Lurker > trdl23

Finally got a decent orb for DHIL. Now for the rope...

KanzarisKelshen posted...

(FWIW I think my favorite animations for her are Ashtart's, because they are just absolutely wildin fluid. But every single ascension has a selling point)

For sure. Ashtart's sith swords are SICK.

ExThaNemesis posted...

More opponents should be scared of the Master of Chaldea.

There's a crack theory that the Master is a Beast or at least a Beast Candidate, but it is genuinely a crack theory

Ratio went from one of my worst as of 2.0 to one of my favorite as of 2.1

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Oh, forgot to say, it's not my favorite NP but this is my favorite chant outside of UBW:

"The return to the Age of Gods, reaching its threshold.
The province of beginnings.
The sound of life blossoming open.
Everything is like a momentary dream.
Edin Shugurra Quasar."

Really conveys the majesty of an entity great enough and powerful enough to make the entire rest of the roster combined look like a speck of galactic dust.

Right but this requires not using her in cowgirl form

I don't understand the love for Abby's. It's so undercooked and confusing (not in a spooky way) to me.

ExThaNemesis posted...

Aside from that, who do you guys think has the coolest NP in the game?

I think along with everything else Roadless Camelot is fucking DOPE.

It is still Moriarty's for me. That moment where he leaps up and is silhouetted by the moon is sublime, and the dakka and SUBARASHIIIII that follows is wonderful. (I prefer the "pseudo-deployment" version) It helps that he also has my favorite overall visual design in the game.

As for the rest of my top 10 in no particular order:

De Sterrennacht (Van Gogh)
Samsara Kama (Kama 3rd form)
Dear Dragon, Race Across the Waves (Ryouma Lancer)
Fleeting World, Fleeting Might (Kagekiyo)
Custos Morum (Astraea)
Unlimited Blade Works (Emiya) -- it's a classic, after all
Mahapralaya (Arjuna Alter)
Balmung Kriemhild (Kriemhild) -- carried entirely by her VA being perfect
The Domination Beginning (Qin Shi Huang)

Castoria is the priority there. Straight up changes the entire game

It's also worth noting that Morgan's best use case is for challenging content where she can effectively make the "immortal team" alongside Castoria and Merlin. I used it to cheese a ton of the Teslafest CQs.

MacArrowny posted...

No way does NP1 Salieri outdo NP1 Morgan.

NP5 sure does, and he's way easier to get NP5 that any other story-locked since up until Xu Fu he's been the only 3-star Extra Class, so rolling on GSSR or other class-locked banner guarantee copies of him for 3-star servant slots.

Again, if Morgan hits trait, she's fine even at NP1, but she really needs the trait to hit meaningful NP damage levels. Only having one personal steroid is rough. That said, she can still crit like a monster with facecards since her s3 gives fantastic star absorb.

MacArrowny posted...

You do not need above NP1 on any Servant imo.

Ehhh. Depends.

On Supports or (most) soloists? Absolutely, NP1's all you need.

For Arjuna Alter? His damage is so ridiculous that he can get away with NP1.

For most other dps? You really want NP2 if they're going to outperform 3-stars or decently-high-NP 4-stars.

God damn. Nice!

My gf had the exact same experience with Voyager. She adores Voyager (the actual space probe) as a concept and even has a copy of the Golden Record. Truly a top-tier catalyst.

I will warn you that at NP1, Morgan's damage is extremely potato unless she hits her anti-Man trait.

Yes

Agartha's terribleness is largely in its ending.

ExThaNemesis posted...

Oh okay awesome. Whenever I finally start getting some goddamn rare prisms.

Treat it as a very low priority

Definitely need cleanses.

Also, this gambling man has just become my favorite character

ExThaNemesis posted...

Not only is she Grade A fetish fuel, but Kiara is one of the most terrifying villains I've ever come up against.

Right?

Me before SERAPH: "haha horny nun"

Me after SERAPH:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/646f21ca.jpg

Will Gallagher also be on Aventurine's banner?

Melt lives rent-free in my head so badly that I incorporated a fae expy of her into my D&D campaign

Man

ExThaNemesis posted...

Fair enough!

So I just finished the Dantes story part, and saw the last node there, thinking it would be a simple wrap up quest.

No. It was fighting all 7 of the fuckin Lords of the judgment tower again. It took me 52 turns and the better part of 45 minutes SMMHHHHH.

Got great rewards for it though I suppose. All those tickets will come in handy here in a few weeks too I imagine.

Yeah, that was the Challenge Quest equivalent

Up one more time

Obviously motivation has been low lately, depression's a bitch

Moriarty is a truly based lad

TheArkOfTurus posted...

How far away is the Morgan/Arjuna/Musashi lucky bag? I'm very tempted to just go for Morgan right away (especially since I like her a lot more than the other two,) but if that isn't far away I might just try with that instead.

(Of course, I don't have nearly enough to pity her, but testing my strangely amazing luck hasn't let me down yet (and I'm sure I didn't just jinx myself by saying that.))

GSSRs (Lucky Bags) happen at Anniversary in early July and at New Year

Undertale remains my favorite game ever made, but if you end up bouncing off it I completely understand

I also recommend skipping Agartha until you have nothing else to do. The story's quality is offensively bad and there are no unique drops from the chapter.

Shinjuku is a blast. Enjoy!

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Fun fact: this was originally a bug. They fixed it and the fanbase complained so extremely loudly that they readded the bug back in SPECIFICALLY for King Hassan just so he could get the swaggiest possible finish for his NP.

That was originally a bug? I had no idea. It's always been the coolest thing for him!

ExThaNemesis posted...

IDK if I'm overpowered or not, but Baobahn Sith and Herc just made mince-meat of all the final battles. Adding King Hassan to the team helped my cut down those Lahmus like they were NOTHING.

Babylonia is a step down in difficulty from Camelot, so don't worry you're fine.

IfGodCouldDie posted...

The back of the card

90/100

It's a beautiful design. Everything you need to know about the philosophy of the game is there; it looks like a tome, the centering of the color wheel... it is funny to see Deckmaster remain when the concept was dumped over two decades ago. Of course, the advent of double-faced cards means that plenty of cards don't even have the back now!

Xtlm posted...

The pink back of the card

38/100

I'm very glad it didn't come to pass. It's just so garish.

For those who aren't aware, Garfield originally planned on each Magic expansion to have its own card back, starting with this monstrosity for Arabian Nights:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/3/39b39c49.jpg

Yikes.

This, of course, would have meant that we couldn't mix and match cards from different sets and pretty much destroyed any chance of Magic becoming the behemoth it now is.

That was a week ago huh

Whoops

Quetz is fantastic. I used my ticket on her too.

Casgil is unfathomably based. And so is Siduri.

Note how Siduri is the ONLY person he will never, ever insult. He'll complain at her sometimes but never anything personal.

Bump

Will get back on this tomorrow

It's my birthday, so I'll get back on this tomorrow

No

Wheres a good place for me to understand the mechanical intricacies? Right now I am plodding along with my team but feel like I could be doing way more

Tag

Just started two weeks ago as my girlfriend got me in, just made it to Penacony last night. Loving it so far even if the Luofu writing was disjointed.

TeamRocketElite posted...

Do you know what a typical penalty would be if the judge is competent and the player is caught lying?

In Magic? They'd get their ass DQ'd on the spot. I hope it's the same in yugioh

NFUN posted...

Mind Goblin

What?/100

PeaceFrog posted...

Cube drafts

100/100

THE best way to play Magic. Limited is the best thing about Magic, and I don't understand why it's the only card game to push it as a core method of play. A custom Limited format where you can shape the experience to what you desire? Sign me the hell up!

I have a powerless vintage cube that I play with my friends every so often. It's currently 100% real, but I'm in a bit of a tight money spot, so I'm selling the pricey stuff from it soon. It makes for a wonderful experience that's different every time while giving my friends a chance to do some crazy powerful stuff. Here's the link if you want to check it out: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/trdlcube

Building a cube takes time and experimentation, especially if you are trying to make it have a specific gimmick like a block-cube. Still, if you're a dedicated drafter, give it a try, or at least try other people's ideas. I really hope I can go to Cube Con this year.

Lopen posted...

Akroma Angel of Wrath (include Angel of Fury/lore stuff here too don't mean just the one card)

82/100

No rest. No mercy. No matter what.

One would be forgiven for wondering why I love Akroma so much when it has a keyword soup long before Questing Beast was even a concept. First off... she's eight mana with three white pips. If you cast her, you earned those keywords.

The story of Onslaught block is one of the low points in Magic lore, best described as "yo what the fuck." Akroma's writing isn't very good (but is still among the best of the era, somehow). However, the concept is amazing. An illusionist wizard, Ixidor, who loses his wife in a gladiatorial battle to an abomination is left marooned in a desert afterward, and the bad juju artifact of the land, the Mirari, decides its next monkey-paw wish will give the dude the ability to create reality and not just illusons. The very first thing Ixidor does? Give up his arm to reimagine his beloved wife as an alabaster angel and tell her to do anything he can to avenge the real one. Somewhere, Edward Elric is coping and seething.

Months and months of holy war later... well, then I'd have to talk about the Scourge novel. I won't because even thinking about it would drop my IQ. Still, the concept and artistic execution behind Akroma kick ass. Magic has the best angelic art of any fantasy medium, and even compared to that, Akroma is built different.

With so many legendary creatures getting spewed out every year to feed the Commander meat grinder, it saddens me that I doubt any of them will become icons on the level of Akroma. I don't think we'll be seeing "Alquist Proft's Memorial" granting your creatures the ability to crack clues to Sphinx's Rev. Akroma broke ground in design and backed it up with her aesthetic and conceptual execution, even if her actual author sucked, and she deserves the acclaim all these years later.

At least I got kind of internet famous when this video came out of me beating someone with boomer cards and got over 340K views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbCeo5Pfv5U

Kenri posted...

Legends (the set)

82/100

I don't know if Legends has aged well or poorly for most people. So many of the titular Legends are wack in design, in mana cost, and color identity. As the very first set after Revised, there still wasn't much knowledge on card design, and it showed. You could look at two cards with the same mana cost and rarity with bewilderment. For some reason, Albert fuckin Einstein was on a white enchantment.

For me though? It's aged so well. Look how many kickass, iconic cards came from Legends. The Elder Dragons, who would be part of Magic lore for decades to come. Tetsuo Umezawa, the building block from which all of OG Kamigawa's story came (Toshiro is Tetsuo's distant ancestor). Famous enchantments like Moat and The Abyss still used to denote modern cards. Some of the jank was fun jank, too -- I loved playing Hazezon Tamar in EDH and abusing the fact that I don't get the tokens immediately. The whole set is packed full of wild, cool designs that just wouldn't be possible now.

We won't get another Legends, and that's probably a good thing. I'm so glad we got one, though. One was enough.

Anagram posted...

Yu Gi Oh TCG

Takahashi did explicitly base Duel Monsters on Magic, so this gets a pass.

Anyway, 14/100

I jammed silly games of Magic with my buddies in boy scouts, but yugioh is where early-teen Trdl cut his teeth competitively. Early yugioh was a blast: There was a beautiful flow and simplicity to the gameplay, there was room for brewing and interaction, and combat actually mattered. Young me didn't have the vocabulary for that, though; I was just glad I couldn't get mana screwed. (Yes I appreciate the irony in me saying this after claiming the land system is OK)

That game is not modern yugioh.

Master Duel did encourage me to try it out, and every meme you've heard is probably accurate. The game is slammed full of force-fed "archetypes" that leaves precious little room to breathe. Games regularly end with one player only getting two turns max. Every card is a tutor for another card. Turns take longer than Zero combos in MvC3 and have 5% of the skill expression.

Say what you will about the state of Magic, but aberrations like Dredge aside, Magic still plays by its fundamental rules. The fundamental rules of Yugioh are irrelevant. "Special" summons aren't special if everyone does 6 a turn. The fact that you can "destroy" cards from hand or deck, which is different from discarding, which is different from "sending," just so you can get distinct triggers? Atrocious design to get around Konami's own stupid errors.

Worse than the game is yugioh culture. I have never seen as much theft and violence as when yugioh cards are involved, and I can't tell you why. Konami's judge program is a joke (and outright offensive to me as a long-time Magic judge), where judges often get carte-blanche to make weird rulings that set some kind of common law precedent because Konami can't be bothered to make comprehensive rules and tournament rules documents held together by things sturdier than chewing gum and twine. A high-level player got a suspension for deliberately having a token in his deck box that his deck couldn't actually make -- in Magic, we call that, "your opponent played themselves." On the opposite end, if you have a card that, say, names a card and makes your opponent discard it if they have it in hand, they apparently can refuse to show you their hand and just say "trust me bro it ain't there." You can call a judge to have them confirm, but given how low their QC is for judging...

There's plenty more asinine design and cultural aspects to the game, but I can feel my blood pressure rising.

I will still occasionally play Master Duel. Sometimes I just get a sadistic urge to inflict pain on someone. I break out a deck designed to play like a Jund deck in mtg and smile with a glint in my eye as players squirm under the bizarre circumstance of my deck actually playing to interact.

Okay by "tomorrow" I meant tomorrow from now

I played Duel Masters a bit, but I didn't like the surrounding mechanics enough for the resource system even to "click" in how quality (or not) it was. Didn't try Kaijudo because I heard it's just Duel Masters again.

Lorcana takes a couple elements of it, but it's really more like Keyforge than anything -- which is good, since Keyforge had some great ideas (e.g. being a "race" game instead of a "knockout" game) but the execution was a bit of a mess.

Anyway more tomorrow

Are there actual unicorns

Lopen posted...

There was another game by Wizards of the Coast called Duel Masters that had a really cool mana system where there was no land and every card in the game was overloaded to be able to be played as mana if you chose to play them upside down as your one mana play a turn. For instance you could instead of playing Lightning Bolt that does 3 damage to anything as an instant you could play it upside down and have it function as a mountain.

This is what Lorcana does (and does quite well), though some cards can't be played for mana/"ink." I'm excited to see how that game develops. It has super strong roots.

KanzarisKelshen posted...

Scorching hot take: Cardgames are better when the resource you fight over is literal board positioning over mana. The game Duelyst died because of mismanagement, but its idea of grid-based combat was a brilliant way of controlling ramp in a consistent resource environment by limiting the amount of ways an opponent could leverage it with smart positioning.

Man I wish you'd been around for Android Netrunner. It's still the greatest card game I've ever played (yes, above mtg) and right up your alley, but the LCG model is just unviable.

Rest in Peace, king