cloudchaserandflitterexplain

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Cloudchaser and Flitter Explain: Top 10 Friends Forever Cards

But you said—

Hi everypony! Are you ready for the next set to drop? Because Cici and I sure are!

When Cici isn’t freaking out about what deck to run for continentals, that is.

I’m not freaking out. I’m deliberately taking my time analyzing my choices so I can pick the deck that’ll let me win continentals this year.

Got it narrowed down yet?

...No.

That’s our Cici, always worrying until the last possible moment.

But anyway, as much as I’d love to tease Cici about her deck, we just don’t have the time! Leaders and Legends is right around the corner, and we’ve not given you all our top 10 lists for Friends Forever yet.

So let’s get right to it! Cici?

Oh, right!

What do you call a Pegasus wearing a—

I said we have no time for jokes, Cici! I mean what’s your first card?

Oh, okay.

So I wasn’t ever sure when we’d get to this, so I’d been kind of updating my list throughout the year. And, uh, there have definitely been a lot of changes… And not just because of the Banlist. My original #1, for example, is much lower…

But the actual ten cards haven’t changed much. They honestly weren’t that hard to figure out.

Well, top 11 if you count Old Money. But banned cards don’t really count anymore…

Anyway, my top 10 card is Lacking Lesson Plans

Huh. WIth how much you’d been ranting and raving about that card when the set first came out, I’d have thought it’d be much higher.

Well it was! Originally, anyway.

The fact that it let so many Manes flip through Tempest seemed great at first. I was looking forward to breaking in some new Manes and see what they could do!

But in practice, it’s not really enough. Tempest’s opening Grubber: Minion play can still slow them down enough to where they’re not flipping early, or still deny req, or what have you. So it’s really only helpful for the absolute most aggressive confront to flip Manes.

I just wanted more, you know?

If you don’t think it does enough, why’s it on your list, then?

Huh? No, it’s amazing.

I basically include it in all my decks nowadays!

But you said—

While, yeah, it doesn’t really enable many more confront to Flip Manes, it’s still incredibly valuable for decks that confront a lot, just because being able to ignore Troublemakers is really good.

It’s basically to the point where as long as strong Troublemaker control decks are in the meta, you basically have to run 2 of these!

It’s a problem the game’s needed for awhile now, and it’s great to see it in action. So yeah, not as high as I originally thought, but still an easy number 10.

So unlike silly old Cici, I had a lot more trouble narrowing down my top 10 cards! There’s so many fun arts and flavour texts and I love the set for that!

But on the other hoof, there weren’t actually a lot of silly fun build around cards in the set. So there’s not a lot of those my list.

But that’s okay, because the art is just so fun and I love it, hehe. And let’s start with Skipping Class!

Uhh, what’s fun about that?

Oh come on, Cici. It’s six best friends just hanging out together and having fun in the sun, relaxing without a care in the world.

So ditching school is something you endorse then?

Well, no…

But it’s still nice seeing them enjoying each other’s company. It’s very relaxing!

It was a tough call between this and another similar art, but I just had to go with this in the end. Paving the way for a new generation!

Which other card?

I can’t tell you that, Cici! These are top ten lists, not top eleven lists!

There’s no harm in mentioning your runner ups, though.

Top. Ten.

Okay, okay, sheesh.

Moving on, my number 9 will likely surprise no pony for being on this list: The Fire of Friendship.

Oooh, that’s a good one!

The Fire of Friendship lives in our hands! As long as it’s there, we foil Grubber’s plans!

Uhh, yeah, actually. Basically exactly that.

When Tempest fist hit the scene, she was infamous for locking ponies out of Entry thanks to Grubber frequently showing up turn 1. Now there’s a card that helps fight that, thanks to Fire of Friendship, being Entry that protects your entire hand.

It even works against other discard effects like Rarity: Soprano and can work with your own discard synergies like Tank: Burrower.

Not costs, though. If you want to exhaust Apple Bloom: Re-Markable to reduce the cost of a card, you can still discard Fire of Friendship to do it, but you can’t put it into play. Since costs can’t be replaced.

Sure, but that’s not the worst thing ever.

It’s still incredibly versatile while still being helpful Entry that does double duty for protecting your hand.

It does only provide 2 req unlike Singing Barrel and Motivational Speech, which is a notable downside. But if you build your deck accounting for that, it shouldn’t be a major issue.

So, yeah. Good card. Goes in a lot of decks. Highly recommend it.

It’s my number nine.

Or is it five or seven?

Kettle Corn’s so cute!

What was that all about.

Silly Cloudchaser!

Everypony else get it.

Check her cutie mark.

Okay...

Anyway, Kettle Corn is just absolutely precious! The haikus, the circles, the combinations of the two. She’s also one of Rumble’s new friends! What’s not to love?

I suppose she’s not bad entry either. Not amazing, but, you know. Respectable.

Whatever makes you recognize she’s amazing!

...That it?

That’s it! Kettle Corn’s just fun is all!

Uhh, guess I’ll move on, then?

So these next three are all pretty similar cards. Just a bit different in application each. But they’re all on the list for the same reason, more or less.

I was originally going to put them all as a tie, but Flitter said my list had to be exactly ten cards...

Top. Ten. It’s not that hard, Cici!

So here we are with Daring Do: Crafty Collector as my number 7.

Did you know A.K. Yearling was secretly Daring Do this whole time? I was so surprised!

Nah, it was definitely obvious. I knew all along.

Hehe, sure you did Cici.

I did!

Anyway, Daring Do is… kind of nuts. The amount of AT value she can provide you is just incredibly high. An AT every time you can confront with her, and saving an AT every time you need to move her to a problem.

Which, if you confront that turn, gets you the AT you spent on moving her right back.

The only reason she’s the lowest of these three is because if you can’t confront with her, due to eccentric or a TM or whatever, she’s not doing much for you. You can’t just exhaust her for AT like most other common AT gens. So she definitely has the worst floor...

But when she’s at full capacity, she’s just fantastic, and definitely worth a slot on the list.

So, to properly introduce the next card on my list, we’ll need an expert on fashion.

Gee, where could we find one of those in this town?

Well, Cici, you’re in luck! Since, as everypony knows, I happen to be a fashion expert!

You are?

Of course I am, Cici! That’s why you always see me in this bow! It’s the absolute pinnacle of fashionably cute.

...I genuinely have no idea if you’re making this up or not.

So, as a pony who knows all things fashionable, I am proud to present to you my next card, Rarity: Shine on the Inside.

...Another Eccentric 1 entry?

Yup! Quite the coincidence, don’t you think?

No. I’m pretty sure you’re doing this just to mess with me.

An added bonus!

But no, I just really like the art they got for these cards!

Plus, you’ve gotta admit Rarity looks fantastic with a three colour mane. And she just rocks that jacket!

If you say so…

I do say so! Your turn!

Hold on, let me just brace myself for the oncoming onslaught.

Onslaught?

You’ll see.

So, uh, my next card is, uh, us.

Eeeeeeeee!

Hug. Too. Tight.

Just look at how adorable we were back then! And that flavour text is so us! Right down to you being moody about not coming in first place, hehe.

I don’t get moody…

Yeah, just like that!

Anyway, uh, this card is pretty good.

Eh, who am I kidding. We’re amazing.

And you’re not just saying that cause it’s us, are you?

Nope. I looked at every card in the set and decided this legitimately deserved to be included. It’d have the same position even if it were Gyro on the art.

You shouldn’t joke about that, Cici. He’s been complaining again lately he still only has one card...

But yeah, this is basically everything I wanted in a Blue Yellow card! Saving AT, giving extra power to confront, 1 play reqriement so you can play it early with Trading Traditions. What more could a girl want?

It’s even an Immediate ability, allowing you to combo with Hasty Friends, or even just exhaust on the opponent’s turn to avoid a single problem faceoff. It’s just a great card!

That being said, unlike Daring Do and the next card, this doesn’t actually give you AT. If you don’t have Friends to play, you’re not getting as much value as you’d like.

But on the other hoof, you can get value out of us basically every turn so long as you can play Friends. Unlike Daring Do, who needs a free problem. And it’s in a colour combination that kind of needed it more. So despite not giving actual AT, I think overall we’re the better card.

So it gets your stamp of approval?

Absolutely!

Know what gets my stamp of approval?

Uhhh, cakes?

Uh, sure, but not what I was getting at?

Pancakes?

Are you hungry Cici?

A little.

Anyway, what I was trying to get at is that Sorry Stamp gets my stamp of approval!

Didn’t we just talk about that the other day?

Sure did! Aren’t you sorry I didn’t stamp your forehead back then?

This better not go where I think it’s going.

I wouldn’t dream of it!

Anyway, despite the sad nature of the stamp itself, this art just makes me smile! It’s just kind of ridiculous going around with a stamp like that on your head, you know?

Plus, just look at Princess Twilight’s face! It’s just wonderful!

Shouldn’t you, you know, be sad that she’s sad or something?

Well, I am! A little bit. Twilight is genuinely very sorry about the situation she found herself in...

But the whole thing is also pretty ridiculous, so it makes me smile a little too. And I think a card that can evoke both emotions at once is pretty amazing, don’t you?

Sure, I guess.

Well, I like it a lot, and that’s good enough for my list.

Yeah, for sure. Your list is your list.

As for my list, well, I’m sure everypony’s already guessed my number 6 card based on what I’ve said in my picks for the 7 and 8 spots. Starlight Glimmer Guidance Counselor.

Which is honestly kind of surprising. At first, ponies thought she was only going to be so-so since there were already a ton of good AT generator options out there, like Princess Twilight Sparkle: Cover to Cover. Plus she costs 3, which means it takes a long time for her to pay for herself.

But in practice, she’s definitely proven to be an absolute all star.

I think you mean an “All Starlight”, Cici!

Sure...

So, to explain why people weren’t that excited about her at first… In the Seaquestria and Beyond Meta, ponies had the mentality that 5-6 AT generators was usually enough. More than that and you were diluting your deck with too many AT gens and not enough other cards that do other things.

Turns out, uhhh, that was just plain wrong. And in the Friends Forever Meta, we’ve seen decks with 8, 12, and even 18 AT generators! And almost every one of those decks was running Starlight here.

So what changed? Well I’ll get to one of those reasons later in the list, but the other thing is just there are so many good AT gens now, that running as many as you can just means you can have a tremendous advantage over your opponent.

I mean, which pony’s more likely to win? The one getting 3 AT a turn or the one getting 9?

Probably the one getting 9, yeah… You can’t catch up if you’re doing only a third of what the opponent’s doing.

Basically, yeah. Once you’re generating at least 2 more AT than the opponent, chances are you’re a mile ahead. At 3, it’d take a miracle for the opponent to beat you.

Anything past that and you’ve basically already won the game, regardless of what the scores are.

Unless it’s 14-0! Then they might still have a chance! Hehe.

Okay, in the vast majority of circumstances.

Anyway, Glimmer is incredibly key in these strategies for two reasons. First is her 1 req, allowing her to be played early even without flipping your Mane. So you can get her out turn 2 and start getting an influx of AT ASAP.

Second, turns out that 3 power is really helpful. Like Filly Racers, you get the benefit of a lot of power to confront in addition to increasing your AT economy. This has actually sped up a lot of slower Purple strategies. Cover to Cover’s 0 power doesn’t help confront, but Glimmer absolute does.

Also, being mono-coloured means she’s a lot easier to play than Filly Racers or Daring Do, giving her that much more utility. And, well, that goes a long way towards making it on my list, really.

So would you say she guides people to victory?

Hey, yeah! I get that one.

Hehe. Way to go Cici! Rah rah!

“Rah rah?”

Cici, Cici, she’s our Mare! Her deck will take Continentals unawares.

Why thank you!

Though I’m not sure it will. I mean, Nothing I’m considering is really that out of the ordinary…

Wait… you’re doing something weird to set up the next card, aren’t you?

Is it that weird for me to be my besty’s cheer squad?

...No? But I can’t shake this feeling...

Maybe I should wear a mask of you at Continentals like Rainbow Dash’s Parents in Cheering Section?

Please don’t…

But look at them! They’re so happy! Giving their daughter their full support, 110%! 220% even!

That makes even less than 110%.

Don’t be silly, Cici. There’s two of them, so of course it’s 220%.

You might even say it’s 20%—

Don’t.

Spoilsport.

But no, seriously, I love seeing Rainbow’s parent so into supporting her. It’s all sorts of heartwarming, and just fun! Such an easy inclusion for my list, hehe.

Yeah… I guess that would be nice.

Oh no, Cici. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.

No, no. It’s fine. You didn’t do anything wrong. I just miss them sometimes, you know?

Of course.

But now’s no time to worry about that. We’ve got our top 10 lists to complete, and I’m finally done with the AT gens.

And next up’s an absolute juggernaut! Daybreaker: Blinding Light!

Oooh, she’s a fun one, yeah.

I’m not sure I like the idea of Princess Celestia going evil at all...

But it’s just pretend, so it’s okay, right?

I’m sure no matter what happens, Celestia’d never turn her back on us.

But anyway, this card is just fantastic.

While you don’t get as many points from a single faceoff as you would from a Night Glider: Overpowering, you also don’t need to win by any threshold. Plus she works in any faceoff, meaning she can score you points off of Troublemakers, or any other faceoff she finds herself in.

And of course, she brings a lot more power to those faceoffs, due to her extra base power and extra point of Competitive. 6 is a lot of power for a 3 cost Friend.

She does cost more, though, and, again, gives fewer points. So there are definitely reasons to use Night Glider over her.

But all in all, she’s different enough to be a great option for different kinds of decks. And a very solid number 5 pick for me.

My number 5 pick also also very competitive.

Huh, really? You tend to pick build arounds or just flavourful stuff.

I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s the most competitive card in the set?

Heh, we’ll see about that.

I mean, just look at the fierce competition going on in Smolder & Sandbar: Pillow FIght!

I… should have seen this coming.

Probably.

But just look at how much fun they’re having! Whap! Pow! Hehehehe.

Hey Cici! Think fast!

Gah!

You almost hit me.

Well, yeah! That is the point of a pillow fight, silly.

Great reflexes, though.

Thanks! We’ve been training a lot lately, and—

Ow.

You shouldn’t close your eyes in a pillow fight, silly!

Oh it’s on now, Flitter! Come here!

Don’t you have a list to finish?

Oh, right. I guess I’ll have to get you later.

I look forward to it.

So this next one, when she was spoiled, I could have sworn was going to be the top of my list. She seemed insane, and exactly what the game needed. And, well, she is. Mage Meadowbrook: Pillar of Healing is the answer a lot of decks were looking for.

Which is why it’s a shame she’s only number 4.

Which isn’t to say she’s not as good as I thought. It’s just, well, other cards wound up being a bit better than I expected. Cause Meadowbrook is absolutely insane.

There are a ton of great Resources out there right now. And Troublemakers have basically always been a problem for aggro decks. It’s kind of what they’re for. And while there have been a few cards that can deal with one or the other before, there’s never been one that deals with both.

And definitely not one that just deals with them all. Unless the opponent has a Desert Road, Meadowbrook just answers everything, no questions asked. And she even comes with a 3 power body to help you confront that turn. She’s amazing.

Plus, just look at that action pose!

Resources and Troublemakers beware, Mage Meadowbrook is coming for you!

Now she is a bit expensive, and she’s not all that great against decks that don’t rely on resources or TMs, so not every deck’s going to want her. But if you’re in Yellow, you should definitely consider her. Nopony does what she does nearly as effectively.

She may not be an all star, but what she does do, she excels at.

Well your number 4 may be a specialist, but mine’s a generalist: Ocellus: Master of Disguise.

She does a little bit of everything!

Sure, but why’s that fun?

Cause mix and matching abilities is just super fun! And you get a different combo of abilities every time, or at least in a different order, hehe.

Agile and Swift and Showy and Dilligent and Eccentric. There’s a lot of fun possibilities!

Kind of disappointed Purple’s is just Meticulous cause it doesn’t really synergize with the other 5 as well, but it’s not bad, I guess.

Plus they brought Transform back just for her and Silverstream! That’s one of my favourite mechanics!

Yeah, it’s not bad.

and for maximum fun, just stick an Alicorn Costume on her. Then she’s automatically fully enabled!

So long as you don’t put any resources on anypony else, of course.

Since when do you suggest not putting resources on Friends?

Not every silly strategy works with every other silly Strategy, Cici.

Alternatively, you could just put all the hats on Ocellus. That way you won’t have a problem!

Uh huh. No way that could go wrong.

Are you doubting the power of my hats, Cici?

Anyway, moving on to the top 3. And, considering how good my top 4 card was, you know the rest have got to be pretty amazing. Pony of Shadows: Pure Darkness is no exception.

The sheer raw value you get out of this card is insane. That’s 1 AT for a Friend. 1! By passing all colour req and everything. And it doesn’t even matter who beats the Pony of Shadows.

Sure, it does need to be beaten, but if you build your deck right, that’s not too hard. And if the opponent beats it, they only get 1 point while you get what’s likely to be an incredibly powerful Friend.

Now I’ve seen some ponies try and use this to put some of the 5 cost tri-colour alicorns into play…

Like me! I’ve done that!

...but it’s honestly not really worth it. They tend to be difficult to play if ever drawn, and usually you don’t have a guarantee you’ll even hit one.

The better way to use it, honestly, is to just include a bunch of medium-cost friends that you’re okay with drawing or with playing for free. This way you’re happy if you draw them or if you get them off of Pony of Shadows.

Farming decks particularly get a lot of usage from this as they can defeat it, then put a large friend into play at another problem with an epic and have a good chance at beating that too. Plus farm decks don’t tend to run all that many friends, so you increase the odds of getting what you want.

I’ve even seen some farm decks run exactly one kind of friend to guarantee hitting it. The results can be a bit scary.

I like using Purple effects like Scope Things Out to stack my deck so I know what Friend I’m getting!

Yeah, that’s not a bad plan either. Though usually you don’t have to. It’s just handy.

Anyway, give it a try. It seriously does a lot more than you might think at first glance. And you probably think it does a lot. I’ve seriously been incredibly impressed with how good it is.

My number three pick is also great value at 1 AT! Rockhoof: Pillar of Strength

Want to guess how many coutners I’ve put on him, Cici?

Nah. I’m going to guess some big number and you’re just going to top it with some ludicrously large number like eighty trillion or something.

Oh, Cici. You always think so small.

Eighty trillion is a lot!

Sure, but we got him to eighty trillion and one

...You’re kidding me.

Of course, that’s when we were just doing silly things to see how big we could get him, hehe. And we kinda just started rounding once it got too big, hehe.

In a normal match, I think it was maybe 100 or so?

That’s still way bigger than you need…

Well, yeah, Cici! That’s what makes him so fun! Rockhoof just refuses to not be the biggest pony around, it’s great!

But what’s even better than just growing Rockhoof yourself is dueling Rockhoofs! You have one at 2 power and have your opponent have one at 3 power and they’ll never stop trying to best each other. It’s great!

“I’m the biggest pony around!” “No, I’m the biggest pony!” hehehe.

Are you quite done?

Yup! I have more power than you, so I’m not growing anymore this turn.

Wah?

Just go, Cici!

So I think a lot of ponies underestimated this next card at first. A couple other cards did a pretty similar thing, and so it was a lot easier to dismiss.

But then ponies started using it and found out, wow, it was absolutely the real deal. And now School Shut Down is a staple in basically any Purple control deck.

So the cards it was being compared too, obviously, were Party of One and Applejack: Captain of the Seven Seas, being the previous board wipes. Each of which was, and still is, very good, but left you with something, while School Shut Down does not.

But the thing is, it gets rid of everything. Nothing stays behind, short of Persistent Friends. Not even discard piles! And that can matter a lot too. It’s definitely not as great as Party of One if your only goal is to get rid of Friends. But that’s not its only purpose.

It’s almost like different cards can have different strengths and weaknesses!

Heh, yeah, exactly.

Being in the colour that gains lots of AT certainly helps as well. Especially in the current meta with basically all the AT Gens. It may be more Expensive than Party of One, but that’s not always a factor when you’re getting extra AT.

And I guess that’s it. It’s a board wipe. It gets rid of everything. That’s all you need to be a super strong card, really.

Well, we’re at the third and last card on my list because it’s just pure fun: Silverstream: Fish out of Water!

Nopony else in the game does what she does, hehe.

Huh. I wouldn’t have even begun to assume that Silverstream would have made your list, let alone as your number 2. She seems kind of… tame.

Are you kidding? Silverstream is insane!

With the right deck, she’s an invitation to put whatever problem you want into play! Or even all of them!

Please tell me you didn’t put all 20 problems at once.

Oh, Cloudchaser. Still thinking so, so small.

We worked together to put all 116 problems in play at once!

116?

Yup! 3 copies each of all sixteen dilemmas for each player. Plus both players 10 problems, of course. That makes 116!

It was the biggest multi problem faceoff ever!

Whatever makes you happy, I guess.

Of course, that’s not the best thing you can do with Silverstream. But I’ll tell you about dismissing problems and uniqueness later, hehe. It’s a whole lot of nonsense.

Wha?

Basically, Sivlerstream lets you do a lot of fun and silly things that couldn’t be done before. And, well, Cici, you may not know this… but I just love fun and silly things!

I think I may have heard that once or twice.

Cici, you made a joke! I’m so proud of you!

Gah! No hugs while we’re doing top 10 lists!

All the hugs while we’re doing top 10 lists!

So we’re finally at my last card and, uh... yeah. All of you probably guessed it’s Mistmane: Pillar of Beauty.

Now, I wasn’t sure she was all that great at first, but the fact she does four different things across two abilities is what makes her absolutely insane. Four. That’s a lot of things for one card to do, and they’re all notable.

Sure, she’s primarily used for her ability to get you a card back while also getting you a point, but that’s only half of what she can do. She also can get herself out from the discard pile while filling it with stuff you might want to get back. Not to mention also filling the opponent’s discard pile.

This makes it incredibly difficult to get rid of her short of banishing her.

Most of you are also probably aware of the fact that being Unique lets you use two of them to just score a point for every 3 AT you spend. Having 2 in play means one is dsimissed immediately due to Uniqueness, and then can be gotten back thanks to her Trigger.

Then, since you’re back where you started just with 3 less AT and 1 more point, you can do it again. And again. And again.

Put simply, she is a finisher, and very effective at it in this meta of a million AT gens. 3 AT per point is kind of expensive, but if you can stall the game long enough to be able to do it 8 or 10 times in one turn, the cost begins to not matter much anymore.

How often does that happen? Seems unlikely.

More often than you’d think or I’d like…

Now she does come with the drawback of letting the opponent get a card back as well, but…

It usually doesn’t matter. Ponies tend not to play Mistmane if the opponent can get something important back, unless they don’t care. It’s mostly meaningless. Kind of disappointing, really.

Long story short, she is incredibly versatile while also being exceptionally good at a single thing, which isn’t a combination you see very frequently. She’s trivially the best card in the set, even more so than Old Money, who got banned.

Which isn’t to say I think she should necessarily be banned…

But I wouldn’t mind it.

Cici!

I just don’t find her very fun to play against.

But that’s just me. I’ve actually heard a lot of ponies talking about wanting to ban her... But I don’t think it’s necessary. At least not yet since rotation is right around the corner. Which isn’t something we need to get into today.

We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess. And it’s not like every powerful card needs to be something I like specifically or anything.

Different cards appeal to different ponies.

Exactly! Part of what makes a card game great.

I do hope she’s being watched for the possibility of banning, if only because a lot of ponies think it might be necessary. But I doubt it’ll need to happen any time soon.

And that’s my whole list. Lots of powerful stuff this time around. Mostly good stuff too.

Well, my last card’s one we don’t even need to talk about…

Wah?

...Since Cici already did that for me!

Look! it’s us again!

Heh, yeah, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

It’s always nice seeing us on a card, and this one’s particularly nice.

Plus we’re just so gosh darn cute! Filly us is the best!

Shame I was wearing the bow that day and not you. That was back when we were taking turns, remember?

Flitterrrrrrr.

But yeah, I don’t really have much more to say that I didn’t already say when Cici talked about us! We’re adorable, we work great together, and we’re the perfect team. Always!

Always and always.

So, that’s our lists! Now if you’ll excuse us, Cloudchaser’s got a lot of freaking out to do now that there’s nothing else to do between now and Contientals.

I do not freak ou—

Gah, Continentals is like 2 days away and I have so much playtesting I need to do! Why did I let you waste so much time trying to teach me how to tell dumb jokes? I’ve got to go now! Later Flits.

That’s our Cloudchaser, hehe.

Bye everypony! See you all at Continetals!

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

I wonder what their conversation is a thinly vieled allegory for... hrm... Anyway, I had no intention on writing this until today. But after waking up today after yesterday's finale (which I loved, by the way), I knew I absolutely had to write something to send the show off. To say it's been a major part of my life would be an enormous understatement. And I'm sure several of you reading this feel the same way. I had no idea I'd love MLP:FiM this much, but wow. Just... just wow. MLP is directly or indirectly responsible for a lot of great things in my life. My job. Many of my friends, including one of my absolute best. And, of course, CaFE (not to mention everything else CCG related I do). MLP has touched my life a lot. More than I can adequately put into words. So the girls little sendoff is about the least I could do. And I hope you all like it. As for Generation 5... I honestly doubt it'll be as great, or as magical, as Gen 4. But I'm still hopeful. It'll be different but... I'm absolutely looking forward to it. And I look forward to talking to you all about the premiere, once it happens. In the mean time, though... CaFE's still going to happen. Don't worry. I'm definitely not done with these two adorable cardponies. See you all next time. Hope you liked the finale as much as I did.

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Cloudchaser and Flitter Interlude: Send Off

Oh no, Cloudchaser. What’s wrong? You look like you’ve been crying.

The last Star Pony book came out yesterday.

Oh, you’ve been waiting for that to come out for months!

Wait… was it bad or something?

What? No!

It was amazing! They’ve been building up the showdown between Captain Bright Star and Dark Star for the last three books now! And it looked like Bright Star wouldn’t make it at first, but her crew and friends help her out and they pulled through in the end and it was the best book ever!

Then what’s wrong, Cici?

Nothing. But...

It was the last book! Now it’s over forever!

Aww, Cici. It’ll be okay.

But there’s so many more stories they could tell!

Well, yeah, but…

It was still a good ending, right?

Yeah! Dark Star finally got what was coming to him!

And you still have the full collection right?

Yup. All nine books from “Star Ponies: A New Beginning” all the way to “Star Ponies: The Final Frontier.”

I even have the limited edition comic books!

See? You’ve got everything at your hooftips whenever you need it! Star Ponies isn’t over forever, you can relive all the excitement whenever you want!

Yeah, but… there won’t be any new stuff.

Well, no. No there won’t. But that’s okay.

You got 9 great books full of characters you love, plus some spinoff stories. And everything got resolved in a way you were satisfied with. That’s pretty great for a book series that no one knew was going to do all that well. Didn’t you say it was originally only going to be a trilogy?

Yeah. But the first three did so well, they just kept making more year after year.

And that’s amazing, Cici! Most ponies would give their right foreleg for a series to go that long.

And it’s not like the books are going anywhere. You can read them again whenever you want and relive all your happy memories.

...I guess I can.

Plus, they still hold Star Pony conventions, right?

Well, they closed down the biggest one, but yeah. They’re still happening.

I don’t know that they’ll ever stop, honestly. Even with there being no more main series books.

There you go! Everything’s going to be fine! You’ll see.

Wait, main series books?

Yeah. There’s going to be a Star Ponies: Next Generation semi-sequel in a year or two. It won’t focus on the same characters, it might not even be in the same universe. But it’s happening.

I really don’t know how to feel about it, though.

I’m sure it’ll be great! If Star Ponies was awesome, the sequel’s gotta be too, right?

I hope so.

Just you wait. I’m sure in a couple years, you’ll burst through my door eager to gush about the latest Star Ponies book just like old times.

Heh. Yeah. That’d be nice.

But for now… I dunno. There’s just so many emotions, you know?

Yeah Cici, I know. And if you need to be alone for a bit while you sort out all those thoughts and feelings… I get that too. It still is sad to see something you love end. But everything ends eventually.

Yeah. I think I would like to be alone for a bit, actually.

Absolutely! But if you need to talk more about this, or just need a hug, remember you can always drop by my place!

You sure?

Absolutely! We are BFFs after all.

Heh. Yeah. We are. Always.

Always and always and always!

Well, bye Cloudchaser. Hope you feel better later.

Hey Flitter. Before you go…

Yeah Cici?

We’re still going to play cards tomorrow and I’m still going to kick your flank, just like always!

As if! I’ve been working on a new deck that’s 100% unbeatable!

Hahaha, we’ll see. We’ll see.

Later Flits. Thanks… thanks for stopping by.

Anytime, Cloudchaser. Anytime.

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Cloudchaser and Flitter Explain: Agile

If you say so…

ahem Hello Flitter. Do you know what we have been practicing at the Wonderbolts Academy lately?

Why no, do tell!

Well, there are a lot of things. Sometimes we practice our speed. Sometimes we practice our guts. But lately we have been practicing our agility. Speaking of agility, that’s our topic for the day: Agile.

You’re supposed to put a pause between those two lines, Cici…

I’m just reading what you put down here.

Well, yeah, but there’s more to telling silly jokes than just reading them.

You gotta put some emotion into it! If you’re not having fun, no one else will. And more important than that is…

Uhhh, is what?

Hi everypony! Like I tried to get Cici to tell you all, today we’re talking about Agile! The new keyword from Friends Forever!

Well, new-ish. We’re still a bit behind.

Er, Flitter?

So Agile’s pretty neat. It’s basically the equivalent of Hasty, only for the “Move a Character” action instead of the play a “Friend, Resource, or Event Card” action.

Which is to say it lets you take the normal pay 2 AT to move a character Main Phase action whenever you could take an Immediate action instead. Cici! Tell everyone why that’s important!

Huh? Oh, sure.

Well, in theory, Agile’s pretty great because it allows for more efficient confronts. Letting you move characters when you can’t normally move them is pretty powerful, and why cards like Rainbow Dash & First Mate Mullet are so good.

However…

There are basically no good Friends with Agile. At all.

Cici!

Sorry, Flitter, but they basically wasted this keyword. The closest to a good Friend with Agile is Flash Magnus, but he just costs too much.

Though Core is rotating soon. He may be good then...

Okay little miss bigshot, why’s Agile so bad if you just said it was good?

Well… it wasn’t really put on any impactful Friends, you know?

There’s 12 Friends with Agile, but none of them really do anything all that impactful. Agile is ostensibly an aggro ability, but the rate on most of these Friends is just not all that exciting. Paying 2 to move a Friend with 2 power and no other benefit isn’t really exciting you know?

Almost all of those cards have abilities when they move, Cici. Or at least when they confront something.

Sure, but the benefit is pretty small for the cost you’re investing. Like, why not just play another Friend who does something instead? Or use more cost efficient immediate movement options like Hasty Friends and Princess Luna: Dream Warrior?

Because I’m building convoluted engines that involve flipping my Troublemakers down with Strawberry Sunrise before my opponent can defeat them, then uncovering them again for minor benefit!

….Why?

Well, it’s like that famous philosopher said…

Anything worth doing is worth doing as silly as possible!

...Pinkie Pie said that, didn’t she?

It was Cheese Sandwich, actually.

You really should go take a tour of his amusement factory! There’s lots of fun stuff you can learn!

Maybe later...

But the point is, this is something new I can do that I couldn’t do nearly as easily before! And it’s all thanks to Agile.

Yeah, but—

Sure, it’s not the most effective plan, but it’s there! And I’m glad Agile exists!

I am too!

I just wish it was on better Friends…

But, you know, it’s pretty good on the non Friends. Defend the Hive and Surprise Take Off are both kind of super good, since they can give Agile to things that don’t normally have it. And there’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with them.

Like using Daring Do: Crafty Collector to confront Surprise Take off to give you an AT which you then use to move Daring Do to another problem and confront and get an AT again.

It’s probably worth pointing out at this point that since Agile counts as a main phase movement, it’s also affected by Swift!

Of course, it’s also affected by Showy, which isn’t as great.

Eh, no one uses Showy, so who cares?

Weren’t you beaten by a Showy Mane last year at Continentals?

That was a fluke, I swear...

Maybe we’ll get more Agile in the next set on cards you like better.

You think? Oh, I hope there’s an agile Friend who moves another Friend when you move it. Just think of all the possibilities!

Anyway, Agile definitely opens up a lot of interesting things you can do. Like move to a troublemaker to challenge it when you’d have had to have waited until the next turn before. Or to counter Purple movement abilities like Burning Bridges.

Yeah. That’s a real strong use of agile…

Maybe if Purple movement saw more play, we’d see a bit more Agile? But nowadays Purple’s usually paired with Pink or White and just removes Friends a bit more permanently… hrm.

Core’s going to rotate soon, though. Who knows what the future holds?

Not me, that’s for sure.

SPECIAL DELIVERY!

Uhh, Bulk? What are you doing here?

SPECIAL DELIVERY!

I’m pretty sure he’s delivering the mail, silly.

I can see that. I mean why? He’s not normally a mail pony.

I wear many hats…

And you’re very good at all your jobs, Bulk!

Couldn’t ask for a better wing pony.

THANKS!

So what’s up, Bulk?

SPECIAL DELIVERY!

...Just give it here, Bulk.

OKAY!

Oooh, what is it, Cici? A new jet ski? A Lifetime supreme of lemon pudding cake? The lost griffon Idol of Boreas?

It’s clearly an envelope, Flits.

Psh, you’d be surprised what you can fit in an envelope if you try hard enough.

It’s… a card. For the next set

But we already had our spoiler for the next set.

“We’re sorry you got two copies of the same card last time. We must have made a mistake when sending them to you. Hope this makes up for it.”

Huh. Well then.

Well, Cici, what is it?

Weird, is what it is. I mean just look at this card.

Oh hey look, Cici, your wish came true! Spike’s got Agile! What are the odds of that?

Eerie.

Also, I wished for an Agile Friend that could move other characters, not whatever this is...

Oh no! Cloudchaser, this is awful!

What? What’s wrong?

With this card… you can get infinite points!

That’s all you’re upset about?

But Cici, before, you couldn’t get more than 19 points, since the game ends the moment you have 15 or more points and the most points you could get at once was 5.

But if you make infinite copies of Spike…

And who’s going to do that?

...then start a problem faceoff at his problem, the winner will get infinite points!

This is just awful!

Don’t you normally love doing stuff like that?

Well, yeah, but it was a fun little piece of trivia that 19 was the most points you could get.

Well, time to adapt to the times, I guess!

You got over that quickly…

I was exaggerating for comedic effect! Yet another comedy technique I’m going to teach you!

And this card is honestly pretty neat!

I dunno. 1 power for 2 cost is really bad…

But just think of all the possibilities, Cici!

You start a faceoff, unsure if you’ll win or lose… and then after flips, once you know you’ll win…

Bam! You agile in Spike to score an extra point!

And if you’d have lost, you just keep him at home so the opponent doesn’t score the extra point.

Seems like a lot of work, honestly…

But yeah, okay. I’m intrigued. This is worth toying with.

Told ya!

I’m not expecting much…

But eh, who knows? It’s definitely interesting.

And with that surprise spoiler out of the way, I think we’re done talking about Agile!

Unless Cici wants to say more mean things about it.

I wasn’t saying mean things...

Although… there is one thing I’m wondering, Flits...

Oh? what’s that?

You never did tell me what’s more important for joke telling than emotion.

Timing!

Oh.

But wouldn’t the right time to tell me that have been right after I asked you before?

...You’re hopeless, Cici.

Huh?

Nevermind. Later everypony!

Later.

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Cloudchaser and Flitter Explain: Harmony

Why Cici! I never…

thought you'd ever catch on. Well done, hehe.

But no! Today's different! Today you're going to do it!

Wah?

We're talking about Harmony abilities today, incidentally.

But I'm no good at this kind of thing...

Give it your best shot! I know you can do it, Cici!

Uhh… hi everypony. Today we're, uh, harmoniously going to…

talk about Harmony abilities?

Aww c'mon, Cici! You can do better than that!

Today we're going to talk about Harmony abilities… harmoniously?

...We'll workshop this later.

I told you I'm no good at this kind of thing, Flitter!

So Friends Forever may have been out for awhile, and we may be a bit late to the party…

We’ve both been a bit busy lately, yeah…

But that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about Friends Forever’s mechanics, right? Starting with… Harmony!

But wait a minute, what I just said doesn’t make any sense! Harmony’s not a mechanic at all! It doesn't actually mean anything!

Yeah, it's kind of like a helper word to let you know at a glance what cards with these kinds of abilities mean. We’ve actually seen it before with Chaos, which also doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s just a reminder that “hey, this card does something in the Flip Zone.”

In this case, Harmony is just telling us “this card cares about other cards with such and such trait.” But it doesn't have any rules text of its own.

If you want, you could completely ignore it.

Well you could, but it's handy to refer to the cards that have it as cards with Harmony abilities. It makes talking about the cards easier, despite not actually meaning anything!

Just think about all the times you’ve talked about Chaos abilities in your games! Probably loads! It’s a nice short hand.

Though I guess in this case that could get a bit confusing considering we have a format named Harmony too…

You can usually understand which is being talked about through context, though, so it's not a terribly big deal.

Like when I say I'm playing my Harmony Griffon deck, you'll definitely know I'm playing a deck that has a couple griffons in it in the Harmony format and not a deck that has a bunch of Harmony Griffon cards!

...You did that on purpose.

Sure did!

Anyway, the point is that Harmony isn’t actually a mechanic. And there’s no one way that Harmony works; the cards that have it are all pretty different from each other and use it in different ways.

Which means that despite the fact that there are a lot of cards with this helpful word, there's not that much to talk about.

But there's still a bit! So let's keep talking!

To start with, we've got seven different traits with this not-keyword: Pegasus, Earth Pony, Unicorn, Griffon, Dragon, Changeling, and last but not least…

Alicorn!

Alicorn barely even counts...

There's a card with Harmony Alicorn, so it definitely counts!

Yeah, a card.

Still counts!

So each of these traits got a bit of help in making tribal decks a bit more fun.

“Tribal” meaning a deck that focuses around a specific trait and uses a lot of bonuses for using as many Characters with that trait as possible.

I think it's called that because of the three pony tribes before the first Hearth’s Warming? I'm not sure.

Something to look into later for sure!

Now if you're like me, your first thought on seeing Harmony was a keyword from Crystal Games…

Teamwork!

Ungh, I'm getting Carbo-Loader flashbacks…

Teamwork and Harmony go hoof in hoof because they're both tribal mechanics, and teamwork before was already on Pegasi, Earth Ponies, and Unicorns so it's basically like doubling your fun!

Or it would be if there were more than like 2 good teamwork cards or 3 good harmony cards…

Oh shush.

In general, Harmony cards all go great with other Harmony cards for the same trait, but there's nothing saying you have to use them.

Yeah. Take Fume, for example. He has a pretty strong Harmony ability, allowing him to exhaust a lot of opposing characters and then keep them exhausted via his other ability. He’s honestly a card with a lot of potential.

Buuuuut... there really aren’t any other Harmony Dragon cards that go super well with that particular ability. So you could get away with just running whatever dragons happen to be best for the deck rather than trying to cram in a bunch of Harmony that doesn’t really help out much.

But on the flipside, you absolutely could just include them all and have fun with all their synergistic effects! I know I have.

Yeah, but that’s what you do every set. Take your favourite cards and play with them.

Well, so do you!

I do not!

Wait, do I? I play with the cards that help me win but…

Those are my favourites! Woah.

Well, blowing Cici’s mind is usually the sign that we’re about done for the day!

Huh? What does that mean?

Don’t worry about it.

Also feels like we just got started.

Well, we did say there wasn’t that much to talk about...

Can you think of anything else to say?

Hrm…

Well, I think it’s worth pointing out that some cards with Harmony are good even if you don’t get to use them with their Harmony effect.

Take Unsatisfactory Work. It’s clearly much better if you have a Pegasus, but if you don’t have one? It’s still pretty good. Kind of like a Yellow Napcakes, though not quite as good.

Though considering how strong Napcakes is, being almost as good is still very good.

And if you do have a Pegasus, it’s super charged and ready to return any opposing Friend to the opponent’s hand, whenever you want!

And the reverse is also true. Just because you have a lot of cards of a particular trait doesn’t mean you have to cram in Harmony cards to go along with them.

I’ve got a decent Pink deck with lots of Earth Ponies but I’m not about to put Sorry Stamp in it over a card like Belly Flop or Foodfight!. It may work best with Earth ponies, but as expensive as it is makes me not really interested.

Awww, but Sorry Stamp is so fun…

Especially if you bring your own stamp to use on your opponent’s forehead!

You keep that away from me!

Don’t worry, Cici.it’s just a prop. I wouldn’t stamp you without your permission.

Good.

No, I have way better ways to tease you.

Uhhhh...

And with that, I think we’re done for the day! For reals this time.

Later Everypony!

Later.

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Cloudchaser and Flitter spoil: Set 11

We have spoi—

Oh, you too, huh?

My card is super awesome. It’ll definitely shake up the meta a bit, and is pretty interesting to use.

Well, my card is super fun, and it’ll be great using it with other ponies and doing some wacky things!

So this is the Crown of the Sibling Supreme. And it’s going to be a great way to give all sorts of decks some easy point acceleration, despite the inherent drawback of sometimes giving it to your opponent.

Well my card is the Crown of the Sibling Supreme, which is fun because sometimes your opponent gets it and—

Er…

What the…

Did… did…

Did they give us both the same card to spoil?

Guess so!

But we’ve always had at least two before… one for each of us to talk about. But if we both have the same card, who should talk about it?

Well, I see only one appropriate way to handle this…

The Hard Way!

Wah?

We’ll have a contest to see which one of us is Spoiler Best Friend Supreme!

But the card is for the Sibling Supreme.

But we’re not siblings, silly.

Oh. Right.

So here’s the plan. We’ll have five faceoffs! Real life ones! And whenever one of us wins a faceoff, they get to talk about the Crown next.

And after the fifth one, we’ll determine who gets to be Super Duper Spoiler Best Friend Supreme Omega!

I thought it was just Best Friend Supreme...

First faceoff... is hoof wrestling!

Oh, you are so on.

Hah, easy! All those Wonderbolt exercises have paid off.

Guess you win, Cici! So tell us all about the crown.

Until I challenge you to the next faceoff, of course.

Don’t worry, I’ll win them all.

Anyway, this Crown is honestly pretty interesting. Paying 1 AT to gain 1 point isn’t a bad deal. It’s not a super great deal, mind, but do it enough times and you can accelerate your game plan by a turn, which can make all the difference.

Just doing it one time can be enough. How many games have you seen where ponies end up at 14 points, only for the opponent to score to 15 the next turn. Sure wish you could have gotten that extra point now, huh?

On the other hoof, you’re starting off by paying 2 for a resource that, ultimately, does nothing. It doesn’t increase your board presence by giving you power, or extra resources or anything. And it doesn’t disrupt the opponent’s plans either.

So that kind of makes that first point rather expensive.

In fact you, uh. You…

Why are you looking at me like that?

Next faceoff is a staring contest. First one to blink loses!

Staring Contest? Is that all you’ve got?

Piece of cake.

I win!

What? No, that doesn’t count. I wasn’t ready!

You closed your eyes! Which means you blinked, which means I win, which means I get to talk about the crown next.

Fine…

So the most fun thing about this card is that first ability.

“Play to your home”?

No not that, Cici. Are you being difficult on purpose?

Sorry…

But anyway, I’m talking about the fact that whoever wins a faceoff, gets the crown! So you’ve turned the game into a battle for faceoff supremacy!

Two ponies enter. One pony leaves with the crown!

This increases the stakes of each face off quite nicely, don’t you think?

Well yeah, but—

And if you take the Crown, the second ability is worded so you can use it right away! Provided it’s not already exhausted from your opponent using it already, hehe.

Okay next faceoff! We’re going to have a duel, Cici!

A what?

A magic duel!

You’re kidding.

I hope you’re ready Cici. I’ve been preparing my whole life for this moment.

Flitter.

Yeeeeeeeesssss?

In case you forgot, we’re not unicorns. We’re pegasi. You know, winged ponies, not horned ponies? Our “magic” consists of flying and walking on clouds. We can’t really have a duel.

Oh shoot, I guess you’re right.

Well, you’re the better flier than me, so I guess you win! Your turn to talk about the crown!

Uhhh, thanks?

So like I was saying, the Crown is not without some substantial risk. Since, like Flitter said, the opponent has a reasonable chance of taking it from you.

Letting your opponent take it from you means they can get points that you initially paid for. They didn’t have to pay that 2 cost down payment, after all. They can just get points at a 1 to 1 ratio.

So you better make sure you’re winning more faceoffs than your opponent is. Or at least winning them when it’s ready, since stealing it when it’s exhausted doesn’t help you much.

Oh, I’m definitely going to win more faceoffs than you, Cici! You may be up 2 to 1, but I will be the Ultra Super Duper Spoiler Best Friend Princess Supreme Omega Mark III.

Er, Princess?

Anyway, what I’m saying is, you can’t just shove this in any deck and expect it to work for you. It may look like it’s a card that can potentially help everyone equally, but it’s really weighted against the pony who plays it..

Assuming you’re playing fair, of course.

If your deck is built specifically to engage in a lot of face offs and, more importantly, win them, then your opponent won’t be able to take it from you all that often. I suspect farming decks and maybe some control decks would like this best. Especially if used alongside The Staff of Sacanas

Some aggro decks may experiment with it, but honestly I think they’d just be better off with Friends that give you points instead, like Daybreaker. But, eh, we’ll see.

So I think overall it’s a pretty good card, but only if the deck can support it. It won’t be good in every deck... but cards like that tend to be problematic anyway, so that’s probably for the best.

Alright Cici, that’s enough. Time for the next faceoff! Rock, paper, scissors!

Er, what now?

You know, that game Lyra tried to teach everyone to play a while back. Where you change your hand into different shapes.

We have hooves, not hands.

Which is why it didn’t take off very well!

But that’s okay, we’ll improvise! We’ll just say what shape we’re making, okay? Rock smashes scissors, scissors cuts paper, and paper covers rock.

Why does that beat rock?

I dunno. Ask Lyra.

Seems like a dumb game.

Well, you only think that because you’re going to throw scissors and lose to my rock.

Uhhh, no I’m not.

Oh, don’t kid yourself Cici. You’re definitely going to throw scissors. It’s written all over your face.

No It’s not!

We’ll see. Okay, ready? We say “rock, paper, scissors, shoot” then say what shape we’re using! It’ll be fun!

I guess.

Rock,

Paper,

Scissors,

Shoot!

Scissors.

Paper! I win by covering your ro—

Wait a second…

You tricked me!

All’s fair in spoilers and card games, Cici.

In fact, faceoff tricks are a great way to use this card to help ensure you win all your faceoffs!

Whether it’s increasing your power through cards like Critter Cavalry, or decreasing your opponent’s through stuff like Apple Juice Break, you need to do everything you can to win, win, win!

But faceoff tricks aren’t going to help you if you can’t start a faceoff. And sometimes your opponent won’t just let you start a problem or Troublemaker faceoff.

But fortunately, there’s plenty of ways to start faceoffs! You could fill your deck with lots of cards to help out, like Gilda: Feather Ruffler or Nightmare Moon: Blackest Night to prove that you are faceoff sibling supreme!

And of course, there’s my personal favourite, the Canterlot Nights Showdowns!

Ohhhh, so that’s why you’ve chosen the faceoffs you did.

Heh, you even referenced one of the Blue ones at the start.

Yup! So, you know what that makes the last event, right? The one that will settle once and for all which of us is the Incredibly Amazing Ultra Super Duper Spoiler Best Friend Princess Supreme Omega Mark III of all time!

Well let’s see. You started with the Orange one, then Yellow, Purple, and Pink. So that leaves White, which is…

Oh no.

Fashion contest!

Nope, I’m not doing this, no way, no how.

So, on the one hoof, we’ve got little old me, Flitter, adorable pegasus with her adorable bow, picture of cute!

Nopenopenopenopenopenope.

Meanwhile Cloudchaser over there isn’t wearing anything! So I guess I win by default, right?

Yes. Good. We’re done. No need to do this any further.

Buuuuuuutttttttt…

Fashion isn’t just clothes, it’s how you present yourself. And Cici has definitely got a unique look, all her own!

Buh?

Why, just look at that cool mane she’s got! It just screams “I’m a winner”, don’t you all think?

Well, I hate to brag, but…

She’s a go getter! An absolute all-star! And, most importantly…

Spoiler Best Friend Supreme.

Wasn’t that longer the last time you said it?

Wait, I won?

Yup, congratulations Cici!

Hah! I always knew I’d win! These events were basically made for m—

Wait, these events weren’t made for me at all. Did you let me win?

Er, well, no. Of course not.

You’re just that awesome, Cici!

Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am.

Well, now that our faceoff competition is over, I guess it’s time for Spoiler Best Friend Supreme Cloudchaser and me, the Incredibly Amazingly adorable Ultra Super Duper Spoiler Best Friend Princess Supreme Omega Mark III Turbo Double Plus Flitter to say goodbye.

Hey, why’s your title longer if you lost?

Bye every pony!

Later.

But no, seriously, why’s yours longer?

Bye Cici!

Later Flitter.

What? Wait, no, don’t leave! You didn’t tell me why you’re the Super Cool Best Friend Whatever Princess and I’m only Spoiler Best Friend Supreme. Flitter? Flitter, you get back here!

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

A “brief” talk about the future of CaFE

I’m sure several of you are probably wondering, or maybe have wondered, why did CaFE go on such a long, unannounced hiatus? they’ve existed before, much to my embarrassment, but never this long, and usually I’d at least say something after a few months. But this time, well, it’s been over three quarters of a year. That’s a long time. So what happened? Well, a number of things. There was, of course, my little tiff with CiM. Which has been long since resolved and we’re all friends again, even if I don’t work directly for them any more, which is currently for the best (though maybe I’ll return someday, who can say? It’s not in the foreseeable future, however). Then, well, there was just a lot of little things that affected my mental health as I was recovering from that. Nothing to cause a monumental delay, mind you, but a lot of stuff that just made me not want to, or just incapable of writing about cute ponies talking about card games. I did manage to write half of the next CaFE early in the year, but I never did manage to finish it. Then, well, the big thing happened. And, fair warning, it’s not good. How bad is it? Well, even Pinkie Pie knows there are some things that no amount of parties and balloons and cheer can help you with, and this is one of those. My father died in March this year. To make matters worse, it happened just about a week before my sister’s wedding (which was lovely, though very bittersweet considering the circumstances). And I did not take it well at all. Writing was close to impossible for a long time. And every time I thought about saying something about CaFE, I just couldn’t. I tried many times. I really did. I was not myself for months. I still managed to go to BABS and Everfree and put on a good show and enjoy myself, though I had to work harder for it. I’m not 100% I managed to mask everything entirely, and I’m sorry if I affected anyone negatively. For what it’s worth, I really did try my best not to. But let’s get back to the writing. It was hard. Very hard. I kept starting things I wanted to write about, then abandoning them. The best I could manage was the Surprise’s Cards that Beat the Odds series (which I think I did a decent job with, though it’s pretty close to over) and barely managing Silver Spanner (which I honestly think helped keep me sane as it was something I could do for everyone that involved very little effort on my part. Though there have definitely been more mistakes in the past few months than I’d have liked). The fact that I managed to finish two thirds of the Bichromatism mini series is, quite frankly, astounding to me as it has been about five times harder to write than something like this normally would be. But progress is progress, and I’m glad to have been able to make it. Bronycon has also helped a lot. I spent a lot of time with my non-CCG friends at the con, one of whom used to be a fanfic writer who published a book with a collection of her short stories from Fimfic and sold it at the Bronycon Bookstore, along with many other writers. It was a thing someone helped organize and push through for them all, and I couldn’t be more proud. Though, admittedly a little jealous since she was having so much fun with her writing stuff and I was just unable to write at all recently. But mostly, I was definitely proud, and enjoying her success alongside her. And, of course, I also did a lot of CCG stuff! I played a silly deck I made with Grand Pause (though we admit it needs a little tuning stil), hung out with people, chatted with people, and so on. I went to the “fire”side chat and asked questions about the next set, a few of which I think were actually pretty good! I even had the impromptu idea at about 90 minutes before Meticulous Talks started to join them in talking about those very same questions, completely surprising cursedchords and Hithroc and, honestly, myself. And overall, I managed to really connect with many CCG players again in a way I hadn’t really done since, well, since too long ago. Being the last Bronycon, of course, there was a lot to see, and do. I looked at all the cute costumes. Hugged Vikingerik’s Scootaloo suit twice.Bought a lot of stuff at the vendor hall (well, 5 things is a lot for me, anyway). Went to a couple panels. Told some jokes. Talked with a random stranger or three. Played board games. And overall, just had an incredibly and unbelievably good time. I even joined an impromptu sing-a-long of Smile Smile Smile (my 100% favourite MLP song, though I’ll easily admit several others are better). Bronycon’s healing process was incredible, and I think it happened at just the right time for me. The MLP fandom, as a whole, is just deeply, truly incredible. It is a community of love, understanding, and tolerance. And it is one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever been a part of (despite not really being much of a brony myself, outside the CCG. I know, it’s surprising considering how much I do for the CCG, but true). Which brings us back to CaFE. I’ve been thinking a lot more about CaFE lately, even before Bronycon. A couple weeks ago, I even thought to myself “it’s time to say something. It may not be time to write CafE again, but you should at least say something!” I didn’t, of course, but just thinking that was a good sign that I was on the right track again, even if still a bit away from the station. CaFE is incredibly and exceptionally special to me. It is legitimately the thing I am proudest of making or doing ever. No joke. I don’t know how well I can express this considering how emotional I’m getting typing these words (I’m tearing up on the plane home from Bronycon), but I think it needs to be put in to words. It’s the longest running project I’ve ever had, aside from my first job. I’ve had many people come up to me and praise how much they like it, even to this day. Folks have made fan art for me, including fan animations and comics! I’ve been asked to sign cards featuring one or both of the girls for people, which has always made my day (though it doesn’t happen much anymore). I’ve been told by more than one person it was their favourite pony blog period, despite being 90% just text! I’ve had players new and old tell me they’ve learned about the game reading my blog, and that they love the format of two cute pegasi talking to each other. Cloudchaser and Flitter have become practically synonymous with “competitive player” and “casual player” in this game, and almost everyone who’s read CaFE and seen how well they get along (despite their occasional fight) knows that they too can get along with the kind of player they’re not (granted, that could just be because we;re all MLP fans in general, heh). The girls’ expressions are used both on the official MLPCCG reddit and the official MLPCCG discord, and even in CiM’s Slack! Bots have been named after them by multiple people across multiple platforms. They were the first outside of Enterplay to give spoilers, and they’ve done so every set. And, most importantly, a girl at Nightmare Nights 2014 gave me a spontaneous hug when she learned I wrote that blog, she loved it so much. In short, CaFE hasn’t just touched my life, it’s touched all of yours. And many who don’t read it any more or even play the game any more. Heck, some people who stopped playing the game still read the blog (when it was updating, anyway)! Somehow, CaFE was even influential enough that I was invited to a panel at Bronycon 2016 to talk about them and how they managed to impact you all (along with several other panelists), and it truly is a time I’ll never forget (thanks Teej!).So there was no way I could let it end here. Cloudchaser. Flitter. You may be minor characters in the show, but to the MLPCCG community, you are beacons shining across us all. Bronycon may be over, and Season 9 may be ending soon, but the card game’s still going strong, even if not as strong as it was in years past. You’ve both got work to do. And, well, so have I. So, for those who missed the announcement at Bronycon and/or Meticulous Talks, I’ll say it here, and I’ll say it proudly. CaFE is coming back! In September or even late August. And I couldn’t be more excited. And I hope you all are too. See you all soon!

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

You'll have to excuse how excited Cloudchaser is, but I'm just so excited to have spoiled these cards because they include my create-a-card from NA Continentals 2017! Feel like guessing which of those cards was my create-a-card From NA Continentals 2017? You might be surprised... Well, rather then tell you outright, how about a spoiler? So at the end of NA Continentals 2017, I asked Adam if I could make a Mane for Seaquestria and he said "sure, but only if you get it to me this week." And boy was that exciting! But unfortunately I got very sick and didn't have the brain power to design a Mane so I didn't get anything to him on time. Anyway, I'd missed the opportunity to get a Mane into SB, so I started thinking about non-Mane stuff to try and make for the next set. I tossed a bunch of cards around, but eventually decided that since I made a card that purely appealed to my competitive side last time, I wanted to make one that may or may not be competitive but had flavour I very much wanted. So I decided to make a Blue/Yellow Cloudchaser and Flitter Card. I thought about Blue/Pink for awhile, since FLitter is more Pink to me than Yellow, but Blue/Yellow just seemed the place to go. Jump to several months later and I was hit by sudden inspiration for the perfect Flitter Mane! I was so excited, I decided to pitch it to Adam and see if he was on board with replacing my first card with this one, despite knowing pitching a Mane would be hard. And he said something like "well, we actually do have room for an Ultra Rare Pink Silverstream Mane. So it couldn't be Flitter, but these abilities seem solid." Wow! I actually managed to design a Mane as my create-a-card! That was just amazing! Later, I got contact from Adam asking about my Cloudchaser and Flitter card to see if he could change it in a specific way and I was like "Wait, that's still in the set? What about the Mane?" Turns out both cards were kept in the whole time, much to my surprise. So it goes without saying but... That's SUPER awesome! Thanks so much, Enterplay! I didn't expect to get 2 cards in the set, and you definitely didn't have to keep in the CLoudchaser and Flitter Friend once I submitted the Mane, but you did anyway! Thanks so much for being so awesome!

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Cloudchaser and Flitter Spoil: Friends Forever

>

It’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a spoiler! Well, except it’s not me, I guess, but everything else! I can’t wait to spoil it!

Well, what are you waiting for? Show us!

But wait, if I spoil my card first, then it won’t be the awesome final reveal out of our spoilers. And it’s definitely exciting enough to be the last card we spoil.

That’s fine, I don’t mind going first.

But if I go second, then I have to wait longer to talk about the card…

You haven’t heard a word I’ve said yet, have you?

Augh, what do I do? Going first would be amazing, but going second would be awesome! Which is better? Flitter, help me!

Yeah, okay, I’m just going to talk about my card now.

Hey everypony! Check out these adorable fillies!

Maybe there’s some way to do both. I could spoil half of my card first…

We were so cute back then! Aww, I love seeing pictures of us when we were younger! Don’t you, Cloudchaser?

Yeah! That’s it! I’ll do half and then you could do your card, and then I—

Cloudchaser!

Ow!

What was that for?

There’s a perfectly good spoiler of the two of us right in front of your muzzle and you’ve just been ignoring me.

I wasn’t ignoring you, I was—

...You started talking about your spoiler without me?

Sigh.

Look, Cici, I know you’re excited, but you need to calm down a little, okay? We’ve got a job to do.

Besides, I think you’ll like this card. It’s super awesome!

...Hey, that second ability is like the ability of my first card.

Just noticing now, huh? And the other half is Forest Owl from Premiere too.

I’m not an owl, but I guess it fits better than my first card’s ability, hehe.

That’s a pretty cool callback! Only it’s immediate now, so even better! There’s a lot of cool tricks you can do with that!

You can confront one problem with us, then rush out a Hasty Friend to the other problem. Or just single confront and then exhaust us so the opponent can’t start a single problem faceoff without our permission. Or maybe throw out a hasty friend on the opponent’s turn!

Actually, being immediate works really well with Hasty friends, huh. That’s pretty neat.

I like that we help out wherever we are.

At problems, we help everypony else by giving them more power thanks to me cheering everypony on.

And at home, we can exhaust to help ponies in hand get to problems by reducing their cost thanks to your eagerness to get things done quickly! We’re a fantastic team!

We are, aren’t we?

And that flavour text just fits us perfectly! Oh, this card is just perfect, Cici!

I wish they’d stop printing us as foals, though…

Awww, but we’re so cute!

Hehe, or is that the problem? You just don’t like having your cool independant mare image ruined by your adorable foalhood years.

That’s not it at all!

...much.

SIlly Cici!

Anyway, that’s enough on my card. What do you have to show us all today, Cici?

Okay, so I’ll admit your card was pretty great. That’s definitely one of the best cards in the set we could have spoiled since it has us on it.

One of? Psh, it’s definitely the single best!

Wanna bet?

Absolutely!

Well you’re gonna lose. Check this out

Ohmygosh, Cici! They gave you a Mane to spoi!

Sure did. In fact I—

Oof.

I’m so happy for you! You always wanted to spoil a Mane!

Eh, it’s no big deal.

Oh don’t lie, you big silly! I saw that grin on your face. You haven’t smiled that much since you got accepted into the Wonderbolt Academy!

Wait, a second!

You only showed us the front! What’s the boosted side look like?

Now who’s excited?

Come on, Cici! Don’t keep us waiting!

Twist my leg why don’t ya?

Okay, okay, you win. Your card’s a teensy bit more awesome than mine was.

Told ya.

So Silverstream draws cards, huh? I guess she must be really excited to learn as much as she can!

Heh, guess so.

I have no idea how good this Mane will wind up being, but on paper she seems somewhat strong.

Eccentric 2 slows the opponent down nicely and helps incentivize keeping this Mane at a problem, where you definitely want her to be to get the most out of her on confront ability. Drawing cards is always good.

And the fact that she exhausts means you can make it so the opponent can’t easily send her home with a single problem faceoff.

Though the most interesting part of her is her flip condition. It’s not as easy as the Seaquestria Manes, but it’s not exactly hard either.

Especially since she doesn’t say they have to be your characters! If the opponent has two characters at her problem, you can flip her!

Yeah, that’s neat. Kind of reminds me of Rainbow Dash: Hanging Out. Though obviously way easier.

Hehe, looks like you’ve finally calmed down a little.

Honestly, I’m proud of you! I’d have thought you’d be bouncing off the walls being able to spoil an ultra rare Mane.

...ultra rare?

Well, yeah. Didn’t you notice the rar—?

They let me spoil an ultra rare? And not just any ultra rare, a Mane?

I may have made a mistake.

We’ve never had an Ultra Rare to spoil before, this is amazing! I have to go tell everypony right now! Wow!

Cici, wait! Say goodbye to—

...everypony.

Well, there she goes. Guess I can’t blame her for being enthusiastic. Silly Cloudchaser.

Well, guess that’s it for our spoilers, everypony! See you all later.

Assuming I can ever get Cloudchaser to calm down, that is!

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Cloudchaser and Flitter Explain: Songs

Continentals. I just don't know what to play…

Oh don't be silly. We all know what your favourite deck is.

Well, sure. And it's a lot of fun. But the current meta is so control heavy, I’m not sure it'll do too well.

So do I play it and just try and do my best regardless? Or do I try to play a control deck instead to capitalize on the meta? Or maybe something else?

Time's running out! I should have made a decision by now! Augh!

Aww, Cici… You'll do fine. You always do.

Yeah, but I want to win.

Well, I know what'll cheer you up! I'll sing a song!

Cici, Cici, she's our mare! She'll win all the Ultra Rares!

Heh. Not much of a song.

But you're smiling!

And now that you're happy, it's time to discuss our topic for the day, Songs!

Well, and Epiphanies, since they're close enough we may as well batch them in. But we'll mostly just be talking about Songs.

Songs are one of the more interesting and fun kind of card in the game since they’re pretty different from just about every other event in the game.

While most events are straightforward and do one thing and only one thing...

...Songs do one of three different things, allowing you to pick the best of the three for the situation you're in.

And Epiphanies are even better as they let you pick two of the three things for even more versatility!

Songs have become a staple in many decks for awhile now because of that versatility. Most songs do at least one good thing, if not more, so it's pretty easy to justify running them over similar cards.

Of course, there's usually a tradeoff. The multi-colour songs require you to be using specific colour combinations, while the one colour songs frequently cost more than similar cards would. It's not always right to use a song over something similar, depending on what your deck needs.

As a simple example, Special Beam Cannon banishes a resource for 1 AT, while Luna's Future does that for 2.

Now if you never intended to use any of the other verses on Luna's Future, it's probably better to go for the cheaper one. But if the temporary banishment or buffing of a Troublemaker helps your strategy, it can be worth spending the extra AT for the versatility.

Likewise, Glass of Water and Splash Attack both let you turn a Troublemaker face-down for 1 AT. But, Glass of Water requires you to be in both Yellow and Purple, so isn't always better despite having more options!

You have to consider all of the benefits and downsides of the song first. Running Yellow/Orange? Bats! is probably a good inclusion! Running Yellow/Blue with just a tiny bit of Orange? Maybe Bats! isn't for you and you should stick with Bewitched Beavers.

Or maybe Bewitched Beavers is even right over Bats! simply because you'd rather have your resource removal at Immediate speed! There's a lot to things to consider!

So as you can probably guess, simply running songs over similar cards isn't always right.

But it usually is.

Just like Cici!

Cici, Cici, she’s so right! Her words of wisdom light up the night!

...What does that even mean?

That’s an exercise left open to the listener.

Oooookay then. Moving on.

So sometimes it's not always clear which is better for your deck, a song or a similar not-song. So how do you know which to use?

Easy. Practice!

Try the deck with the song and try it with the other card and see which worked better for you. Then use that one.

Though I guess technically that's advice for just about any card.

Still doesn't hurt to bring up now!

True.

So that covers when to add them to your deck, but what about when they’re already in your deck. How do you choose which verse to use?

That's… harder.

Sometimes it's pretty obvious. Opponent has a nasty resource in play you need to dismiss, so playing Friends Are Always There to dismiss it is probably more important than making 3 Critters.

Or maybe you're 3 power short from DFOing and only have 2 AT and have never seen the opponent play a resource, so using it to make Friends is the right call after all.

Silly Cici.

Making friends is always the right call! Just ask Pinkie!

Er, uh… I meant in game.

Sure, making friends through games is great.

But you can also make friends through parties or interpretive dance or snowboarding or learning the Vuvuzela, or traveling to Yakyakistan or—

I get the picture.

Point is, sometimes it's pretty obvious. But sometimes, well…

Sometimes it's not.

Maybe you want to DFO and are 3 power short and Friends Are Always There is your only way to get that three power… but you know your opponent has lots of annoying resources and annoying non-epic troublemakers, even if they're not in play now.

You could play it now and DFO and get some points…

But if they play a Staff of Sacanas the next turn, you might find yourself in a rough spot and wish you still had that resource removal.

Quite the predicament. So what do you do, Cici?

Well, in my professional card playing experience, I can tell you with utmost confidence that…

I don't know.

Whaaaaaat? But you're supposed to be the expert, Cici!

Cici, Cici, she knows it all. Her knowledge of the game’s not small!

Heh, thanks.

Mine neither.

But, seriously. There's no inherently correct answer.

It's possible you'll get punished for making the risky aggressive play, but it's also possible you'll get punished for making the safe defensive play. Unless you have perfect knowledge of the opponent's hand and deck, there's no way to know for sure.

It comes down to a judgement call. Make your best guess as to which is right and hope. That's part of the downside of having choices. Sometimes you make the wrong one and have no way of knowing until it's too late.

But hey. It was a choice you had the opportunity to make that you wouldn’t have if it was a similar non-song card, at least. And once you've been in a similar situation enough times, you'll be able to draw on your experiences to help weigh in the decision next time it shows up.

It’s…. tricky.

But honestly I find it a pretty rewarding skill to grow. And it can feel great when you get to the point where you feel you're making that kind of decision right most of the time.

But, like most skills in this game, it's something you can only really refine with practice. And you will occasionally make mistakes.

Yeah, even Cici still makes mistakes every now and again. Nopony's perfect.

Well, except for Princess Celestia.

Uhhh, I'm pretty sure even she's not—

It was a joke, Cici.

Oh. Right.

Anyway, that's just about it… but there's still 3 cards we need to bring up with regards to songs!

Dance Fever: Dancing Machine, Spike: Master of Ceremonies, and…

It's just those two, right?

Nope!

We also need to go over how Songs and Epiphanies work with Wake Up Call!

Well, and I guess Octavia: Harmony and Dissonance, but that interaction's basically the same.

Huh, yeah. That is worth mentioning.

So our little card game works a bit weird when it comes to canceling events. Specifically, you don't decide what the output of an event will be until it's resolved.

Normally, this doesn't matter. You just play your I'll Fly, say you're moving your Mane to your problem, and that's it!

But when a Wake Up call is in play, the opponent has the chance to stop your event from doing anything. So it's best not to say what you're doing when you play your song.

Just say “I'll play I'll fly. Are you canceling it?” and wait for them to answer. If they do, then put it in the discard pile without saying anything else. But if they don't, then you say what you're doing with it.

Technically there's nothing wrong with saying what you're intending to do with it, but it might affect your opponent's decision on whether or not to cancel it!

You're just giving up a tactical advantage. So keep it in mind, but don't sweat too much if you mess it up now and again. Especially since those cards are pretty rare.

Now let's get to the more fun cards, Dance Fever and Spike!

Dance Fever is fun and cares about the songs you play by giving another character +2 power until end of turn, which is a pretty nice bonus!

That being said, there can occasionally be some odd interactions with him, despite how straightforward he is.

Take for example Find the Music In You. One of its verses is to put a friend into play from your discard pile. But you can't choose that friend for Dance Fever's ability, right?

Bzzt, wrong! Since you process Dance Fever's ability after fully completing the Song, you totally can! Great way to sneak in some extra power!

Spike can get similarly complicated, only even crazier. A lot of songs have verses that can have non-intuitive results when processing all three verses. But there's two simple rules to follow that should clear up most of the issues.

One: Process all three verses in order. And by extension, don't process any verses until the previous ones are all done.

So if you play Music in the Treetops, you get to manipulate a problem deck, then put 2 critters into play, then have each player retire a friend. Which can be one of those criters you just put into play!

On the other hoof, if you play Make This Castle a Home, you can't use the first verse to draw the resource you put on top of your deck with the third verse since the third verse always happens afterwards.

And singing songs out of order is just silly!

Incidentally, this is true for Epiphanies too. Whichever modes you choose, you have to do in the order listed on the card.

Two: Even if one of the verses starts a faceoff, you finish the rest of the verses before moving into the rest of the faceoff.

So if you play It's Time To Be Awesome, you'll still boost all your characters for the turn before finishing beating up that Troublemaker.

That Troublemaker will never know what hit it!

Other than that, it should be pretty easy processing songs even with Spike out.

Which about wraps up our thing on songs! Feel better now, Cici?

Yeah, a bit. Still not 100% sure what to do with continentals, but we’ll see.

Oh stop worrying! You’re too awesome to worry about stuff like this!

Cici, Cici, she's so awesome! She's the best cause she's so awesome!

Okay, you're not even trying anymore.

Cici, Cici, she loves my songs! We're besties cause we get along.

Okay, okay. I get it.

Though I thing those qualify more as cheers than songs.

Nonsense. My songs are works of art that will be treasured for years to come!

Cici Cici, she's so—

Yeah, okay, you'll do this for hours if I don't stop you, so I think this is time to say goodbye to everyone.

Bye everypony!

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere yet.

I said I wasn't going to be late and here I am still pretty late, sigh! Oh well. If you follow CiM, you've probably heard by now that I've left them temporarily, but don't worry! I'm still intending to work on CaFE, hopefully at a once a month cadance. And hopefully I'll actually manage it this time! But we'll see. Anyway, that's it for now. See you next month!

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Cloudchaser and Flitter Explain: Seaquestria and Beyond Manes

Guess what time it is!

Uhhh, what?

Guess.

Do I even get a hint?

Sure!

“Hey there everypony! Today we’ll be talking about…”

Talking about... what?

Seriously, Cici? That hint was so obvious! Ugh, do I have to do everything myself?

Wah?

Hey there everypony! Today my totally clueless friend and I will be talking about the Seaquestria and Beyond Manes!

I thought I was supposed to be guessing what time it was...

You were, but you failed, so we’re moving on now.

Wah?

So Seaquestria brought us a cycle of six new Mane Characters that are all a fair bit different from your standard Manes.

Instead if trying to fulfil a specific flip condition like most Manes in the past, they all let you pay 2 during your Mane Phase to just flip them over.

Which is pretty easy! This’ll let you flip turn 1 guaranteed, if you want to.

So, uh, we’re doing the thing now?

Yes, Cici. We’re doing the thing now. Try to keep up.

Sorry…

Now you might be thinking paying 2 to flip your Mane is the best flip condition ever—

Aside from Vinyl’s absolutely busted one…

—but there are trade offs. Namely, the entire cycle of Manes has no ability on their boosted side. None at all!

But that’s okay, as they all do something neat as a part of boosting them. So it’s not like they do nothing but provide colour requirement. It’s just a small one time thing, like a strong event that just also happens to boost your Mane!

Which is a pretty interesting concept. This makes them all stronger early game than most Manes, but weaker mid to late game since all they’re providing at that point is power.

But considering how many decks want their Mane boosted ASAP, this winds up being an okay tradeoff a lot of the time. Though some manes pull this off better than others.

And we’ll be going through all six of them today to give you an idea of what kind of decks would want to use each of these Manes!

Ready, Cici?

Sure.

Let’s start off with Captain Celano: Swashbuckler. Who is… interesting, to say the least. She’s not the first Mane to have points built in to her flip condition, but she’s definitely the easiest one to use at the moment.

Of course since the Seaquestria Manes all have no abilities while boosted, all you get out of her is two points. Which isn’t all that great, aside from being able to jump up to 3 AT a turn instantly. But so does your opponent, so that’s not always a great tradeoff.

Despite this, though, some ponies have actually had decent success with her. Specifically as a combo Mane.

By using Tempest Shadow: Easy as Pie, you can reset her to let you score 2 points again. Thus allowing you to score the majority of your points without ever needing to move to a problem.

But if you don’t see Tempest you’re in a bad position…

But when it works, it’s not too bad. Not the best Blue Mane in my opinion, but she’s workable. Especially in Core.

Celeano prefers aggro and combo strategies, though definitely the latter more than the former.

If going the aggro route, you might want to consider running more three or 4 cost friends since you’ll have more AT to work with sooner. So you don’t need to worry as much about your early game!

And if going the combo route, well, you obviously want to build the whole deck around her with loads of support cards.

Cerberus: Tartarus Guard, Discord: Captain Wuzz and so on can let you uncover Tempest more than once, which can get you lots of resets with Celano, letting you score tons and tons of points!

Whichever way you go she’s pretty fun! Afterall, everypony loves scoring points, right?

Next on the list would be Grubber: Royal Announcer.

Who, uh… is interesting, I guess. Exhausting all opposing characters and keeping them exhausted on the opponent’s next turn means they probably can’t confront problems that turn.

When timed right, that’s actually pretty potent.

The problem is, it’s not always easy to get that timing right since you’ll frequently want to flip these Manes early for their req. But Grubber’s ability really wants you to wait until mid to late game to Flip and that can really hurt your power requirements.

Which ultimately means you need to build your deck around the fact that you’re likely to just not flip him early, which kind of negates the point of having such an easy to flip Mane.

But he’s not awful. Just a bit lackluster.

Oh, and before you ask, no, you can’t infinite combo with him, Easy as Pie, and Monstrous Manual. Since Grubber only double exhausts characters he exhausted. So if they’re already exhausted, nothing happens. So at best, you’re just locking them out of every other turn.

Which, admittedly, isn’t awful. Hrm. There may still be a deck there…

Grubber prefers a control strategy, though you could also go for aggro too. Timing his flip just right can let you DFO without fear of the opponent counter DFOing.

Like Cici said, you’re probably going to want to include some ways to get to more Orange power without relying on flipping your Mane. So 1 req Orange cards, or cards like the Premier-block Fixers can help a lot here! Or even Kevin.

You may also want to include cards that keep characters exhausted longer like Bessie or Jailbreak! Or be even meaner and use Vinyl: Breakdown!

Now go out there and wear ponies out by shouting at them!

Shouting?

Well he’s an announcer. How else would he exhaust ponies?

Uhhh….

Yeah, I’ve got no idea.

Fear the mighty shouting powers of Grubber!

Next up is Princess Skystar: Out of Her Shell!

My personal favourite of the Manes from this set.

Which is saying something since CIci usually picks the Blue Mane as her favourite!

Hey!

...I don’t always, pick the Blue Mane, do I?

No, not always.

In Defenders, you said you didn’t want anything to do with any of the Manes!

Well it’s not my point they’re all bad!

Er, where were we again?

Skystar!

Oh, right. Thanks.

So Skystar looks pretty average on the surface. All you get is two 2 power friends. That’s not all that much, right?

Well, actually, it’s a lot. A whole lot.

Pink is a colour that loves having lots of friends. whether it’s for effects like Pinkie Pie: Holiday Spirit or just retiring them to stuff like Belly Flop, Pink always wants Friends. So getting two Friends for free just by flipping your Mane is a great way to jumpstart any strategy that wants lots of Friends.

And of course, you’re jumping from 1 Pink Power to 7. And since the most you’ll ever need for any card is 6, that’s enough req to play any Pink card you want right out the gate.

Assuming you have the AT, of course.

But we’re only scratching the surface here. One of Skystar’s other strengths is the ability to confront turn 1 guaranteed! If your starting problem needs 4 or less wild power to confront, you can flip your Mane and confront with Seashells easily.

And if the opponent’s is 4 or less Wild and yours is 3 or less, well, you can DFO almost guaranteed turn 2 as well. That’s real strong. Especially If the opponent’s problem was Trading Traditions and they haven’t yet played a friend of their secondary colour yet.

Playing aggro has never been easier!

Of course, this is mostly in Core. While all this does apply to Harmony, of course, she’s got pretty steep competition in the form of Vinyl. Some Pink decks may choose to run Skystar over Vinyl, but in general Vinyl’s typically going to be the better choice.

But even still, Skystar is a fantastic Mane and I absolutely love playing with her.

Skystar definitely prefers an aggro strategy, but she’s perfectly suited for Control as well.

Just a slightly faster control than most people are used to. One that actually tries confronting problems early, hehe.

Like Cici said, you’re going to want to maximize ways to use your Seashells! So cards that count the number of characters you have, like Changeling CItizens, work well, as do cards that retire Friends for benefit, like Braeburn: Two Left Hooves.

And of course you’ll want to heavily consider running Concerning Cutie Mark or Searching High and Low as your starting problem.

Cici says I’m wrong, but I prefer Searching High and Low. Because if my opponent is also running that problem, I can DFO turn 1!

Yeah, but if you go second and your opponent is also running Searching High and Low, they get to DFO turn 1 and you get nothing.

I’ll take those chances!

Yeah… I don’t know why I thought that would dissuade you.

You can pick other problems of course, but those two are the most fun, if you ask me.

And that’s basically it for Skystar! So grab two Seashell Tokens and go crazy!

Next up would be Tempest Shadow: Storm Commander. And I am so sick of seeing her.

Isn’t Skystar more popular right now?

Er, well, yes. But Tempest, uh…

You just hate having the best card in your hand discarded turn 1, aren’t you?

Maybe…

But, really, who isn’t? And it’s practically guaranteed! Unless they have all 3 Grubber: Minions in their opening hand, at which point that just means they’ll play two and you’re discarding 2 cards instead, just delayed a turn. It’s annoying!

I think you’re being a little harsh there, Cloudchaser.

I’m really not.

Though Tempest does have a kind of interesting effect on the meta. Her ability to find a troublemaker and put it into play turn 1, while simultaneously giving you 3 Purple power in your Mane, has changed Control’s early game significantly. Most notably, it’s sped it up.

Oh, sure, you still get some really slow control decks, and some of them are still pretty good, but they seem to be a lot less popular than the medium speed ones now. And Tempest is at the forefront of most medium speed decks.

Mostly because the ability to put a Troublemaker into play ASAP is really good.

Especially if that Troublemaker is Grubber.

Yes, especially if that troublemaker is Grubber. Unsurprisingly, discarding the opponent’s entry can have massive effects. Though sometimes, you just aim for the best card in their hand instead.

And on top of that, you have access to 3 Purple immediately, which is very relevant for a lot of control decks. Several control staples like Princess Twilight Sparkle: Cover to Cover and Interdimensional Portal are available to you immediately. And there’s not much the opponent can do about it.

It can really speed up control’s game, especially since Princess Twilight Sparkle: Ambassador of Friendship isn’t nearly as easy to flip. At least not in Core.

The result is that, well, Tempest is everywhere. Not as everywhere as Skystar, but still pretty everywhere. And more ponies are playing control than ever before.

Not a good time to be an aggro player like me…

Awwww, Cici.

But I won’t give up.

I’ll find a way to get past them and bring aggro back to the limelight where it belongs!

All right Cici!

So like CIci said, Tempest is mainly a control Mane, though like all of these Manes you technically can use her for other archetypes as well.

But her most common playstyle is definitely control, by far.

In addition to the cards Cici mentioned, which are all good choices, you might want to include other troublemakers that have strong effects early, like Starlight Glimmer: Enforced Equality, or Yelow Parasprite. And probably some cards to protect your troublemakers like Sweep Sweep Sweep.

Oh, and you might want to consider a strong starting problem like Trading Traditions or Ancient Research since having an early Troublemaker means it’s more likely to stay in play for a while making since it’s harder for the opponent to DFO.

Sounds fantastic!

I’ll say. Tempests that start with trading traditions guaranteeing their second colour and dropping a Grubbr denying your second colour are frustrating.

But, well, I’m learning to play around that. There are definitely ways.

For sure!

But yeah, Tempest is the real deal. Don’t expect her to go away any time soon.

Moving on from Darkness and brooding, let’s move on to cunning and elegance with Capper Dapperpaws: Charmer.

Capper is, uh…

Interesting.

You know, you called Celeano and Grubber “interesting” too.

Well, they are. But in a very different way, I guess. I at least know where to start those two. But with Capper...

Honestly, I’m kind of at a loss for what to say.

These Manes want you to flip them early to get their power, but flipping Capper early is just so much wasted potential as you’re missing out on returning up to 5 cards from your discard pile. That’s quite the perplexing conundrum.

Catastrophic, you might say.

I would?

Uhh…

Nevermind.

Anyway…

The other interesting thing about Capper is he specifically looks for even powered cards. So you’re going to want to use as few odd powered cards as possible.

Which includes 0, according to the rules.

The rules spell that out? I thought it was obvious

Well, apparently not everypony does.

So it’s nice to have the clarification!

I guess.

Anyway, while there are a lot of good even powered cards, restricting yourself to only even cards means you’re missing out on a lot of good options.

But there’s good news! You don’t have to run only even cards.

It’s not like Capper forbids it, he just encourages choosing as many even cards as possible. Even if that’s not all of your cards.

Let’s assume for a moment you’re running a 45 card deck and 10 of those cards have odd power. There’s only a 6.47% chance you’ll reveal 3 or more odd powered cards. And only about 30% chance you’ll reveal 2 or more.

Those are pretty good odds to get back a bunch of your best cards! Even if you’re not getting a full 5.

Hooray for math!

So, really, there’s a chance Capper’ll be good someday. As getting cards back from your discard is really good.

It’s just no pony has been able to find a really strong deck with him yet. He’s kind of a tough nut to crack.

But hey, maybe you’ll be the first.

Heh, maybe.

Capper prefers a control playstyle, but can definitely play aggro as well. His best friend in the form of a Troublemaker, like many of these Manes, is absolutely Tempest Shadow: Easy as Pie.

You’ll want to run a bunch of cards that’ll wind up in the discard pile too. Events are the easy choice, but things that retire themselves, like Rarity: Pony Pirate or Local Fashion are good choices too.

Both of which, coincidentally enough, have even power!

Of course, the hard part is getting lots of White power on the field without flipping Capper. And while Staff of Sacanas is a good option for that, it’s unfortunately odd power.

But don’t worry, White has lots of good entry options that you might be fine with using anyway! Rarity: Generous Pony, Dance Fever: Dancing Machine, Sweetie Belle: Forsooth and Anon, all great options!

And you can always run Kevin or similar cards too! It’s just a matter of finding what’s best for your deck!

But the most fun trick is definitely of using Infilitrating the Hive as your starting problem. Discard 2 cards to make a friend in your secondary colour, then flip Capper to get them right back!

Probably.

It’s not as strong as starting with Trading Traditions and a Mane that gives you immediate benefit…

But it’s not bad, I guess.

And that’s Capper! Now you can be as smooth as him!

Which leaves us with Queen Novo: Sea Sovereign.

Who, all things considered, honestly isn’t that bad.

She’s not great, but she’s not bad either.

Moving all of your characters at home for 2 AT is pretty massive, considering you normally can only move one for that amount. That means each additional character you move is basically free. Plus you get around Showy.

The downside is that, well, you need to have friends at home for this to matter. And you don’t start the game with Friends at home, just Novo. Which means if you want her power early, you’re basically wasting her very powerful ability. And that hurts.

This is the same problem Grubber and Capper have, really, but it just feels much more pronounced with Novo.

But! If you can make good use of her ability, you’re all but guaranteed to DFO, and probably win it too.

So the trick is in trying to make a deck that can use her ability but doesn’t require her to flip too early. Which isn’t easy. But if you can pull it off? Well, she can definitely lead to some powerful turns.

Novo is basically all about aggro! And more importantly, she wants cards to stick to problems.

Cards like Princess Celestia: Day Shift or Pinkie Pie: One Filly Party can really help here, as they keep friends at problems for you. And this way you can use Novo herself as a backup plan in case you need even more characters at problems.

And don’t forget to include some Tempest Shadow: Easy as Pies. Aggro doesn’t normally like Troublemakers, but this one’s just perfect for Novo!

Another route you could go is to increase your home limit, so you can move even more characters. Fluttershy: Safe Haven and Zipporwhill: Pet Collector are great ways to do this.

Or you could even try running Canterlot Citizens: Pony Populace who don’t even count towards your home limit in the first place! Especially handy since Novo’s unboosted side only has a home limit of 3, after all.

Other than that, basically anything aggro will help you out! Go nuts!

And more importantly, go fast!

Heh, don’t need to tell me twice.

And that’s all the Seaquestria Manes!

They’re a bit of a mixed bag, but overall I think I like them.

I just wish more of them were a bit better…

Maybe next set will improve on some of them.

Heh, maybe. I’m not counting on it, though.

They’re kind of specific in how you use them. Though I suppose with as complex as Capper is…

Well, maybe.

So, did you figure out what time it was since I asked you at the beginning?

Of course I did. I’m not that clueless.

Yes you are.

Hey!

But that’s besides the point. What time was it?

It’s Time to be Awesome!

You know what? I’ll take it. That was a good call back.

Thanks.

Well, that’s it for now, everypony! Until next time!

Later.

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Sorry for being so late!

BABScon was great, but unfortunately it meant missing the April Fools deadline. ANd then just a lot fo stuff happened, including me not wanting to write for a bit, so this got later and later until, well, now. But hey, it's here! And it's good seeing Gyro and Berry back to their old tricks! And this was a pretty good topic to talk about with them, I feel, so hopefully you all enjoy. Next one should PROBABLY be more timely, as I have motivation to write again and I'm not going to be infinitely busy (in fact, I'm about to have a lot of free time during the end of the month, so maybe another this month or early next month? Yay!)

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Gyro and Berry Dreams Explain: Points

Indeed. My win record is above 80%, which puts me amongst the top echelon of players of our fine game.

Let’s not gloat, hun.

Very well. I suppose this is neither the time nor the place. Shall we delve right into our chosen topic of discussion for the day?

Let’s! Today we’re talking about points.

Which is admittedly a rather broad subject, so let’s break that down a bit.

Our battle plan will cover four different fronts. First we’ll talk about the value of points. Then we’ll use that knowledge to establish how to optimize our scoring. Third we’ll discuss stopping the opponent from scoring points. And then we’ll wrap up with something we like to call “points on board.”

It is possible, perhaps even probable, that you are questioning why we would discuss such a base and obvious portion of the game.

Well that is because, as usual, most ponies do not grasp the full picture. There is a substantial quantity of subtlety and nuance that the average laypony simply is unable to grasp initially. But fortunately you can rely on us to educate you in what you’re missing.

That was probably a little too arrogant, hun.

I am not being arrogant, I am simply stating the facts as I observe them to be true.

What he’s trying to say is that while most ponies obviously understand that points are important and how to get then, they might misunderstand exactly how valuable they are. Which can lead to mistakes when forging your plan of attack.

It’s one of those easy to learn, difficult to master kind of things.

Perhaps for some, but my skills on the matter are top rate.

I thought you were going to stop boasting, hun.

But yes, I suppose the reason we’re talking about this is that we do understand the subject rather well.

Anyway, let’s talk about the value of points! Care to kick us off, Hun?

Certainly. Having witnessed a multitude of games as both a player and an observer, I’ve discovered that most ponies overestimate the value of points. While it is true that they are integral to the game, as you require them to be victorious, they are not as precious as one might originally believe.

Aside from the 15th one, of course. That one is priceless.

The actual value of a point is tricky to place exactly, and actually fluctuates as the game goes on.

When you’re behind, you need to be as efficient as possible in order to have a chance at catching up.

But if you’re ahead, you might be willing to spend a little more to extend your lead.

Of course, desperation due to the time limit waning or trying to recover from a bad board position might change the value even further… but ideally that doesn’t apply to you much.

Aptly summarized, my dear, and a fact that I’d wager many are not aware of.

However if I were to place a precise value on a point, I would say it is worth roughly one and three quarters AT at most stages of the game. Or if you prefer, slightly less than two AT.

Where did you get that number?

Observation, my dear, observation.

I have noted that paying 2 AT per point acquired feels overpriced. On the other hoof, paying only 1 per point is a miraculous steal. Thus the value should fall somewhere between the two.

And as 2 AT feels closer to the value of a single point than just 1 AT, I decided a reasonable estimation would be one and three quarters. Though I admit I may be off an iota or three.

I suppose it does feel about right. 2 is definitely more than I’d want to pay, but only a little.

You see? It may not be a perfect value, but it is a good enough estimate to base the remainder of our advice on.

So now that we know about how much AT a point is worth, it’s time to use this knowledge to give us the advantage in battle. But how?

Simple! It allows us to figure out if spending AT on points is a good investment or not right now.

A simple calculation can do wonders for guaranteeing you’re making the right play.

If you’re spending 2 or more AT per point you’re getting, it’s probably not a great deal and there may be better lines of play...

But if you’re spending less? It’s worth at least considering since you’re getting a good rate of return on your investment!

I would think an example would help illustrate the point nicely. Let us say that for some reason you are not playing a combo deck and—

Most ponies don’t play combo, hun.

Well, it’s hardly my fault that so many ponies don’t acknowledge the glory and majesty that is a well built—

I’m just saying be a little less condescending, kay?

My apologies. I suppose I did get a little carried away.

A little bit, sure.

Now as I was saying, you are playing an aggro deck with a boosted Princess Luna: Dream Warrior as your Mane at home. Each problem is just 5 wild for you to confront and you have a pair of Princess Cadance: Best Foal Sitters in hand. Bonus value for each problem is 1, lets say.

So you could just play one Cadance to a problem, moving Luna for free, and confronting for one point. But since Cadance costs 2, that’s not an especially great deal. It’s hardly horrible, but it’s not great either.

But you manage to do a lot more damage if you play the second Cadance via Hasty to the other problem to move Luna to start a DFO. If you win the DFO, now you scored 3 points for 4 AT, a much better deal!

One and one third AT per point is a perfectly reasonable rate of exchange, if you ask me. Not the best, but adequate for most performances.

The example’s a bit simple, but it just goes to show why aggro decks like such low to confront problems, even if the bonus isn’t always great. They want to spend as little AT as possible to score some big points.

A rule I see many aggro players utilize when building decks is to aim for being able to DFO every turn using no more than 4 AT. Assuming nothing goes wrong, of course.

Which does happen since the opponent isn’t always going to just let you do as you please. Maybe the opponent’s problem is just too big for you to confront no matter what you do. Or there’s a Troublemaker in the way. Or whatever.

Stuff like this can lead to some harder decisions. Do you try for a single confront anyway? Or do you just try and save up for a double?

Believe it or not, our guideline still applies here! Just maybe not in the way you expected.

Indeed. After all, we never stipulated that you had to be scoring all those points in the same turn, now did we?

Moving to confront one turn in anticipation of being able to confront the same problem again on the following turn can be quite worth it as well, as now you have scored that problem twice for the price of once.

Especially if on that second turn you manage to confront multiple problems and start a multi-problem faceoff.

Very worth the investment, if it works!

Though there is risk here that the opponent might confront the same problem and start a single problem facceoff. Which can be worth it if you win, but set you back significantly if you lose.

You can waste a lot of AT that way, so be careful with single confronts.

Indeed. That is an excellent example paying too much for your point. Especially as not only did you only score 1 point, you allowed your opponent to score an extra point as well.

Now this isn’t a principle only aggro decks should use. It applies to all sorts decks.

Though the rule is a bit weird for combo decks…

Indeed. In that case, it doesn’t matter how much AT you wind up spending in the long run so long as you make it to 15.

But anyway, let’s look at control and how they might want use this rule.

I doubt any of you would be surprised to learn that Photo Finish: Say "Käse!" is a staple in many control decks. To the point that some decks will even splash into white for the sole purpose of playing her.

Now why is that? She doesn’t help control players maintain control. She doesn’t give you any resources or help you find the tools you need. All she does is score you points, and even those are conditional.

Well, it’s simple! It’s because she’s a very cost efficient way of scoring points. Very frequently Photo will score the control player several points over the course of the game. Sometimes as many as five, or even more!

And even those without my astonishingly massive intellect can tell that 5 points for a mere 3 AT investment is an extraordinarily good deal.

Another common tactic for control players is to build up a troublemaker wall, then start confronting a single problem a turn behind it.

Indeed. You’ve likely spent a large quantity of AT to set up this situation, but as long as you are able to maintain it, you will be scoring a point every turn for the rest of the game thanks to that large investment.

Efficient command of your troops in such a manner is a great way to come out victorious in the end!

And I suppose it is briefly worth mentioning that Farming decks also use this principle, trying to score multiple points for a very small AT investment. Frequently they can score 2 points a turn with just 1 AT investment, as they play an epic, uncover it, and defeat it immediately.

Honestly they’re probably a little too efficient if you ask me...

But that’s a topic for another day! For now, it’s good enough to know that every deck archetype strives to follow this rule, even if not always in the same way. After all, points are what determine the winner at the end.

All too right, Berry.

Of course, even I must admit, that even the finest of plans go wrong on occasion. And while it is a good idea to adhere to this guideline where possible, it is not always feasible.

Sometimes you need to pay more to score than you would normally, and there’s just no getting around it no matter how clever you are. Especially if you’re playing aggro and there’s a troublemaker in the way.

It’s up to you to figure out when you should be sticking to the rule and when you should be breaking it.

After all, a clever general knows when to change her plan of attack.

Now that we have sufficiently gone over the strategy of scoring points, I believe it is time to tap our reservoir of knowledge on a different, though related, topic.

Preventing the opponent from scoring points. A tool all control players rely on.

Not just control players, you know. It’s an essential skill for everypony.

Though admittedly, control uses it the most.

True enough, my dear. I’ll concede that point gladly.

So we all know how important it is to score points, since getting to fifteen first means you’re the winner, but your opponent is trying to do that too.

So it’s not always enough to get as many points as possible yourself, sometimes you’ve got to prioritize stopping the opponent from scoring them.

And like with scoring points, you want to be efficient at it.

While it’s true that you could simply Napcakes their Friend to prevent the opponent from single confronting, that is typically going to be a waste of very important resources. You are spending 1 AT to stop 1 point.

Now we learned earlier that a point is worth a little less than 2 AT, so why is this a bad deal?

Well, it’s because that’s AT you could have been spending to score points of your own, but now you can’t. So it actually wound up costing you more than you thought!

Indeed, you should save that Napcakes for when it would be most effective. Such as preventing a DFO, or to protect a troublemaker. By successfully protecting the troublemaker, you’ve denied them not only the confront, but likely the ability to DFO. Possibly extending into future turns as well.

And by stopping the DFO, that’s at least two points you denied. One for the extra confront, and one or more from the bonus point they were likely to score. Far more efficient.

And as an added bonus, you might cause a single faceoff to happen instead, which you probably have a better chance of winning.

Not only did you thwart the opponent’s plans by denying them multiple points, but you managed to advance your own agenda by scoring a few yourself.

Bringing yourself much closer to winning the battle.

The AT value of denying points is a little harder to define than it was for scoring points, especially since it’s likely you only have so many way of doing so in any given deck. I would wager it is probably closer to only one and a quarter AT per point denied, rather than one and three quarters.

Of course, you do get extra value out of delaying the opponent’s plans, so sometimes that can make up for the AT cose.

Though things are a little different if it’s the opponent’s 15th point. In that case, if they can score at all you’ll lose, so your entire battle plan needs to be devoted to finding a way to score without letting them do so themselves.

Quite right. As I said before, the fifteenth point is priceless. As such, all rules about efficiency are off the table when it comes to keeping it away from your opponent.

Or securing it for yourself, of course.

Now there is one last topic we should address before bringing this discussion to a close. Something that, as my lovely companion alluded to before, we have taken to calling “points on board.”

Points on board is pretty simple! It refers to how many points a pony can score on their turn with the current problems. It also counts anything in play that increases that number, like Nightglider: Overpowering or troublemakers worth points.

As a simple example, if the problems are both Under Lock and Tree, then the points on board is 3, as the opponent can only score a maximum of 3 points with what is currently available.

Now if one of the problems was Tough Call instead, points on board would be 4. If you also had a Changeling Mimics in play, then it would be 4 for you and 5 for the opponent.

So why does this matter? Well, it can help you predict what scores might look like a turn from now. If you scored every point possible this turn, what would your point total be? What if the opponent scored every point available to her?

This can be particularly important to take note of during the end game. If your opponent is at 11 with 4 points on board, you better take measures to ensure the opponent can score, at most, 3 of those points lest you find yourself defeated.

And in a situation where the roles are reversed, it would behoove you to do everything in your power to score all four points. After all, that 15th point is priceless.

Of course for most of the game, there aren’t enough points on board for you to finish the game. But it’s still something to be aware of.

Indeed. It might factor into decisions like whether or not to pass two, six, or eleven points. Occasionally it is better to delay passing those thresholds for a turn, to keep the opponent’s AT gain lower.

But by far, the most important time to be aware of this is at the endgame. Especially when you can’t close out the game.

Let’s try a different example. Both players are at 11 points and there are only 3 points on board. You have the ability to DFO and score 3 points, bringing you just one point away from victory so you do.

But then a 2 point problem is flipped after problems are replaced and now there are 4 points on board. If your opponent has the ability to DFO and claim them all, you’ll have lost the war despite victory being within your grasp.

So what went wrong here?

Ah, a simple trap has been sprung here. Despite there only being 3 points on board now, you failed to account for the fact that problems being replaced allows for the possibility of the number of points on board for the opponent shifting.

You would have been fine had you not gotten greedy, my dear.

That was just an example, hun, not something that happened recently.

But yes, that’s exactly what I was getting at. Before your DFO, you had a good idea of how many points the opponent could possibly score on their turn, and it wasn’t enough for them to win.

Instead of going for a DFO, you could have just gone for a single confront since you knew it was unlikely the opponent could win next turn. Now you’re at 12 points with 3 points on board, enough to win next turn!

But by replacing problems, you gave up your safety and allowed the tides of battle to change. A mistake that has caused many a good pony to lose a fight that seemed like a decisive victory until the very last moment.

You are still talking about the game, right?

Sure, that too!

What my esteemed colleague is trying to convey is that one must not only think about the points on board now, but the points that may be on board. Think a turn ahead, lest it cost you the game.

After all, were you to face me and failed to plan accordingly, I would be more than willing to capitalize on your error and come out triumphant.

They get it, hun.

But that was everything on the battle plan, so I think we’re done here!

Yet another masterful execution, my dear. I think we can leave with the knowledge that we are making the world a better place for those who play this favourite game of ours.

Ah-hah, you were right, Cici!

Told you they were up here.

Oh, uh… we were just.

Trespassing in Cici’s home? Again?

I still don’t get how you guys even get up here. You’re earth ponies.

Ah, well, there’s a very simple explanation for this. You see...

Now!

You got it, hun.

What the? Where’d all this smoke come from?

Anyway, what are you all—

They’re gone, Cici.

Wah?

I didn’t think smoke bombs actually worked.

Eh, whatever. They’re gone now. And it doesn’t look like they did anything.

Yeah, well, I’d still like to know what they’re up to. This is, what, the third time they’ve done this?

I think it’s the fourth. Remember that one time we found open envelopes addressed to them at my place last year?

Oh yeah, that was weird. But they never seem to do anything. Wonder what they’re up to...

Maybe they just wonder what it’s like to live as pegasi so they researched a cloudwalking spell and visit!

Yeah, that’d make sense. Being a pegasus is pretty awesome. I can’t imagine not having wings.

Still weird that they do it when we’re not here, though.

Maybe they’re shy about it.

Well, whatever they’re doing, it certainly seems harmless enough.

Weird…

But harmless.

Well, looks like they didn’t do anything so I’m off. Bye Cici! Let me know if they come back.

Later, Flits. Will do.

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

I’ll be at BABSCon

But only Saturday and SUnday, unfortunately. Feel free to say hi if you see me! I'll likely be in the boardgame room.

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Cloudchaser and Flitter Explain: Their top 10 favourite Seaquestria and Beyond cards

Nooooo, but that’s not a bad idea!

Time to go see your parents?

Nah, that’s not for a few months yet.

Time for us to talk about our favourite Seaquestria and Beyond cards?

No silly it’s time fo—

Actually, that’s exactly it! Good job, Cici!

Heh, I knew it all along.

Hi everypony! Today we’re finally sharing our favourite Seaquestria and Beyond cards! Ten from each of us!

Which for Cici tends to mean the cards she thinks are the best from a competitive standpoint.

And for Flits generally means she liked the art or it does something silly.

Yup! Betcha can’t guess what my number one is!

Is it—

Cici! Don’t actually guess! You might just spoil it for everypony!

We gotta go through all our other favourites first, hehe.

Oh, uh, yeah. I guess so.

I’ll go first!

So like Cici said, I sometimes pick my favourite cards based solely on the art. And there was a group of cards that had art that really stood out to me! Namely the cycle of Pony Pirates!

They all look so cool! I love their pirate outfits! So I just knew I had to include one of them on my list!

And the one I finally chose is Princess Twilight Sparkle: Pony Pirate!

Can you guess why I chose Twilight, Cici?

No idea.

C’mon, guess!

Uhhhh, her hat?

Exactly!

I just love that huge hat! It makes her look like such a leader!

Uhhh, she is a leader. Without the hat. The whole Princess thing, remember?

Oh I know that, but a good accessory says a lot about a pony. Like my bow!

Speaking of which, ponies were pretty disappointed last time that I didn’t manage to convince you to—

I’m not wearing the bow!

Hehe, okay, okay. Shall we move on to your 10th favourite card, then?

Oh sure, that’s easy. It’s Rainbow Dash & First Mate Mullet: Swinging Wonders.

Wait, they’re only your 10th favourite? But you love that card!

Well… see the thing is...

Blue kinda sucks right now.

Cici!

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It’s certainly not as bad as Yellow was a couple sets ago. But it definitely feels like the weakest colour at the moment, at least in Core.

I’ve not really been able to play enough Harmony to see what’s going on there, but it’s probably fine.

But Core? Blue’s just… okay.

But! This card is definitely the best new tool Blue got in the meantime! It’s a lot like Winged Wonder from the past, only generally better, despite only moving two characters and not having Swift.

You can move them from anywhere instead of just at home, you can Move Manes instead of just Friends, and Hasty means you can do this during Score Phase for a surprise DFO or a Faceoff to get a ton of extra power out of nowhere! That’s pretty fantastic!

So Blue may need a little help in the Core meta right now…

But Dash and Mullet make a fantastic team as well as a fantastic inclusion into any Blue aggro or Farm deck, and I absolutely love playing them.

That’s great Cici!

Anyway it’s my turn to share with you a card I absolutely love playing, Rescue Party: Canon Cavalry!

These faces are great! I love them all! Especially Pinkie’s and Spike’s! They’re just such polar opposites and I love it!

Why is only Pinkie wearing a helmet anyway? This doesn’t seem safe.

Oh, I’m sure they were fine.

If you say so.

Well, you see them all walking around Ponyville without any major injuries right?

I guess so…

See? Fine!

Anyway, that’s it for me, Cici! What’s your number nine card?

Are you going to talk about anything besides the art for any of the cards on your list?

Probably!

But who can say for sure? I’m mysterious! OooOOoooOOoOoOOooO

Right…

Anyway, my number nine pick is a pretty interesting card: Desert Road.

The ability to globally shut off opposing Friends as they’re being played is pretty significant since it prevents their “when this card is played" and “when this card enters play" abilities. And in case you missed it, there’s an awful lot of good cards with those sorts of abilities right now.

Unfortunately the card’s high cost and req make it a bit more situational than I originally thought. 3 AT is a lot, so unless you know you’re going to get benefit from this, it’s not generally worth playing. And the later in the game you play it, the less likely it’ll be to help you out.

And of course all the best resource removal right now costs 1, maybe 2. So if they just dismiss it before needing to play anything with such an ability, you wind up getting no benefit at all and you paid considerably more than they did.

So all in all it’s pretty good, but not as great as I or some other ponies thought it’d be initially, which is why it’s only at number nine and not much higher.

Back to me and my number eight pick is The Mane Six: Party Planners!

What is it, Cici? You look worried

Wah?

Oh, no. It’s, uh. Well… don’t worry about it.

Are you sure?

Yeah, you just took me off guard for a moment there. Keep going.

Well, if you say so…

Anyway, I absolutely love, love, LOVE this card, hehe. You get to borrow every single one of the opponent’s Friends, which I absolutely love doing! And then all your Friends and all your opponent’s Friends can team up to solve problems and it’s just great!

But more important than any of that stuff…

It shows all six of them wrapped up tight in an amazing Pinkie Pie hug and it’s just so wonderful and I absolutely love it, eeeeee!

Heh, yeah, that does sound right up your alley.

Every time I see it, it makes me wanna hug somepony.

Yeah, that sounds like you to— oof.

Like right now! Hehe.

I, uh, I really should have seen that coming.

Yup!

Your turn!

So it’s only my top eight card and we’re already getting to the really good stuff. I’ve been really happy with Pinkie Pie & Twilight Sparkle: Bait and Switch so far.

So Snips and Snails: Problem Solvers was a staple of Harmony, being a cheap and efficient way to replace problems. Which does a lot of good stuff as a side effect of that.

Sends everypony there home.

Removes any face up TMs there that have been bugging you.

Helps you look for a specific problem in your problem deck.

And of course, they let you get rid of a problem or dilemma you might not like.

These are all really handy things for both aggro and control decks to have access to. Even Combo decks would frequently use the duo for various reasons. And they’d basically been a part of the meta ever since they were introduced.

There were, of course, a few other cards that did something similar.

...But they all paled in comparison to Snips and Snails. So everypony just kept using them.

You might say ponies were stuck on them.

But in Core, well, they’re not legal. Which kind of left a hole that needed to be filled.

Which we got in the form of Bait and Switch.

They aren’t a perfect replacement, though. Since at 3 cost and 4 req, they’re a lot harder to play and you can no longer play them reliably on turn 2 to disrupt an opponent’s powerful starting problem…

But they’re still pretty good despite that. And in some decks, wind up being even better.

Not needing to retire them means you still get a 3 power, Eccentric 2 body after replacing a problem. And you don’t need to play them to the problem you want to replace, meaning they can provide their power and Eccentric to that problem instantly.

Not to mention they can replace a pesky Trixie: Highest Level Unicorn that’s been giving you trouble, which Snips and Snails can’t do.

Yeah.

Of course, the big thing you can do with them that you couldn’t with Snips and Snails is to use them with cards like Interdimensional Portal.

This lets you replace problems at odd times and can lead to pretty great effects. Like the opponent not being able to start a DFO for starters.

Basically a solid card all around.

So which would you use in Harmony, Snips and Snails or Pinks and Twis?

Hrm, that’s a tough one.

It depends on the deck, really. If you can afford the 3 cost and 4 req, Bait and Switch is probably better. Or if you want to to use portal tricks. Otherwise I’d stick with Problem Solvers.

Despite being pretty similar, they’re most useful in different decks, you know?

Makes sense.

Moving on to my number seven pick, we’ve got our third Pink card in a row: Party Mare: Living It Up!

Again with the descriptive name instead of her actual name? At this point they’ve got to be doing it on purpose. Why don’t they just learn her name already?

Dunno...

But it doesn’t bother me too much anymore. It’s kind of fun!

If you say so.

Then again, I’ve heard so many names for her at this point, maybe they just honestly don’t know.

Maybe!

Anyway, this is a super fun card. Not only is it fun seeing her pretending to be an alicorn by using her party hat as a horn…

But her ability is really fun too! I just love silly random effects like this! Who knows where she’ll end up?

Having Traveller is really nice too, since she gets more and more power the more places she goes! And she goes a lot of places.

Yeah, she’s pretty solid. A lot of people were using her at the prerelease.

Yup! A fun card with fun art is basically perfect for my list!

Moving on to the my number seven pick… honestly, this is one of my absolute favourites in the set.

It’s powerful, game defining, and is probably going to be one of the reasons Yellow is playable again. Princess Celestia: Day Shift.

You can never go wrong including a Princess in your list, hehe.

Now chances are, I don’t need to talk much about her. I and others have been raving about this card since she was released. She is, quite simply, very good.

But just in case, she’s an incredibly efficient card. Two free moves after every DFO is impressive, to say the least. And it doesn’t even matter who did it.

Not to mention the combos with dilemmas, since that works too. As does forced problem replacement.

Like Pinks and Twis!

If left unchecked, she will simply take a game and run with it. She makes DFOing very easy and makes it so the opponent won’t necessarily just win their DFOs since you’ve put a bunch of power at problems.

She’s absolutely fantastic!

Befitting of a Princess, wouldn’t you think?

Heh, yeah. I guess so.

Unfortunately, I’m not placing her higher because I think Yellow’s still only okay. It is certainly more viable than it’s been in a long time, but hardly amazing. Which is a shame.

And if she is sadly pretty easy to remove nowadays. And Yellow doesn’t have many other high value Friends that the opponent might rather remove instead...

But that certainly doesn’t make her bad, just vulnerable. So you have to plan accordingly.

An important part of card games!

Definitely.

So Cici, now that you’re done talking about Day Shift, do you know what time it is?

Uhhh… evening shift?

It’s High Noon!

I, uh… yeah, I guess that follows.

So Cici wisely made the correct choice of putting Celestia on her list, but clearly she picked the wrong one.

Hey!

I mean look at this card! It shows off the dazzling radiance of our Princess in all her majesty! This is a really good shot of her!

Shame it’s not foil, though..

Well, we can’t have everything…

But that’s okay, because not only is the art fantastic, the card is pretty neat too! Three colour Friends are super exciting, and this one does some really interesting things!

Eh, I dunno about that.

Sure, a 3 cost 5 power Swift Friend is pretty good, but that protection ability isn’t nearly as good as it looks like at first... it’s not awful, but it really should have been better.

It’s still not like anything we’ve seen before, though! And I love the idea of Celestia protecting all of us when we’re in danger!

Huh, yeah. That is neat.

I just love this card! It’s really great seeing the Princess shown off like this.

Anyway, that’s my number six pick. What’s yours, Cici?

That would be Bodyguard.

This card is kind of insane.

...And I kind of completely dismissed it at first. Looked at it, went “meh", and moved on…

Aww, it’s okay, Cici. We all make mistakes.

Yeah.

Anyway, like I was saying, this card is insane. You can make so, so many Unicorns with it. Both Pink and White have lots of ways to remove Friends, and they even have Cornered and Party of One to remove lots of Friends at once.

Which, naturally, gives you lots and lots of Unicorn tokens. Each with prepared.

The opponent’s not going to want to DFO if you have 12 Prepared at the problem!

Yeah. It’s, uhh… it’s intimidating to say the least. And it gets even more insane when you have more than one Bodyguard.

I once made more than 10 unicorn tokens in one turn with three out once.

I’ve made over three thousand.

Granted, I wasn’t trying very hard.

I should try for a couple million someday!

Or would billions be better?

I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

Anyway, since Bodyguard triggers on any non-token friend leaving play for any reason, it’s pretty easy to get tokens even if you’re not just dismissing, banishing, and retiring everything. It also works if the opponent causes a friend to leave play.

So if they play Interdimensional portal on your friend, you still get a Unicorn!

And he works on himself. If he leaves play, he leaves a token behind as well.

He’s just really, really good.

Oh, and he also has a built in way to make friends leave play. And while problem filtering isn’t always great, if you have a specific problem in your deck you’d like to get to ASAP, he can do it for you.

And then you can even get that problem out without needing a faceoff due to Pinks and Twis, since you’re already in Pink!

Anyway, that’s Bodyguard. Try him out if you haven’t, yet. He’s pretty nuts.

So it’s back to me, and...

Hehe, my, hehehehe, my number five pick, hehehehehehehehe.

Uh, Flitter?

This card’s art is just too funny, Cici, ahahaha.

Uh, okay then.

“We’re sorry, Princess Twilight and Spike couldn’t be here to organize your event today...

“...Instead, here’s a picture of them making funny faces!” Ahahahahaha.

Uh, Flits? I think you need to calm down.

But Cici, don’t you see? The Friend isn’t actually Princess Twilight and Spike, it’s just the photograph! They’re not actually there!

I get it, Flits.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

I’m just…. I’m just going to move on since I think Flitter’s done.

So earlier I mentioned briefly that Yellow wasn’t in a very good spot. It just wasn’t quite getting the quality of cards the other colours were and ponies were just not playing with it very frequently.

Thankfully, Seaquestria helped out with a couple of very nice mono-Yellow cards. I already mentioned Celestia but, well, I think Brian: Swell Guy might be even better for helping Yellow out, honestly.

I love Brian! He almost made it onto my list too.

So Celestia helps you win by keeping your characters at problems to DFO frequently. Brian, meanwhile, helps you to not lose. And that’s really, really important.

It’s pretty standard practice nowadays for players to wait until you’re in your score phase about to confront a problem before using their removal. This not only gets rid of the Friend in question, but will frequently also stop the confront, meaning no point. And possibly also stopping a faceoff.

Enter Brian.

Now, so long as the opponent is trying to dismiss, banish, or move your Friends to stop you from confronting, you can just retire Brian instead. Not only saving your important Friend, like Celestia, but also letting you continue to confront the problem.

So long as you didn’t need Brian to contribute his power too.

Er, right. But Brians have a habit of hanging out at home after a faceoff, so that doesn’t come up as often as you might think.

Now of course, that’s just one of Brians three abilities. He also lets you dismiss resources, making him very versatile, and has chaos text that just puts him into play.

And don’t forget he’s a Critter too, which works with a lot of cards that care about Critter Friends.

All for just 1 AT. That’s really good.

If you’re playing Yellow and have key friends you’d rather not get dismissed, you should strongly, strongly consider running Brian. And if you’re not playing Yellow… well, he’s still not a bad inclusion since he can put himself into play. Especially if you don't have access to good resource removal otherwise.

You might want to include some Singing Barrels or something too, though, just to make sure you can play them if you draw them.

I’ve been playing with Brian for awhile now and I’ve always been impressed at how useful he is.

You might even say he’s...

A swell card!

Ungh…

Anyway, Cici isn’t the only one who’s fond of Yellow cards in this set. As my number four pick is Queen Novo: Benevolent Ruler!

This card is so fun! I love cards that turn everything topsy turvy!

What’s that? I lost the faceoff by 20? Let me just play Under the Wire and then play Queen Novo, and now suddenly I’m winning!

When has that ever worked?

Lots of times!

If you say so…

There’s lots of neat tricks you can do with Novo! She just makes the whole game different and exciting. It’s so fun!

Of course, my favourite trick with her is to try and use her with cards that want you to win a faceoff by 5 or more. Like Rainbow Dash: Back in Black or Fleetfoot: Natural Born Winner.

Since they don’t say you needed to win by having 5 more power than the opponent, just that you win and the difference is at least 5! So if you have 7 power less than the opponent, they’ll trigger!

Not easy to do, though.

Almost impossible.

Which just makes it all the more awesome when you do pull it off!

Well, that’s it from me. Back to you, Cici!

So normally I try and get at least one Mane in my top 10 lists, if possible. Since Manes are such an important part of the game.

This… didn’t happen last time for Defenders of Equestria. I also didn’t bring one up for Absolute Discord. The Manes just weren’t all that great in either set.

And when I saw the spoilers for the first couple Manes for the set… I thought I’d be skipping talking about Manes again.

But hey, I was proven wrong as Tempest Shadow: Storm Commander has proven to be a very, very strong Mane.

The ability to find a Troublemaker turn 1 slows aggro down considerably. Especially when you find her partner in crime, Grubber: Minion. Discarding the opponent’s best card in their opening hand can swing games in your favor pretty heavily.

And of course, paying 2 to get access to 3 Purple req is itself pretty solid itself. The issue with Princess Twilight Sparkle: Ambassador of Friendship was always that you needed to jump through some hoops to get her flipped.

Hoops that are much harder to pull off in Core…

Well yeah. Hoops is a Premier Block card!

...That’s not what I meant.

Anyway, Tempest guaranteeing you have your 3 Purple req is pretty great since so many good Purple cards are 3 req. Napcakes, Princess Twilight Sparkle: Cover to Cover, Sunset Shimmer: Clever Calculator and so on.

Being able to hit these powerful cards early and reliably has proven to be pretty fantastic for Purple control players.

And Purple aggro players!

Are you sure they’re aggro decks and not just control decks in disguise?

Well, they have Moondancer: Page Turner.

That doesn’t automatically make it aggro, but okay.

The point is, Purple is a colour that really wants 3 req ASAP and Tempest providing that while also giving you a good early game works out well.

You don’t even need to get Grubber. There are plenty of other solid Troublemaker choices to get too, in either Core or Harmony. She’s honestly pretty strong.

So yeah, fantastic Purple Mane, just when we needed one. And I guess that’s all I have to say.

Which means we’re down to our top 3 cards for each list! I’m so excited to talk about them all!

But first…. do you know what time it is, Cici?

Didn’t you already ask that before?

Uhhh, Midnight?

Nope! It’s Time to be Awesome!

Which should be easy for you, Cici, since you’re always awesome!

Heh, thanks.

Song cards are generally pretty awesome, since not only are they super flavourful since Songs are the best! But also because it’s fun to have three abilities on one card.

But It’s Time to be Awesome is even more awesome than normal! Not just because it’s in the name, though that helps.

Sure does.

But because two of its modes are huge and exciting! Challenge a Troublemaker with all of your characters! Give all of your characters +2 power this turn! Those are super fun!

And of course dismissing any opposing friend for just 2 AT is pretty nice too, hehe.

But you know what? The best thing ever is when you combine this with Spike: Master of Ceremonies and get to challenge a Troublemaker with all of your characters with +2 power.

That’s one Troublemaker that’s going to regret making some trouble, hehe!

And naturally you’ve done this despite needing 4 colours and 4 req in one of them.

Do you even need to ask?

No. No I don’t. Of course you did.

Yup! And it’s fun every time!

You goofball.

And that’s it for my number three! Hopefully it made your day more awesome!

Which brings us to my number 3, I guess. Which is actually another Mane. Specifically, Princess Skystar: Out of her Shell

.

It was difficult to choose which of Skystar and Tempest would be higher, but honestly? Skystar has proven to be extremely effective at what she does.

Like tempest, getting your req online early is an important part of Skystar. And also like Tempest, she has a very strong early game.

Now, yes. You can confront on turn 1 with her so long as there’s a problem with no more than 4 req for you to confront. And that is pretty good, but that’s not actually what I’m talking about.

Where she really shines is the fact that she can reliably DFO turn 2 if your opponent’s starting problem is 4 or less on your side. Just put the two Seashells there, then move your Main to Concerning Cutie Mark or Searching High and Low and you’ve DFOed.

Hooray!

Which is really important considering how many decks open with Trading Traditions right now. Not to mention you’ve got a huge lead on points.

And those two Seashell tokens can frequently have other uses as well. They’re good Belly Flop candidates. Or you could retire them to abilities like Bodyguard or Minuette Schadenfreude. So even though they tend to go home quickly, they frequently wind up being not useless.

Plus you can make friendship bracelets and picture frames with them!

Wah?

Don’t worry about it!

Anyway, Skystar has proven to be a Mane to be reckoned with.

Though she and Tempest have kind of bullied out confront to flip Manes like Scootaloo: Cutie Mark Crusader. If playing one of those Manes against Tempest or kystar, it’s easy to miss your opportunity to Flip your Mane before problems change or troublemakers show up blocking everything.

So yeah. Not just one, but two Manes in my list this time around. I’m honestly pretty pleased.

So Cici…. do you know what time it is now?

Well, it’s gotta be Midnight this time, right? I’m pretty sure that’s the last time themed ca—

Gah!

It’s Spontaneous-hug-your-besty time!

I… don’t think that’s a card.

Well it should be!

0 AT colourless event with Immediate: Hug your besty!

Best card ever!

Okay, okay. You can let go now.

Spoilsport.

Well now that my betsy has been sufficiently hugged for now, I guess it’s time to talk about my top 2 card! The Pearl of Transformation!

If only I could use it to transform Cici into—

No!

Okay, okay!

I love the Transform mechanic! It’s super fun to build around and play with and you get to do so many neat and exciting things! I know lots of ponies who’ve built Transform decks.

And naturally, all Transforms Deck should absolutely include some copies of the Pearl if at all possible! Not only does it let you find your transforming friends, but it makes the cost cheaper! What a bargain!

Not to mention it flips for 7.

Its one redeeming feature...

Cici!

Er, sorry. I’m just not a fan.

Well it’s my list and I like it.

Sorry…

Anyway, there’s lots of fun things you can do with the pearl. Especially in conjunction with Princess Skystar: Making a Splash and Air and Sea.

Flip flop. Flip flop. It’s perfect for Skystar!

Why?

Well… she has flippers…

So that means she must be really good at flipping!

And since it’s an Ultra Rare, it gives me hope we’ll see more Transform cards in the future! That’d be super neat!

Yeah, I’d like that a lot. And it’d definitely make the Pearl more interesting to me.

Absolutely!

Well, that’s it for the Pearl!

In that case, let’s move on to my #2 which… well, might surprise some ponies.

Mostly because I didn’t put at number 1. It’s a card that ponies have been putting into almost all of their decks, and for good reason. It’s very powerful and just about every deck can use it.

I’m talking, of course, about The Staff of Sacanas.

Still not as good as the pearl.

If you say so…

Anyway, the Staff is pretty insanely good.

Giving your Mane 3 extra power for 2 AT is pretty strong since a 6 Power Mane can do a lot. Manes aren’t easy to deal with outside of forced movement, so you’re not at risk for putting so much power into one card like you are with big Friends.

Also, it’s pretty satisfying moving your big Mane to a 6 power problem to let her confront it by herself.

Or even bigger Problems in the case of Applejack: Ambassador of Honesty or Thorax the Changed Changeling!

Yeah, it’s a nice boost to just about any Mane.

Of course, that alone wouldn’t make the Staff take a top 2 slot. It’s good, sure, but not enough.

No what skyrockets it up to my number 2 slot is its second ability.

Scare all the things!

Not only do you get to reliably frighten stuff for 1 AT, but you get to start faceoffs. Which can be pretty relevant for some decks.

Like decks full of chaotic cards!

This is admittedly pretty niche compared to the benefit of being able to repeatedly frighten Friends for just 1 AT, but it’s still important to keep in mind.

Of course, when you lose the faceoff, it feels pretty bad because you wound up paying 1 AT to do nothing…

But usually it works out great for you.

And the fact that it’s colourless and costs only 2 AT means it’s a consideration for just about any deck.

Not every deck wants it, admittedly…

But those are honestly pretty rare. It’s good for almost every aggro and farm deck and many control decks. It’s just a really good card.

Anyway, that’s my top 2 pick.

So Cici, can you guess what my favourite card of the set?

Probably not.

C’mon, guess!

Uhhh… Is it a Pinkie Pie?

Nope!

I give up, then.

You can’t give up, Cici! The Guessing Game has only just begun!

...I’m honestly surprised I didn’t guess that.

It’s okay, Cici.

Some of us are just better guessers than others! And then we get points!

Right...

Anyway, Sea Poppy: Guessing Game is amazing! Not only are you encouraged to do as many random things as possible, but you get to play fun guessing games too!

Will I score a point this turn? Who knows!

I find she doesn’t work for me at all. I prefer reliable ways to score points.

But you wouldn’t be Flitter if you didn’t like silly random things.

I wouldn’t be Flitter? Then who would I be?

Uhh…

I’m kidding, Cici!

And with that, I guess I’m done now! Hehe.

And you also wouldn’t be Flitter if you didn’t make forced jokes like that.

Nope!

So what’s your #1 card, Cici? Everypony’s dying to find out, I bet!

Yeah, I bet so, honestly. Since if they were anything like me, they probably saw the Staff one release day and thought for sure it’d be my number one.

But the more I played against this card and getting absolutely crushed, the more I realized I should probably be using it too. And the more I used it against my opponents, the more they started to use it as well.

And so on and so forth. As time went on, it became more and more popular and, honestly, seems to win almost every game it’s played it. And when a card has that huge of an effect, well, I think I basically had to put it at the top of my list.

So after a lot of thinking this over, and a lot of games, my pick for best and most impactful card in the set has to go to The Mane Six: Party Planners.

Eeeeeeee!

Woah, are you okay, Flitter? Did something awful happen?

Just the bestest thing ever!

Wah?

We’ve been doing these lists ever since Crystal Games and not once have we ever chosen the same card for our lists before!

And now we finally did! Yay, we’re so in sync!

Grah, get off me!

A special occasion like this deserves a special hug, don’t you think?

But this is like the fourth time already...

Psh, like there’s some kind of daily hug limit.

There’s always room for more hugs! Yah!

Gah!

Time for number six?

I, uh, I need to finish talking about my card.

Oh fine, be that way.

We’ll save number six for later!

Unless we’re talking about the Mane Six, of course! Since you’re talking about them now.

Right…

Anyway, this card is, well, surprisingly formidable. Taking every opposing friend does a lot more than you might think since it also removes all of the opponent’s req aside from their Mane.

This can make it hard to play cards.

Now admittedly, just borrowing friends for a single turn isn’t too scary in and of itself. Sure, it means you’re probably going to DFO, but that’s not necessarily game ending.

No, the problem comes when you combine Mane Six with a card that lets you retire Friends indiscriminately. Soarin: Pie powered, Shoeshine, Discord: Sneaky Snake, and a few other friends are all very good options here.

And what makes it so devastating is there’s almost nothing the opponent can do about it since they probably only have 3 power in one colour, which doesn’t give you the opportunity to play many responses.

And unlike dismissal, banishing, and frightening and such, there’s no card right now that prevents your opponent from borrowing your friends.

But you know what? Even all that would probably have only put this at #2 for me. They would have been great, and sometimes game ending, but not always. And Staff would have generally just been more useful, I think.

But there’s one specific card that drives Mane Six from insanely powerful to absolutely broken. One card, that in conjunction with the Mane Six, delivers such a backbreaking blow, it’s almost impossible to recover from. And all it takes for you to play this is 1 more AT and 2 Orange Req.

Party Hard.

I think I see where this is going.

Now for just 6 total AT, you’ve not only retired all of your opponent’s Friends, but likely also discarded their entire hand while drawing that many or more cards yourself. Even if you had to retire some of your own friends to do it.

This is… game ending. It’s almost impossible to recover from such a position. Possible, but really hard.

Really, really hard…

You okay, Cici?

Yeah, I’m fine. But I’m not sure this card is.

I mean, ponies have been Playing Pink decks and just splashing for Party Hard despite not having any other Orange cards at all. Either they just fix into it with something like Singing Barrel or just use the orange Req from a friend you borrowed with Mane Six.

I had no idea it was such a problem…

Yeah...

It’s admittedly possible that I’m overreacting and ponies just haven’t found good counterplay to it yet. But right now? Mane Six seems to be dominating the meta. It’s that potent. And honestly it worries me a bit.

We’ll see what happens, though. I don’t want to be an alarmist.

But, uh, it’s a very strong combo right now. So if your opponent is playing Pink at all, watch out.

Though hey. Maybe a clever pony out there will think of a good way to beat this beast! I look forward to that.

Well, that wasn’t exactly the highest note to go out on…

But hey, that’s our top ten list.

And I’m still super excited that we finally both picked the same card, eeeeeee!

No more hugs!

Oh, there will be more hugs. Not right now, but someday.

...That may have been the scariest thing I’ve ever heard you say.

Bye everypony!

Later.

[cloudchaserandflitterexplain]

Cloudchaser and Flitter Explain: Transform

But everypony wants to see you do it! And it’d be a perfect introduction for today’s topic!

You just stay exactly like you are right now to be regular cool Cici...

And then you put this bow on to transform into super mega adorable Cici!

Not going to happen.

Aww, c’mon Cici. It’d be perfect.

Why don’t you just transform from Flitter-with-bow to Flitter-without-bow?

What? Surely you must be joking!

My bow is what gives me my super powers! You can’t just expect me to take it off for a simple gag like that.

Wah?

Hi everypony! Despite Cloudchaser’s stubborn unwillingness to cooperate—

I’m not wearing a bow!

—today we’re talking about the Transform mechanic!

Now we talked about Transform briefly before, when I got to spoil the two Princess Skystar Transform cards, so some of this might just be a refresher for you…

But we figured it was worth going in more detail considering the large number of questions we get about this mechanic.

Yeah, this one seems to trip up a lot of ponies. And for good reason, it is a bit tricky.

So let’s go over it slowly and hopefully once we’re done, everypony will know how it works!

To start with, Transform is an alternative way to play Friends. Which means that, if you want to, you can completely ignore it and just pay full price for anything with Transform, just like you would a normal friend. You’re not obligated to Transform your friends.

But if you do want to Transform a friend, you have to do two things.

First, you have to pay its Transform cost, which is the number listed next Transform. Which is currently 2 for everypony with Transform right now.

And second, you have to return a Friend from play to your hand. Which is also a cost, just not an AT cost. So if you can’t do it for some reason, like say a player has Bedtime in play, you can’t transform.

And while you still need to meet colour req, obviously, don’t worry about losing it when you return the friend in play into your hand. As long as you meet the colour req before returning the friend to your hand, you’re fine.

As a simple example if Pinkie Pie: Holiday Spirit is your only Pink character in play, it’s still fine to transform her into Pinkie Pie: Joyous Seapony. Since you still have the necessary req when announcing you’re playing Joyous Seapony.

Now, before we go any further, we should clarify that you can’t return just any Friend when paying the Transform cost. There are a few restrictions.

First, the Friend you return to your hand needs to include the full title of the Friend you’re playing.

The title is the first part of the name. Like Applejack. Or Princess Skystar.

Also, the Friend you’re returning to your hand doesn’t need to exactly match the title of the friend you’re having, it just needs to include it! So If you want to transform Fluttershy: Kind Seapony, it’s okay to use Rainbow Dash & Fluttershy: Words of Encouragement.

It’s not an exact match, but it does include “Fluttershy", which is good enough!

Second, both Friends need to have a different subtitle.

Which is the second part of the name!

Basically all this means is you can’t have Rainbow Dash: Loyal Seapony transforming into Rainbow Dash: Loyal Seapony.

That just wouldn’t make any sense!

There is one thing we definitely do need to bring up while here, though. Which is that Princess Twilight Sparkle: Magical Seapony cannot transform into Twilight Sparkle cards.

The reason for this is because the title of the Friend you’re putting in your hand needs to have the entire title of the Transform Friend you’re playing. Twilight Sparkle: Cutie Mark Consultant doesn’t contain the full title of “Princess Twilight Sparkle”. So you can’t transform her.

It’s kind of disappointing it worked out this way as there are definitely some non-princess Twilight Friends I wouldn’t mind returning to my hand…

Yup, but we’ll just have to deal with it.

One last thing to mention about the name restriction that might throw some people off at first...

Frightened Friends don’t lose their names.

Nope! A Frightened Pinkie Pie: Everypony’s PFF is still called Pinkie Pie: Everypony’s PFF. So feel free to return one to hand as part of a Transform cost!

It’s such good value, it almost feels like cheating!

Which brings us to our next point! Using the return to hand part of the Transform ability as a benefit, rather than just a cost.

Yeah, this is definitely the neatest part of Transform!

There are plenty of Friends that have great effects when you play them, and sometimes you wish you could just play them again instead of moving them.

Which is what Transform does, in a way.

Let’s look at Rainbow Dash: Loyal Pony. Now this is a neat card because not only does she provide us with entry for Blue, but she has a helpful enters play ability. Namely she gets to move one of your characters, assuming you have any other blue characters!

Which I’m sure Cici will tell you is a great ability. She loves moving characters!

It’s true.

Now let’s assume she’s at home since you DFOed last turn. So despite being useful, she’s not as useful as she could be. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could do something awesome with her?

Well, good news! You can!

Yup! Just play Rainbow Dash: Loyal Seapony to a problem and return Loyal Pony to hand.

Now, not only did you just put 4 power to a problem for only 2 AT, you’ve also returned a card with a useful enters play ability to your hand that you can replay later.

Sounds like a good way to spend 2 AT to me.

Absolutely.

Of course, this gets even more fun with the two Princess Skystar cards with Transform. Since she can keep transforming into herself! Giving you a bajillion seashells!

Didn’t you bring this up last time?

Doesn’t make it any less true.

...Fair enough.

But even more fun than that is my favourite Ultra Rare from the set! The Pearl of Transformation!

Not this again.

Don’t mind Cici, everypony.

She’s just jealous of my amazing transform deck of awesome!

Not really…

As cool as Transform is, there just aren’t very many good ways to use it. Maybe if the cards had more impact than just a keyword, but… eh. I’m not sold.

Maybe, but what if we get more transform cards later?

...Wah?

Nah, that’ll never happen

Why not? It’s not like we haven’t seen ponies transforming a whole bunch in the past.

Breezies, Power Ponies, Discord’s various shenanigans…

It happens more often than you might think!

Huh… yeah, I guess so.

And being one of the first new keywords of this brand new block… it’s not exactly impossible to do more with it! And then you’d get your wish for more impactful transform cards!

...I guess I would! Yeah, let’s do this!

Well, it’s not up to us, Cici!

But it would be neat, and I’d like to see it happen for sure.

Anyway, let’s get back to my point about the Pearl of Transformation! The best Ultra Rare in the set.

Yeah, I’m still not calling it that.

Now the Pearl lets you reduce the cost of Transforming by 1 AT, to a minimum of 1. Which is pretty great! Now you can use the Skystar Transform combo even more!

But wouldn’t it be great if you could reduce it even further?

Well, you can, actually! Transform is a cost, just like any other cost. So stuff like Cici or Foal Free Press actually can reduce the Transform cost too!

You can even combine them with Pearl to reduce something to 0! Since while the Pearl says a minimum of 1, that’s just what the pearl can bring it down to. Other effects can then reduce it even further.

Well, it’s a little more complicated than that, to be honest…

But so long as you apply Pearl first, you’re fine.

Anyway, that’s about everything we have to say about Transform! Hopefully now you’re a transforming expert!

Yeah, I think we went over just about everything we could, and pretty detailed too.

I think it’s safe to say we’ve answered just about any questions anypony may have about Transform.

Well, I wouldn’t go that far!

We’ve definitely gotten questions about topics we’ve covered in the past that surprised us.

Oh. True.

But we definitely gave ponies a good place to start from today.

For sure.

Well, that’s it for today, everypony! See you later!

Later.