Lurker > NewerShadow

I've had two 7-win drafts so far (one going through bronze, one through silver), the name of the game seems to be early drops (or at least have something proactive to do by turn 2 or risk getting snowballed). It's a lot more my speed than the last couple sets, where I just don't have the experience with slower, value-oriented draft formats.

7-2 with BG toxic: https://i.imgur.com/nQtcR0d.jpg
Turns out if you make a growing threat on turn 1 most games you do well! Rotpriest is a wild uncommon too, the threat of giving deathtouch to your toxic creatures makes them very dangerous.

7-1 with UW go-wide toxic: https://i.imgur.com/y72u0xe.jpg
So I'm trying to play more responsible amounts of power this year but this curve was dumb enough that 16 lands made sense even without the Bo1 hand selection.

HxH returns in 2 weeks, and **ALL** back chapters have been added to the Viz vault:
https://twitter.com/shonenjump/status/1579639921471803393

It's also one of the best sources of basically every currency in the game - drink tickets, gold, and ability chunks all drop in decent quantities from the milestone bonuses, which are reset with every 40-hour shift. I think I might call it my favorite game mode, and being always-on in Splatoon 3 is a great QoL change.

This is maybe my dumbest salmon run moment, I have no clue why we were given the win with all 4 players dead:
https://twitter.com/newershadow/status/1575312729539239936

Today's rotation is the one I've done the best with in probably a week, the last 3 before it I was dropping or treading water at best.

And in an actual game, this is definitely the best thing I've done with the Zipcaster:
https://twitter.com/newershadow/status/1575312868492427264

Soon... Mr. Grizz loans out the big guns:
https://i.imgur.com/xMnM2jD.jpg

I think that's correct - I've been busy since the midway point so my data was all from the first half. It could just be that I'm just particularly unlucky, or everyone was playing in the Open queue.

I think the proportion of team Fun is really low (or matchmaking is totally busted) - in my last 50 matches on team grub in the Pro queue, only 2 were against team Fun.

I also think that actively using your weapon in the lobby might hurt matchmaking success? I've stopped doing anything between matches and I feel like that upped my match success rate, though it might have just been from playing in a more off-peak time.

I did not realize just how much more potential Anarchy Series had for ranking points than Anarchy Open - I got more points from one 4-3 run (though there were 3 other non-counting losses in there from disconnects) than from going 23-10 in the rest of my app history (174 vs. 164 net points). I guess at least the high-achievers will be in S-rank already?

Yes - once you have 100% map completion on all 6 areas, there's something in the first area that you can spend 999 eggs on once a day to get a random duplicate item, pack of tableturf cards, or a meal ticket.

Bofuri S2 finally has a date, it airs starting in January 2023.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tAaJ7hsas0

Took a couple hours, but I finally beat the bonus mission in story mode. Thoughts below:

The first stage is just such an endurance run without a checkpoint. Having to redo all the stuff you've proven you can clear every time is such a drag especially since there's a decent amount of dead time. Second/third were a cinch, last stage was challenging but in the fun way - I ended up trying to abuse the ninja squid to clear out the last wave and eventually getting there. I think my total lives spent ended up something like... 15/3/3/20? But stage 1 is just so demoralizing.

Now to remember to go into story mode every day to burn off my 60k extra power eggs >_>.

Anyway now I can focus on my true objective: maintaining Eggsecutive VP in Salmon Run. At least I don't get disconnects nearly as often there.

WazzupGenius00 posted...

So the tri-stringer is just complete shit, right? Nothing about this seems worth it. If the exploding arrows spread ink further than the initial impact it might be at least something, but as is I don't really see the point. I guess it locks a spot down for just a moment but the paint coverage is just so terrible.

I've heard the other bow is good though, haven't seen anyone use it or try myself though.

I think it's meant to be a player-killer with the charged vertical shot (from jumping), since it's easier to get multiple hits that way, and a triple hit should be a kill. It's probably better to just use something like the Squiffer though.

GuessMyUserName posted...

I can't remember anything I've actually read from Judd, I basically just talk to him to get rid of his exclamation mark

Yeah, I'm just trying to work through his dialog since he used to give sea snails for player levelups last game and I want to get my hands on some ASAP. It's just that sometimes he forces you to do a simple tutorial that I don't know if you can skip out of.

Salmon run - I'm now paranoid about burning specials to celebrate post-run when there's the looming threat of overtime. My last run of the cycle cleared the extra wave with 1 second on the clock, the first time I cleared it (in 3 attempts).

WazzupGenius00 posted...

Maybe it skipped some additional tutorials since I imported save data, but does this game just not ever explain to people that they can super jump to allies

It looks like a bunch of tutorials got split up and pushed to Judd in the battle lobby - I got one about super jumping a while ago. I haven't worked my way through all of them yet so there are a bunch.

I don't think there is a core set stand-in, it's laid out like this year's standard cycle was - 4 real sets, plus the supplemental (aftermath) set at the end. Where Baldur's Gate was this year, they're doing a Lord of the Rings set in the same way, with an Alchemy version on Arena.

Also, hidden at the bottom of the weapons page on the website is a section on transfer bonuses: (https://splatoon.nintendo.com/en/weapons/)

If you have save data on your system from the Splatoon 2 game, youll get some neat-o bonuses to help you hit the turf running.
Receive three Gold Sheldon Licenses. Give these to Sheldon to access your favorite weapon types more quickly, regardless of player level.
Join Anarchy Battles from the get-go, regardless of player level.
Start with a higher rank, depending on your rank in Splatoon 2.
Get matched against players who achieved a similar skill level to you in Splatoon 2.

Sounds great!

swordz9 posted...

Uhok?

Look, fundamentally there's like 5% difference between a leak and a spoiler, and I don't want to be spoiled about a game that isn't scheduled to come out for three and a half months. This topic is about the pokemon presents, so am I wrong to not expect untagged spoilers about stuff not in it? That's where my frustration is coming from.

I fully understand that going in mostly blind isn't the majority opinion but is my only option to just not open topics about upcoming stuff at all, and not discuss new information?

swordz9 posted...

Well according to leaks theres no level scaling so I have no idea how people are going to do gyms in any order. I think that was part of the leaks that have been accurate

Okay Buzz Killington, but I haven't seen the leaks, and honestly I'd prefer to avoid non-official sources (everything but trailers/official website) to go in as blind as possible.

If it's truly an open world, there might not be much of a difference between early-game and late-game, especially if you can navigate to all areas without much trouble.

I'm pretty sure Bow guy is the blood guy from the other jujutsu school, just with a new haircut so he's impossible to recognize.

I think I'm like 90% up to speed with JJK now, but it took rereading the entire series this week.

Obligatory day 1 MTGA draft trophy - this deck went 7-2.
https://i.imgur.com/vr7m6V3.jpg
I drafted a handful of good red cards, but in pack 3 I noticed that I didn't have *too* many, so I cut them all so I wouldn't need to worry about mana problems. It played good too, with decent ramp targets and a surprising amount of card draw. Format overall feels fine, sure it's alchemy but it's not terrible.

Now that MoM is getting closer to home release, I want to do a brain dump of my thoughts on phase 4 as a whole. I don't really follow a whole lot of the Discourse on marvel stuff (outside this topic, on and off) so these might be mildly hot takes but they've been smoldering inside me for a while and I'd like to get them out of my head.

Non-specific spoilers for all of phase 4, including Multiverse of Madness, ahead.

Movies: So so far in phase 4 we've had 5 movies (Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Eternals, Spider Man 3, and Dr Strange 2). Of those, I kind of think that there has been about 4 halves of a good movie, with Spider Man being the closest to complete and Eternals missing the mark. I don't know if the movies are just Not For Me, or if the Covid wait messed with the edits, or if the schedule changes just messed everything up, but I don't think any of the phase 4 movies have fully landed for me the way the infinity saga movies did. I'm not saying they're Fantastic Four (2015) bad but just average, which is a cut below my expectations. I think part of this is that the (cinematic) component parts of phase 4 have been mostly unconnected from one another - there have been rumblings of things for the future but you don't have anything like the stones as obvious plot devices. The Multiverse also doesn't really do much for me from what I've seen of it. There also is no big team-up coming, which I kind of think is the whole *point* of having everything connected.

Disney+: Phase 4 has had 6 TV shows, plus one airing (WandaVision, Falcon/Winter Soldier, Loki, What If?, Hawkeye and Moon Knight, plus Ms. Marvel). IMO there are about 3.5 good shows, with Loki and Hawkeye clicking with me, and WandaVision and Moon Knight almost clicking (WV I'm just not at all interested in the TV show part, MK just has bad vibes by design). I think the miniseries format just doesn't do them any favors since you need to make a good impression fast and maintain it, and I don't think the showrunners are consistently good at that. I don't think this is necessarily a trait of marvel TV stuff since I liked Agents of SHIELD and the Netflix series (even Iron Fist was fine!) but I guess it might be a format that's Not For Me?

Commonalities: This might just be an issue of contracts expiring but the other thing that bugs me is that we've basically gone back to origin stories again, except instead of for the title characters, they are for future content - all of the Disney+ stuff has introduced people that are going to Show Up in the future, but aside from WandaVision, they haven't really changed the status quo much. I do wonder if the changes in release dates have messed with plots and screwed things up, but if that's the case maybe Disney just needs to change strategies if they're being too ambitious with schedules.

Caveats: Between the Delta and Omicron (and whatever we're on now) waves of Covid, and overall dissatisfaction with my job, my opinions might be biased by being on edge and just not in a great mood, both being in a public theater, and in general. That's kind of why I want to post this just as a (partly literal) sanity check - if other people have similar opinions, or if I just need to take a break from watching Marvel shows/movies if they just aren't going to land for me any more.

CassandraCain posted...

Even Wandavision isn't absolutely required to watch first.

Having sped through WandaVision the day before I saw MoM, I strongly disagree with this! I think you'd probably be confused if you went straight from Infinity War/Endgame to MoM.

I still haven't watched What If though, and I don't think I really missed out on anything there.

squexa posted...

For example, in Fire Emblem, the Sacred Stones is commonly referred to as FE8, even though that's not an official title. Rather, FE8 is a fan given name because the game's perceived as the 8th game in the series (although ironically, the fan numbering is different from the "official" ordering).

I feel like "perceived" isn't really the word you're looking for here (or you're misunderstanding... something)? When I see numbers attached to fire emblem it's usually meant as their release order, not the order they occur. It's not like most of them are direct sequels, or even necessarily meant to take place in the same world.

Zelda: Four Swords Adventures was the first one I played.

Yeah, I don't know either, I guess I didn't know Wind Waker existed, and I wanted to use the Gameboy/GameCube cable?

Some more draft success, this time with a 7-1 to get into Diamond ranks.
https://i.imgur.com/aQkuUWx.jpg
Trip report: Ziatora is busted, winning 4 games, including 2 where my opponents peaced out after it hit the field. One of those I got him down t4 with the treasure from Most Wanted which was disgusting.

The loss was to t3 Disciplined Duelist, t4 4/4 Angel trick, t5 Angel trick and +2/+2 trick, otherwise this deck was super strong.

Also green was completely open in the draft, but I was able to pivot from WG to BRG when I got Ziatora p2p1 which felt really nice to successfully do.

Went 7-0 with this brokers deck, including a couple mulligans:
https://i.imgur.com/InsdnG9.jpg

my fixing was mostly cards and not lands which probably shouldn't have worked out as well as it did, but Disciplined Duelist/2x Lagrella/2x Darling are just so powerful.

First 7-win draft of the new format:
https://i.imgur.com/j8yGmtm.jpg

early impressions: this format seems really slow to me. With all the tapped sacrifice lands and duals that you need for fixing, you can almost afford to go lighter on 2s without getting punished too badly.

Thor: Love and Thunder teaser is out: https://youtu.be/tgB1wUcmbbw

Mobilezoid posted...

I was interested in A Couple of Cuckoos too but everyone on r/anime reacted with disbelief to it getting an adaptation, apparently the manga was really bad!

I mean, from a production standpoint it probably seems like a pretty safe bet:
-romcom
-by an established author, who has had a previous series adapted to anime (Yamada and the 7 witches)
-that has survived for 100 chapters in a weekly magazine.
-Also, apparently its volumes sell reasonably well?

I'm not going to say it's much more than standard fare, but it reached the "put up or shut up" stage of serialization, so being adapted shouldn't really be a surprise.

My only spring suggestion, outside the big names: "Skeleton Knight in Another World" avoids most of the isekai pitfall traps, and is a decent enough fantasy story. Plus it has a skeleton and a cool fox!

ScareChan posted...

Aww

I stumbled onto Irina, but I beat the boss of the area before finding her dad

Lame

I did this too (because I found the route to the back before I tried to tangle with the Demi-humans in the courtyard), but I did find him before trying to go back to her and it didn't break the quest.

I feel like this is going to have a sizable disconnect between what people are expecting (sand) and what we're getting (more Rebels connections). Not everything in Star Wars needs to be related!

Today's accomplishments:
-killed a few NPC invaders
-rekindled an old friendship
-freed a man of the earth from his earthly prison
-used a required gesture
-was tempted by promises of knighthood
-defeated a boss the first time I met them

Hit diamond off the back of this 7-2 GW deck:
https://i.imgur.com/KIpC5I5.jpg

Tamiyo won 2 games and the splashed lands had no effect otherwise; 3 imperial oaths meant I drew one basically every game and then established control upon playing it.

Draft is definitely really good right now! I hit a rough patch after hitting platinum, but my last 4 drafts have been 5/3/6/5 wins and I think I can probably hit diamond this month (currently at plat 2). I think this is definitely a format where you can get a feel for it and see your results improve.

I think BG is supposed to care about value/recursion? Either picking up from your graveyard or by getting value from your ETBs off of ninjas. I don't think I've drafted UG yet but it doesn't seem like there's any particular theme to it.

Dex finished, amusingly I had forgotten Bronzor along with the babies that I was missing (I used Bronzong for a good portion of postgame but apparently I caught it in that form). I found two shinies over the last couple days, Starly and... Staravia. >_>

Also (post-game) I didn't check in with the professor in his room after beating the main plot for too long, and thus didn't realize he gave you the other two starters until I was probably under 10 left (I had found Quilava and oshawatt from distortions, I still needed cyndaquil).

took a break from the game for a bit, but today I finished off (post-game) the weather trio. Dealing with their overworld gimmick just was not fun for me, maybe I was dealing with it wrong but it was a lot of forced time-wasting which is lame.

I think I'm around the point where I need to force distortions to finish off the dex, but other than that I'm probably not going to take the time to get everything to 10. I got a solid 50 hours out of the game, and if they have any free DLC I'd be willing to come back.

hit back to back 7-win drafts today, this time with BW and BU, apparently I need to draft black this set to win big.

https://i.imgur.com/yLpkTpU.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/FIEfM29.jpg

Also Virus Beetle + any ninja is crushing.

Early draft returns from MTGA:
fake 7-2 (7th win was a disconnect) with this GB deck:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/5/2/AAVrqJAAC6iU.jpg

Also had a draft with p1p1 Wandering Emperor, p2p1 Kaito, p3p1 Tezzeret, and a couple other drafts with the bad drafting/piloting combo.

WazzupGenius00 posted...

I think I've decided the battle system in this game is not good. Damage is so high that any strategy beyond rock-paper-scissors is worthless. It would be even worse in PvP so not including that was definitely the right decision.

To some degree, I wonder if the game expects you to raise effort levels on your party. I don't think doing so fixes the damage issue but I think it makes random one-shots less likely.

Not Dave posted...

have you all found many Unowns? I only found 6 or 7 playing through, but haven't dug into the clues yet

I actually got all of them without a guide I strongly recommend translating the clues though, they are very good. I'm in the middle of endgame now so I don't know if there's any reward post-game for them, or if they triggered one of the quests I have open.

I guess for perspective, I'm just through area 3 with my party (of ~9) around level 38 on average, and about halfway through 4 stars in rank. I've been backtracking pretty heavily but I also have a tendency to avoid battles when possible, mostly because I'm focused on doing something else at the time. There's a lot to do, but progressing the plot does tend to open up more things each time.

Midway through area 3 so far, my primary 6 are: Stantler, Monferno, Luxray, Dartrix, Kleavor, and Floatzel. I think I'm probably at the point where I should rotate some of them though.

Also Monferno was caught in its second stage; i only recently found a chimchar, and the first one I caught was shiny (which I didn't notice until I was in the results screen)

banananor posted...

i see champions of kamigawa card skins on arena today

how do you get the actual cards?

The hondens are in Historic Anthology 3 - it looks like the bundle is out of the store so you would need to craft them with wildcards.