't take his post seriously because the post read like he had a beer in one hand and his dick in the other).
But I've been thinking lately... wouldn't it be nice if I could, for once, jump on a stock, before it rockets? Like... Every stock I've been in so far has holders who are already 10 bagging. How do they find these stocks and how can I become one of them?
Well, here is your chance. Full disclosure, I'm in at 26.5c, closing price today is 24.5c. It IPOd at 35c so we are still at bargain prices. No rocket yet. If you can think of a reason not to buy, please say so, before I take a larger position tmw morning, as I am trying to keep myself from getting overly keen on yet another stock but so far I can't find a good reason to put money anywhere else.
Copy pasta below:
I thought it was about time that I made the “Ultimate Guide to SBW” and consolidated months of research and analysis into one comprehensive post. Then we can add bits to it from there as more positive news develops.
Let us start with capital structure.
Capital Structure and Why This Is Important!
There are currently 139 million shares on issue, sitting at a price of 32 cents.
This gives a Market Capitalization of approximately ~45 million AUD.
Keep this in mind when we discuss partners and peers later - it’s arguably a more important metric than share price.
The Top 20 shareholders of SBW (which includes key management as the Top 2 holders) have about 90% of the stock on issue. The interests of management are well-aligned with shareholders.
What does this mean in plain English? It means management are extremely incentivized to perform, and are not just idly sitting by collecting an easy paycheck like so many other ASX companies. They have as much at stake as you do! Probably more.
The Core Business
The core business is a profitable operation which has been selling weighing systems to both retail and healthcare sectors – with reliable recurring revenue from customers including, but not limited to, household names like Toshiba and Fujitsu.
SBW have a combination of weighing + artificial intelligence + advanced mathematics which cannot be easily duplicated. The company was first founded in 1971 and was one of the first to shift from mechanical to digital weighing and ultra-thin IoT load sensors.
If you are interested in reading up on some of their patents, please see this link:
https://patents.justia.com/search?q=Shekel scales
I found 11 separate patents here, which are probably not an exhaustive list, but ranging from weighing vehicles in motion, to load cell devices (this is the flagship technology), point of sale apparatus and infant weight systems (for their medical customers)
SBW's three main technology pillars, including patented ultra-thin high precision load sensors, can distinguish between Coke, Fanta & Pepsi - even if they are all in 1.5 litre bottles!
The Hitachi Project (Hitachi’s Market Cap = roughly ~33 billion USD at time of writing, SBW = ~45 million AUD)
http://hlds.co.jp/product-eng/1079
[Translated from Japanese] Hitachi-LG Data Storage. Inc. exhibited in “NRF 2020 Retail’s Big Show” which took place at Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York from 1/12-1/14/2020, where Unmanned Store solution using 3D LiDAR(TOF) was jointly exhibited with Hitachi America, Hitachi Vantara, and Shekel Brainweigh (Israel).
Some quotes I found from Hitachi themselves
“Micro-markets are the fastest growing segment of convenience shopping. We see them exploding in high traffic areas, such as workplaces, campuses, train stations and airports,” said Hideki Hayashi, Sales and Marketing Manager, Hitachi EU Ltd.
“Deploying the joint Shekel-Hitachi solution enables retailers and micro-market operators to provide the 24/7 frictionless shopping experience consumers demand without sacrificing accuracy, performance or profitability.”
“As the manager responsible for LiDAR products in EMEA markets, I consider the R&D and commercial collaboration with Shekel Brainweigh to be the perfect partnership as we both bring our respective capabilities to develop a seamless consumer shopping experience. We are extremely pleased to collaborate with Shekel Brainweigh, which we believe is the best digital weighing technology developer globally."
“The collaboration builds on our expertise in optical motion sensors, together with Shekel’s advanced Product Aware Technology, and further strengthens our commitment to overcome the challenges, and address the significant opportunities, in global retail store automation.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-uxk2Ycoqw
The Open Retail Initiative
https://www.lfedge.org/2020/02/13/n...ensor-fusion-for-intelligent-loss-prevention/
For the one-year anniversary of ORI, six initiative members Edgify, Flooid, Shekel and LF Edge members HP, IOTech and Intel inspired by the initiative, worked together on a demo for the Intel booth that showcased the value of Real Time Sensor Fusion for a loss prevention use case at self-checkout. The retail environment has become incredibly complex. The latest technologies enable data-driven experiences and unlock business value like never before, yet there is still a lack of interoperability making it difficult for retailers to deploy integrated solutions with speed and ease. The demo illustrates how integration roadblocks can be a thing of the past.
The demo pulls together real time data through the EdgeX middleware from different common systems including POS real-time transaction log, CV-based object detection, scale solution, and RFID, and data fusion—all in a single pane of glass.
Here are some PowerPoint slides of IBM, Intel & Hewlett-Packard talking about the joint solution
https://wiki.edgexfoundry.org/downl...amp;modificationDate=1579904283000&api=v2
The Fast Track Project
https://www.edgify.ai/retail/
Reduce time at till and selection at self-checkout by up to 98%. Computer vision-based product recognition, that continuously learns directly on the till, so the accuracy of the detection always increases.
Friction-less stores are great in theory but extremely complicated to scale in practice. Our edge training solution makes autonomous stores scalable, by having all the AI train directly on the camera. No infrastructure costs and no added complications.
Reduce incorrect selections by up to 90%. Either intentional or unintentional, use computer vision that is trained directly on the SCO itself to reduce loss by more than half!
No barcodes, no packaging, no worries. Simple USB cameras can detect the produce at close to 100% accuracy. Use as a decision support for cashiers, or to avoid consumers having to go through long and confusing menus.
https://www.edgify.ai/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Retail_Intro.pdf
https://twitter.com/Edgify_AI/status/1277859718413930505
https://twitter.com/Edgify_AI/status/1230534216133332997
Shekel’s Visual Recognition Platform embedded with Edgify’s machine-learning training framework is the world’s first cloudless software that automatically recognises products, including fresh produce, at a retail self-checkout.
This ~45 million AUD Market Cap company allows retailers to potentially bypass expensive cloud services from Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
Sending data to the cloud is a very costly process with the Google Cloud Platform charging 1,000 stores more than US$7.2 million in cloud computing power per annum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrpZ56IdFtg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpqwqQ1tJ4A
You can see the Shekel system 35 seconds in.
Patnership with Madix (2nd Largest Retail Shelves Manufacturer in NA)
https://www.bloomberg.com/press-rel...ade-product-aware-cabinets-to-retail-industry
NEW YORK -- January 13, 2020
Madix Inc., the second largest retail shelves manufacturer in North America, and Shekel Brainweigh Ltd. (ASX: SBW), the leader in advanced weighing technology, today announced the availability of ready-made Product Aware shelves and solutions for the retail industry.
“By seamlessly integrating Product Aware shelves into our hardware, our customers are armed with accessible data giving them reliable inventory visibility and assisting them in addressing over-stock and out-of-stock problems, as well as better control over shrinkage” said Steve Kramer, VP Sales, Madix.
“For the retail industry, this is a defined competitive edge that promotes the opportunity to increase profitability.”
Conclusion
So, remember - the core scales business is what drives the revenue we see today, but the innovation division is where the real potential resides. That will take a few more months/years to play out. I think most people are buying for the fully autonomous frictionless retail technology which comes with a huge addressable market. That’s still being undervalued in my humble opinion.
Considering there are quite a few ASX-listed tech companies with no revenue and over 100 million market cap (some even @ 1 billion market cap right now…
I don’t see why SBW couldn’t move past ~45m market cap in the near future.
Now if you read all this - links included- I commend you for your diligence. It should be obvious now that the Capsule (in partnership with Hitachi) is the “crown jewel” or “holy grail” of retail disruption technology plays (look at the success of Amazon GO for example).
So you are probably thinking: "This sounds great @verce but it’s all just aspirational and hypothetical. When will it be put into operation?" Well I’m glad you asked. The answer might surprise you. And it may be sooner than you think.
The SBW Half Year Report from 31 August 2020 had a little snippet that I think a lot of people missed. Specifically, the following text:
“Flagship micro-market project Capsule is in an advanced stage of pilot in Europe, and expected to be open to the public for trial in the second half of 2020.”
Now you are probably wondering: "That’s great but what if it’s just some obscure insignificant corner store somewhere?" Again, the answer may surprise you, and requires a little digging.
Enter Groupe Casino. A historic player in French retailing since 1898, the Casino Group is one of the world leaders in food retailing with more than 12,200 stores worldwide, located in France, Latin America and the Indian Ocean and a turnover of 37.8 billion euro.
In their Annual Report this year, they mentioned an exciting new disruptive project they were working on with a relatively obscure company.
https://www.groupe-casino.fwp-content/uploads/2020/06/RapportActivite_Casino_2019_EN.pdf
And we have some commentary from SBW featured on Page 42-43 of their Annual Report plugging "the first fully autonomous store in Europe". I'll leave it to readers to determine the significance of being mentioned in the Annual Report of a leading mass-market retail group with billions of Euro in revenue.
The same group who claim to be the source of many innovations such as the first distributor's brand in 1901, the first self-service store in 1948 or even the display of a sell-by date on consumer products in 1959. They are always pushing the boundaries of innovation, and it's an exciting partner to have.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that issuing shares are not the only mechanism by which to raise money. And that a placement at a premium to a sophisticated cornerstone investor can yield great results. Kind of like what happened with 3DP and IHR.
If I was them, I’d be asking Hitachi to chip in.
SBW also have the luxury of generating enough revenue (we are talking USD millions) in 2H20 from the core scales division, that a capital raising may not actually be necessary at this point in time. So they can wait for a better outcome.
Source: “Post 30 June 2020, the business has seen a resurgence of orders for Shekel’s products, resulting in July 2020 sales exceeding July 2019 sales by approximately 18%.”
The final thing I would like to add (if you have in fact read my other two posts which are worth reading) is coming to an appropriate valuation. This is the tricky part, especially with microcap stocks which are valued on their future potential.
We do know that there are medium to high barriers to entry, and that SBW have accumulated a competitive edge with their technology iterated over several decades, with certain patents in place.
We also know that the opportunity is global in scope with a huge total addressable market (TAM) - and that traditional retail is ripe for disruption.
Remember when there were more human checkout lanes at supermarkets than self-checkout? Now it's the other way around. We are even starting to see self-checkout in Bunnings. The trend for autonomous and friction-less shopping - what some term "Grab & Go" - was inevitable. And coronavirus has only accelerated this trend.
https://www.ibtimes.com/5-tech-tren...-end-year-result-coronavirus-pandemic-3011819
5 Tech Trends Expected To Shape Retail Through The End Of The Year As Result Of The Coronavirus Pandemic
“Retailers and brands will need to collaborate more than ever with technology startups to futureproof their businesses and be better equipped to meet fast-changing consumer demand and behavior,” Coresight said.
Coresight reported the pandemic has piqued consumer interest in cashierless models.
Technology firm Shekel Brainweigh said 87% of respondents to its global consumer survey indicated they would choose stores with self-checkout over those with only cashier lines.
So if you ask me, when you consider all the different technology projects SBW are working on - most of which we now know are "close to commercialisation*" - is 45m AUD market cap really fair value for something that has the potential to roll out globally? I personally think it is still undervalued, but the market will eventually decide one way or the other.
Even at 70 cents per share, the implied market cap with only 139 million shares on issue is about ~97 million AUD. Which is still less than 100m. And still quite low when you compare SBW's proven technology and revenue to a lot of unproven technology companies with no real customers whatsoever. And extremely low when you compare SBW's market cap to their collaborative partner Hitachi (ranked 38th in the 2012 Fortune Global 500).
Even at 32 cents as it currently stands, we are still below the IPO price when SBW first listed at 35 cents per share. How does that make any sense?

TL;DR: you can find the link for the decks list and accessories (and another link for a way less nicely formatted list of 100+ books about magic, sleight of hand and card tricks) at the end of this post. Feel free to rush to the lists, get the decks names (or just books names and author in case you are also/only getting books) and respective items conditions (M, A, B or C - more on that later) AND and create a top-level comment with your list of wishes. Example:
 
Mint 2 Set (Blueberry, Cucumber, Frost, Foiled Frost) (M)
Dynasty Jade Green (A)
Smoke and Mirros V6 Rouge (M)
Seasons Set (Verana, Inverno)(A)
The Amazing Miracles of Shigeo Takagi - Richard Kaufman
 
After that, you MUST read the whole post. It is CRUCIAL you read, understand and, if you still want to go ahead with negotiations, agree with the conditions I wrote. It is extremely important we are on the same page regarding this. I am here to try to sell cards, not to create an unnecessary mess. I hope no one minds too much me saying "hey, you can check that information on the post" :)
Note: DO NOT edit your top-level comment, if you want to add decks or subtract decks from your list answer to your own comment and we will go from there. I will have to prioritize non edited comments because that is the only reliable timestamp I have.
 
 

Hello there, everybody!

The day has finally come! After almost four months, the work on this list has come to an end. Quick shout-out to everybody who helped by checking prices, conditions of the decks, gathering information on the internet and with people in the industry, helping me coming up with clever solutions for Sheets automation and so on. Thank you all! Unfortunately for me, from now on this is basically a one man mission :)
A lot of consideration went into deciding on how to do this, how to tackle a project this size. There are around 1550 decks and a few accessories all bundled up in, as it stands right now, 1350 different items (plus the books on the secondary list).
So, who am I (regarding cards, that is)? I am a card collector based in the woods in Sweden (yeah, I live remote even for Swedish standards). Been collecting for two and a half years, worked in the casino industry as a dealer for quite some time (though I don't deal that frequently anymore I am more involved in logistics, inspecting and training) even with my "actual" profession being in a completely different field. I admin the only group of card collectors in Sweden on Facebook (trying to push fellow swedes to engage and participate a bit more - it was kind of a miracle we had a fairly successful Secret Santa last year haha) and been a contributor at Portfolio 52 basically since I started collecting (fixing tons of info and pictures there whenever I can and spot something). Also, because of circumstances, I ended up getting involved with some creators (I am talking about campaigns funded on Kickstarter) and still work with some of them on the background of their campaigns :)
 

The List!

I would like to believe all the relevant information is right there, easy to see, search and find.
All the decks are listed in alphabetical order (company>deck name) and color coded differently by different company's name. There are individual entries for every single deck (i.e. 10 copies of lets say "Saturn Red October" will have 10 different entries) that is not bundled up (example: Ellusionist's Prohibition Case V1 is one "item" only even though it has six decks).
 
Shelf/Box | Item# | Deck/Set/Accessories | Company/Designer | Printer | Year | Price (USD) | Condition | Status
 
When you decided for something you want, specially if that item has copies of it (but also when it doesn't), it is essential that you also write down the condition (M, A, B or C - more on that later) of that item so I know which one exactly do you want.
 

Available / Reserved / Sold!

Another thing that is very easy to see on the list is if a certain item is still available or if it has been reserved or sold already (check the "Status" column).
How do you "reserve" an item? Just make a top-level comment bellow with the items names and condition (M, A, B, or C - more on that later) and you are good to go!
How am I going to coordinate all of this? I will let you guys go crazy for 48 hours (countdown here) saying which items do you want (there is NO need to say "Ohh if that person doesn't want that specific item I am first in line", etc). During this time, whenever I am available, I will be answering things that are not on this post (this post will NOT be updated for transparency sake, I will make an addendum in the comments about anything that needs to be corrected) or any other questions you guys and girls might have about the decks, conditions, etc. After this period I will check all the lists and put them in order (first come, first served of course), and grind the data from there.
 

Pricing / Condition

This is literally a "BUYER BEWARE" section of this post, but first things first.
 
Pricing: as you will see, there many, many different items with prices lower than what it is being offered everywhere else on the internet, but there are also decks priced pretty competitively towards the market, and a few decks have a higher compared to other places. Are you free to make me an offer because you saw an item somewhere else for cheaper but you still want to buy it from me? Absolutely, but that won't be the case often. Am I open to trades? Absolutely, but then again, do not have high hopes for it. I am in no way expecting most of it to be sold in the coming one, or even two years. There will be a bunch of decks left after this, and that is ok. Also, everything is priced in USD.
 
Condition: big disclaimer here so this is as clear as it can possibly be: EVERYTHING BEING SOLD HERE (DECKS, SETS, ACCESSORIES AND BOOKS) ARE SOLD "AS IS". As per Wikipedia: "As is" denotes that the seller is selling, and the buyer is buying an item in whatever condition it presently exists, and that the buyer is accepting the item "with all faults", whether or not immediately apparent." There is no way to put this out without sounding like an ass (maybe?) but this needs to be understood by both you and me.
Having said that, I have done all I could, to the best of my abilities, to condition every single item fairly, but of course this is still subjetive and it only represents the way I would see them. Basically the "M" decks are decks with no faults whatsoever (or nothing that I could possibly bother or notice to begin with), the "A" decks are minor imperfections I would not bother with even if it is a deck I had no intentions of opening it, "B" are decks I would probably contact the store / seller to talk about it, even if it was not my intention to request a refund (example: decks I would be opening anyway I still contact them but just to let them know and give some feedback) and "C" decks I would definitely contact the store / seller to know what could be done about it regarding some sort of compensation.
On the list you will see four different letters representing the conditions of the decks (and the respective discounts to each):

• M: Mint (base price). Some decks have no cellophane (signed, etc) or came with no seal but are still considered "M", it just depends on the condition of the tuck.
• A: Almost mint (10% discount). Minuscule dents, minor issues with the cellophane or with the seal or other minor issues with the tuck. Basically no possibility of damage to the cards.
• B: Either bigger dents or issues or more quantities of minor dents or other issues. Very low possibility of damage to the cards.
• C: Bigger damage to tuck. Possibility of damage to the cards.

 
This was not an easy (or fun) run at all. I considered everything I could regarding the condition of all the 1550 decks: dented corners, dented sides, pressed bottom, pressed top, pressed seal, opened, no cellophane, cellophane broken, cellophane opened, scratched, smudged edge, seal partially broken inside the cellophane, no seal, issues with the bottom or top flap, etc etc etc.
As of now, these are the quantities of items with each condition (to a total of 1350 different items):

• M: 993
• A: 266
• B: 80
• C: 11

Obviously nobody wants to buy anything in the complete darkness, but neither could I take individual pictures of 1550+ decks and match each and everyone with the respective conditions (with the "free" time I have this would take years hahaha). Having said that, I will upon request (which might take some time but I am 100%, of course, willing to do so) take pictures of specific decks (matching condition/item#/etc).
I made a small Imgur album with a few pictures of some of the decks and my username on it (please don't mind the mess of this new VERY OLD house with tons of renovation to be done we just moved in). Again, feel free to ask for additional info or pictures.
 

Shipping

It doesn't make it easier that one I live in Sweden and two I live in the middle of b$%f#&* nowhere in Sweden :) Basically the only shipping option I have here is Postnord, and I will absolutely not charge anything "a bit extra on top of shipping just to be sure but then people end up paying a bit more every time". If you want to have an idea of how much shipping would cost to you, go ahead and check Postnord's own website.
Yet again, a lot of consideration went into this, and it is unfortunate but I have to say that I can not be responsible for any lost packages or packages damaged during transportation, in any stage of it. The responsibility I am taking here is to agree on a price for items + shipping, pack everything in a way that the parcel could take a severe beating and the itens would still arrive on the same way they were shipped (I am talking hard boxes and unethical - I don't remember which redditor said this but I promised myself I would take it for a future use so here I am - amounts of bubble plastic, paper, tapes, boxes inside boxes like a good old matryoshka, etc). I have sent close to a hundred parcels on the last two and a half years (to Sweden, Europe, US, Taiwan, etc) and not ONCE a single deck arrived in a different condition they were shipped in. Depending on location and kind of parcel, Postnord offers some "sort of insurance" I can claim if a package gets lost or damage. We might talk about it if you are interested but I will only be able to refund any amount whatsoever after, and only if I am compensated by Postnord first.
 

Payment Methods

Making this as short as I possibly can: buyer is responsible for all and any fees from Transferwise or Paypal (or any other payment method we agree upon - Swish in Sweden but I think it will be hard to find someone here that is not part of "Svenska Kortlekssamlare" already).
Transferwise you say? Yes, I use a lot of Transferwise.
Why? Cheapest fees charged by a service that accepts Swedish Crowns and deposits it directly on my bank account. Works in most countries, worth checking them out.
Does Transferwise has a buyer protection program like Paypal does? No, Transferwise, because I only use a personal account and not a traders account, has no buyer protection at all. It works like Paypal's Family and Friends, sort of.
I am not sure I feel comfortable using that, do you understand me? Absolutely, if you don't feel comfortable using a service like Transferwise (even though it is cheaper for you and easier for me), you are free for us to try to work something else out (like Paypal), but you have to remember my responsibility here is to send the decks we agreed upon, for the price of items + shipping we agreed upon, and packed very, very well; yet again, I can not be responsible for lost parcels or items damaged during shipping. If you rather use Paypal Family and Friends (I think inside Europe we don't pay fees to use that option but please someone correct me if I am wrong), you are also free to do so but ONLY if you understand what it entails and are comfortable with that.
 

Final Considerations

Probably by now everybody forgot already that I promised to post this and nobody gives a flying f#%& anymore! The kids went to sleep way later than I expected and I wrote for way longer than I thought I would :)
Again, I think there is a lot of important and specific information here and because of that I won't edit this post for transparency sake. Any correction or new information will be posted in the comments.
I will have to let pass all my English mistakes I am sure I made so please, bear with me :)
 

HEY, YOU FORGOT THE LISTS!!!

• Decks and Accessories:
  
• Books and Dvds:
  

 
Cheers! :)

Not Financial Advice (NFA)
Warning: Wall of Text. If you hate reading just skim through the bolded/italicized
Ever since I publicized my findings on DKNG, the stock has underperformed & probably has fucked a lot of people here, especially given the overly bullish stance back in June. Unless you took my advice & got into Puts then, congrats, welcome to tendie town. For the ADHD retards, here’s what the next wall of text is going to summarize: I believe at the current price of ~$30, the stock is oversold.
A tech-focused, high-growth Company that has made sports betting easy to understand with an aesthetically pleasing interface similar to how Robinhood has neatly laid out stock market gimmicks so even high-schoolers can make sense of it I believe, is underpriced at these levels.
Let’s get into some details as to why the stock has underperformed:
First off, the news slate revolving sports with the rumored delay/cancellation of the MLB season & the NFL watching from the sidelines is in my view, just a part of why the stock has underperformed. We’ll revisit this later in this post, but I want to focus on the drivers of the stock’s recent underperformance, & why these factors are now in the rearview mirror.
Part I – The Past Has Passed – SPAC-related Equity Dilution
History lesson first: DKNG went public via a SPAC merger, which has exploded in popularity recently. Anyone serious about analyzing stocks going forward needs to do their homework on this, Google is your friend.
A feature of most SPAC merger to public listings that creates a headwind to near-term share prices are embedded equity dilution events, usually in the form of earn-outs (stock bonuses to execs, the SPAC sponsor) & conversion of Warrants.
On 5/24, the earn-outs were triggered, adding 6m shares to the share count.
On 6/26, 16.3m warrants converted to DKNG, netting them ~$188m of cash.
Stepping back a little, in addition to the above, on 6/18 DKNG launched a follow-on equity offering of 16M shares @ $40/Share [1], receiving $621M in proceeds.
The last part is tricky to understand from a dilution perspective. To simplify, historically it’s almost a coin toss whether a Company’s shares outperform on the onset of an equity offering. While issuing shares does dilute the existing shareholder base, it theoretically shouldn’t, if the proceeds from the offering are earmarked for investments/projects that yield outsized returns. This is the reality for the long term, theory for the short-term. For the short-term, the ‘reality’ isn’t that the proceeds will be used for investments/projects that yield outsized returns, it is more about how convincing management is to investors that the investments they intend to pursue with the proceeds will outweigh the dilutive effects of issuing incremental shares. That’s a mouthful, but hopefully you get what I’m trying to convey.
All of this stuff put together – the Company has increased its share count by ~39M, but now has a whopping ~$1.4Bn of cash [2]. More on this in the next section.
Part II – MLB News Should Not Fucking Matter & DKNG Is Positioned As the Leading Online/Mobile Sports Platform
DKNG should not be so tied to MLB news or any of this shit as the ongoing success of the NBA/NHL season + Soccer in Europe has effectively created a blueprint on how to regulate player behavior so that they maintain professionalism amidst the pandemic. I’m going out on a whim here, but I truly think the MLB threatening a cancellation of the season is pure posturing to get these fuckers to behave appropriately. Maybe a ‘bubble’ is what it takes to get these players to focus on their jobs instead of going out & contracting COVID, but I argue that isn’t necessarily required given Soccer in Europe. So there’s already a proven path here without the need for a bubble in Soccer, so MLB/NFL should be fine, and execs need to study how they got it done in Europe. Okay, back to some facts.
Anecdotally, I’ve kept in touch with a handful of sports bookies from California to New York & even internationally about what they’re seeing – all of them say that since the NBA season started on 7/30 & since Soccer (especially the Premier League) resumed in June, along with other leagues like La Liga & Serie A, they’ve seen massive increases in betting.
These numbers are also showing up in the official data [3]:

• Average % increase in sports betting handle from April 2020 to June 2020 (handle is the total $ wagered in sports bets) from the states that reported up to June 2020 (NJ, PA, MS, RI, WV, IA, IN, NH) of +258%!
  
  • Note: NV is left out due to the site I sourced showing a weirdly negative number – so I dug into the official filings & show specifically, Sports Mobile betting growth from June since April has growing by at least +73% [4]

REMEMBER: This is for June only! No NBA, No NHL, No MLB, just Soccer, Golf, NASCAR & UFC.
The data clearly shows that there was a ton of pent-up sports betting demand, which leads one Wall St. analyst to think that betting on the NBA/NHL could ABSORB the MLB’s sports betting handle (handle = total $ size of sports bet) [5]. Remember, the MLB season is still ongoing, with games being played. The entire focus is on the Miami Marlins & St. Louis Cardinals. Fucking retards.
Additionally, I want to remind everyone that DraftKings.com is the #1 Fantasy sports website in the U.S. [6]. Also, since April 2020 site visitations are up +86% [7] & Google Search Trends for “Draft Kings” is up ~3x compared to PRE-COVID levels [8]. What does this mean? They are piquing more people’s curiosity than prior to COVID/ongoing slate of sports.
This is important because remember that ~$1.4Bn chest full of cash I mentioned DKNG had assembled earlier? Well, that money is being put to work & results are already coming in, which is exactly what DKNG intended to do with it.
Part III – Legalization of Sports Betting in the U.S.
I could write a fucking bible on this topic alone, but for now we’ll stick to some basics. Due to COVID, it’s easy to understand that each State’s financial situation is clearly in shit. Because of this, you better believe that these guys are going to start taking a hard look at how they can extract additional tax revenues, & what’s one of the easiest ways to do this? Legalization & taxation of gambling.
The big players: CA, TX, FL & NY. First, CA pushing its legislation out to 2023 was fucked up, but here’s a twist I want to add to this: Anything that has to do with gambling in CA you better believe is lobbied against by not just the Tribal casino owners in CA, but by the deep pockets of Las Vegas money. Similar thing can be said for FL, but let’s take a look at some actions by LV/nationwide gambling companies that are starting to align financial incentives with guys like DKNG.

• MGM / GVC Holdings JV in BetMGM - $450m total invested
• PENN invests $163m into BS Sports
• Caesars has a 20% stake in William Hill plus partnership deals with The Stars Group (TSG) & our winner DKNG for operating its sports books

So it’s safe to say going forward, nationwide legalization of sports betting will reap rewards for everyone involved, & no longer be something LV money is completely focused on safeguarding.
Let’s also not forget that DKNG didn’t become the Company they are today because of their fancy app, but because their management team has a HISTORY of navigating the U.S.’s legal framework to get what they want out of it.

• The Crown Jewel – The Internet Gambling Prohibition & Enforcement Act: I said it in a previous post, but I want to emphasize that them getting Fantasy Sports to be labeled a ‘game of skill’ by FEDERAL Law as opposed to gambling is just something for the history books. Fucking genius shit. When this happened I bet every casino from LV to every Indian Tribe that has one was against it, yet DKNG & other DFS providers won.
• There’s more, but more recently: Getting into IL:
  
  • In IL, there’s an 18-month ‘penalty box’ for Companies that offer DFS to offer sports betting. Our guys at DKNG created a workaround to this situation with their partnership with Casino Queen [9]. DKNG being savvy again.

These guys are at the cutting edge of creating legal frameworks to successfully launch their products & now with more of their ‘competitors’ financially aligned with them, combined with financial deterioration of State budgets, we should see an overweighting of good news vs. bad on the legal front.
Final Part – Share Price Targets
Under-fucking priced at anything below $42.50
Near-term catalysts:
8/14: DKNG files 2Q’20 results, might be shitty, but you can bet that the Earnings Call is going to contain rhetoric on how massive the uptick in sports betting has been since late June/July.
Sometime from now until November: NY releases ‘study’ by Spectrum Gaming on online/mobile sports betting.
8/20 – 9/7: PGA Championship for FedEx Cup Title
9/5 – KY Derby
9/10: NFL KickOff Game
9/17: PGA U.S. Open Start Date
Month of October: NBA/NHL Playoffs
10/1: Estimated launch of online sports betting in TN
11/1: Estimated launch of online sports betting in VA
[1] https://draftkings.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/draftkings-announces-proposed-public-offering-class-common-stock
[2] Wall St. Research – DKNG on 6/29/20
[3] https://www.legalsportsreport.com/sports-betting/revenue/
[4] https://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=16984; Note: Nevada did not break out April/May figures but from the Revenue difference of 3 month ended June 30 of 4,950 vs. month of June of 2,297 for a total difference of 2,653 spread evenly over April/May for a base case April estimate of 1,327.
[5] Wall St. Research - 7/27/20
[6] https://www.similarweb.com/top-websites/category/sports/fantasy-sports/
[7] https://www.similarweb.com/website/draftkings.com/#overview
[8] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=draft%20kings Feb 23-29, 2020 vs. Current Aug 2 – Aug 8, 2020
[9] https://www.legalsportsreport.com/42314/draftkings-illinois-sports-betting-market-access/

I should mention up front that this is by no means the card that I predict with accuracy nor is this what I believe AEW should do in the short and long term. All this is is a fantasy booking card that I would like to see based on the small build thus far and how I would go about booking this show if it were left up to me. Mostly, I just tend to get extremely excited about future events and enjoy fantasy booking in general, though this will be the first time I have ever published something like this on a public forum. Obviously Khan and the talent have a much clearer vision than I do, and no matter what they decide to do here, it will almost certainly be better than mine. I’m probably wrong here, but at least I had a lot of fun doing it.
Having said that, here’s my card in reverse order:
1) MJF def. Jon Moxley (c) to win the AEW World Championship
This feels like exactly the right time and the right person to take the title from Moxley. MJF has been positioning himself as a star of the company, would make a good face for the company, has almost perfect abilities with the mic, and can actually wrestle while putting on a good show. Not to mention the fact that he has a perfect reason for a rematch: Jon Moxley cheated by using the Paradigm Shift at All Out. MJF has no shortage of future contenders (as I’ll get to later) and can be a high end attraction for AEW’s future events.
MJF could win this match cleanly if he could (he can almost certainly out-wrestle Moxley), but if they’re worried about hurting Moxley by losing, MJF could win with a little help from his future friends from the Inner Circle.
2) Thunder Rosa def. Hikaru Shida (c) and Dr. Britt Baker to win the AEW Women’s World Championship
This was a weird one to come up with mainly because of the lack of exposure the Women’s division is receiving as well as the lack of talent depth. In recent weeks they have been pushing Britt Baker despite losing to Big Swole (who has been absent), so this match and result is what makes the most sense to me. I understand that Thunder Rosa is contracted with NWA and the company may be hesitant to put the title on her, but hear me out:
Thunder Rosa gets over huge and out of every woman on the roster, seems to be most poised to take the title. If for whatever reason (travel, contractual obligations, etc…) she cannot defend the title at Revolution 2021, she would be forced to relinquish the title, setting up a match for the vacant title come next show.
So my plan would be to have Thunder Rosa pin Britt Baker to win the championship, thus protecting Hikaru Shida in case the title needs to be vacated. After Thunder Rosa wins the title, Big Swole comes out and lays waste to the three already exhausted women, cutting a promo on how she beat Britt Baker and should have been the only contender for this title.
This would set up a program between Thunder Rosa vs Big Swole in 2021 or Hikaru Shida vs Big Swole if the title needs to be vacated.
It would behoove AEW to invest further into a deeper Women’s roster and give these women more time to shine on a weekly basis.
3) FTR (c) def. Best Friends to retain the AEW World Tag Team Championship
These two teams just had one of the most brilliant street fights on Dynamite a few weeks ago and this feud does not seem to be over. These two teams are destined to have a great tag team match on PPV and this is the time to do it.
The Young Bucks seem to be positioning for the titles, but right now doesn’t seem to be the time to do it. FTR are new champions and they have really good chemistry and really good athletic abilities capable of turning in a showstopper of a match. FTR need to retain their titles here and the Best Friends are the team to defend against.
I’m going with non-stipulation here because I think these four men can put on a great show without a gimmick.
4) Cody def. Mr. Brodie Lee in a Non-Title Deathmatch
I know these two have a Dog Collar Match coming up next week on Dynamite, but this has been a feud going on for some time and it has reached a boiling point. Much like the Tag Title defense, it would feel like robbery ending such a well put together feud on television. I also realize that “deathmatch” is an extreme word in wrestling circles, but that’s what this feels like. Street Fight, Hardcore Match, No DQ, whatever you want to call it.
Recently in an interview, Cody mentioned that he was planning on talking to Tony Khan about having these types of matches on the program, and depending on how that conversation went, this seems like a great place to start that.
Also, I’m listing this as a non-title match because it would keep the title on Brody for the time being and also because I believe the TV title should be defended exclusively on Dynamite. As a side note, it feels weird with Cody not being able to challenge for the World Championship any time in the future, which is why I think they need to implement an Intercontinental Championship with the same level of prestige that New Japan has that Cody could chase.
5) Kenny Omega def. Lance Archer in the #1 Contender’s Match for the AEW World Championship
It is WAY too soon to pull the trigger on an Omega championship reign, I realize this, but his track record in single’s competitions is so poor that this is the only outcome here that would give him the push Omega needs to eventually become Champion. It’s also not necessarily his fault, either. In a lot of those matches he took the loss to get over Jericho, Pac, and Moxley. It was the right thing to do at the time and led to an incredible tag team run, but now is the time to focus on single’s competitions, and winning this tournament seems to be a good fast track to do it.
I booked his opponent as Lance Archer, mainly because I do not believe he has a chance to beat Moxley at the anniversary show but still feel like he deserves a shot at a big match on PPV, and in my mind, there is no bigger match than facing Kenny Omega in single’s competition as Omega has the innate ability to get his opponent over with the crowd in a loss.
6) Chris Jericho and Jake Hager def. The Young Bucks, SCU, and Private Party in a Four Team Elimination Match to Determine the #1 Contenders for the AEW World Tag Team Championship
Probably not going to happen by any stretch of the imagination, but this does a few things: It sets up a Tag Team Championship match for Revolution, it gets The Young Bucks in the show (always a big draw), it gets exposure to SCU and Private Party, and it also cements Jericho/Hager as an official team in the Tag Team Division.
SCU and Private Party would be eliminated first, leaving The Young Bucks and Jericho Hager as the final two teams. There are a number of ways The Young Bucks could take the loss without hurting their rankings for a future title shot. They could get themselves disqualified by the antics they have been displaying on Dynamite or there could be interference from the Inner Circle and/or MJF/Wardlow.
7) Orange Cassidy wins the Casino Battle Royale
I could have gone a number of ways here, but Orange Cassidy was my decision because he is OVER AS HELL with the crowd as a babyface, not to mention the fact that Orange Cassidy and MJF would be a huge television draw for a title match on Dynamite. Cassidy hasn’t been positioned to be a main eventer (yet), and MJF could certainly out-wrestle him, but this would make for a highly entertaining Dynamite main event between Full Gear and Revolution.
8) Lucha Bros and Eddie Kingston def. Jurassic Express and Adam Page
The reason I booked this match here was for two reasons: 1) I think it would be highly entertaining and would get all this talent on the show and 2) It would tell a perfect story of Adam Page being unwilling to accept his destiny as a single’s competitor. In my perfect vision, Page would be severely intoxicated during the match, making mistakes, and ultimately costing his team the win. As Jungle Boy attempts to talk some sense into him, Adam Page stumbles off the set and Kingston rolls him up for the pin.
9) Darby Allin and Will Hobbs def. Ricky Starks and Brian Cage
You guessed it, another well set up feud that does not deserve to end on television. I do not have any particular notes or ideas of how this should go though it does seem destined to have some sort of stipulation attached to it. I am not entirely sure if AEW would pull the trigger on this one, but some sort of variation of this match seems destined to me.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Future Main Events:
Revolution 2021: MJF def. Kenny Omega
Still too soon to pull the trigger
Double or Nothing 2021: MJF def. Adam Page
This sets up Page as a contender, but still too soon
All Out 2021: MJF def. Chris Jericho
In my fantasy booking, Jericho and MJF allied themselves during Full Gear (2020), but the way the story is progressing, it seems to be building towards this match.
Full Gear 2021: Kenny Omega def. MJF
A full year, Full Gear to Full Gear. This would seem to be a good point to have Kenny Omega finally crowned as champion.
Revolution 2022: Kenny Omega def. Adam Page
This would be the first match of an ideal trilogy to rival Flair vs Steamboat, Gargano vs Cole, and Omega vs Okada. Maybe it’s too soon here but right now, it feels right. Something would have to happen in this match to set up a rematch for...
Double or Nothing 2022: Kenny Omega def. Adam Page
Match #2 of the trilogy, this time Page gets defeated cleanly and no rematch seems to be on the horizon.
All Out 2022: Kenny Omega def. Kazuchika Okada
I’m just joking here. I’m leaving this blank because it feels like a variable. If Adam Page is going to beat Omega for the title then Omega needs to appear extremely strong, so this title match will be kept open for now depending on new arrivals or who gets pushed.
Full Gear 2022: Kenny Omega def. AJ Styles
Again, just a joke. Same as above, this is kept open for whoever appears to be the strongest contender based on what happens and who gets over in the next year or so.
Revolution 2023: Kenny Omega def. ______________
Same as the last two main events.
Double of Nothing 2023: Adam Page def. Kenny Omega
This is it, the final match of the trilogy where Adam Page is finally crowned as the guy of the company. The story would go something like this: After losing the hypothetical Intercontinental Championship, Adam Page goes on a huge downward spiral and “leaves” the company for a few months only to return at Revolution completely sober and changed where he wins the rights to challenge Kenny Omega one last time and were he to lose this match, he would never challenge for the title again.
Naturally, even when fantasy booking, we can never guarantee match quality, but assuming there are no unfortunate injuries and both talents are in prime shape, this would be the closest to that seven star Omega/Okada match from 2018.
Adam Page wins a nearly one hour contest.
Other Notes

• Wardlow wins a Casino Battle Royale to set up a title match on Dynamite with MJF
• I feel like there is a need for an Intercontinental Championship to keep Adam Page in the title picture despite not main eventing for a year.
• Adam Page has a rather long title reign, but whoever beats him should have to beat Kenny Omega in a #1 Contenders match. Defeating Omega and Page within the span of a few weeks would work great to establish the next face of the company.

I realize that I may be horribly wrong in every single one of these predictions, but I thought it was fun nonetheless and wanted to share them. If anyone thinks this will plan out differently for whatever reason, feel free to message me at any time and we can talk about bookings, AEW, NJPW, or whatever (I'm a fairly amusing guy all things considered). For the time being, I'm going to plug these matches into Fire Pro Wrestling World and watch them all plan out.
Cheers!