#and I still need to finish the tcg event.

[beanmaster-pika]

FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

[ohsunnyboy]

zerobase1 and how they play genshin | zb1

WHALE | META | CASUAL | NOT A GAMER

TAGS: headcannons, crack-ish, lowercase intended

A/N: as a genshin player and zb1 enjoyer, i own a wealth of knowledge. if you don't know what i'm referencing or talking about then i'm sorry lmao i get rly into genshin

WORDS: ~600 (~100 each)

WHALES 🐋

GYUVIN - ok puppy dog has no spending sense and would swipe swipe swipe until he got the character. or somehow get his account robbed and card details stolen. wouldn't swipe for c6 on characters but would swipe for all the skins.

plot goes soaring over his head. though, he'd get 100% completion completely on accident bc he runs from chest to chest completing everything bc ooh shiny. (it's what i do)

definitely hops across different coop worlds to be an absolute menace. steals all your starconches, beatles and cor lapis and leaves.

a whale so team comp doesn't quite matter, but i feel like cool burst animation is a must.

RICKY - need i explain? he doesn't even play the game often, he just sees a cool looking character and swipes. feels like he would c6r5 a character if he really liked them. would get surprisingly into event content just for the exclusive items etc. cares mildly about the plot and zero for the exploration.

would play cool and pretty characters bc when you're a whale, team composition just doesn't matter.

META 🎮

MATTHEW - a confirmed nerd by his sister so you bet he's an enthusiast. pays attention to kqm, twitter and future patch leaks. grinds out for the spiral abyss and has op asf team combos. would spend but only if he knows it's worth it.

enjoys the plot and characters, but not massive on exploration. still enjoys all the characters thoroughly and knows more lore tidbits than most. is the sweetest coop friend.

GUNWOOK - okokok he'd be apprehensive at first until he pulls like c5 benny and a eula then the world of dps (damage per screenshot) awakens. fights wars in the trenches of the honeyhunterworld comments section. stays updated and dips in and out of the game.

secretly stays about for plot. finds exploration boring but can admit it's pretty. the dude who refuses to swap characters when doing coop domains. does a boss blitz when bored.

CASUALS 💫

HANBIN - ok only got it bc the kids said he should. (gyuvin uses him to get the coop achievements) actually ended up staying bc wow everything is gorgeous, the plot is engaging and the characters have depth! and it's all free ?? goes about it at a decent pace, doesn't do spiral often, just finishing floor 10.

tcg enjoyer and event player.

ZHANG HAO - TEAPOT MAIN god yeah hella into the teapot. only completes the story and everything for the teapot. comes on sometimes to help hanbin out or bc someone else needs mats from his world. has a solid overworld team for collecting mats etc.

mildly enjoys the plot but exploration is where it's at.

NOT A GAMER 🌱

JIWOONG - only got it bc everyone else did, found out it took too much space on his phone, deleted it. tried playing it on gunwook's pc but had to play zhongli with his shield up 24/7 bc mechanics are hard okay! does see it as pretty and that yeah some characters are worth spending money for but there are better ways to find enjoyment in life.

TAERAE - doesn't mind it. he just doesn't see the hype over online characters. if and when he does play, it's on someone else's account and on the tcg. man loves the tcg, making decks and sweeping the floor with everyone.

has insane pull luck.

YUJIN - hmmm he sorta thinks it's cringe but gyuvin makes him play it. defo a valorant kid. tried to make a gun didn't work. plot doesn't matter much to him, interested in some character backstory but dips out when it comes to exploring. yujin defo thinks childe, xiao and alhaitham are cool. paimon gets on his nerves the most.

i had lots of fun doing this so i hope you enjoyed ! leave a like or reblog if you did :) ⭒ masterlist

[falconcoast]

taverns and tcg | cyno x reader

day six. holiday party ft. cyno 

event masterlist

cyno is stuck at a horrible staff party before winter break. you are stuck at a horrible staff party before winter break before winter break. as the only two bearable people at the party, you tough it out together. 

a/n: LATE AS HELL IM AWARE AND KAEYA’S EDITION OF THIS WILL BE OUT SOON I PROMISE

tags: brief alcohol mention (none consumed)

cyno knew that coming to the staff holiday party was a bad idea.

he didn’t really like the akademiya’s staff in the first place, so he wasn’t sure why he still came. simple conversations behind closed doors came forward, resulting in bitter discussion. the eggnog was spiked, and lips were looser than leaflet papers on a windy day. and there were an overwhelming amount of people crammed into the tiny tavern. if he could, he would escape into the night and peacefully begin the akademiya’s winter break.

but he held himself back for one reason.

“cyno!” a familiar voice called out in the crowd. snapping his head around he recognized the voice as you, one of the librarians in the house of daena and one of the only coworkers he could stand. something fluttered in his chest. “hey, hey! didn’t expect you to be here. parties don’t really seem to be your thing.”

“they aren’t,” he replied. “i was planning to leave soon.”

“oh, is that so?” you asked, tilting your head. “come here and sit. you’re the only sufferable one around here.”

he smiled, taking a seat next to you by the couch. “i don’t think staying for a few more minutes could hurt,” he conceded.

after settling beside you, you both stared out at the rest of the staff. it was like all of the decorum that the akademiya always sought to preserve was slipping through the cracks. swears were being exchanged rapidly. “they’re without composure tonight,” you observed.

“they’ve been grading all day, everyday for the last four weeks. i knew that they would be off the rails, just not by this much.”

“well, nothing we can do about that,” you shrugged. “it’s good entertainment. anyways, how have you been? i haven’t been able to see you much recently. i mean, i guess it’s technically part of your job to be out and about so much, but still… i guess what i’m trying to say is…i missed you.”

missed him? for some reason, cyno felt like he was going to be the next one to lose his composure. his cheeks warmed, and he knew it was not from the compact space. “i missed you as well,” he stifled out after a moment. “nothing as crazy as what happened this summer. most of it has just been chasing down plagiarists and accompanying a few important scholars to port ormos. nothing significant.”

“oh, is that so?” you said. “well, i think it’s a very important job cyno. not just for the praise and glory you get from the sages, but for the reason that you preserve the sanctity of knowledge. people who lie and cheat and steal to get work done take the purpose of learning and destroy it. it makes me so mad to think about, which is why i’m always grateful for the matra.”

he paused, taking in your words. people had sung his praises for a long time now, and it was so common that he would brush people off before they could even finish. but with you, it was different. in fact, he almost wanted to ask you if you could keep telling him that he was doing a good job.

“um, cyno? do i need to call the hospital? are you alright?” you asked, snapping him out of his daze.

sitting up a little straighter, he blinked rapidly. “that won’t be necessary. your compliment was just nice to hear,” he replied. “apologies for worrying you. so, how has your semester been?”

“not much on my end either,” you shrugged. “we’ve been just waiting on an order of texts to come in from liyue. they’re ancient writings from the adepti, and i know that the harvatatan scholars have been itching to get their hands on it.”

you continued talking about all the books that you were receiving, but cyno became slightly distracted. your eyes were lit up with passion, a rarity in the akademiya nowadays. you really cared about your work as a librarian rather than just wanting to climb the ranks.

he watched your hand motions flutter about, another show of your love for your work. your voice, although it went in one ear and out the other, was sweet and warm. you were so different from anyone else in the akademiya, and his heart thrummed a little faster at the thought.

“...and we also, although accidentally, got a big order of tcg cards. i don’t know how it ended up in our hands and there’s no return address, so i guess we’re stuck with them,” you mentioned, making him perk up. you smiled. “oh, do you like tcg? i’m not very familiar with it, but it looks like a fun game to play.”

“it’s certainly an interesting game,” cyno answered, trying to downplay his excitement.

“you’ll have to teach me sometime,” you grinned. “a lot of scholars play it in the library. i wanna play with them, if possible.”

“i could teach you right now, if you’d like,” cyno replied instantly before immediately feeling his cheeks rush with heat. clearing his throat, he backtracked. “if you’d like that, of course.”

“i’d love to!” you smiled. “this party is getting boring anyways. and, seeing as i have the key to the library, i can get a pack of cards from up there. it’s a date, then. i’ll get my coat and then we can head out.”

standing, you walked away from him. cyno was motionless on the couch, blinking once. twice. after a moment, his face broke out into a grin as he came to a conclusion.

first, he would be escaping this party to play a much more entertaining game of tcg.

second, you had just asked him on a date and he had never been more excited.

[doubleddenden]

I have done the Worst Possible Pokemon Day prediction. I have done the NO Way in Hell Will it Ever be This Good prediction. Time for the "realistic" prediction.

Nostalgia bait video of game progression throughout the years or scene of everyone playing Pokémon

Pokemon Go is doing a thing I guess, probably BW2 Kyurem

Unite- they're adding Miraidon and have already told us, but they need to take up time.

Masters has a bunch of gems and events idk. Looks like someone is getting a Mega Tyranitar I guess

Cafe ReMix is gonna do a thing- did they already add Miraidon? I don't keep up with it tbh, looks boring

Pokemon Sleep has some kind of thing. Maybe more pokemon added?

Merch announced- its bland and over priced, but someone will buy it. The only thing I want are hats

Pokemon Concierge season 2 trailer?

Next Pokémon game- most likely ILCA Unova remakes (I'll argue this if I have to, but they're just short of a cowboy and large mole driving a car and honking a Driftveil inspired La Cucaracha carhorn through the streets of New York with the obvious hints they're dropping in games and in literal NYC right now lately).

Legends Unova or something in that vein announced for either December 2024 or January 2025. This will be the last Switch mainline game.

Music video, probably Hatsune Miku

Less likely to happen, but on the table

Gb, GBC, and GBA ports to eshop or NSO

New Pokémon movie announcement featuring the first mythical since Zarude- most likely the Horizons cast

Something about Horizons anime- Sprigatito evolves?

New anime mini series based on SV DLC? Maybe centered on Carmine, Kieran, the BBE4, and Ogerpon.

After that is where you start getting surprises, good or bad. Side games won't replace a mainline game release or dlc as proven by PMD DX, so they could do whatever from here.

Reasonable but random predictions, not all but maybe one or more could happen, most likely not

PMD Explorers Remake

PMD Mobile game with micro transactions and live service

Pokemon crosses over with something

tcg digital card game on Switch

Pokemon racer game

Will not Happen, imo:

SV dlc pack 2. They seem pretty done with it tbh, even with all the loose ends. Can't blame them for being tired of adding content to a broken game that's still not finished and is being held together with scotch tape and Elmer's glue

Johto re remakes YET: simply because I think those will be an early Switch 2 title to get as many people on board the next system akin to how LGPE drew in the Go, genwunner, and main crowd to the Switch, and they can't announce it because Nintendo hasn't officially revealed the Switch 2 yet. I'll say they'll announce that next year.

Kalos- yeah I see you there, you dumb bastard, still huffing that Kalos Copium 11 years later. Let it go, man. Let. It. Goooo. Southern Kalos is NOT happening dude. At least, not this gen. It didn't happen in Alola, not in Galar, and it's not happening in Paldea. They're not skipping gen 5 to get to you first.

Overall I expect a similar response to the 2021 Pokémon Day Presents. A mixture of under, over, and straight up whelmed. Thorough disappointment for everything but Legends Arceus, from what I remember. Maybe they'll make my day and surprise me with something amazing, but I feel that the ILCA Unova Remake will probably piss a lot of people off while the Legends game excites me and everyone else.

[kyogre-blue]

Updates I want to see in Genshin, grouped up loosely

Major: 

Skip button. Barring that, something like a 20x speed option that also auto-selects dialogue choices for you. Would be great if it also did the on-rails “gameplay” sections like walking after an NPC. 

Ability to disengage from quests and set them as inactive. The fact that this is still an issue and that the only “fix” they’re doing is for newly unlocked story quests is a bad joke. We should be able to set ALL quests as inactive if we want to, even if that means losing progress in them. 

The interactive map mat locator should be in-game. If they must keep those “local specialty” passives relevant, then make it so that the locations only appear on the main map but not the mini map. 

Gadget to switch Traveler element without going to a statue of the seven. 

Gadget for removing enemy aggro. It’s ridiculous that you can stand on a cliff where an enemy can’t reach you for 10 minutes, but they won’t de-aggro. 

Similarly, a gadget to keep enemies from aggroing unless you bump into them or attack them. 

Artifact presets. We all know this one. 

General: 

Recall all and send again option for expeditions. 

A gadget that stacks all those “crumpled letter” and “ragged notebook” items crowding up one of the inventory sections. 

A gadget that records the texts in the overworld that you can interact with but do not pick up. It should list where it was found and what it said. This is for the lore fans, lol. 

Some improvement to the achievement-related commission RNG. At minimum, earlier steps in the commission chain should be removed from the pool of possible commissions, and ideally the entire chain should get removed once you’re done. (me personally mad about getting the Bantan Sango Misdirection quest three times and yet being unable to finish the whole chain)

Cooldowns should reset when you reset an Abyss floor. This is basic. And before anyone asks, we know it’s possible because there were a couple of combat events where resetting the challenge also reset cooldowns. 

Add a shop for TCG coins, similar to the teapot one. 

Option to have companions sit in the teapot. 

Gadget updates: 

Merge treasure compasses into one gadget that you forge additional modules for in new regions. 

Seed box should always be active without needing to be equipped. It should give you the “limit reached” warning when you pick up the 20th seed but only then, not afterwards. 

Red feather fan should be useable in flight. 

Artificial warming seelies and oculus resonance stones should be activated from the menu, without needing to be equipped. 

Ideally, some way to just select “region-appropriate fishing rod” without having to manually switch each time, but this one is a long-shot.

[4fahy]

How I Farm Primogems

Daily commissions and Events are BASIC, do them everyday. There's no other option.

Use your resin!!! Follow a tutorial on how to build characters. Even if you can't 36 star the abyss, it's important that you try. I believe you should start building them one-by-one, start with the Healer, DPS, Sub DPS/Support/Utility/Etc.

Do the Battlepass!!! It gives you Acquainted Fates, which can be recycled for Intertwined fates on Paimon's Bargain

Same thing with leveling up characters.

Adventure's Guide

Web events!!!!!!

Make sure you already have the Treasure Chest Compass of Each Region. You can get it by finishing your quests, bounties, requests and so on. Go to the Reputation thing on each city. Use it all the time while exploring and doing quests and whatever else.

Use the Teyvat Interactive Map to help you find stuff!!!!! It's Hoyoverse's Official Map, so it's always updated.

Don't forget the daily login!!!!

Talk to Neko on Seirai Island everyday for 20 extra primogems.

Feed the Foxes on Dragonspine so they give you a chest

Do these other things in order so you won't get lost on what you've done or not yet.

Level up Mond statue to 10.

The Stamina will help you A LOT on the exploration.

Mondstadt quests!!!

Archon quest -> Story quests -> World quests

Most of them give either primogems or achievements. Make sure to finish them all.

Dragonspine tree!!

Be brave and complete Dragonspine. I trust you. You can do it.

Completing that TCG book also gives you primogems.

Any Mondstadt puzzle you might have missed

You can always search on YouTube what puzzles and secret chests are there to help you grind.

Kill the Lawachurls on Dragonspine.

Liyue Statues to 10!!!

Other than stamina, it also opens the 9 Pillars of Peace quest, so you need to do it.

The Luminous Chasm Stone I Forgot The Name

Again it can be done as you explore the chasm but I'd recommend doing it before the chasm quests because it helps a lot with exploring.

Liyue quests!!!

Archon quest -> Story quests -> World quests

This include the chasm and every quest you might have not finished. There's a lot of them.

Level up your teapot!!

Liyue puzzles and secret chests you might have missed

Inazuma Quests!!

You need the Archon Quest and some World Quests to do things and go places in peace. Do them first.

Inazuma Statues

They actually give primogems!!!!

The Narukami Tree

It gives you fates every X levels, I don't remember how many tho.

Enkanomiya quests, sigils and puzzles

Any other chest you might have missed

Sumeru Quests

Sumeru Aranara Tree

I don't actually know if it's a tree, but you out dendro sigils there.

Sumeru statues

I don't think they can be completed yet, might be wrong.

Sumeru chests and puzzles.

Achievement hunting

Some of those you might be able to do simultaneously, but keep track of your progress.

The begining is slower but helps making the other stages easier, and sometimes you don't even have to go that far. I'm still doing the Narukami Tree, and got various characters just doing the despair method.

[robotgirldisc]

Tag Game To Better Know You! Send this to people you'd like to know better!

Tagged by @petallswildsurge

What book are you currently reading?

I've had Gideon the Ninth on my nightstand for months now, I do really wanna finish it, but I find I struggle with keeping focused on printed books

Online I'm reading Zoe Storm's Bradford McKinley series, I really like book 3 and 4 Performative Masculinity and To Own the Libs, and the first two chapters of book 5 are out on her patreon and look really promising

What do you usually wear?

Jeans and hoodie is my usual lazy-fit, I'll wear a denim jacket or t-shirts based on occasion and weather. I used to wear a skirts every day pre-pandemic, but I didn't bother when I was stuck at home for months, and then I kinda fell out of the habit

How tall are you?

I'm 5'6'' (and a half, but I only bring up the half inch cus of a certain someone who says she's 5'6'' despite actually being 5'5'' and a half)

What’s your star sign? Do you share a birthday with a celebrity or historical event? 

Gemini, I can't think of anyone who shares my birthday

Do you go by your name or a nickname? 

I have like 4 names in my bio, I'd say one of them is a nickname and the other three are regular names. I'd say the regular names get more use

Did you grow up to become what you wanted to be as a child? 

I did a paid internship as ambulance personnel for like a year before figuring out that my social anxiety and inability to hold a conversation made me unable to continue in that field. On a positive note, dropping out of that was what got me into therapy for the first time, and while the quality of the care I got that time wasn't the best, it at least made therapy seem less forbidden to me, which I ended up needing later on.

What’s something you’re good at vs something you’re bad at? 

I'd like to think I'm a pretty good game master. I've been doing it for over a decade now, so I feel pretty confident (I still get some pre-game nerves tho)

I'm not very good at keeping things organized.

If you draw/write, or create in any way, what's your favorite picture/favorite line/favorite etc. from something you created this year? 

idk if he's my favorite, but the most successful npc I've created for a campaign this year was Puck the fae prince from the monsterhearts campaign I MCed over this summer. the Players seemed to get very invested in him. I'm very attached to a lot of NPCs from that campaign, but they're from an older campaign, so they weren't created this year

Dogs or cats?

I like both, but I'm slightly more of a dog person

What's something you would like to create content for? 

I really wanna get into TCG design in some capacity, whether that's for an exiting game or an original creation

What’s something you’re currently obsessed with? 

I've been obsessively making new commander decks this week

What's something you were excited about that turned out to be disappointing this year?

my birthday this year was a bit of a letdown

What’s a hidden talent of yours? 

I taught myself to finger count up to 31 on one hand (or 1023 on two hands) when I was 15 and hyper-obsessing on number systems

What's something you wish to have at this moment? 

I wish I had all the Christmas presents I'm gifting ready, I'm way behind this year

Tagging @lovingpoet @trans-sachlichkeit @zeroraiser and @thegreatandpowerfulversy but no pressure to respond

[ladala99]

Neopets Plots/Events/Plevents; My Experiences

Going by JellyNeo's Book of Agest for a most comprehensive listing, because late Viacom Plevents are so unmemorable that I'd never be able to do it by memory.

2004

Battle For Meridell I joined while this plot was ongoing. I didn't even know it was happening, other than when I finally realized I didn't need to give my pets special abilities before going to Explore, finding Meridell in complete ruin. By the time I actually found the plot comic, it was over.

Hannah and the Ice Caves I didn't have a battle pet. I followed the plot comic closely and very much enjoyed it. I love the Hannah games. I hope they come back someday.

2005

Curse of Maraqua Happy there was a non-battling option, I joined as a Supporter for this plot! Points were, supposedly, gained by both turning in items the NPC requests or playing specific Flash games. I turned in one item and played a whole ton of the Flash games, but I only got credit for the item.

According to the Editorial at the time, there was a glitch where the Flash games weren't counting for certain players. You had to actually send in a ticket to get this fixed for your account. I did not send in a ticket, assuming some big fix would be pushed, but nope. Even when the Editorial said all affected players had been fixed, I wasn't. So I got two points for turning in a single healing potion. At least I got the avatar and site theme.

Darkest Faerie This is a video game, not a plot! I got it, still have it, didn't finish it until 2018 I believe. Fun game!

Lost Desert Plot I had like an hour computer time per day max and that was not enough to figure out what I was doing with the Temple of 1000 Tombs. I got a couple of points for happening to play a game of Pyramids, but that was the extent of what I did that actually counted.

I did wander the Temple of 1000 Tombs for fun a lot, and I helped out on the furniture-moving step if I remember right? That was open for everyone I think.

Loved the comic, though. I became absolutely obsessed with the storylines that came out around this time (both Darkest Faerie and Lost Desert Plot) and those characters still resonate with me the most today.

2006

Altador Mini-Plot The first plot that went right start-to-finish! I followed a guide and got everything done as it came out, having a blast.

Cyodrake's Gaze This happened at this time? Well, it was just a comic with making some guesses as to who did it. I guessed Anshu and was wrong(sorry Anshu! Just thought your version of the story was more different than the others!), but I got the other questions right.

Tale of Woe First real plot that I completed start-to-finish! And my favorite to this day. I was obsessed with Sophie the Swamp Witch since I got her TCG card so I loved seeing her with a real personality and backstory in the plot.

The only parts I didn't do were some of the higher-level battles and the harder version of the Potion step. I was too obsessed with digging to bother figuring out the puzzle there.

Wand of Wishing This is a video game, not a plot! I have it. I still haven't beaten it. I should add that to my to-do list.

2007

Journey to the Lost Isle My memories of this plot were that it was okay. Kinda fun, but nothing to write home about. I did not become invested in the characters. I remember a few steps being basically rehashed from Tale of Woe, which isn't a bad thing by itself.

2008

Operation: Petpet Park I remember this being an interesting diversion, and I played it all the way through. Didn't really catch me and get any lasting memories, though.

Puzzle Adventure This is a video game, not a plot! I have it, and I did not finish it. I did not find the gameplay fun and all I wanted was the site them.

My step-dad wanted the book, so he redeemed the first code, which locked our Wii's codes to his account and I quit once I realized that.

Then, years later, I played on my aunt's Wii and one of the prizes was already redeemed by someone else somehow. Despite the first code supposedly locking all of the prizes to my account. Since I wasn't going to suffer through this game if there was any chance I wasn't getting the site theme at the end, I quit.

And now the codes from this are locked because some cheater figured out how to guess them. Which is probably how one of my codes was already redeemed. So I'll never get the site theme. I hate whoever did this with a burning passion.

Return of Dr. Sloth I got stuck on the codebreaking part and wasn't able to participate in most of this plot. Didn't find the comic all that interesting, either.

2009

Atlas of the Ancients I recall this plot but as another kinda boring one. I got all the way through and finished with a good, but not the highest, trophy. Mostly because I didn't grind some of the steps enough.

But hey, I can turn my pets Magma at will (now that the glitch keeping me out is fixed), so worth it!

Quizaria's Curse This is a video game and not one I got. I do not have a Leapfrog.

2010

Faeries' Ruin I, at this point in my Neo-life, went on hiatus every year from the start of the Altador Cup through the Advent Calendar. So I didn't know about this plot until it was halfway through!

I had a good time while I was there, but was a bit salty about missing the beginning.

2011

Krawk Island Disappearance Crewdoku was fun. That's all I remember from this.

2013

Spooky Food Eating Contest I took a bunch of screenshots of the catacombs so I'd actually remember this plevent. I remember setting timers and having a blast.

War of the Obelisk Finally, a battling plot I could make it all the way through! I joined the Order of the Red Erisim and was actually able to beat the other team leaders on Easy! It reinvigorated me into training for the next war.

2014

Desert Diplomacy I enjoy logic puzzles, so I enjoyed this (and the Negg Fest one that happened one year. Not listed on this list.)

Portal Activation Centre I completed this but have very faded memories of it.

2017

Wraith Resurgence This was. . . a real disappointment. I got through it and was super happy defeating the Darkest Faerie at the end (She is in my account's canon an important character in my battle pet's past so him beating her up was so satisfying), but the actual plot had bad art, bad story, and moved entirely too slowly.

2018

Lyra and the Lost Heirloom I followed the plot for the first few steps but got bored because it took too long and took a hiatus from the site. By the time I got back, the prize shop was closed, so even though I earned some points, I wasn't able to use them!

Bad, bad feelings about this plot all around.

2019

Legends and Letters This is a mobile game that I did not play because I wasn't interested in the gameplay.

2024

The Void Within Looking above at the recent plots that took too long to get going so I took hiatus and missed most of them. . . I'm hoping I somehow like this plot. I like the buildup during the events last year and actually got me to be more active. I might even participate in the Altador Cup this year (haven't since the Flash versions went down and were replaced with awful HTML5 versions).

But those NC cookies and the fact that one achievement you absolutely needed to log in on a Sunday make me nervous. Like, Sunday. Really? I thought for sure since it wasn't obtainable by Friday it wouldn't be obtainable until there was an actual step to do. And right after they say that there's some leeway with not being on every day.

I got the achievement, but still. Weekends are the times I'm most likely to accidentally miss a day since I'm not on my normal routine.

[skellytonsandstars]

Crap I still need to finish the tcg event

[somegirlsnerdywords2]

Anime i’ve Watched

That begin with a A (Part 2)!

Yep this is how i’m going to bring over all the anime and manga i’ve watched and posted about on the old blog. It’s not so detailed but it will have to do. Anything new I watch or read from this point on will have their own posts.

Angel Beats!:

Genres: action, comedy, drama, school, supernatural

Synopsis:  Otonashi awakens only to learn he is dead. A rifle-toting girl named Yuri explains that they are in the afterlife, and Otonashi realizes the only thing he can remember about himself is his name. Yuri tells him that she leads the Shinda Sekai Sensen (Afterlife Battlefront) and wages war against a girl named Tenshi. Unable to believe Yuri's claims that Tenshi is evil, Otonashi attempts to speak with her, but the encounter doesn't go as he intended. Otonashi decides to join the SSS and battle Tenshi, but he finds himself oddly drawn to her. While trying to regain his memories and understand Tenshi, he gradually unravels the mysteries of the afterlife. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 10/10

Finished airing in 2010 with a total of 13 episodes. 

My Thoughts: A masterpiece and a classic. Now that I think about this one probably deserves a rewatch! Tragic and beautiful with one hell of an opening theme. This one really takes you for journey in 13 short episodes and it’s not one that you’ll soon forget.

Ani ni Tsukeru Kusuri wa Nai! (Please Take my Brother Away):

Genres: comedy, school, slice of life

Synopsis: Shi Miao simply cannot stand her lazy, stupid, and unreliable elder brother Shi Fen, who is one year above her at the same high school. Though the two siblings can only depend on each other, Shi Miao's violent tendencies combined with Shi Fen's knack for causing trouble cause them to fight constantly. And so, Shi Miao can only hope that someone might take her brother away—even though, when push comes to shove, Shi Fen always tries to do what he believes is best for his cute younger sister. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 9/10

Finished airing in 2017 with a total of 12, 3 minute episodes. 

My Thoughts: Three minute episodes of pure comedic bliss. A short and light anime that’s perfect if you’re looking for a bit of a pick me up series but don’t have a ton of time. Highly recommend. 

Ani ni Tsukeru Kusuri wa Nai! 2 (Please Take My Brother Away 2):

Genres: comedy, school, slice of life

Synopsis:  As always, Shi Miao is tired of her brother's ridiculous antics, and Shi Fen can only hope to escape the clutches of his violent sister. With their friends and classmates in tow, the two continue their dysfunctional relationship as reluctant but devoted siblings. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 9/10

Finished airing in 2018 with a total of 24, 3 minute episodes. 

My Thoughts: The hilarity continues, this time with a 24 episode run! A must watch for fans of the first season. 

Ao no Exorcist (Blue Exorcist):

Genres: action, demons, fantasy, shounen, supernatural

Synopsis:  Humans and demons are two sides of the same coin, as are Assiah and Gehenna, their respective worlds. The only way to travel between the realms is by the means of possession, like in ghost stories. However, Satan, the ruler of Gehenna, cannot find a suitable host to possess and therefore, remains imprisoned in his world. In a desperate attempt to conquer Assiah, he sends his son instead, intending for him to eventually grow into a vessel capable of possession by the demon king. Ao no Exorcist follows Rin Okumura who appears to be an ordinary, somewhat troublesome teenager—that is until one day he is ambushed by demons. His world turns upside down when he discovers that he is in fact the very son of Satan and that his demon father wishes for him to return so they can conquer Assiah together. Not wanting to join the king of Gehenna, Rin decides to begin training to become an exorcist so that he can fight to defend Assiah alongside his brother Yukio. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 7/10

Finished airing in 2011 with a total of 25 episodes. 

My Thoughts: Great look in terms of art/ animation/ character design. Great setting and premise but overall the series fell a bit short, in large part (my opinion only) because of the anime original ending. An ending that WAS ignored when they released a second season years later. I’d recommend this series for the simple fact that watching it would enable you to watch the second season which was much, much better! Pretty good opening theme though. 

Ao no Exorcist: Kyoto Fujouou-hen (Blue Exorcist: Kyoto Saga):

Genres: action, demons, supernatural, fantasy, shounen

Synopsis: The ExWire of True Cross Academy are beset with shock and fear in the aftermath of discovering that one of their own classmates, Rin Okumura, is the son of Satan. But for the moment, they have more pressing concerns than that of Rin's parentage: the left eye of the Impure King, a powerful demon, has been stolen from the academy's Deep Keep. After an attempt is made to steal the right eye in Kyoto as well, Rin and the other ExWires are sent to investigate the mystery behind the Impure King and the ultimate goal of the thief. While this mission has them cooperating for the time being, Rin has never felt more distant from his fellow exorcists. In his attempt to reconcile with them, he undergoes specialized training to control his dark power. However, when the right eye is stolen not long after their arrival, the unthinkable threat of a traitor amongst them leaves them in need of all the power they can get. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 9/10

Finished airing in 2017 with a total of 12 episodes. 

My Thoughts: Took years and a less than stellar anime original ending in the first season to get here but finally a second season came! Great art, music and story. An odd case where the second season is far better than the first and truly makes up for its predecessors missteps. If you decide to give this series a try be aware that what you’re really coming for is this gem of a second season and not the first! 

Aoharu x Kikanjuu:

Genres: action, comedy, sports, shounen

Synopsis: Hotaru Tachibana has a strong sense of justice and just cannot help confronting those who choose to perform malicious acts. Furthermore, Hotaru is actually a girl who likes to disguise herself as a boy. After hearing rumors that her best friend was tricked by the popular host of a local club, Hotaru seeks to punish the evildoer. Upon arriving at the club, however, she is challenged to a so-called "survival game" by the host Masamune Matsuoka, where the first person hit by the bullet of a toy gun will lose. After a destructive fight which results in Hotaru's loss, Masamune forces the young "boy" to join his survival game team named Toy Gun Gun, in order to repay the cost of the damages that "he" has caused inside the club. Although she is initially unhappy with this turn of events, Hotaru quickly begins to enjoy what survival games have to offer and is determined to pay off her debt, much to the dismay of Tooru Yukimura, the other member of Toy Gun Gun. As time goes on, Hotaru begins to develop a close friendship with the rest of the team and hopes to take part in realizing their dream of winning the Top Combat Game (TCG), a tournament to decide the best survival game team in Japan. Although Hotaru tries her best, there are just two little problems: she is absolutely terrible at the game, and Toy Gun Gun doesn't allow female members on their team! [Written by MAL Rewrite]

My Rating: 9/10

Finished airing in 2015 with a total of 12 episodes.

My Thoughts: I freaking loved this anime when it came out... though I doubt i’d be quite as generous with the score now. Good chance I was distracted by the cute glasses wearing male character which would have heavily impacted my score. A strong female lead masquerading as a male, attractive male leads (both with glasses and not) and some killer theme music. Even if I wouldn’t rate it quite as highly now i’d still argue that it was a pretty decent anime. No where near perfect but a bit of fun. 

[radioshackraider]

An Open Letter to Mark Rosewater

This was too long to fit into the question box, and I couldn’t think of a batter way to put this, so here it is. I am a college student in the UK. I’ve been playing Magic for 9 years, just before New Phyrexia came out. I play Magic as a way to get out the house and socialize with people, like many others. And just like many others, I cannot afford to play Modern, or Legacy, and even finish the Pioneer decks I have the large majority of. I checked how much it’d cost for me to finish the two Modern decks I’d like to play most, and it’d be about $300 for either of them. Seriously, it’d be about $600 for less than half a 60 card deck. That’s a lot of money, especially for a college student. Could I play cheaper cards in these decks? I could, but I;d also be significantly less likely to win, and if I’m paying the enter an event I’m going to want to win some of my matches, so I didn’t just flush that entry fee down the toilet. And so when I read that the reason I can’t afford to buy the cards I need to finish the decks I’d like to play is because the company you work for intentionally keeps the most expensive cards for the most expensive products you can imagine I, like many people who love and want to play this game, would be upset. Even as a Trading Card Game, the more expensive a card is, the less likely someone is willing to part with it, for fear that they’ll never get another. Artificial scarcity is a thing in TCGs. I get it. But Magic is making it harder and harder to afford to play, with rotation is Standard making it a continual buy in experience. The other two major TCGs, as far as I know, make efforts to keep their staple cards low in price, and even then some printings manage to have value by being foil or full art or the numerous other ways WOTC themselves use to make certain cards desirable. You even have a similar product that these games do, though woefully under-utilized. You make Challenger decks and Commander decks as an affordable on ramp to Standard and Commander. Currently, there is no affordable way to get into formats such as Pioneer, Modern and Legacy, and the reprints needed for these formats is no being intentionally gated behind product made for people who already have the ability to spend more, and thus do not need these reprints as much as others. Collector's items like Secret Lairs are great for collectors, but terrible for people who just want to play. Can you imagine how bad it would feel for someone who is interested in learning how to play Magic, only to find out that the only LGS in town’s FNM events are always Modern, and that the price of a Modern deck is so high that it crushes their enthusiasm to play? It’s also worth noting that those who can already afford to spend large amounts of money on product will be just as happy to spend on cheaper product than expensive product. Happier in fact I’d bet. The only people who would be upset by a change in how you reprint expensive cards are those who have been using this game as an unregulated stock market, forgetting that it is first and foremost a game played by children and teenagers. I used to play another TCG before I played Magic, and even though I played that game at it’s peak of cost, it’s price was still cheaper than Magic is today. And that game has since then taken strides to keep it’s game affordable by frequently reprinting it’s staple cards. Premium versions of those cards even still have value. If you want premium priced products for collectors, look to products like Secret Lair and Signature Spellbook, that use alternate card styles and foiling to make the versions of the cards included special, but don’t make them the sole source of reprints because it ultimately just makes this game prohibitively more expensive. If you read this, please listen to what I’ve said and understand that it comes from someone who loves the work you do and wants nothing more than for people to be able to play this wonderful game without it costing them a reasonable price. High prices should be because the card is foil, or has a really cool frame, not because it’s a card needed to compete in a format that just hasn’t been printed enough. You’ve printed the Shock lands every 6 years since you released them originally and it’s kept their prices at a good level. Please give other cards the same treatment.

[mazelikedays]

2019 Year Ender

Currently Listening to: Breakbot feat Irfane - Baby I’m Yours Location: Loyang Ave, Singapore Mood: Burned Out

This picture is taken from my second trip to Japan, and not to mention my first ever anime pilgrimage, featuring the Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. This place was the basis for the scene where Haruhi makes her existential monologue. Anyway, without further ado, the eighth iteration of my year ender post! 1. I currently feel so burned out at work right now. Not exactly physically, but more of mentally. A lot of weird workplace changes, friendly colleagues who left one by one, realizing that your pile of work is not that significant in the grand scheme of things; and a client that working with feels like Chinese water torture. If I had a choice, I rather would like a 6 month sabaticcal. But with my current state of being an overseas worker, I can’t afford not to secure a job. So no choice but to find new work soon. Hopefully a much green pasture. 2. I didn’t travel to new countries this year, but I was finally able to secure a multiple pass visa for Japan. As I got another invite for the Force of Will WGP, I went to Japan again, this time in Osaka. I finally made the most out of my trip here, and went to a lot of nice places. I even made the Haruhi Anime Pilgrimage in Nishinomiya City. Travelling around got tiring, but it was so much fun. I even mingled with some of the locals when I went to the Macross themed FireBomBar in Osaka. Hopefully I get another FoW WGP invite so I can go back to Osaka and finally reach the bridge in Hoshi no Buranko, which I failed to reach in time. 3. Speaking of travel, I already have a trip planned for Dubai for January. I’m still pretty excited to visit Dubai even though I have visited it around 8 years ago. This also sparked in me the interest to travel to far off places that I have never been. Currently, my bucket list includes Australia, Qatar & St. Petersburg and hopefully the US, so I can finally visit my uncle who I haven’t seen in almost 20 years. At the very least, I hope I can visit Melbourne, Australia to visit my cousin and check out the place. 4. A pretty surprising development this year was the birth of my niece. I didn’t expect to be an uncle so suddenly, but my niece became the family’s pride and joy. Seeing her for the first time gave me this warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Hopefully I can see and play with my niece when I come home on February. Which reminds me that I’ll attend the wedding of a good friend of mine. Hoping my Feb vacation will be a nice one. 5. TCG wise, things are more or less the same. As stated earlier, I got another invite to play in the FoW WGP. Of course I didn’t win anything, aside from the three boxes and 2 starter decks which was worth enough. Unfortunately though, the company seems to be not doing so well, so likely invites for 2020 will be less. Let’s see how it goes. 6. Anime, Manga and Pop Culture stuff. Same as last year, I’m watching less and less anime. I did watch some new ones this year, mostly those from Netflix, or those that have been shown for quite a while but I only watched now. I think I watched a lot more anime movies too. I think I read less manga as well, and some of the ones I have been reading have ended. However though, I spent a lot on anime goods when I was in Osaka, so I guess I’m still pretty much an anime fan? Hahaha.

Currently Watching: Nothing currently, if you set aside me watching Mitsudomoe clips on Youtube. Finished This Year: Carol & Tuesday, Quintessential Quintuplets, Oregairu (barely finished this one), Kmietsu no Yaiba,  Yuru Camp, Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs, Aobuta, Senryu Girl, Tamako Market, Oreimo, Lucky Star, Youjo Senki, Ancient Magus Bride, Tada-Kun Does Not Fall in Love, A Place Further than the Universe, New Game Unfinished Anime: Cells at Work Finished OVA/Movies:  Aobuta Movie, Weathering with You, Heaven’s Feel: Lost Butterfly, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re;surrection, Saekano Movie, I Want to Eat Your Pancreas, Cencoroll Connect, Psycho Pass: Sinners of the System, Tamako Love Story, Godzilla Anime Movie 3

New Manga  Read: Quintessential Quintuplets, Kimetsu no Yaiba Finished Manga: Shokugeki no Soma

Other Stuff Watched: Movies: Avengers Endgame, Godzilla: King of Monsters, Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, Aquaman, Ant Man and the Wasp, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, Spiderman: Homecoming Series: Rilakkuma and Kaoru, The Witcher, Brooklyn Nine Nine,  Youtube Channels: Davie504, TwoSet Violin, Sam Chui, Mitsudomoe Channel

New Games Played: Princess Connect, Borderlands 2, Cities Skylines

8. Fulfilled (or not) Wishes a. Work Pass Renewal - Renewed with no issues b. A significant other - Tried events but lately I’m derailed due to plans c. Proper sleep - I still need more sleep d. Stable Work - I haven’t looked yet. I really should soon e. New Places to go - This year was Osaka, pretty fun! New Wishes: a. New, Better Work b. A Significant Other (again?) c. Proper Sleep - I still need it d. More places to go - Getting the itch to travel. Dubai to be visited soon. e. Get Healthier - I forgot to tell that I have a bit of high blood now, so I hope I can do a good diet and exercise regimen

That’s all for this year. I’m supposed to be busy at work, but working on New Year’s Eve feel so unrewarding lol. Till next year!

[mlpsimta]

Tiptoeing into Pokémon TCG

While my main hobbies nowadays contain finishing Undertale twice a week, and watching EA’s stocks falling down recently I really got into (as the title suggest) Pokémon TCG. A couple of weeks ago a Board and Card game shop in the city decided to host a Pokémon TCG training for newbies and offered cards to play with, and for purchase of course. So as a fan of Pokémon I snatched the opportunity and with a friend of mine we decided to attend the teachings to learn the ropes of the game and play some Pokémon TCG.

Once we got there it was really an amazing sight to see a bunch of pokéfans at one place talking about Pokémon, trading cards, playing TCG and even doing the same through their 3DSes (just not in a card form) too. For my surprise half of the audience were kids! Maybe I sound old, but man it was such a delightful sight to see that Pokémon is something that is not only enjoyed by us the first generation that got exposed to it, but the gens after us! That’s the power of this franchise. It doesn’t matter how old are you or what’s between your legs it can appeal to all kinds of audience.

After a half an hour long introduction of the card game it was finally time to play with the others. Shamefully I didn’t have a deck to play with and for some reason they told me that one Eevee card is simply not enough to play the game because I need 30 or 60 cards for it. So after asking for 59 Eevees they showed me the shop to buy a pack. The shop was filled with all kinds of packs and booster to choose from... Well before the training at least. During the teachings the shop went nearly empty and only a training set left that contained 30-30 cards for two half decks. So because of the dangling kids who got away with the Luminous Frost deck that I wanted to buy we settled to purchase the training set that remained.

Maybe it is only a half deck but I can still fly with it

Because I already played Heartstone and even some Magic learning Pokémon TCG was very simple. Heck I would describe it as Magic for kids. It is easy to learn, a mach doesn’t take more than 10 or so minutes to finish, and it is filled with just enough of randomness that I don’t find annoying. Observing some of the more advanced players on other tables was well.... let’s just say different. Seeing what kind of decks they used and watching their games showed how much though, calibration, care, time and money can go into ones deck. You know the saying, it’s easy to get into and learn the ropes but it’s hard to master. So my friend and me decided to mostly play against each other as we agreed that one of us will have the electric part of the deck while the other the rock. Overall the whole event went very well. It was really a great time, played some TCG got some new friends and even the online community that we were invited is really a fun place to hang out.

Still need more Eevees but I’m getting there!

After a couple of days I was able to purchase that frost themed deck I wanted to buy (gosh I love Aloan Vulpix so much) so even I now have a deck to play with. Since that day I founded myself laying on the floor and trying to come up with a better deck at least once a week. How should I mix this electric and frost decks together? What could be a working combination that would allow me to build up my pokémons during a play? How can I shove in as many eevees as humanly possible (Yeah I kinda purchased some more eevess too...)? I don’t know how but Pokémon can still bring out my inner child and I am very glad for it. My wallet maybe not so, but still I love it.

Now that is a majestic fox!

Other then the physical format I downloaded and played some of the Online TCG part. I have to say Pokémon TCG has one of the fairest price models that I have seen. All booster and decks have a little code that you can insert into the online interface and with just a click of a button you can play with your cards on the internet too! This is soooo amazing as it allows me to have my deck not just in my hands but under my cursor too. The fact that I don’t have to pay twice for something I already have is a really customer friendly move and ensures me that every dime I spend on the game won’t be wasted and will be utilized as much as possible. Also it makes me want to buy more boosters... Sadly the online interface is clunkier than a Klang. Navigating the menus is not intuitive and takes some time to get used to, checking out your cards and building a deck is painfully hard and just simply not as easy to do an is in like Heartstone. Speaking of Heartstone Pokémon Online TCG is light years behind to it. It really needs some improvements and a new looks because as of it today it just dull to look at and sometimes it looks like an asset flip.

Let’s just say this is not really pleasant to look at.

Also checking out your cards is hard too. Everything is too small if you wish to see more than one.

In summary Pokémon TCG is a really fun card game. Playing with others (who are just as nerdy as you) while talking about Pokémon and other video games is a really good way for someone to spend their free-time. I’m really glad that they showed me this gathering and I simply can’t wait for the next one. In the meantime I purchase some booster, find more eevee cards, and play a couple of matches with my friends on the campus. Also hoping for some improvement for the Online TCG part. Man that program needs some visual upgrades.

For closing I want to say thank you for your reading my post and of course have a great day!

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[ruzhansky]

i pray this will never end, i have my heart open wide

This report is not going to cover my teams, spreads and so on, as it was in 2015. I even don’t know if I should call it a ‘report’, I just want to slop down some thoughts about 2017. Have a nice read.

Why did I return to vgc? I DONT KNOW. As you might remember, I was a tryharder in 2015, but Nats loss and Autumn Series event loss completely broke me. 2016 season wasn’t a thing I’d like to try out (especially with the 2015 wounds) and I got some serious mental health problems in 2016. New pokemon game was a thing that could possibly make my days a bit brighter, and yea, I liked the game, the tapus, the ultra beasts and I became curious about the new format. The first russian tournament was announced to be held in late December, but I was busy with exams prep and haven’t even completed the main story. Though the tournament was tempting. I tested my first ideas on PS which included Instruct spam xd, but Nihilego with proper support showed a real potential at our early days of metagame. I could make it to the tournament (MSS Q1, wow Russia got midseasons...) and somehow won it. It’s like WHATTT how could i... but still. This thing lit something inside me and I decided to give that season a chance.

this is a very bad and old drawing of my mss q1 team xd sorry

January brought the first meta shift, and I started struggling with the team I had. I accidentally joined a random coversation on twitter and then I texted PephanVGC something like hey, did you remember we wanted to talk about teams. And he was very nice to me right from the start, he helped me out with the team and then we started to chat about everything. About friends, life, our past, loneliness and other troubles, and I thought I’ve found a real soulmate. We started to chat every day, but some days ago we were complete strangers to each other. This is so great.

Pephan shared a team with me I instantly fell in love with. It was Winter, so yeah Hail was cool to use, and that was the warmest winter I have :3 though Arcanines already were everywhere, and I removed Life Orb from his Koko to make it Electrium Z Koko AND IT BECAME MY MASCOT FOR THE WHOLE SEASON (i thought so before specs has come to mind...)  Also I played the same team with Pephan at Melbourne Challenge, and I got paired with him on r2... I lost in a close set and got broken so much, but he still helped me a lot with that and taught me how to treat losses less painfully. I love Pephan.

February IC poster with @Elveman yeah we had fun once

Then I built an AFK team too but with fucked item choices (firium arcanine just why), but I also had Scarf Porygon-Z and it was amazing to use. 

I brought Hail team to St Peter (yeah I travelled to St Petersburg) and Moscow PCs, got 1st and 2nd, AFK PZ team - to MSS Q2 AND I WON AGAIN. I was wondering why my enemies rivals didn’t visit our events, but ok, it was not my problem. Especially when our 2016 nats champion became my main enemy.

This was my season flow. I traveled, I played, I was studying at university and it was my graduation year, I had a job and tried to combine it with studying and pokemon, sometimes it affected my results. I was invited to represent Pokemon at Hinode 2017, the huge annual Japanese event in Moscow, with my main rival, famous russian pokemon community moderator and some TCG guys. It was definitely a nice experience. I got money from that just because I told people how amazing pokemon is, I teached them how to battle and showed that there’s much more than Pokemon Go. Yes, I don’t like Go. All pokemon players don’t like Go here.

b-but they’re so young!!! pic from Hinode.

Well, I thought season should have something else besides MSS and PCs, and hell yes, 8 Russian Special Events at 8 different cities were announced in May. Moar travelling! We(my rival, me and our tcg frens) decided to go to St Peter (again), Perm, Astrakhan and Ufa. Someone decided to go to all 8 SE because he wanted to.

The big-big drama started at our community but I don’t wanna share it here.

I graduated, traveled and played, and since my rival missed 2 Specials due to his own graduation and some other issues, my invite made a bit more real. Wait. THE DREAM OF MAKING WORLDS BECAME REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But I still needed to put a lot ot work into it. Top 1 vgc gets paid invite, I was 1st, but tcg guy with a good amount of vgc points was second (because he always played vgc after tcg at special events). I thought he will play TCG after all and he won’t interfere with my road to worlds, but I found out that he is going to the city we’re all decided not to go, to grind some tcg AND vgc points. I got angry as a rival and made an impulsive decision to go to Irkutsk Special before Moscow Special. And I went. And got some important points. And pretty locked up my invite. But I said to myself that I shouldn’t sсream it out loud and dance in the shower before the official ceremony in the end of the season. I still had Moscow event.

Huh. Our system this year allowed travelling, and 8 Special Events were held in June and July. Because I had the will and money to travel, because I got a job and combined it with studying at university and somehow haven’t lost it, I visited 6 Special Events. People started to shittalk me. I am wallet warrior, I am noob, I am not worlds caliber, I bought an invite and so on. I even partly agree. At that point winning russian events isn’t close to winning or doing well at EU/US events. Not every SE at regions gave us a strong competition. I am deadly far from WolfeyNails/Markus/etc level. But even with that, should I leave my spot and act like a fucking noble idiot? ‘Oh I am bad and not worlds caliber, guess I should give up now’. Yes. Definitely. Absolutely. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? I have a game I love, a desire to travel, a job and money for that, so why not. If you don’t play and try, you can never ‘get good’. Sitting on a sofa and thinking ‘oh I will never be good enough so I better don’t play’ is a shitty mindset as well. And then twitter drama about ‘free worlds not being elitist’ happened, I’ve become so sick of that.  

Moscow Special. The long-awaited end of the season. Really long-awaited because I felt like every day had 48 hours. I didn’t have special plans for Moscow. I didn’t want win it out as hell, I just wanted everything to end. And it ended. 

the event

party after d1

i remember how to draw

the main scene

turn your main enemies to judges lol

#lifegoals

<3

Despite tons of personal shit happened to me this season, apparently I found myself a better person. i don’t know if this is growing up, I am already 21 and difference between 19 and 21 doesn’t seem too big, though my mind and attitude to some things have noticeably changed.

Got rid of fake elitism, as it was in my early days of competitive and my -most famous year- (2015). I can’t even imagine now but then I thought that competitive is the BEST part we can have about pokemon, and everyone else who likes casual playing or anime are absolute losers and can never be as cool as us. Your dream is completing dex? Breeding a shiny? You love some anime characters and wanna watch fuckin dummies’ anime forever? Uh, dream of becoming a xXxWORLDCHAMPIONxXx just disparages your shitty life goals. I laughed at people i don’t know in person and who didn’t do anything bad to me.

I don’t know what changed my mind in particular. It’s like I just woke up with thoughts “why should I do this”. I saw that people who are not only about competitive can have and reach their own pokemon dreams, they’re valuable too. They can travel not only for competitive. For love to the franchise all of us are fond of. I am sorry for being an asshole :)

Got some skills of loving myself. Yup, y’all might know it was a big problem. Tl,dr: I haven’t a reason to. My only ray of light was being successful enough in vgc and when I wasn’t it became a catastrophe. Bad runs at IC, losses at regionals stages, bad BS sessions? Oh god, i am so shitty, i hate myself - and it was the softest thing I said. It was a mix of hatred and sadness and absolutely wasn’t a great thing to feel.  It cost me a real depression in 2016 - though I didn’t even play that season, it hit me hard. I let it happen, I let myself think and treat the game that way. Now it is slightly better, and it also feels so new. It’s like WOAH you actually may not hate yourself for a loss? In 2015 I had my Nats spot already reserved, but every mediocre regionals stage run made me feel terrible. This season I was fighting for the Worlds (Worlds > Rus Nats) right from the start with no ‘safe options’, I was losing too, but I could cope with that. Though losing is always sad. The difference is in being frustrated and hating yourself for days or week and being frustrated and hating yourself for an evening, and then you’re saying something like enough, it won’t make me better, learning and practice will make me better, so let’s play tomorrow. Pephan helped me out a lot with this. Tons of love to Pephan.

Well, also I reached a dream. When I was 17, I watched 2013 Worlds with excitement, though I understood nothing because I was an OU child. New format? Big event? That was very unfamiliar but holy crap so breathtaking! Two guys were fighting for the honourable title with some beautiful teams and strategies, I felt their drive even when I was so far away. That blew my mind. I told myself that I want to visit Pokemon World Championships too. The long way of getting better started in 2013 and will never end. I won Russian VGC 2014 big event and got closer to my dream. I qualified to Russian National Championships in 2015 and almost made my dream real, finishing 2nd. I got broken and gave up because sometimes it was too hard to keep up. I remembered how I sang lyrics from “Wavin Flag”: ‘when I get older, I will be stronger’. The dream wasn’t dead.  And I tried again. And I did it. The most trivial thing I can say now is do not give up and fight for your dreams, but this is really true!

Every Trainer has a choice To listen to that voice inside. I know the battle may be long, Winners may have come and gone I will carry on! Yeah, this dream will last forever, And this dream will never die, We will rise to meet the challenge every time. (Advanced Challenge) Yeah, this dream keeps us together, This shows that you and I Will be the best that the world's ever seen, Cause we always will follow this dream!

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Nothing can be perfect in one second. I still have issues with rivalry and with the community, though I wonder how we will do in 2018.

Thanks for reading and, finally I can say it, see you at Worlds!

Shout-outs to: PurpurVGC, Loui, PephanVGC, Elveman, Sergey, Annet Ilvers, unhealthy rivalry and Havkai for making this season amazing.

[quality-chaos-and-other-qcs]

Just finished Shield

Aaaand now we have the news about the DLC stuff.  So, that’s a thing.

Some thoughts:

Positives

* Marnie is definitely the best of the ‘rival’ characters in this generation, both in terms of design and in terms of character.

* Sadly, that’s not because she’s a really excellent character- she’s alright, don’t get me wrong.  Just.... Bede is an arrogant jerk and.... that’s it.  Hop is an enthusiastic fool and.... that’s it.  There’s really not much character there.

* I like the variety in the gym leaders and other character designs.  It’s especially noteworthy that they’re definitely actual different ethnicities/phenotypes from one another- Kabu is clearly intended to be Japanese (Kantonian?  Whatever the equivalent in-universe is), Milo’s a big triangular goof, and off the top of my head I can’t recall seeing any characters in the Pokemon games ever who’re soft chubchub like Melony is.  The closest you get is the ‘middle-aged mom’ trainers from some of the earlier-gen games.

* THE WILD AREA OMFG

* Wow this game is British.  I don’t know if it’s just the translation or what, but it feels a lot more British than, for instance, the Unova region felt American or the Kalos region felt French.  Some of the pokemon really helped with this too.

* Corsola/Cursola.  Corsola has always been just a tad on the weak side to use reliably when you get to the late-game, so having an evolution for it is nice (even if it’s restricted to the Galrian version), and the relation to coral loss in the ocean works really well.

* Most of the Galarian variants in general, really.  Not only are there some really neat references but there are type-mix coverages and evolutions to things that needed them badly (cough farfetch’d cough) and so on.

* The ability to modify Natures and to Vitamin past 100 EP in a given stat.  The ability to play mostly casually but still be able to squeeze out some extra strength for battling with friends or overcome an unfortunate Nature or save a little time training Effort Values is great.

* HMs didn’t return.  I hope they never come back.  They never really bothered me too much- Surf, Strength, Fly, and to a lesser extent Rock Smash are all perfectly usable, Cut is alright as a backup move, though I have no use whatsoever for Flash, Defog, or Whirlpool- but it feels a lot better to have overworld use of PKMN moves be completely optional.

* Some of the visual design for the various areas is really great.  I loved the neon mushroom areas, for instance.

* Paid DLC rather than a third game or second set of games is a much, MUCH better way to go.  I think the only generation where it was really worth it was B/W, because it was a whole later storyline and you could do things like have the stuff you did in B/W affect B2/W2.  If you can’t do that level of development on the latter part of the generation, there’s no sense bothering with a whole extra game, nevermind two (looking at you, Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon).

* Camping and making curry is fun.  I’d really like to also have the ability to interact one-on-one like in the Sun/Moon generation, but it’s fun nevertheless.

* All the Max stuff- from the Gigantamaxes on down- is generally pretty great, with one major and one minor exception.  I even like most of the derpy forms because of the references (Long Meowth is long, gen1 sprite Pikachu....).

* A lot of the stuff for the DLC looks great.  Galarian Zapdos may become the third Legendary ever that I like the design enough to actually use (the first two being Articuno and Terrakion.)

* TMs and TRs.  I love this.  This is really good.  So many moves that can be taught via them.  Keep this forever please.

* Team Yell is not trying to take over the region/world/universe/etc., nor working with the Head Villain.  They just really really like Marnie.  I like this.  Maybe we can start adding more Teams, both non-villainous and villainous, maybe even make it a mechanic or something, I don’t know.  Team Yell aren’t as fun as Team Skull, but I don’t think there’s an organization in the PKMN world at all that is more fun than Team Skull... nobody else will ever be your boy Guzma.

Negatives

* You can’t turn off the EXP Share effect.  I get it, you don’t want people to have to grind, but this doesn’t feel really like it was thought through- I finished the game and some of my team members who’d been on team for the whole game had only fought in maybe twenty or twenty-five battles outside the E4/Champion battles.  I really, really hate the permanent EXP Share and I want the ability to turn it off.  Having it is fine, I don’t care if anyone else uses it or not, but I want to be able to not.  Please can I turn it off?

* The major Max exception- the assortment of NPC assistants for Max Raids is awful.  It’s kind of hilarious to see a Magikarp actually use Hydro Pump, but the NPCs who team up with you are generally just awful.  They never Dynamax even if you don’t Dynamax at all, their move pools are really crummy, a lot of them get wiped out in one shot by Gigantamax ‘mon, making it incredibly difficult to capture Gigantamaxes without several friends in the room with you, when they don’t get oneshot it’s often because they were carrying Focus Sash and for no other reason, you’ll often get horrible random selections (every time I fight a Dynamax ghost I get that guy with the Throh and he literally can’t do anything at all).... the Dynamax Raid battle ally selection just wasn’t sufficiently refined.  You can do better than this, come on.

* The minor Max exception- Gigantamax Charizard.  FFS, why?  I get it, Charizard is kinda popular because dragon and because way back when the TCG started it was a heavy bomb in any Fire deck, but.... it just really rubs me wrong.  It’s the only starter from any gen to get a Gigantamax, and the work being done on Gigantamaxing the Sword/Shield starters for DLC barely makes up for it.  I’m tired of Pikachu- especially the voice clip it uses for a cry- but I’ll live with it because Pikachu’s the mascot.  But I’m SO FUKKIN TIRED of Charizard and only Charizard getting extra bennies.  I think I’m starting to actually hate Charizard.

* There’s only one Wild Area, it only connects three actual locations (two hub cities and a train station), and most of the routes are virtually just straight lines.  Next time, just make the entire region Wild Area please.

* Some weather types (and therefore some ‘mon, both Galarian and not) are not available until completing the storyline.  I don’t like this, and it doesn’t make sense to do it.  Cut that out.  I’m fine with locking the time of day to the storyline outside of the Wild Area until the storyline is complete, but the weather locking is dumb and bad.  Don’t do that again.

* The story is..... uh..... How to put this.  If the stories of all the Pokemon games were breakfast, the story of this game would be a scrambled egg sandwich with soggy limp bacon and burnt eggs on white bread that wasn’t even toasted.  It’s not completely bland, but it’s really, really limp and hasn’t been made the right way.  Honestly, I found most of it outright annoying.  Hop’s alright, but he doesn’t do anything- doesn’t even have a vague attempt at a character arc- a lot of what should have been exciting events either took place offscreen, were horribly bland, or came so far out of left field with so little explanation that I mostly just went ‘oh okay I guess I’m doing this now until I can get back to trying to become champion.’

* Player trainer is customizable, but no moreso than in Sun/Moon (I think maybe even less so?)  Where are the body types, Game Freak?  Where are the long skirts?  The kilts? Long hair for boys? Varied hairstyles? Why are there only three bangs options?  Only three eyelashes options?  The selection here is pitiful.

* OH YEAH THE LIE ABOUT REDOING THE MODELS AND THAT BEING WHY POKEMON WERE BEING CUT

Overall.... eh.  I’d give it a 6, maybe 6.5 out of 10?  If anyone likes Pokemon and hasn’t got Sword or Shield yet, I’d say wait until it’s on sale.  It’s not a full-price Pokemon title right now, and with the pass for the DLC set at $30 American, the overall pricing is... not okay.

They really should have taken the extra time on it, instead of shoving it out this winter.

[watercat5-blog]

Why Slay the Spire isn’t good

It's not often that a game manages to get over a 95% overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam. Slay the Spire (StS) was able to do just that and in early access no less. With close to five thousand reviews and boasting a review score to match universally acclaimed games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, does Slay the Spire achieve the same degree of perfection? I don't think it's a surprise to anyone to say that StS isn't at that level and still has a long way to go. Despite that, many players are enjoying the game, and it even draws thousands of viewers on Twitch.

But popularity isn't a reliable indicator of quality, and this is certainly the case with StS. The game has many problems in its current incarnation, and several of these issues are simply impossible to solve with the games current design choices. I'll be giving a brief explanation of the game's mechanics in the next several paragraphs, but after that I will be discussing exactly why StS fails to offer an experience worthy of what its review scores might indicate.

What is Slay the Spire?

Slay the Spire is a deck-building roguelite where you pick from a variety of procedurally generated paths to advance up the floors of the titular Spire. As you fight enemies, open treasure, and complete events, you gather cards, relics, gold, and potions to empower your character.

To begin, you select your character. Currently only two are available, but a third is on the way. The Ironclad and The Silent each have their own starting relic and deck. They also have a different set of cards that you can acquire throughout the game, leading to a distinct difference in playstyle between them. After character selection, you select a room to start in and begin your journey.

The types of rooms are very simple. There are ordinary fights, which will pit you against enemies in card-based combat. Should you prevail, you will get gold, the ability to add a card to your deck, and possibly a one use potion. When picking a card to add, you are given three choices, or there is the option to skip it entirely. I'll get more into the nuances of this later.

You can also fight elite enemies which give enhanced rewards and also a relic. Relics are potentially powerful items that give run-long boosts to your character. You can also find relics in chests which appear in the middle of each floor, occasionally in mystery rooms, and in the boss chest at the end of each floor. In shops, you can use your gold to buy cards, potions, relics, or remove a single card from your deck. Campfires litter the floor layout and provide much needed healing and an opportunity to upgrade cards. Lastly, there are mystery rooms which can give a large variety of events.

Combat will take up most of your time in Slay the Spire. By default, you get five cards and three energy per turn. Each card in your deck has an energy cost and an effect associated with it. Normally you discard your entire hand every turn, drawing a totally new set of cards on your next go around. Once you run out of cards in your draw pile, your discard pile is shuffled and placed back, cycling all your cards back in once more. Your goal is to damage, weaken, and eventually kill your opponents while simultaneously defending their attacks and debuffs they assault you with.

Essentially, that's all there is to know about the game. You advance room by room, gaining cards and other boons (or banes) that will affect your chances of victory. On death or victory, you gain progress to various card and relic unlocks.

What exactly is fun about this? From various reviews and other opinions, the deck-building seems to be the de facto point of interest. There are many synergies and combos to explore for each character, and the effects can be pretty spectacular. It is not that uncommon to create a deck that can play itself infinitely or to construct one that can destroy a boss with a single blow. Just looking at the game's cards can fill your head with ideas about different builds and strategies. However, the game is much more than just the cards, and these other mechanics and aspects tend to be the source of most of the game's frustration.

The Problem with Combat

Currently, the Spire is composed of three floors: each more deadly than the last. Unfortunately, the same can be said about how enjoyable each floor is. Simply put, the first floor is extremely boring unless you get a select few relics to make it interesting. You start the game with a deck of five strikes and five defends in addition to a couple special class cards. None of these do anything particularly unique besides doing damage, blocking, or applying some basic debuffs. You draw your beginning cards and have to think “what cards will be best against my enemies?” In standard TCG games like Magic or Hearthstone, oftentimes the solution to this question is not clear. You have to consider what cards you can draw, what cards your enemy has, what they might play in the future, and all manner of other considerations. In StS, this entire thought process is killed by its simple card design and the usage of intents.

Enemies in the Spire will have an icon above their head on your turn, signaling what they will do once their turn comes up. These icons are referred to as “intents” by the game, and the name is pretty appropriate. The intents go so far as to say exactly how much damage enemies intend to do. After a couple playthroughs of the game, even an average player will be able to tell exactly what action any enemy will perform on the next turn.

I'm sure many people if not all reading this have played Tic-tac-toe, but if you haven't, you might want to read about it before I continue. If I asked you to play Tic-tac-toe with me, would you? Even if you knew me quite well, you would likely only do it to humor me. Tic-tac-toe is simply not fun because it is just too simple. The optimal move is always obvious. In fact, it is so mind-numbingly simple that anybody who has any business playing StS can understand that Tic-tac-toe is also mind-numbingly boring. A sufficient level of complexity has to exist for a game to be fun, and in combat StS usually doesn't reach a high enough level to be fun.

In Slay the Spire, you will very frequently find that your turns play themselves just as obviously as Tic-Tac-Toe, and this is largely due to the intents the enemies will display. An enemy is attacking you for ten damage? Then you should play two blocks to block ten and then play an offensive card if you can. There are some scenarios where this is not the case. Your health is the ultimate resource in StS, so minimizing health loss is the measure of how well a fight went. Some enemies will buff themselves and grow stronger or make you weaker throughout the fight, meaning you may take more damage if you insist on always blocking the maximum amount. In these cases, taking a bit more damage up front to be more offensive is a wise choice, but this strategy is also fairly obvious. Once you have fought all the enemies, you will know the rate at which they get stronger and can plan accordingly. Even without the intents being shown, eventually the enemies' patterns will become ingrained in your mind, and then you will be able to predict their turns even further in advance.

Many roguelites suffer from a similar problem. The beginning is often too easy due to having simple enemies and not enough resources to perform difficult or interesting actions. StS takes this to a new level though as the enemies are so predictable, as is the way you interact with them. Playing cards is just not satisfying. The animations and sounds are basic, and there is no real skill involved in dragging a card over an enemy to attack them. The cards are straightforward, and so the game does an excellent job presenting information to the player. However, this makes the actual strategy of playing the cards trivial. Even well into the end game of StS, the act of playing a card is boring mechanically, visually, and audibly. Combine this with the mostly obvious turn orders, and you will quickly grow tired of combat.

I'm sure people will argue with me on this, so I will try to address some counter-arguments now. I don't think anyone can argue playing cards is mechanically difficult in a meaningful way. In terms of visual and audio effects, there is always a matter of taste involved. The animations and sounds are simple but done well.  Obviously, Mega Crit Games can alter/add effects since the game is still in development, and they have. They just recently added a fast mode to speed up animations which makes slogging through the boring combat go significantly more quickly.

Many players will also probably disagree on what exactly constitutes an obvious turn. Even professional TCG players make mistakes in StS, but many of these errors are just from playing to quickly trying to rush through the game's combat. The main source of actual reasonable errors is from effects that draw cards. IF your hand does not have card draw, the hand will nearly always play itself optimally, and quite simply at that. Most cards will either do damage, buff yourself, debuff enemies, or block damage. Your health is very precious, so you always want to end a fight with the most health possible. You gain nothing from finishing the fight faster (the only exception being thieves which will flee with your money if you take too long). The only complexity in the decision of what you play is whether or not the enemies can outpace you. In an effort to not make this an hour long read, I will not spell out every possible way enemies can outpace you, but if you play the game or watch it, you will soon find out. The rate at which enemies surpass you is predictable due to their intents and patterns. IF you can draw cards, planning your turn becomes much harder, and this is the cause of essentially all complexity in combat. As I will explain later, drawing extra cards each turn is integral to making your deck grow in power, so almost every deck will have some form of card draw. Even drawing cards can be a very simple decision though. For example, you might have a hand full of blocking cards, but the enemies are not attacking. Therefore, you want to draw cards that have some other effects. With some decks, drawing is easy. You may constantly be digging for a specific powerful card that is the lynch-pin of your deck, thereby incentivizing always drawing if you can play this crucial card. Other decks might draw to try and fill their hand before playing a card that buffs their entire hand. A deck with draw is not necessarily a complicated deck.

Anybody with basic arithmetic knowledge will be able to play the majority of turns. I actually took a tally of several runs I played, and I found that usually at least half of my turns had a clear and optimal play. It's possible I make decks that are straightforward, so for those of you who own the game, feel free to track it yourself and see what results you get. You might get something different, but probably not by much.

The simplicity of the enemies as well as their predictability combine with the basic card functionality to create a very simple and unrewarding combat experience.

The Problem with Deck-Building

So, combat is fairly boring, but what about deck-building? In fact, the game's deck-building is its most lauded feature looking at the Steam reviews. With over a hundred relics and even more cards, Slay the Spire already has a large number of tools to change how you play each run. You will almost never end the game with the exact same set-up. Furthermore, each card is quite unique. Once you get an idea of what's available to you, a huge array of possibilities unfolds before you. It's unfortunate that the game does not allow you to explore these different paths reliably.

There are a decent number of ways to get relics and cards in Slay the Spire, but all of them are random. This makes it difficult to make a deck because getting certain cards or relics is not guaranteed. Even worse, you do not know when you will get them. Suppose I get a really interesting relic, but I get it on the final third floor. That means I have only one floor or less to make my deck work with it well. This is incredibly problematic because of a number of reasons, which I will discuss in the following paragraphs.

Firstly, you cannot know what cards you will get until you get them. When drafting decks in other card games, you will usually be able to select your entire deck at once. In StS, you draft the entire deck piece by piece. After each battle, you will get a choice of one card between three, and you can also buy cards at shops with gold obtained through combat and events. Already there is a problem. Because you do not know what cards you will get later, picking the wrong card early is a liability. Since your deck reshuffles when you run out of cards, any bad card will just be taking up space permanently, preventing you from drawing your good cards unless you can remove it. Removing cards is very costly. Some special events can remove cards, but mostly you are going to spend a lot of gold to remove cards at shops. There are only so many shops though, and constantly paying to remove cards prevents you from buying all sorts of other tools. You can get cards that will exhaust your bad ones, effectively removing them from the current combat. However, you still have to draw the bad cards once and have the necessary cards to remove them in the same hand. At worst, you may fill your deck with even more bad cards, and at best you still must waste part of a turn to exhaust them.

What this means is that the best early game strategy is to pick a couple generally good cards to add to your deck. In most scenarios, you will not know what your endgame strategy is going to be at the beginning, so you pick a few good cards to make your deck better. Why is this necessary? Because you need to fight elites. Fighting elite enemies gives you more gold, better cards, and relics. These fights are what will make your deck become truly strong, and there's no reason to be making a wimpy deck. Simply put, the best way to win is to fight as many elites as you can. With the basic deck, you will struggle against elites and take a lot of damage. Gaining health back is costly and usually requires resting in the early game. Avoiding rests means you can be more aggressive in fighting elites, or you can upgrade your cards at campfires instead. You need to add some cards to your deck to make it good enough to take on elites if you want to have a good deck (and why wouldn't you want a good deck?).

Now ideally, you fight some elites and maybe get a couple rare cards and some relics. With these you can start developing a strategy that will tailor your future card and relic choices, and you are off on a grand deck-building adventure. Of course, this is not always the case, and it usually isn't. Even though you fight elites, you are not guaranteed useful cards. Simply speaking, there are a lot of garbage cards or simply neutral cards that don't lend themselves to a particular strategy. Similarly, many of the relics are either very bad (Prayer Wheel) or don't offer anything specific to your deck (see the relics that just raise max hp). Worst of all, you remember those few cards you added to make your deck decent enough to fight elites in the early game? They probably don't all fit your strategy and now are just mediocre additions that overall will make your deck worse. Good luck removing those when you probably still have several strikes and defends that are even worse.

But inevitably, you will fight the first boss. Assuming you've picked up a couple decent cards and gotten some relics from elites, you should be able to win. This guarantees a rare card as well as a boss relic. Boss relics can be very powerful, giving you extra energy per turn or some other powerful ability. By this point, you probably have a feel for your deck and what you should get in the future. Immediately, several cards and relics come to mind, and you add them to your mental wish list.

The second and third floors are where the game gets an opportunity to be more than an arithmetic simulator. You now hopefully have a more well-defined play style that influences what cards and relics you are gunning for and how you play your hand. Enemies get tougher and have some more unique effects, so you will probably start to lose here on your first couple runs if you aren't used to building decks. Even still, the turns are usually straightforward. The enemies seem strange and difficult at first until you realize their attacks and mechanics. Then fighting them becomes the same as before: figuring out what their intents say they are going to do, and what your hand can do to get you out ahead. Most cards and relics still do simple things. The relic Vajra gives you one strength, and Storm of Steel discards your hand and replaces it with zero energy shivs to attack with. Yes, there are some truly strange relics that shift the value propositions significantly. Snecko Eye is one such relic that randomizes the energy cost of cards you draw. It makes high cost cards much more valuable and low cost cards worse. While this does turn the game on its head, you just need to adopt a slightly altered perspective to realize that it doesn't change much at all. You still want to achieve the same goals in combat. It's just the card values fluctuate proportionally to their energy cost, and you have to factor that in. In fact, Snecko Eye can make turns trivial when things are all either free or very expensive. The relics and cards you get do not really do anything different in the end. It's all just an arithmetic game to figure out how much damage you can do while minimizing health loss.

For example, let's look at some Ironclad cards. A basic Strike card does six damage to an enemy for one energy. Another common attack is Cleave, which does seven damage to all enemies for one energy. Obviously, Cleave is better against single targets and against multiple, unless there is some downside to hitting enemies (which there is sometimes, but again it is very obvious when this is). So in almost all scenarios, if you draw a Cleave and a Strike, you're going to be playing a Cleave. It all boils down to which number is bigger. Only drawing cards can disrupt this hierarchy as I've said before.

The real joy of playing the game on these later floors is finding those cards and relics that take your deck to the next level. If you are playing a poison deck, you may be looking for the rare card Corpse Explosion to deal some powerful area damage. If you are playing many attacks per turn, you could look for the relic Shuriken, which increases your strength when you play three attacks in a turn. So many cards and relics flit through your mind as you imagine what could be. It's unfortunate that you have little agency in actually fulfilling those fantasies.

The cards you want most are usually rare or at least uncommon. I frequently go five or more runs not seeing some cards. I unlocked the Entrench card several runs ago, and I didn't see it until just recently even though it's only an uncommon card. Relics are hard to come by as well. Often you can only buy one good relic per floor, and the rest are random drops from elites. I have only once found myself with every relic I really wanted, and that was due to extraordinary circumstances (I started with Black Star, fought two to three elites per floor, and also got the Shovel early, so I had almost every non-boss relic in the game). Even if you do get all the sweet cards and relics you could want, your deck will still probably never be the best it can be because you have a bunch of garbage cards from the early game clogging up your deck. Removing all of them is not possible unless you specifically get the relic Peace Pipe, which allows you to remove cards at campfires. But if you want to remove your cards at campfires, you have to probably skip other sweet stuff like elites or shops, making your deck worse than it could be anyway.

You will never be able to make a “perfect” deck because of this. The only possible exception to this are decks which combo infinitely, which is technically perfect in the sense that you will win on turn one taking no damage. However, these infinite decks are as boring as pressing left click a hundred times. Congratulations, you've managed to make the combat even more boring. Yes, it's fun to do once, but making these infinite combo decks that consist of a handful of cards is just not interesting to play.

I'm not going to go into great detail about every deck archetype you can make. What I will say, is that you will struggle to be able to make it as good as you want it to be. You will struggle to remove the weak cards from your deck, you will struggle to get the key cards you want, and you will struggle to get the relics that can elevate your deck to its highest potential.

Each time you play the game is like throwing a token into a slot machine. You gamble away an hour of your time to see if you can get something good, and your definition of good will change as you play. First you will be content with winning. Then, you need to win twice in a row. Eventually, you will look to do more than win and construct either extremely powerful decks or very specific strategies. Much like a slot machine though, you will find that you hit the jackpot very infrequently. Even if you do manage to reach those lofty goals, what do you do with your amazing deck? You just steamroll the game in a somehow more boring fashion, just with bigger numbers probably. Is it really worth spending hours of your time trying to get that jackpot of a deck just to coast through the end of the game and then have to start all over? The answer to this question will probably determine if you enjoy Slay the Spire for an extended period of time. Of course your definition of a jackpot deck matters too. Every deck is just more damage or defense in the end, and personally I've long grown tired of finding just more ways to do the same thing.

The Problem with Enemy Design

Now that all that is out of the way, we will revisit the enemies and why they are simply not fun. Beyond their simple, predictable selves, there are some enemies that create a whole new level of frustration. The reason for this is that decks in Slay the Spire possess two ways to gain power. You can increase the effectiveness of your cards via relics, upgrading, and card buffing, or you can simply find a way to play more cards. Usually most decks will employ both strategies at once, but one of them tends to be more dominant. I personally like to imagine a spectrum between the two extremes. Each deck you make lies somewhere on this spectrum, and based on where it lies, the late game enemies can wreck you in an extremely unenjoyable way.

What exactly is an enjoyable way to lose? The definition can vary greatly between different genres I think, but I know of one condition that must be met. The game should not force the player to lose. The main, unifying feature of games compared to other media is the player's capacity for interaction. A game that strips this capacity away ceases to become a game. Of course, if a player causes themselves to lose and then blames the game, then they are not exactly justified. But if a player truly makes the best decisions available to them, then there should be no reasonable way for them to lose. Obviously, many games use randomness, and there usually exists a chance to be completely screwed over by the RNG. However this chance should be small enough for it to be a one time occurrence.

There are several enemies in Slay the Spire that will punish you for picking certain strategies. These strategies are not bad by any means, but merely the act of picking them can doom your run. This is obviously not good. If a player can successfully execute a good and valid strategy, why should they be punished in such way? In many other games, similar situations exist where you will have trouble trying a specific strategy. However, the key mechanic in Slay the Spire is its cards, and this is also the source of a lot of inflexibility on how the player operates. In other games, maybe you are fighting an enemy that is strong against what you have been doing, but you can swap out a weapon or alter your playstyle to still come out on top. Honestly, most games simply don't create a situation where one strategy is completely invalid like the enemy I'm about to discuss. In StS, you cannot alter your strategy mid-fight. In fact, altering your strategy at all is very difficult once you get to the third floor. You've already committed to some particular deck, and if you want to retool it, you have to remove probably ten or so cards and try to get new ones to replace them. This is simply impossible to do. You cannot alter your strategy on the fly due to the inflexibility of the card system. In this case, punishing a player's strategy that by all other accounts works is not fun as the game is essentially saying, “You picked this deck, but our RNG says you must fight this guy and lose. Sorry about that.”

I will say first off, nearly every encounter favors buffing cards in favor of playing a lot of them. This is why the Ironclad is better than the Silent in terms of win consistency. The Ironclad can buff his strength to an extreme degree, thus making every attack incredible. In fact, strength buffing is by far the most consistent way to win. While this is a general rule, it is not always true. Several enemies are pains to fight including the aptly named Nemesis, but I do want to talk about one enemy in particular.

The Time Eater is by far the most terribly designed enemy in StS, but his existence is a symptom of an underlying problem that plagues the base design of the game. The Time Eater is a final boss that has one very annoying feature: after you play twelve cards, your turn is forcibly ended and the Time Eater gains strength. Note that the twelve cards do not have to be played in a single turn. If you play eleven cards one turn, then you can only play one the next turn. In a nutshell, the Time Eater destroys decks that play a lot of not powerful cards. Remember the spectrum I talked about? The Time Eater exists as a line on that spectrum, and once your deck goes past the line towards the “play many cards” strategy, you lose. He exists to unfairly destroy a subset of decks for no particularly good reason.

Why would the developers make such an enemy and not remove it? I'm not sure why they haven't honestly, but the Time Eater provides an important feature. Namely, he serves as a limiter that actually punishes strong decks more than weak ones. The Time Eater is not that strong by default. He only becomes strong when you play too many cards, and weak decks lack the mechanisms to play a large amount of cards. I had a run as the Silent where I took zero damage on the third floor. It was easily top ten in terms of strength that I have ever had, and it played probably fifteen or so cards per turn on average. I had no very strong buffs in my deck. It was just playing a lot of good basic cards and manipulating my energy amount and hand (for those wondering, I had ice cream and just an insane amount of energy creation as well as mummified hand). However, the Time Eater did manage to kill me. This was partially due to some unluckiness as I had some bad draws, but I had bad draws before as well and still took no damage. The issue is that I could not play my hand management cards because the Time Eater would end my turn before I could utilize what I drew. There was basically nothing I could have done. Fully half my deck did nothing other than draw cards or give me energy. If I didn't play those, I lose because I would be playing a non-buffed mediocre set of cards where half of them are dead draws. I had to race the Time Eater, and I just couldn't keep up.

The Time Eater, and other such annoying enemies, exist for the reason of trying to limit the power of certain decks, namely decks that play many cards. In most scenarios, the increase in power of the player will far outstrip the enemies if the player is competent. The developers could just increase the numerical values of enemies to make fights harder (which they try to do with the ill-conceived ascension mode), but this is a foolish way to increase difficulty. In my strongest Silent decks, I can accumulate over 50 block per turn quite easily. If the enemies were buffed to be able to even approach close to that, there would be a problem since one bad draw would get you killed. Also, the Ironclad has no way to consistently put up that much per turn, meaning he would become useless. Average decks or decks from unskilled players would be slaughtered since they wouldn't be strong enough. There wouldn't even be a chance to fight. There is a limit to how difficult enemies can be numerically. If this limit is exceeded, the game becomes singularly not fun in any way. Control is wrested from you as the the game says, “Sorry, your deck isn't good enough. Please try again.”

So, in a bizarre attempt to try and make the game artificially more difficult for stronger decks, the Time Eater is created. His mechanic is designed to punish specific strong decks more than weak ones. You could imagine a similar enemy whose purpose is to punish decks on the opposite side of the spectrum, those decks that play a few hugely buffed cards. Unsurprisingly, such an enemy does already exist although he is not as ridiculously heavy-handed as the Time Eater. The Awakened One is a boss that gets strength for every power you play. Powers are one of the key ways you buff your character mid-combat, and nearly any deck will have at least a few. I had one particularly strong deck where over half the cards were powers (another mummified hand run). This run was one of my first really strong runs, and I ended up dying to the Awakened One because I had to play powers to thin my deck at the very least. If I didn't play my powers, then over half my deck would be useless, unbuffed cards.

These two bosses serve as important examples. The player has access to so many cards and relics that they easily outstrip the game's current numerical scaling. A skilled player will nearly always be able to accomplish this should they choose to. The developers cannot simply raise the enemies' numerical values to make them stronger. There is a limit to how far they can go as I said before. Even if they approach this limit, the act of doing so would invalidate many deck types along the way. So, in an attempt to challenge players who have conquered their simple game, they have created enemies designed to limit strong decks without punishing lesser decks to the same degree. Why should this even be a thing? It shouldn't obviously. Imagine playing a First-Person Shooter and being told that because you are good at shooters, you get to do less damage. This concept is just unfun, plain and simple. But even this is a bad comparison. Shooters generally have mechanics that can still make the game fun, and skilled players will use them to overcome such a handicap. Slay the Spire is so simple in its gameplay that such a thing is not possible. There is no room to outmaneuver your opponent since they are mindless patterns that tell you their every move. Your deck is so simple that it limits you. The source of your strength can become your downfall all due to fighting a specifically designed enemy meant to counter your deck. Enemies like the Time Eater should simply be removed, but this won't solve the problem of the game not being sufficiently scalable. It's not fun to play against these limiter enemies like the Time Eater, but it's also not fun to just destroy basic enemies over and over. How can this be reconciled? Well, with the current state of mechanics it can't. The way the player interacts with the world is too easy and straightforward. If you want to hinder the player, the hindrance must be just as straightforward since it too must obey the game's rules. Increasing the enemies' numbers or giving them heavy-handed mechanics like the Time Eater does not make the game more difficult in a fun way.

Early Access

For the final section, I just want to talk a bit about early access. A lot of people cut games slack because they are in early access like Slay the Spire. Of course, this is deserved to some extent. For example, the developers at Mega Crit Games have been updating animations which helps make the game look a little nicer. However, there are some aspects that cannot be changed without great difficulty.

Some things can be changed easily like art, music, small enemy tweaks, UI improvements, and other great additions like the newly done “fast mode”. However, the key things that plague this game cannot be easily changed.

I've seen a lot of discussion about adding cards to the game. This is just a bad idea unless they are talking about adding a new character with their own set of cards. Adding cards to existing characters is bad, and the developers agree with this according to an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Already, you will have trouble finding certain cards. Even common cards will sometimes elude you. Adding more cards would further dilute the card pool and make it so much more difficult to make a coherent deck. Instead of increasing the number of viable strategies, it would actually narrow it since decks that require specific enabling cards would have a difficult time finding what they need.

Ah, but we could make finding the cards you want easier! This is a sentiment I've heard a lot as well, but it's no surprise that there is already a problem. If I could choose what cards I wanted, I'd win every time. The game's difficulty is not in how you play the combat because the combat is so trivial as I've said. The probability of you winning is directly related to the strength of your deck. Making picking cards easier means that deck strength would go up. Why is this an issue? As I've mentioned, there is no good way for the game to scale to match. Increasing the difficulty of enemies numerically is frustrating, and creating bosses like the Time Eater is unfair. How else can they try to challenge the player? Simply put, they cannot. Making cards or relics easier to find does not solve the problem here. If this idea of making drafting decks easier still appeals to you, I would suggest you might simply like constructing decks. If that's the case, there are plenty of card games that let you directly construct a deck however you want to without having to deal with the randomness and time investment of Slay the Spire.

The game needs something that the current design does not offer. There are a number of things that need to be revamped to make the game good, but honestly the idea of a card-based roguelite might just be bad. Some genres or ideas are just doomed from the start. I wouldn't go so far as to say the entire genre is just bad, but there are already a lot of issues. To start off with, the game needs to rework it's base mechanics. This attack and defend system is just too simple and is the root cause of many issues in my opinion. Cards are how the player interacts with the game the most. If the cards and how you play them are so trivial in scope, how can you stop this from trivializing the player's experience?

I could talk about Slay the Spire for hours as several people have had the misfortune to experience, but I will stop here and give a small recap. The base mechanics of the game are very simple, and while this does benefit the game in terms of its clarity of information, it makes combat trivial as well. The enemies follow predictable patterns that are even directly telegraphed to you, making combat even more trivial and boring. At this point, I don't even pay attention to combat on the first floor. Building decks can be interesting, but due to the random nature of getting cards and relics, certain deck types are frustrating to build. If you want to win, prepare to make the same decks over and over with slight variations. Even if you do develop a strange and novel deck, it will probably never reach its full potential. Frankly, novelty is all the deck-building has to offer after a certain point since playing the cards themselves is so boring. After all this, you still have to worry about the annoying enemies in the game designed to unfairly punish certain deck types.

All in all, Slay the Spire serves as a brief foray into the realm of roguelite card games that quickly loses its luster due to overly simple and frustrating design choices. The brief longevity of the game is due to the endless and ultimately futile pursuit to make interesting decks and find the perfect form of them. Even if such a deck did exist, it would be wholly unsatisfying to play. Unless the base systems of the game are revamped, Slay the Spire will not be a good game.

I am beginning to wonder if single-player roguelite card games even have a capacity to be good using just card mechanics, but that is a discussion for another time. To end this article, I would just like to comment that even though I think StS is a mediocre game at best (and there is evidence to support this opinion), that does not mean people can't enjoy it. I am speaking about the quality of the game, which is not a direct indicator of how much you might like it. If you enjoy the game, then by all means continue to enjoy it.

Thanks for reading,

Water Cat

P.S.

I have a strange inkling that some people reading this will think I am just some baddy who is upset that the game beat him. While I will not say I am the best, I do win quite frequently with about a 50% winrate. Furthermore, many of my losses are just me trying to make stupid decks and failing due to the game not giving me important enablers, or I sometimes just quit the runs mid-game because they are boring. I believe I was ranked 30th or so in the world for a while with a 10 win streak as the Ironclad before I lost by knowingly playing like an idiot with the new fast mode.

For those of you who incorrectly think my arguments depend on my skill playing the game, take solace in knowing that I am good, and you can stop worrying about it.