Lurker > trdl23

wg64Z posted...

I'm sensing you have a disdain for Kingdom Hearts?

It is only eclipsed by my love for RPGs with good writing.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

UltiXX posted...

If it actually is true, then it proves my every point about the left.

It proves every point about ESPN's lack of a spine.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

UltiXX posted...

For the sake of my own sanity, please tell me this ESPN story about Robert Lee is a practical joke.

No way did ESPN pull an Asian announcer to avoid offending leftist idiots prematurely, right?

I really hope so too. It's beyond asinine.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Unsubscribed
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E come vivo? Vivo!

So I went to a Bernie thing last night.

I didn't realize it was going to be a Bernie thing. I thought it was just going to a John Conyers thing, which was why I was shocked at how many people were there.

I see why people like him. His passion is infectious. I certainly don't agree with everything he says (fuck protectionist trade policies), but he has a lot going right, and more than anything, he really seems to mean it.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

MariaTaylor posted...

I seemingly forgot that in arena my opponent is always holding whichever answer they need on any given turn, no matter how small the odds.

Never go full Ulti
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Maybe some Miyazaki.

Spirited Away?
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Diddy Kong Racing
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Oh god please no
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Is 1 Sailor Moon?
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Early in a Priest draft. Pick my legendary:

Y'Shaarj (No big drops yet)
Benedictus (Meeeeeemes)
N'Zoth (No deathrattles yet)

Forced synergy picks were both Servant of Kalimos, and I have a couple more elementals.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

-
SotN
SMTN
KH2

Please never, ever make me vote for fucking Kingdom Hearts 2 ever again.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Mr Lasastryke posted...

trdl23 posted...

In theory, yeah, the vast majority of the battles are done. Hoo-rah, go team.

wut?

"in theory," women in saudi arabia are allowed to drive cars?

Okay, I'm looking at it from an American lens only. My bad there.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

I'm not following that connection. Can you clarify please?
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E come vivo? Vivo!

EndOfDiscOne posted...

I agree with WhoopsyDaisy. I know feminists hate it when people say "I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist." They say that if you believe in equality, you're a feminist. But the foundation for that label is that women don't currently have equal rights.

And if you go beyond legal issues, no one really agrees on what equality actually is.

Depends if you're looking at it in theory or in practice.

In theory, yeah, the vast majority of the battles are done. Hoo-rah, go team.

In practice... indirect things get into play. And that's where things get dicey.
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Is his name actually Shiva or did he just adopt it because he wants to be "the destroyer"?
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E come vivo? Vivo!

I didn't draft triple CTK, so maybe the other packs ruined it?
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E come vivo? Vivo!

To be fair, making mana would probably have been even more busted.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

I was talking about PoM from an arena perspective too.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

LapisLazuli posted...

scarletspeed7 posted...

LapisLazuli posted...

Sadly no.

I have hard time remembering particular user's taste a lot of the time.

I assume you like.....The Flash??

My favorite comic runs of all time are Sandman, Astro City, Planetary, and most importantly Starman.

All totally solid picks from the experience I've had with them.

Wait, no, uh....nevermind, I got it.

"Wow what a pretend hipster, picking all the famous non mainstream books."

Are you actually trying to make Scarlet out to be a "poser" about comics? Like, seriously? Scarlet?
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E come vivo? Vivo!

scarletspeed7 posted...

This is such a "Who cares" situation

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Ugh
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E come vivo? Vivo!

He's a "spin the wheel" kind of thing. When he's great, he's great. When he's bad, he's really bad.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

I guess I don't know how NG+ would work in this game.

I might go at it again on a higher difficulty soon. I never got the hang of the big passing executions that many of the CPU enemies did.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

I'm curious how Pirate is going to handle Brandish if he perishes, since much of what makes him scary is that he is nearly impossible to kill.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

My sister was born under the last eclipse...

Wow, that explains so much.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Tombolo play Transistor now so you can get Pyre afterward
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E come vivo? Vivo!

This was more lopsided than I expected.

Is banging yourself technically incest?
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Assume that the other you is the correct gender to your sexual preference, roughly the same level of attractiveness, and is totally OK for it if you are. Also assume you're not tied up with current girl/boyfriends or spouses. Most physical characteristics are the same, save the ones that are highly gender specific (beards, etc.) but otherwise you're the same person.

I'd probably go for it. Not many tall girls around.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

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E come vivo? Vivo!

Oh, the context of SMFFFC. Missed that. Probably Eiko then.

Where's "playing Pirate Warrior"?
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Mainly, I don't know how much the drugs affect Fetch
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Suits are great. Ties are great.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Is there a reason Shep doesn't clean this up from afar?
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Which Eiko are we talking
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E come vivo? Vivo!

VI got it.

On an unrelated note, I can confirm that Stonehill Defender in Paladin is just as bullshit as before.

On a related note to that one, my pally draft is 3-0 now.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

My preference toward turning dudes sideways is now laid bare to all!
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E come vivo? Vivo!

okay, who wants 80 gold? Arjuna#1833
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The hell are you smoking, dude.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Anagram posted...

I hate the high-pitched robots.

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E come vivo? Vivo!

Limited

I drafted Kamigawa a few times on MODO. It was, simply put, miserable. Just absolutely miserable. Not quite BFZ bad since at least the decks were there, but good lord it was horrible.

The main problem I found is that the aggressive decks that draft formats need to keep crazy bullshit in check just weren't there. The flip-cards that promise to turn your little dudes into big Legendary powerhouses were just way too hard to trigger, so you were left with these garbage-tier little guys that you were somehow supposed to rush your opponent down with. Plus, all of your Bushido guys that would typically be your big threats on board actually do less damage if they aren't blocked, so your opponent can afford to just ignore them for a while. All the Legendary permanents flying around also meant you might just lose your best creature because your opponent had one too, especially since unlike most sets, many Legends in Kamigawa were uncommons.

Bombs were too bomb-y. If one of your opponents opened a Dragon Spirit, oh boy, prepare your anus for some bleeding because there are not many good answers to them that aren't sideboard-tier cards. Meloku was another near-unbeatable card that could flood the board with flying 1/1s at any pace he wanted based on the board state, including in response to a kill spell. Myojins were still a bit costly even despite the slowness of the format, but if you landed one, it was GG no re.

With such a dearth of aggressive decks to take advantage of its slow starts, the Arcane instant/sorcery deck was pretty much unbeatable if it came together. Being able to stitch three spells together at a whim was a bit much, especially in blue-red, the two colors that really favor instants and sorceries.

So yeah, it p much sucked.

Lore

Yeah... there's a lot to cover here. I might get to it this evening. Suffice it to say that Toshiro Umezawa, our protagonist, is fucking awesome and the best central character of any Magic story in history.
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Kamigawa Block



Overview

Unlike Masques, Kamigawa block had a definite game plan of what the block wanted to do: Be as weeb as possible, all the time. Okay, that's not entirely true since they didn't put nearly enough "waifus" in, but the whole premise was that it was Shinto gone horribly, horribly wrong. The flavor of the cards was top-notch; divinity counters for the godlike Myojins making them indestructible, the various Dragon spirits, the art showing the upheaval caused by the kami war. Even the art was perfect in showing MtG's versions of some of the more... peculiar spirits in Shinto. I'm still disappointed they didn't make that weird living umbrella thing though. Those are cool. The amount of and emphasis on the various legendary creatures also highlight how Japanese history, perhaps more than any other, chronicles the numerous legends in their own wars.

...But let's talk mechanics. Oh lord. The mechanics were mostly a "sacrifice effectiveness for flavor" problem, except for the mechanics in Saviors which made absolutely no sense. As an example that won't be on A-O-D, many of the Soulshift cards ran into the Mercenary problem; sure, you got to recur a smaller creature once your bigger creature died, but who cares since both of your creatures suck for their mana cost? The mechanics also didn't play nicely or synergize with cards from other blocks -- Spirits-matter and Arcane spells were only in Kamigawa, and most other blocks had far too few Legendary cards to take advantage of Legends-matter cards. Furthermore, these mechanics shoehorned you into bad decks far too often in Limited. Although it was easy to understand why WotC did what they did, that doesn't excuse just how bad most of these mechanics were.

Let's talk about Legends for a bit. Kamigawa introduced a new Legend rule compared to the one we discussed in Mercadia. Now, if there were two or more of the same Legendary cards on the board simultaneously, they all went to the graveyard. I like to call this the "mirror break" rule. It was certainly an improvement over the previous version, but it made mirror matches miserable, especially in Limited. It also led to some hilarious-but-shouldn't-be-a-thing deck design choices, such as control decks with 2-3 creatures playing Umezawa's Jitte, the best equipment ever made just so they could destroy an opponent's Jitte. Although it sounds cool, being a Legendary permanent in Magic is actually a downside mechanic, and WotC didn't seem to understand that.

Even beyond the mechanics, the power level of the cards in the block was just way too weak. Kamigawa had the unfortunate fate of being stuck between two far more notable blocks: Mirrodin Block, one of the most overpowered blocks of all time; and Ravnica block, one of the most beloved blocks of all time. Pretty much no competitive deck in any Standard had more than a sprinkling of Kamigawa cards in them, though a few of the more unique designs did see some fringe play (Owling Mine is a silly deck).

Apparently, Kamigawa was so poorly received that WotC said a while back we'll never return there. However, many of the players -- most of whom never played while it was in print and only know it from the cool Commander cards -- have fallen in love with it because the flavor, story, and art is so great. With Tamiyo, a moonfolk (slightly rabbit-like humanoids, taking a MtG twist on a Shinto legend), playing a prominent role in the current lore, WotC might soften that stance. I really hope they do. This plane has so much potential; I want to see it done right.
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Nice! I only watched UT so far (as you saw my comments, it's my GoaT) but I like the new layout!
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Arti posted...

MZero11 posted...

XERD_003SS posted...

But before that, what the hell does one do with this shit?

post on board 8 obviously

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okay, I'm really going to try to knock out all of Kamigawa in one shot tomorrow
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E come vivo? Vivo!

https://www.theringer.com/podcasts/2017/7/28/16078022/pyre-greg-kasavin-achievement-oriented-podcast-dd948a4f109f

Don't hold your breath.

Also -- no new game+? Really?
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E come vivo? Vivo!

I haven't gotten to play many games this year, but Pyre is head-and-shoulders above everything so far.

Recency bias might be a thing though. We'll see in a month.
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I think I'm OK not putting this into spoilers now:

Character ranking for Rites games:

-Ti'Zo -- Once you max out his special trinket, this guy is just unstoppable. His aura's surprisingly strong for someone of his stature, he evades attacks easily, and flight is really good. Plus the mastery that adds 10 damage is obscene on a flyer.
-Pamitha -- Again, flyers OP. The fact that she can just charge right into the enemy team is amazing. I always passed the ball to her since her trinket made her get "free" dunks.
-Zhae -- A decent normal cast plus unparalleled mobility made her fantastic. She and the next one on this list were my top scorers, but I'm putting her above because she scored more points and also could regroup after a failed attack for another go.
-Gilman -- Nobody could get their hands on this slippery wyrm. His dash speed plus his huge jumps made him a top dunker. And unlike Rukey, he actually did some good zoning too since he was able to wall off people with his aura and use it to retreat if needed.
-Volfred -- Volfred's the king of zoning in this game. Once I learned I could join his aura with the sapling's to make the explosion huge, it was a total game-changer. He rarely scored, but he held the door so well.
-Bertrude -- Clunky movement and unpredictable cast patterns made her tough to use, though that jump is ridiculous. I mainly have her this high for those score-changing masteries. Those are nuts.
-Rukey -- I didn't go the MoonSault path with him, which is probably why he's this low. He was great early on, but it felt like Gilman just did everything better than him. Still scored a lot of points!
-Jodariel -- At first she was my vote for the best of the original 3, thanks to her domination over the early Rites of the game. She falls off REALLY hard though because she's so slow and takes forever to respawn. I never got the hang of her dash masteries.
-Hedwyn -- A jack of all trades really is a master of none, and in this kind of game, you need to be a master of something. He worldwide buffs just weren't good enough.
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E come vivo? Vivo!

VC
FF12
EB
-
ME2
caps
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E come vivo? Vivo!

Yeah, the major reasons I liberated Rukey and Hedwyn so quickly was because they had people to come home to.

I think the majority of people are going to keep Tizo and Bertrude down there, and possibly Volfred if they don't take their own liberation.
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E come vivo? Vivo!