#but I couldn't dream of it without the card bonuses

[earl-grey-love]

Holy crap the gacha GAVE to me today I got him twice in the same summon

[fourseasonsfigs]

Hug of the Century

I love that there is a specific name for the hug between Zhang Zhehan and Gong Jun at the end of the Word of Honor Concert. Whether it's called "Hug of the Century" or "Century Hug", it's one of my very favorite things.

I watched the Hug of the Century live very, very early in the morning Pacific Standard Time on May 4, 2021. I ended up paying twice for access - once laboriously translating my way through Youku's Chinese portal, and then the second time just paying for premium access on Youku's channel on YouTube, since I was not at all confident I'd be able to get the first access right at 4am or whatever time it was in the morning. It seemed a bit expensive at the time, especially since I watched it without subtitles and therefore had zero idea what was going on, but it turns out it would have been a bargain at 10 times the price.

I have saved every single angle and fancam that I can of this hug, so it's a real shame that I only have one video slot. I'm going to put it to good use with one of my very favorites:

Words cannot describe how much I love this clip, and all my carefully hoarded little clips of this. Let's put a few pics in as well:

Ah, I feel so emotional looking at these pictures. What an incredible event. It's very worthy of being immortalized in fig form!

The fig maker had a difficult time with the factory for the engineering for this set. From what I understand, she had originally planned for it to be two characters, but it turned out the difficulty and cost was just too much, so the two ended up being made as a single figure. So you can see it here being shipped as one set together.

Unfortunately, Gong Jun lost the end of a hairpin! It's not common to lose part of his hairpin...but it's not that uncommon either. As you can tell from this, it was a pretty clean break, so I got out my glue and some tweezers and stuck it back on. It wasn't too difficult.

Alright, I'm going to just post the series of photos all in one go, so you can see the full 360 degrees of the Hug.

There we go. I don't mind at all the two figs aren't removable - it might look pretty funny if they were.

Here's a close up. The fig maker had a lot of issues with Zhehan's face during production - they ended up redoing it and then tweaking it several times. The finished product is much improved over the first draft, for sure. I know the eyes are very difficult for fig makers to get right…I've had a couple figures that got cancelled because they couldn't get the look right.

Gong Jun's face is a lot easier, since his eyes were closed. I really like the detail here of his rucked-up sleeve. I checked the pictures and they did model it very closely. It looks really good I think, some very natural looking detail.

You can see how they were actually designed as two separate figs. It would have been very interesting to see the production pics on this fig to see how they interlocked them together.

Both sides here...I think the hairpin glued on very well! Maybe my most successful one yet.

This fig set is quite a bit larger than my typical figs. To illustrate, here's one of the the original official concert figs.

The first-in bonuses for the set included an art card, a luggage tag, and a sticker, all with some really delightful art of Zhehan's speech. I love this so much! I would have bought it just for the extras here. The box card is in the upper top right.

Here's the back of everything...

And our box art. The fig maker really went all out on this set - you can tell how much this meant to them. It's the only set they've made - their dream figs. I'm really happy with it. Having all these different visions and styles of figs makes the collection really special to me.

Material: Resin and a lot of emotions

Fig Count: 417

Scene Count: 29

Rating: Love forever

[link back to Master Fig Index for more posts]

[lunarsilkscreen]

Card Game Design

I've been playing a lot of hearthstone, which is about as simple as you can get as a battle-card-game, since there isn't any responsive spells. In MTG: "Instant Speed".

Although, if you look at each turn as a layer in a stack waiting for response with some spell unable to be responded to, who's to say it's much different.

There are several parts to a strategic game, with many layers. And if you're building a deck, it's important to keep these in mind as well.

The first key is the "Core Layer" or base mechanics.

In most games, this is the standard; draw 1 card per turn, get one energy point of some kind to spend on playing cards, and then the core card design.

Core card design is usually, 1 energy for a 2/2 creature without abilities. Or a 1/1 with abilities. And then the 1 energy for a 2 damage spell.

Each extra energy typically only increases those values by 1 or sometimes; a percentile factor. In Hearthstone fireball is 4 energy for 6 damage. So each energy is worth about 1.5 damage.

So cards that break that paradigm are incredibly strong, especially cards that also allow storage energy for later.

Drawing extra cards is a strong mechanic, because it allows you design a preset strategy, and then get cards in your hand until you can play that wombo combo.

Most deck builder strategies follow the paradigm of knowing what the strategy in your deck is, and then delay until you get the combo, and then playing the combo. Sometimes even adding an alternate win-condition in case that combo doesn't work out.

<aside>I don't follow those deck builder strategies because I like to do things the hard way. But I won't go into detail here about what the valid alternative is.</aside>

The next key component to keep in mind is "Ramp". We know what the core gameplay is, so "Ramp" is the ability to break those rules.

This is taken from the MTG term "Mana Ramp" which is a green core feature, and allows for building up a lot of extra Mana so that you can play big cards before you would be typically able to.

In Hearthstone, this Mechanic is limited because the mana-cap is set at (10). So if you don't win with your early big stompy plays you're kind screwed.

But mana isn't the only thing you can ramp. You can reduce the cost of cards, give yourself a lot of small cheap cards that are stronger than their core values, and play spells that increase their power.

The Paladin card that gives every creature +2/+1 when they attack is incredibly strong in this instance. Because it allows you to turn a board state of 7 weenies (1/1 creatures) into a winning attack.

7*3=21

This is partly why I say mage is kind of weak in this context, because each of the class abilities is less than what the core calculations suggest. Except fireball and maybe blizzard it there's enough creatures out. And then flame lash is super strong, but only if the opposing creatures have 5 or less hp.

The reason for this design is because of the Spell Damage bonuses. The more you stack, the more valuable your spells become. (And probably because the devs found Mage was Overpowered otherwise and couldn't figure out a better way to improve the balance.)

What irks me about *mages* design, is that other spellcaster classes *seem* stronger. Because Mage is a "late game class". Meaning the class is designed to explode in an ultimate fireball if let sit for too long, a lot of other class spells are incredibly strong in comparison. Even offering more utility than mage.

That's the mage's Ramp design, but it often falls short of the goal. If you don't or can't lock the opponents board state and then blow up your opponent, you're kinda SoL.

Like my inclusion of "Pyrotechnician" in every deck, it's kinda limited by the dream of what Mage should be. (Pyrotechnician is great late game card, or card for adding spells to your hand when you run out if there's a Lul in battle. But subject to RnG.)

So at the crescendo of the game, this is usually at about 5 turns, you should be playing much stronger cards than the core mechanics suggest, for many classes this is playing their strongest cards at turn 5 or 6.

For other classes, this is playing a lot of creatures that have been buffed in some way.

In MTG, this is commonly when a player "Goes Infinite" if there's no response to stop the trigger.

For a late-game design, the spells that are high cost are designed to be played for their high cost. And so the challenge for this style of play is to get past that "Crescendo" or "Burst Phase" the opposing player is dishing out, binding their time. Until they can play those high cost cards and complete their strategy.

For a "Blue" player in MTG, (or sometimes a Red spells deck, or R/U spells deck) this is having responses for everything, until you can play a card that gets bonuses from the #of instants in your graveyard.

Or you slowly mill their deck while making sure the opponents Ramp can't happen.

Which is typically why blue players are hated. Because who stops people from doing sick ass jumps off of ramps? Boring!

Then the end-game, if it gets that far is playing regular high cost spells for their regular cost in the hopes of outlasting the other player.

Which, if you're not playing a deck that can outlast the opponent, you've all but lost without a trick up your sleeve.

Don't get me started on how colorless became the strongest color in MTG. Because that's when MTG *really* jumped the shark.