Lurker > HeroDelTiempo17

I had two drafts tonight, a 2-3 with UW fliers/control and 4-3 with BR aggro.

Format feels...weird. It's very much like a core set with very little removal and lots of creature combat, but there's also a lot of quirky cards and incremental snowballing and extremely obnoxious bombs. Not sure if I'm a fan yet. I loved Zendikar and Strixhaven and I don't think it's on that level.

Spectated a few friends though and one of them completed Mad Mage with the UW uncommon out that doubles your adventure triggers...completely insane value for that archtype, although I don't know if it's one of the best ones.

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I mean let's be completely real

Typically, the party members outside of the core 2 or 3 characters in a Final Fantasy are not NEARLY as fleshed out in terms of characterization so "cool design" is perfectly sufficient for almost the entire cast

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Leonhart4 posted...

Not sure why you're calling out Rinoa. She doesn't exactly have a sexy design. If that applies to any FFVIII character, it's Quistis. Rinoa is not as hated as some B8ers would have you believe. She does well in these types of contests everywhere but here.

Why do you think female characters have to be sexy for people to be horny for them? Rinoa is like perfectly engineered to be waifu bait.

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Cool but the design isn't necessarily the problem, the specific artwork looks bad!

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pjbasis posted...

Amano art is really good but it's no surprise to me that it's not popular. Anime graphics are way easier on the monkey brain.

He's a great artist, but he is legitimately not suited to character designs, and his good character artwork is good despite him being out of his element.

KamikazePotato posted...

The real surprise is Lulu at 13. People be horny I guess.

Also I'm surprised anyone is surprised by this. Not only because horny but because Lulu is probably THE iconic Nomura design! Belt dress has not been topped.

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Galuf also looks like an Amano art victim now that I look at which one they chose for him



Not a good one! Meanwhile Faris has probably one of the best Amano arts here, and Bartz got his Dissidia design.

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I'll be honest, it just seems like a ton of recency bias and mascot factor, which is to be expected. The weirdest thing is the FF9 stans appear to have shown up for the middle ranks which you love to see!

XV also really getting the shaft because the characters were not the problem with that game!

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That sealed deck went 2-3. Either I had a bad run and am on tilt or this sealed format is even more bomb-dependent than usual. Either way: bad! Now that it's out of the way it's time to ignore it and play draft as Maro intended.

The Mana Sword posted...

Also I basically never found myself in a situation where I wanted to venture into any dungeon other than the mine. Small sample size, but I think you're going to use that one like 75% at least.

In the GW deck I played there were situations where I had the pridemate clones out where I would go into Undermountain (forget the actual name) to get the 1 life trigger from Yawning Portal and then proceed to ignore the mechanic, but every other time it was Phandelver.

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Pokalicious posted...

I liked it. I see "What If...?" as a fun watch, not something serious that takes the MCU plot forward.

So whatever it gives me I will enjoy.

Well part of my concern here is that it's occurring at the same time that "the multiverse" is becoming a thing so people might be expecting (and they might be doing) both

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Yes

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JonThePenguin posted...

New trailer for What If?

https://youtu.be/x9D0uUKJ5KI

Man I really don't want to judge based in the trailer because I was excited for this, but the animation here is not doing it for me. I'm not necessarily anti-rotoscoping because I've seen it done pretty well but it just feels lacking in personality despite being very colorful.

Also Killmonger and Tony is a real thinker and maybe the last two MCU characters I would think of teaming up. And uh, as a dedicated Tony hater I don't mean that in a fun way.

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Sealed deck attempt. I have very little removal but Drizzt and Ochre Jelly are insane rates and I hope bombs carry, plus I have some Ajani's Pridemate wannabes.

I have a spiked pit trap, maybe worth putting in over something but I'm probably overvaluing it.

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Mr Crispy posted...

Probably broader than the tc intended, but Fromsoft games.

Yeah surprised this wasn't an immediate answer, maybe because if you're only counting Soulslikes as Demon's/Dark Souls then it's not a hugely long period of time. It only really blew up once the PC release of Dark Souls which was a 3 year gap. But you could definitely argue it as a successor to King's Field which had been going for some time.

But at the very least it probably had the biggest delta going from "cult hit" to "one of the most defining games of the decade, if not THE most" in that 3 years.

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Yeah I loved this one. Honestly think it's better than Hotline Miami, it just...really needs that DLC

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9

Basically flawless, although if it has one it's that it doesn't really "hit" hard enough to get to a 10 for me. It's just extremely good at what it's doing. A perfect 9!

Mass Effect 2 - 8
Can't believe I missed the best mass effect day smh

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trdl23 posted...

I do wish some trials had an automatic item level sync built into them so they wouldn't be trivial. All the X.0 finale trials feel like cakewalks at this point when they should be the biggest and baddest thing a player had encountered to that point.

I think they have learned their lesson on this because the 5.0 finale was all spectacle even at release. And meanwhile I would not wish the experience of the 4.0 finale trial at release on anyone.

Actually I say that but I think I actually have wiped to the enrage in the 5.0 trial, though that was well after release so I don't know.

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Thwre are incidental spoilers for past events but if you are okay with that kind of thing it does a super good job of onboarding. It's meant to be an entry point as well.

There are also tons of references to past games you'll miss but this is just a thing for Yakuza, since Yakuza 0 and the remakes instead have a bunch of references to future games.

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I'm still playing this one so I'm abstaining but I'm about 20-30 hours in and really enjoying it. The characters are all likeable, the setup and character backstory goes above and beyond even for Yakuza, and the presentation is top notch. Ichiban strikes me as a worthy Kiryu successor while also feeling distinct.

Also was kind of surprised on how loudly anf quickly a Yakuza game wanted to yell about its political themes (the very hot takes that homeless and sex workers are people too), which was amusing. But it is Yakuza and I'll see where it goes.

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Lightning Strikes posted...

I have strong feelings about the narrative on this board around one of these games (not Other M) but we will get to that later.

Is it time for Marche did nothing wrong discourse???

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Yeah, a ton of bard's damage is from Wanderer's Minuet and Pitch Perfect, as well as upgraded versions of its regular GCDs and dots that you might not have yet.

In addition there is a quirk SPECIFICALLY with bard where a ton of your damage is based on rng procs from your dots, and the rate starts very low and goes up as you level. It doesn't become good until the 60s or 70s.

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Embercleave is just good against any deck trying to race or block (trample/double strike is an insane combo that means chump blocking doesn't work).

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

Question for other Dancers, actually. For Flourish, is it worth the free procs of AoE when doing single target, and vice versa, or should I just be letting those sit? Obviously RNG is involved, so maybe there's no real answer.

You already got the tldr answer of "yes" but I'll give the tl version of its actually VERY worth it! They are the same potency as your single target procs, and it'll give you more fan dance procs, and every two flourishes you will also have Technical Step and Devilment up at the same time you're spamming all this, so this is actually the most important thing for Dancers to keep track of for their own personal dps.

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The stuff I heard about him is how he and his fanbase treat RP communities, which is so far outside of my wheelhouse that I'm forced to rely on people who I trust to know better than me

But again, that's also just aether. That's why they split off Balmung and quarantined it. We did that on our own.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

Receipts? Didn't see any evidence of that from the 14 hours he was on in the background so far.

Well bigoted against Lallafels, sure.

I mean you can just search on Twitter and find receipts of a few years ago of him complaining about "pronouns in bio" types or whatever.

I dunno. Part of it is just twitter being twitter but also it's just like...the FF14 community, especially in the competitive area, ESPECIALLY on Aether, has a lot of baseline toxicity that doesn't get talked about. Not that I'm excusing it, but from my perspective a lot of the major 14 personalities like Xeno and Mr Happy also get up to shit, so a lot of of this reads to me like people projecting onto an outsider. My WoW friends already hate the guy due to some incidents in the past, but honestly the biggest difference seems to be that his fanbase is orders of magnitudes bigger than FF14 players', and haters have been more willing to keep receipts.

I dunno man. I'm just gonna say I'm a Cactuar main and I'm unsubbed right now and I'm real glad about that.

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Bahamut is a very weird design that I think is interesting but not good. Odd that they chose such a big name to experiment with.

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I mean, posting spoilers on Facebook for a movie that just came out isn't unique to the omnipresence of Marvel, that's just someone being a dick. The directors and actors even tried to request a moratorium on spoiler memes for a few weeks, right?

I would say it's unavoidable NOW because it's been two years since Endgame and its events are just part of "the lore" now.

And I will also say the move to TV has probably resulted in a lot more spoilers since the weekly discussion is a big part of ongoing TV dramas. It was the same with Game of Thrones, you had to get off social media until you saw the episode.

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Man I played this game but I remember absolutely nothing about it so I'm gonna abstain

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andylt posted...

I'm sad this is just a slightly upgraded port, this game could really benefit from a proper remake. There's good stuff at its core but it needed far more than a little touch up to me. Like how did they not revamp the sky stuff, or at least speed up the flying! Ah well, at least the controls will work. Hopefully they made them fun >_>

At this point I'm counting on BotW2 to have the dynamic with the sky islands that SS should have had from the start! I was expecting something like WW sky islands + classic Zelda overworld instead of a glorified hub. Seems like BotW could do that while having more flexibility than a straight remake.

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Oh my god this has become the Hearthstone topic 2

I thought I was free!

Ulti man, I gotta ask, how much do you mulligan? You gotta mull super aggressively now, the new mulligan rules are OP

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banananor posted...

to me dumptruck implies it's crossed the line from being attractive into being either comical or concerning

only if you're a COWARD

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Oh that's neat but also something I absolutely don't have the energy to engage with myself

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mnkboy907 posted...

Yeah I'm not even really sure how these variants even happen if the sacred timeline is just a singular timeline being maintained. Like where do these irregularities even come from unless there's multiple timelines continuing to exist in the first place? Maybe time travelers and the TVA is just bad at neutralizing all the little ripples, so other changes manifest later?

Yeah this is the conclusion I came to by going down the time travel mechanic rabbit hole. We KNOW there logically has to be a ton of alternate timelines that are "okay" because 1) Endgame was already explained as "supposed" to happen and 2) everytime Sylvie hides out in an apocalypse, by the shows logic this is an alternate timeline with differences too small to detect by the TVA.. So following that to the logical conclusion, there is no one alpha timeline. There are actually infinite versions of the "canon" MCU with inconsequential differences that the TVA cannot meaningfully distinguish between. But this would also mean that what constitutes a "Nexus Event" is completely arbitrary and just up to what the TVA decides is different enough to detect and cull. Which could very well be the point! Fascism is arbritrary. So in this version, they don't actually care which version is the "real" timeline but that all the timelines are similar enough and, presumably, don't find out about each other and start fighting again.

Edit: ninjad by rope which is a much more succinct version of this lol

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mnkboy907 posted...

I like the idea I've read that Sylvie became a nexus event because she was going to be good, when Loki is supposed to be bad. She was playing in her room with a Valkyrie doll when she was taken, and she yelled for people to help the other guy being restrained. As a girl, she could've had aspirations of actually becoming a Valkyrie, and that would go against the path Loki is supposed to take. Until then, being a girl may not have been enough to cause a nexus event, because she could've still gone down the villain route.

Not to mention she doesn't want to rule the TVA, she just wants to tear down what she thinks is a corrupt fascist organization; something a hero would want to do.

I can buy this, although I feel the need to point out the nitpick that if Sylvie diverged because she idolized and wanted to become a Valkyrie, an all-female warrior group, then it's not exactly an unrelated distinction! It's kind of the same twist, but more, which is why it would work.

So it's plausible! The only thing there is that it starts to raise questions about timeline mechanics (namely, that a timeline with the Sylvie swap but all other events being identical is not strong enough to be considered different from the main timeline, which I am not too sure holds up) but at this point you're getting into time travel mechanic discourse and that's just insane.

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Jakyl25 posted...

Is there any other kind?

I fuckin wish dude

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xp1337 posted...

Perhaps not, but I'm pretty sure the research has shown that where the GOP was able to successfully able to tie "Defund the Police" to Democrats it worked to their (GOP) benefit.

Even if the policy demand is correct, if the result of the activism results in the only side willing to hear you out even a little, then I mean... it's ultimately a backfire, isn't it?

I don't think the blame lies with the activists though. I think it's an indictment of the electorate. But then I think I also have a far dimmer view of the broader electorate than many of you!

I don't deny this happens but I still am forced to see it as a messaging problem, and one the GOP has a good solution for. For better for worse, the Democrats are working on a "big tent" methodology and that means that part of their job is to manage the tent. Various factions within the tent are always going to confront them with ideas and they'll have to synthesize something that works.

Take healthcare as an example. Here you have progressives demanding an extreme (Medicare for All) and moderates offering compromises as a rebuttal. The GOP of course seizes on the extreme (socialist healthcare!) but moderates actually have some sort of rebuttal (no, we are actually going to do public option, or expand the ACA, or whatever). Progressives don't have to be happy with it totally but you get the compromise and that's progress. That's how the system is supposed to work.

(Relevant aside here that one of the problems is that we don't even get the compromise. Biden has been awfully quiet about healthcare since getting elected, aside from lowering the Medicare age, which is a far cry from the ACA expansions he was touting during campaign season)

But the compromises to stuff like defund the police and green new deal? Crickets. They don't have tenable messaging or compromises on actual policy (often times because they don't WANT to even make a compromise, even on stuff that's popular like weed!) and so the party strategy just becomes "PR nightmare, deny and disengage" which pisses off the tent and isn't enough to fend off the GOP attacks. They straight up pick the [Everyone disliked that] option. This is never ever going to stop being a problem as long as the big tent exists and Dems can't afford to axe their entire left wing. There's no one to blame here but bad Democratic PR, that's the only sane reality. The other reality is the one Inviso subscribes to where the electorate really is that stubborn and immutable, and not only do I not think that's true from a cynical perspective (people are very susceptible to propaganda!), but electoral politics is just doomed anyways if that's true.

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Jesus christ I'm going to lose my mind going from relitigating 2016 to slogan shit again.

Voters are not responsible for the failures of Democratic Party strategy. It is not the job of activists making demands of politicians to make sure their demands work as campaign slogans for the people they are criticizing.

Likewise the political reality that Dems are constrained by a shitty system doesn't absolve them of not even TRYING to placate their base in other ways like Republicans do when things don't go their way. None of this is contradictory or hard.

Just nuke the topic from orbit whenever 2016 comes up at this point

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Ive only seen Barbarian, what else is there?

I kind of wish they did more with the Party mechanic in this set, it fits the theme so well and Ive always thought it was underutilized.

It was pointed out to me that they couldn't use Party here because that only covers 4 of the DnD classes. It seems like it was more of a mechanic that had incidental synergy with the past few sets than a recurring theme.

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GuessMyUserName posted...

To be fair I don't think that's finished with yet. When Sylvie asked, Ravonna was definitely smirking like she's lying and that she's actually fully aware of what Sylvie's asking about. But Ravonna had all the power and didn't want to say, while the episode ends off with the Sylvie and Ravonna alone together with Sylvie now in charge demanding her tell all. I believe we still may hear the specifics, although yeah things have been getting glossed over a lot for sure so far (namely as mnk mentioned the episode 2 closer that seemed like it should've been a bigger deal)

I'm remaining open to the possibility that there's a twist, but to be perfectly frank I'm going to have a hard time being sold on something other than the obvious answer here. And also, after Wandavision really burned me out on the whole "cryptic and secretive slow burn buildup for incredibly obvious events" it's possible I'm being too harsh here, because Loki is legitimately handling that better so far.

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ninkendo posted...

And if you are just looking to return to this world and these characters, Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! feels like the version that was made for the fans."

If this is accurate I don't have a whole lot of interest in it. I was wondering if the expansion was for fanservice or to significantly expand the narrative and I only care about the latter.

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MrGreenonion posted...

I kinda don't agree with the whole thing about Loki being a narcissist and that's why he fell for Sylvie. His animating motivations for the last decade have been self-loathing and an inferiority complex. Dude HATES himself. Like think of all the time he spent between Dark World and Ragnarok just chilling as Odin. He didn't seem to have any ambition beyond that, and he didn't try to do anything like make a miraculous return and have "Odin" abdicate the throne to him so he could rule under his own identity. I don't think a narcissist would be satisfied ruling under a false identity, but I get the feeling Loki was truly happy during that time. He hated being Loki and just wanted to not have to anymore.

My interpretation here is that Loki may hate his TRUE self but he's all about illusions. He has this grand idea about what he deserves and this conquering, scheming, badass version of himself that he COULD like, and that's the version of himself he projects when he's being a villain. His arc is that over time he gets worse at lying about this, which took four movies but we are seeing condensed here (look how laughably awful he was at lying about his feelings this episode). Meanwhile Sylvie already is that "badass Loki," at least to him.

MoogleKupo141 posted...

on the heteronormative thing, I was sort of surprised after there had been discussion in interviews of Loki being genderfluid, it turns out thats not really the case here.
I had assumed when she showed up that Sylvie was a Loki who chose to take on a new female identity, but in the last episode she says she was born a girl.

I don't think anything in the episode outright debunks the theory (echoing post 14 here) but I do find it so very Disney that they went out of their way to provide ammunition against the headcanon this episode. Was especially rolling my eyes at the scene in the elevator where Sylvie asks what she was even arrested for and gets told by Miss Badass Time Cop that she doesn't remember. Lmao really bitch? You expect me to believe you forgot Sylvie got arrested for the crime of being a woman? They couldn't have just written confirmation of that? It isn't really a mystery - she's right there! Yes, they used that line to make a point about how fascism doesn't care but they could still have made that same point.

Really hard for me not to view this the exact same way as bi Loki - Disney gets to have their cake and eat it too as long as they aren't super explicit about it on-screen.

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pyresword posted...

I think that the existence of the Genocide route is an essential piece of Undertale as a game, but I don't necessarily think that playing it (or any other particular route, for that matter) is an essential piece of the experience of playing Undertale.

You don't necessarily have to play it, the game even comments on this, but it's meant to be engaged with one way or another. And I'd extend that to True Pacifist too, you can definitely get an experience no matter how you play it but I think the "full experience" includes both of these.

I guess you could, very cynically, "solve" Undertale's intended message by refusing to engage with the Genocide route AT ALL, including not looking up an LP or synopsis, but since you're unaware of the point it's making...I dunno. The question was about if understanding the details of the genocide route is essential to the story, and I think it absolutely is.

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I love Volo's design, that seems like a super fun commander to build around

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Mr Lasastryke posted...

that explanation doesn't work for me because sylvie's personality is clearly way different than loki's. if she would have been a carbon copy of loki, this would have been really clever. but with the way they're doing this, i'm not buying it.

Is it not in-character for Loki to project his own thoughts onto someone who is only superficially like him and then fall in love with the false projection he's built up for himself? Dude is a TURBO narcissist.

If Sylvie actually reciprocates then yeah maybe you have a point. That would be stupid (but, admittedly, very funny).

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I would say the genocide route is essential. If the pacifist route is the game's thesis, the genocide route is the game taking the time to illustrate the logical extreme of its antithesis.

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10

Tried to think of stuff I'd change about this game and blanked, plus no matter how you slice it, it's up there with the best video game stories I've experienced so I kind of negotiated myself up to a perfect score here.

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man do I feel good that I played the GBA versions of these seeing this

https://twitter.com/N0Rythm/status/1410341777354235907

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KamikazePotato posted...

John Cornyn

shockedpikachu.png

Also only "tens of thousands" for Joe Manchin to sell out? Really? The Kickstarter bribe idea is looking more and more realistic!

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It isn't about wealth and fame but it absolutely reflects on how our justice system is a joke that doesn't actually result in any justice. There's no positive outcome here.

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From a development perspective I also have to wonder if the team was getting burned out on wild shit after designing tons of nonsense basically non-stop since Ikoria (excepting the core set). Perhaps I'm speaking too soon but I gotta assume the last three sets + MH2 exhausted a lot of weird bullshit design space and I can't really see two Innistrad return sets getting too insane.

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Dungeon/venture strikes me as a mechanic they knew could be busted and so intentionally watered it down. Which is, you know, a power level decrease people have been screaming about for two years.

There's still some individually strong-looking cards so there's a possibility it hits a critical mass for constructed but I dunno.

Still looks fun in limited so I don't really care!

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