Ocellus goes to her first Trader's Exchange hoping to get rid of some of her trading cards and get the ones she really wants: Harmonisers.
But between a collector who can't spare what she wants, a price-watcher who only wants to trade for something more expensive, and little meta-watchers who'll only trade for something stronger, how is she going to get what she wants?
More importantly, will she cross a line while getting it?
Trigger warnings: pony name puns, market exploitation, Heart of the Cards.
Chapters (1)
Poor Ocellus just wanted to play Slivers. I mean Allies. I mean Harmonizers.
Brilliant union of the trading card community and Equestrian friendshippery. I especially loved Starlight slowly learning the dialect—though I imagine Sunburst could've helped there—and the idea of Chrysalis trying to conquer the world with a foals' card game. Seriously, now I want to see a story where she tries to go full Yu-Gi-Oh on an unsuspecting and otherwise conventional Equestria.
"Ha! I have defeated you, Twilight Sparkle!"
"Yeah. Good game, honestly."
"Your soul is mine!"
"... No. No it isn't."
Thank you for this, and for the sneak preview.
Always a pleasure to see some tabletop fanfics on here! This was great
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Considering how literally Ocellus took the 'pass around gifts' during Hearth Swarming (because you just know that's how they'll write it eventually) that might actually be a legit idea. Chrysalis acquires this knowledge from advertisements, all the cards and supplemental material are made out to look as genuine as possible...
For some reason I keep thinking it would involve age regression of some sort, though, don't know why.
Anyway, glad you liked it. I wrote it with a niche audience in mind, it was fun, always nice to make someone smile.
That last line is the most glorious thing I've ever seen. Fantastic fanfic
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...
Fear what your actions have led to.
Well, for the upper floors of the hive, yes, but the lower floors still appear to be...you know...cavernous. There is a brief scene here and there where it's probably inside one of the caves of those lower floors...though the show never really did a good job establishing that, so...
Actually, it did annoy me we didn't see more of the inside of the hive after the reformation, at least to similar degree as "To Where And Back Again" did.
Didn't you know, Ocellus? These card players start young.
I was Starlight in this fic--only kind of following what all the player lingo meant.
Got the point of the fic though, so still a worthwhile read. 
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See, you say that and the only thing it fills me with is anticipation.
For CCG nerds.
I love it.
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Mission accomplished, then. That was certainly one of the major worries, too. Glad you enjoyed.
I share the frustration with the worldbuilding in the show, too. We ended up with, what, three major civilisations just suddenly coming back from decades or centuries of isolation, and we got how many stories exploring that? Crystal Empire, Seapony Kingdom, Changeling Hive. Lots of basic things we could have gotten great material out of, wasted opportunity (I think, at least, still need to finish S8 and 9).
But hey, that's what fanfic writers are for, after all. I'd have liked to see how the changelings adjust, how they farm and trade and bump up the literacy rates. It's a recurring thing for me.
Well, I don't play card games so this was like reading a dissertation on nuclear engineering. Pass.
I follow a simple rule, MTG fanfic, I like.
(Disclaimer: I play a Black/White Exalt deck)
I kept thinking "Is Harmonize the new name for the Uplift mechanic?" as there had been rumblings on the discussion fora about the Coastal Conclave of Magi planning on renaming some mechanics due to their cultural baggage (Some cards from early on use neighponese terms. The head of the Conclave, one Water Rose has said that these mechanics are fairly high on the Tempest Scale under their current names, but if the Conclave can find a culture-agnostic term, then it's likely to show up again.) and "Uplift" has some rather, shall we say "Equines Burden" baggage when the mechanic is supposed to be "Support the Lone Champion" flavored.
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I haven't kept track of such things, so no, that wasn't an intended link but it's not a bad one to make. I wanted something generic enough to conjure the image of groups getting buffed up as a whole by each member, and Slivers and Allies were the closest I could find.
One of the Harmonisers could be a stand-in for Exalted-ish mechanics, but it'd have to be a tribal-limited version of it.
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I was mostly trying to write things as if it was "in-universe", mostly by changing around the names of things. It's a bad habit of mine, leaving comments on fanfics that is pretty much recursive fanfiction.
I blame "Flash Fog" and my inability to immediately write out an alternate scene inspired by a scene from Stand Alone Complex where a company is being obstructive to the head of Section Nine, claiming that their stock price will tank, only to be met with the reply "That implies that your company will still exist in future!". I managed to write out the scene MUCH later, but by then, I caught the bug of writing out recursive fanfiction scenes in the comments.
(It's times like this that make me really annoyed that I can't reread my comment history easily)