#it's hard to get because of aggressive mystic players

[clonerightsagenda]

while we're on the topic of social media

Gill Hm Concept: FMA character most likely to be a Twitch streamer Kat hohenheim is a twitch streamer he's if twitch plays pokemon was a father in a more general setting probably that one younger guy whose specialty is radios though, he seems like the Tech Dude Gill Fuery? I could see that For some reason my mind kept going back to Ed discovering redstone building in Minecraft and vanishing off the face of the Earth for a month Kat yeah that tracks but idk if anyone else would want to watch a live stream of that maybe tune in occasionally for videos of whatever atrocities unto god this kid managed to do in minecraft this time honestly my grasp of minecraft was 'caves cool', idk how people are doing mystical rituals in there Gill Ed drops highlight reels once every quarter of whatever nonsense he’s managed to do and then if you want to watch his process it is all archived on Twitch in excruciating detail Al makes fun mob farms and then occasionally he and Ed set each other’s stuff on fire for fun Fuery regrets inviting them to his server Kat I would watch a livestream of Alphonse just to bask in his presence as he pets cats in video games Gill Al takes up coding just to make mods so You Can Pet The Cats Ed attempted Fortnite once but kept getting no-scoped out of nowhere by some rando Maybe don’t make your handle Actual_Fullmetal_Alchemist if you don’t want that kind of attention in-game my dude Kat Amestris blue checkmarks…………. Gill Good way for Scar and also internet trolls to ID targets Kat Father: where did my bitcoin go. Greed:

Gill Of course Of course Father would be into crypto He makes an NFT of the big transmutation circle, also

Kat Re your fma twitch stream concept “The presidents 10 year old headshot me in overwatch and then called me a slur” Gill Ed making a call-out video for Selim over his use of slurs in League of Legends’ voicechat Kat New gamergate Greed: I spent five years curating my beautiful animal crossing village and then my terrible brother broke my hard drive Gill Speaking of animal crossing: it may not be Raymond that Greed gets possessive over but he definitely gets Weird over other people having his favorite villagers in their towns Also: do not discuss shiny Pokémon hunting with this man Kat Ed and Al the incredibly aggressive Pokémon go players Summer 2016 the last peace and joy I knew in my life Gill Ed, about to trespass on government property: This Blastoise better have good IVs. Kat Fights church gyms just to put Pokémon with sacrilegious names in them Gill Ed is the guy nicknaming all his Pokémon “HAIL SATAN” and is part of why gyms stopped displaying Pokémon nicknames Kat Al posts a video on which games you can pet cats in and Scar accidentally likes it Ed: Isn't that the guy who commented 'GOD WILL PUNISH YOU' on my redstone video Al: idk guess he has good taste Gill Alphonse is not personally affiliated with the violent state apparatus and Scar is surprisingly consistent about the ethics of his vengeance quest What can we say Kat Roy is one of those army recruiters going after kids on twitch streams…. they made him do it because he's the youngest Gill Roy, running the Official Amestrian Military Twitch: how do you do, fellow kids. If you have any questions about joining the service let me know! Ed, maybe: hey what’s up, what’s your favorite war crime you’ve committed Kat Roy : the one you will commit for me after I hire you Al: you have to admit he's good Gill Roy’s the one dude they’ve got who can hold his own in an Internet flame war /ba dum tiss Kat lmao commenter: post another video Roy: wow I'm popular commenter: I want to see more of that hot blonde who walked by in the background Roy: hey Gill Ah yes another addition to the “chat inexplicably fascinated by streamer’s partner/roommate/colleague” club Congrats Riza Kat Roy: I get more hits if you're in the videos Riza: I said I would follow you into hell not into tiktok Gill The line must be drawn somewhere Roy Kat Ed gets cancelled by half the internet for disrespecting the troops, reveals his military credentials, gets cancelled by the other half of the internet Gill Why do I still see him trying to take all this with a Knife Cat-meme-type attitude Ah yes. He totally planned for all of this. He has definitely not been owned Kat awful teen Gill Ed: The Internet is great actually, even when you catch shit it means next to nothing in the real world And then he gets doxxed a week later Kat this is what you get for joining the military Ed people keep linking him to a reddit thread tracking Hohenheim as some kind of cryptid Gill Ed like “stop sending me this. That bastard was the one to walk out on us, I’m not about to go chasing after him” Meanwhile Al keeps tabs on the sightings just in case he needs to be braced for a surprise father/son confrontation

[dancin-skai]

YAY BACKPACK!

After 80 years of fighting with rather aggressive players for coins I finally got one 🤣

Maybe they want an eggy backpack too? 🤔🤔🤔

[spectrumed]

1. piano

The brain is a musical instrument. How it sounds all depends on who is playing it. The keys, the strings, the tubes, the circuits, none of them make noise on their own. Some may argue (some very aggressively) that every instrument has one exact way that it should be played. That there is one correct way to play the piano, and then there’s several incorrect (deviant!) ways to play the piano. But a classically trained pianist will not play the piano in quite the same way as a self-taught jazz pianist will play the piano. Sure, the latter does employ some stylings unique to them. They have an idiosyncratic way of playing that makes their sound highly notable, possibly even sought after. While the former, the classically trained musician, they’ve been taught to minimise many of those quirky individual traits that could, potentially, distract from the classical compositions that they will be playing. In jazz, music is carried by unique characters and a strong sense of individualism. In classical, music is carried by tradition, norm, and history.

It should not be understood that the classically trained musician plays without soul or passion. While we, in the western world, have become more and more infatuated with the idea of the self-made artist, the amateur who makes their way to success and stardom solely through will, and quite often a manic compulsion to create, there is no wrong way to play an instrument. However you make it work, whatever sounds you are able to produce, you are playing that instrument. You are channeling your inner essence into the music you are performing, no matter what genre you belong to. No-one plays their instrument the exact same way, for certain, but everyone is playing with what they’ve got.

How do you think? You’re used to being asked “what do you think?” But how do you think? Do you see pictures in your head? Do you experience an inner monologue? Are you riddled with anxiety? Have you ever hallucinated? Do you think that you think good, or do you think that you think bad? If we return to our metaphor of the brain as a musical instrument, what sort of music do you think you’d play? Sure, there’s the classical world, and the jazz world, but of course, that’s hardly the music most people will listen to nowadays. Do you think in pop songs? Or do you think in big heavy metal epics? Or maybe what you are is a maniac for dance music. You may find like-minded friends who like the same kind of music as you do. I think that there is a correlation between what music we like and how we perceive the world. Does listening to a certain song send you back? Does a certain tune evoke memories that you may have thought were long since gone? I know that there are some folks out there who say that they do not care much for music, and while I don’t doubt that they absolutely do feel that way, I can personally not imagine where I’d be without my trusty set of headphones and my phone loaded up with a wide library of music I like. It seems to me that music is primal. Almost as if only by understanding music, can one come to understand consciousness. To nab a song title from Jethro Tull (the band, not the agriculturalist,) life is a long song.

But I do admit that I come from a biased perspective. Music means much to me. I’m no musician, but I think that partly stems from a desire to not see “how the sausage is made.” I’d like to be able to listen to a composition without feeling compelled to analyse it, or to study it. I’d rather eat the sausage without having to wonder what bits of the animals this meat came from. Is that the taste of a spleen or a testicle? There are plenty of other things in life to dissect and tear apart just to examine. Perhaps what I wish is to maintain an arcane approach to music. Perhaps I am too enamoured by the idea of the musician as a mystic able to tap into an elevated state of being, some spiritual realm divorced from our own. That look on the guitarist’s face when they successfully manages to convey just the right emotional tone perfectly with that solo. The frisson you feel when the song reaches its climax. That thing we call the sublime. To explain it, well, it simply feels like you are making something splendid mundane. It seems to rob it of its power. Or… Well, maybe that’s not it all. Maybe all I want is just a moment or two when I can relax and avoid thinking about things. For a moment, I’d just like to forget that I’m a person.

The world is so loud. Really, I can guarantee you that if you didn’t have those natural mental filters that we all have, you’d go insane. Every little sound. Every little bit of stimuli. It would all overwhelm you. It would burrow deep into your consciousness, and it would refuse to leave. Ever tried to fall asleep while hearing the dripping water from a leaky tap? Drip, drip, drip. Know how impossible that feels? Well, imagine if you had that feeling always, imagine if all noise felt that visceral and in-your-face. Lucky you’ve got those filters. Turns out, not everyone has them. I don’t. It fucking sucks.

Music is lovely, because music is organised. It has structure. You can listen to a song, remember it, and then follow along as you’re listening to it a second time. Music follows a pattern. There is a logic to patterns. But the everyday noises that surround us do not follow a pattern. Let me tell you, birds are infuriating animals. Sure, their individual little songs can be nice to listen to, but when all the birds of the forest come together, they don’t perform as an orchestra. No, they’re all just doing their own solo piece, completely oblivious to the sounds going on around them. I’m thinking that nature could have done well with a conductor. Someone competent to create order. To make it all just that bit more peaceful. I don’t have those filters others take for granted. I can’t ignore sounds. And that makes the world feel so loud.

It is neat to imagine the human brain as a musical instrument. You can imagine that seasoned player, that old session stalwart who’s played on all the most famous pop hits throughout the decades, and you want to imagine them playing with grace and finesse and showcasing all the amazing sounds that the instrument can produce. But the brain isn’t really some marvel of biological engineering. It’s not intelligently designed. It’s actually just a piece of meat hiding underneath layers of bone, skin, and hair. It’s a complex bit of meat, admittedly. It’s hard to understand exactly how the brain does work. But if you were to open up a person’s cranium, rather than feeling awe, you’d most likely feel grossed out. This thing that we’re supposed to think of as a miraculous product of millennia of evolutionary progress, it looks… Well, it looks awfully pinkish, and wrinkly, and frankly unpleasant.

We’re all mortal beings, made from squishy flesh and blood, scraped together from all that was available at the time. Sure, we may dream and fantasise about one day achieving those heights we aspire towards, to become that perfect superman, whose cognitive abilities put them on par with the mythological titans of the past. But really, we’re all just trying to do our best with what we’ve got. You may not be able to play the finest of Mozart’s many symphonies, the instrument that you’ve been given just simply isn’t up to snuff. Even if all you can play is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, that shouldn’t weigh on your value as a human being. And besides, that’s still Mozart you’re playing.

I will undoubtedly get back to discussing music in later instalments of this blog. It is truly a major part of my world, and without the joys I associate with it, I would be in a far worse place. But I think that, ultimately, what I wish to arrive at, is the fact that our sensory perceptions have a significant impact on how we piece together our sense of self. While it may be an unnerving thought to consider, what would happen to our understanding of ourselves if we one day were to lose one of our major senses? I am sure that many people could go without their sense of smell. Humans have long since abandoned smell as a dominant sense. To a dog, on the other hand, to lose its sense of smell would be devastating. It would lose part of what it means to be a dog. For humans, we enjoy the scent of freshly baked bread, the whiff of somebody’s perfume, or the bouquet of some pricey bottle of wine. But that’s nothing to what dogs get out of their sense of smell. To a dog, its sense of smell is its world. Is a dog even a dog if it can’t sniff around? Do you think dogs ever take their sense of smell for granted?

I do not think that humans are what we eat, but I suspect that we may be what we perceive. Our consciousness does not exist independently of the world that surrounds it, but rather, it is formed by the outside stimuli it receives on a constant basis. The fury of noises, lights, smells, all kinds of impressions, it shapes you. It is what our memories are built on. I am not at all certain that there exists anything more to the mind beyond that. I doubt that we’ve got some immutable soul hidden underneath it all. Humans are the collection of thoughts and ideas that we’ve attached ourselves to throughout our lives, and naturally, if you’re neurodivergent, that process is going to happen differently to most. At times those differences will be large enough that it can create real conflicts with those others around you. Effectively, to be neurodivergent is to suffer constantly from culture shocks. To me, it is natural to loathe the cacophony of birds in the summer. Their screams feel like piercing needles embedding themselves into my skin. But I try telling that to others, and I’ve yet to find anybody who agrees with me.

So, am I just wrong? Am I mistaken? Am I a freak? Why can’t I just be like everybody else? Why must I be such a buzzkill? I can’t even enjoy birdsong, I really must be a pain to be around. How did it come about that I just can’t be normal? Normal. I want to be normal. It is and it will likely always be grossly underrated to just be normal. Normal people don’t know how good they have it. They’re just too normal to be able to perceive it. When you’ve never been without it, you don’t know what it is to miss it. Normalcy. Having a normal brain. Having others see you as a normal person. Only if you didn’t have it, would you know how great it is. Do you sometimes wonder if dogs know how much they’d miss their sense of smell if they ever were to lose it?

Then again, there is no such thing as normal, is there? If you were to take the world’s most average person, then that person would be abnormal. To be a person is to be unique. We’re all special snowflakes. Aren’t we?

You may not play your instrument in a conventional manner, but who’s to say what manner counts as conventional? It’s all just so arbitrary. Who’s to say you can’t play an acoustic guitar as a drum? Who’s to say you can’t treat your piano as a percussion instrument? Smack your cello with a flute, if you’d like. Isn’t it just delightful when you see a unique performer who is able to play their instrument in a way you could never before have conceived it being played? The novelty of it all. The absolute joy of being exposed to something different. Of seeing something that can barely be believed. You love things that are unusual, and you think people who are different should delight in being different. Surely, it is better than being normal and boring?

But is it all that bad to be boring? And you may love what’s different, but when it comes down to it, despite your positive inclination, you still perceive it as being the other. It is not you. It is not mainstream, it is underground. Secluded. Deviant. Those who truly do struggle to fit in with society, to be just like everybody else, they are constantly faced with these little reminders that they just don’t belong. They are humans (at least they think they are humans,) but they’re not like other humans they know. For as much as they get told that they should embrace their quirky nature as simply being who they are, it is hard to know what it is like to be not normal, when all you’ve ever been is normal. Sure, for a performance or two, it’s fun. It’s fun to get the attention, to be seen as having something others don’t have. But then, at the end of the day, all you want is to be able to fall asleep, without the birdsong outside your window keeping you awake.

[spiffyspuffy]

My Mystic Messenger Opinions

(That no one asked for)

Zen

Character: 8/10 I know a lot of people think Zens annoying but I find him endearing. One of the best things about this game is the complexity of the characters and I love that Zen’s cockiness is actually how he hides his insecurities. Even though he’s egotistical about himself, he’s never shallow with MC. He says multiple times that he doesn’t care about MC’s looks. He loves her for who she is and shows this in how he makes an effort to get to know her and be her cheerleader everyday. An underrated thing about Zen is how emotionally intelligent he is. He’s great at helping the RFA members when they need emotional support (Yoosung’s grief over loosing Rika, Jaehee crying from the stress of her job and MC’s shock at almost being kidnapped). 

Route: 2/10 Zen is a great character and he deserves a better route. The false rape accusation plot is horrible and offensive. Also, his route functions as an introduction to the game’s plot, so it’s exposition heavy and lacks action. The creators said that the lesson of his route is that when our insecurities are handled in a healthy way, they can push us to be better people. I love this message and I wish it had been highlighted more in his route.

Romantic Potential: 9/10 Zen is arguably the most dateable of all the characters. He’s a bad boy without being sketchy. He’s protective without being possessive. He’s kind without being a pushover and he’s smart without being pretentious. His biggest drawbacks are his overconfidence and and how busy he is with working. There aren’t any glaring red flags. 

~ More under the cut ~ 

Jeahee

Character: 7/10 I love this adorable theater nerd! She comes across as formal and stuffy at first, but reveals herself to be passionate and funny the more you get to know her. I gave her a lower score because she does have a strong personality that rubs me the wrong way sometimes (her jealousy of MC in Zen’s route, her lack of sympathy towards Jumin in her own route and her general rudeness towards Yoosung). She is the most mature of the RFA though, so her exasperation is warranted. Being mature and grounded also makes Jaehee the least complex Mysme character. I’ve got a lot of respect for her though!

Route: 5/10 Getting to engage in discourse about capitalism and the patriarchy? Amazing and hands down the best part of her route. It’s really inspiring to see Jaehee stand up for herself and choose to follow her dreams. I think it’s important for every young person to hear that they should have a positive work/life balance and demand that their employer supports that. Other highlights are Seven helping Jaehee by making the Power Point presentation for Jumin’s cat project, getting to fangirl with Jaehee over Zen and the creepy stalker plot. I thoroughly enjoy her route and the only reason the score is so low is because some of the other routes are seriously incredible.

Romantic Potential: 8/10 Jeahee doesn’t have any red flags either. I think she’s perfectly capable of having a healthy, romantic relationship with MC. The biggest issue standing in their way is Korea’s bias against lesbian relationships. As a fellow coffee lover and theater enthusiast though, I could definitely see myself or someone similar having a happy life with her, even if it might have to be in secret.

Yoosung

Character: 6/10 I can’t stand people who aren’t competent. Yoosung is a terrible cook, he barely cleans and he doesn’t pay attention to his studies. On top of that, 80% of his personality is that he’s a gamer AND he’s in love with his “dead” adopted cousin. Yuck. ~ But ~ I understand that he’s depressed and depression can seriously effect someone’s executive functioning. Taking all of those negatives away, we’re left with a young man who’s trying to his best to be taken seriously, which is something I can relate to. It’s nice to see imposter syndrome represented and I admire his loyalty to his friends. 

Route: 8/10 This route is sooo good! Who can forget the night when the RFA starts being aggressively stalked by Minty Eye? And the pic Zen takes of a believer looking at him through his apartment window...chills. His route only gets better from there when he infiltrates Mint Eye with Seven. This is the first time we get to see the twins interact and damn, is it confusing. But in a good way!!   The biggest drawback is that MC is stuck in Rika’s apartment and doesn’t play much of an active role in the story. 

Romantic Potential: 7/10 Despite all the negatives I listed about Yoosung, I do think he’s capable of have a healthy, romantic relationship with MC. Yoosung is also the only true sub of the RFA men, which is a definite plus for some players. Yoosung’s yandere side is a huge red flag though. MC better watch out if she doesn’t dote on him as much as he wants. Once he falls for her, he’s all in. 

Jumin

Character: 5/10 Unpopular opinion, but I hate Jumin. I understand that he’s some people’s guilty pleasure though. Jumin’s good aspects are that he’s intensely loyal, an animal lover and has a dry sense of humor. I appreciate how devoted he is to the RFA and it’s members. He offers to help Zen multiple times (albeit rejected), sends everyone body guards in his route and pays the hospital in the SE to keep Saeran’s identity top secret. What I’m not a fan of is the way he obsesses over MC and traps her in his house. This isn’t the first time he’s shown obsessive tendencies either. Seven explicitly states that Jumin acted this way with Rika in the past. Huuuge red flag.  

Route: 3/10 His entire route is fraught with rich people problems. I’m supposed to sympathize with him for an arranged marriage? All he had to do was say no. His father couldn’t force him. He’s possessive of MC because women have only ever wanted to be with him for his money? Not an excuse. Elizabeth going missing was a vaguely interesting story line, but Jumin’s relationship with his cat was cringey enough to overshadow the drama of it for me.

Romantic Potential: 3/10 Jumin has some serious issues. He’s never had a good female role model which has given him a deep seeded hatred of women. Remember when he tells MC that respecting women goes against his core beliefs? Yikes. Then, after meeting a woman who respects him and he actually likes, he locks her up and tries to change everything about her (cutting her hair, buying her a new wardrobe, teaching her the ‘proper’ way to walk, etc). We’re supposed to believe Jumin learns to be better by the end of his route, but he still proposes to MC after only a week of knowing her! I’m having a hard time picturing Jumin in a healthy relationship. 

Saeyoung

Character: 10/10 I’m not saying Saeyoung is a good person. Far from it actually. But he IS very well written and extremely interesting. In the other routes, Saeyoung is energetic and funny, bringing much needed humor to heavy moments. It’s always a joy being in a chatroom with him. Then you have the reveal that he actually hates his job and that he was faking his personality, all to a sad and slowed down version of his theme song. This plot twist shook me to my core. What makes him so well written is that the devs did a good job dropping hints to his real personality in the other routes that players might not notice during their first play through. 

Route: 9/10 This route is a wild ride from start to finish. This is when the plot threads from the other routes come together and start make sense. This route has secret agents, assassins, a deadly bomb, kidnapping, an evil twin, a powerful cult... It’s action heavy while still carrying enough emotional weight to make me cry every time. Saeyoung’s route is heavy and emotional and sooo worth playing. 

Romantic Potential: 6/10 Saeyoung has a shady job and a complicated past. Choosing to be with him means putting your life in danger every day. If you’re okay with that, he’d be a decent romantic partner. He’s a little rough around the edges, but I do think he has potential to become more like his ideal self (God Seven) after reading his AE. He’ll always have that mean and serious side to him, but I don’t think he’s hopeless. 

V

Character: 4/10 He’s low-key the worst. I sympathize with his trauma from being abused by Rika, but I don’t understand why he feels the need to fix everything by himself. Rika might be the source of most problems in this game, but V is partially responsible for standing by and letting her get away with everything. 

My first issue with him comes from encouraging Saeyoung to join the agency. I know Saeyoung didn’t have many options, but how was encouraging him to train to become a hacker and assassin the best option?! On top of that, he stalked Zen per Rika’s request and took creeper photos of him, failed miserably at protecting Saeran and don’t get me started on how he loves Rika unconditionally. V has some good characteristics but I really don’t care about those when he’s so terrible otherwise. 

Route: 10/10 This route is *chef’s kiss* the BEST. I wouldn’t call it a romance since Vs barely in it but damn is it riveting. Saeran is the perfect amount of loving and unhinged, MC get’s to know Rika on a personal level and V finally gets to be active instead of just reactive like he is in all the other routes. It’s also  satisfying to find out how much V has been keeping secret and to get a glimpse into Rika’s psyche. But what really makes V’s route stand out among the rest is that there are spy action scenes like in Saeyoung’s route, but the player also gets to spend time in Mint Eye.

Romantic Potential: 7/10 I’ll be honest. I don’t think V will ever be able to move on from Rika. He’ll always love her, as evidence in his AE. Besides that drawback, I do think he’d be a good romantic partner for MC. V was never the issue in his past relationship with Rika. She was the abusive one and he was 100% the victim. I think he would treat MC just as well in their relationship as he treated Rika. 

Saeran

Character: 7/10 I know I’m not the only one who loved the suave and cunning Saeran of the main routes who, after getting the therapy he needed, became an adorably shy and awkward man. Sadly, that’s not the character we got in AS. Instead, we met Ray, the split personality of Saeran’s psyche. Ray is charming and sweet as well as possessive and manipulative...which is something I’m into. But it’s not for everyone. Saeran’s real personality in AS is revealed to be angry and abusive and not at all similar to who he was in the main routes. I’ll give Cheritz props for writing a fairly accurate portrayal of disassociative identity disorder, but I think Saeran’s characterization is inconsistent. I get the impression Ray was an afterthought when creating AS. 

Route: 7/10 A mixed bag for me. I really enjoy any chatroom/scene with Ray. He’s undeniably creepy, but those scenes were entertaining in a dark romance kind of way. On the other hand, the Saeran scenes had a lot of unrealized potential. Abuse is never cool. All his route needed to fix this was a scene where Saeran explained to MC that he was pretending to hate her to appease Rika and the other believers. While this fake hatred is implied, I think it needed to be outright stated. It’s also hard to believe that Saeran overcame his DID in the course of one night. I know all routes are limited to 11 days, but this one needed more. Highlights of this route are Saeyoung being kidnapped by his father and of course, dark Yoosung with Elizabun. 

Romantic Potential: 7/10 I truly do believe that Saeran could go on and live a happy life in any of the endings where he escapes Mint Eye and receives therapy. While we only get a glimpse of what an emotionally stable Searan looks like, we know that he was kind and attentive with MC. Saeran is a giver and would do anything to make MC happy. Red flags are that Searan is still clingy at the end of his route. Yoosung makes a comment that he’s always holding MC’s hand when he sees them together. Also, his DID is something that will occasionally return and that’s something MC has to go into their relationship knowing. 

[inventors-fair]

Rock and Roil Commentary

What a wild one! Everyone did a great job this week, I saw a lot of really creative cards, and I was happy that we same a very nice mix of lands and non-lands. I noticed a common trend in a lot of them. I wish in my article I had talked about the idea of giving the player the choice. We had a lot of entries that either forced the lands to become creatures, or turned them in to creatures permanently. I don’t know if people realized how dangerous that is, making players put their lands at risk of getting hit by removal or sweepers with very little way to protect them. I don’t think every card should have avoided it, I just worry that some people didn’t realise it was as much of a downside it is. Also, nobody wanted to make a lategame beater like most of the landfolk are, everyone wanted to make giant busted gods.

Anyway, here’s the commentary for everybody! It’s in alphabetical order based on your tumblr name.

@dabudder - Oran-Rief Awakening

I see you took this contest to its logical conclusion. What if they were all creatures? First things first, I like the first trigger. I like how it’s optional, I like how it trigger at combat, I like how it untaps the land as some sort of weird ramp, I wish it granted haste. I like how it can either be a sort of slow finisher in green ramp decks or a way to turn your ramp spells into blockers as you wait for your big stuff to come out. Pretty good. The win the game trigger, however, I do not like. A five mana enchantment that wins the game with nothing but a Zuran Orb is too strong in my book. It’s also not hard to ramp this out with creatures by turn 3, giving you only 3 lands you need to animate. I really wish this were more like a planeswalker ultimate, where it only MOSTLY wins you the game. Preferably something that scales with land creatures, such as “put X +1/+1 counters on each land creature you control.” Your heart’s in the right place, I just wish you would have made the payoff a little more interesting.

@deafeningsandwichpeach - Ranged Wildlands // Borlox

There is a LOT of text on this card. Enters tapped unless you control an animal, sure, though might be a little strong considering it’s already fine as a tapped triland. The Slate of Ancestry ability is REALLY strong on a land, considering it still seems some minor play when it cost 4 mana to play. And the Borlox, which admittedly does cost a lot to flip, is also really really powerful. I think you could remove half the abilities form both sides of this card and it would still see tons play. On non-power level concerns, I think the card may be trying to pull in too many directions. Try focusing it into doing just one thing well instead of a lot of things all at once.

@emmypupcake - Flooding Mire // Deepmire Serpent

One of the few untapped lands, but the fact that it can only flip on endstep is a really cool way to sidestep the haste issue. I also really like that mana fixing downside because it is a pretty major downside, especially in decks that are playing enough basics to flip it. But boy, that downside is really made up for on such a strong card. In a controlling shell, that guy can really do a lot of damage (figuratively). It might be decent in aggressive becks as well, but the unreliant nature of the mana and the creature might be more trouble than an agro deck wants. Which brings me to my biggest issue with this card, and it’s a big one: the flip isn’t optional. This means that a control deck might be forced to keep lands in hand to not flip it (either this land or basics), or play the land just to lose another. I know it can be played around with appropriate sequencing and deck building, but it just seems like an unnecessary problem. If you just put “may” on this card, it becomes a lot cleaner of an execution.

@fractured-infinity - Presence of Solara

I was expecting a lot more auras, but I’m happy with this one. So, at three mana this plays like a slightly worse Dungrove Elder, trading off hexproof for trample and some commander stuff, but I don’t think the trade-off is quite worth it. I really like the presence mechanic, and I like how you incorporated commander damage into it, though I’d be worried about Presence on an equipment. But as for the card itself, it seems fine, I could see a lot of decks using it, but it’s not really pushing any design space, and I don’t understand why it needs to be an aura as opposed to just a creature with the P/T ability. I know there’s stuff that can be done with that, like arbor elf to give it vigilance or animating a Nykthos so you can untap it with creature untap abilities, but those combos seem pretty minor as opposed to the headache of rules or losing a land every time someone kills your commander.

@dimestoretajic - Sower of Vengeance

Wow, that’s a card. This is a fun card to read as it just gets nuts the further you go. It’s in the right colors, the set symbol is good, the abilities all interact in cool ways, the theme is fun. I checked, though, and multi-blocking doesn’t grant more than one counter, so that’s awkward. I like the idea of storing up damage until it dies and you get a massive army of huge creatures, but I think there could have been a neater way to do it. As is, some lands will have different counters than others, and some won’t be able to attack but others might. I also wish it only lasted for a turn, instead of lasting forever. It’s bound to either win you the game or lose you it very quickly. All that said, as messy as a card it is to play, I can’t ignore the fact that there’s a lot of really cool ideas going on here, and out of all of the hard to gauge cards submitted, this was the one I most hope is playable.

@gofytomcat1 - Monument to the Ancient Way

Always nice to see jeskai representation. I like the strict upgrade to mystic monastery, a card that was just barely under playable in standard, but sees a lot of play in casual formats. I like the cost on the activation: a 3/2 flyer for 4 is good, but the three color restriction reins it in a bit. I like prowess here for the jeskai throwback but I think it plays a little bit against the card. The fact that you could activate the ability twice means you could get two instances of prowess, which will both trigger independently, and if you somehow activate a second time after casting spells, you will have to remember that some spells have been doubled up and some haven’t. Also, you’re usually going to be activating this late game when you’re out of cards in hand and have nothing better to do with your mana, so prowess won’t come up often, which I guess is good considering what I just mentioned. Anyway, good card! Prowess is a little awkward on it, but I like what it does in the colors it’s in.

@gollumni - Krug, Utmungr Worshipper

So it ramps when attacking, and has menace? Seems solid. I like how it’s not ramp unless your opponent’s board is clear enough, but maybe that’s fine because you can always choose to not do it. I’d almost suggest to give the land menace instead of trample to link it closer with Krug, but it’s fine as is. Very solid card, not much to say.

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes - Dormant Earth

Lots going on here, but I think I like it for the most part. I like the bounce effect, it’s something you don’t see a ton but works really well in land-centric decks. It also helps balance the manaless activation cost. I like the simple ETB tapped effect to deal with haste problems and the colors are good. As for the main event, the landfall ability, I’m a little torn. I like using landfall as an animation tool, since if you’re topdecking lands, chances are you’re fine throwing one into combat. I really wish it didn’t trigger itself, but I know landfall has to trigger on all lands, so your hands were kind of tied there. Similarly, I wish it was optional, since getting your land hit by a bolt when it entered tapped anyway and wasn’t going to attack just feels bad. I think this card was just a scant few steps from being at the top.

@illharg-the-rave-boar - Tomb of the Buried Ancients

This card scares me. Any land that can tap for multiple mana is terrifying, and giving it to dredge is a whole other thing. The downside is paying life, which as we all know, is why no one play ancient tomb (hey wait a minute). But I said I’d be judging cards in a standard-level environment, and it’s much tougher to self-mill in standard, but a couple looting effects and you have an extra mana or two scarily easily. As for the animating ability, it seems by far to be in the background. Not being usable until you’re got 10 or 11 mana means it’s not going to see use except in some very long games (which if you’re acelerating with this, probably won’t happen). It’s also odd that the untap ability wants deserts in your graveyard but the animating turns them indestructible. I really wish that last ability weren’t on there, because otherwise I think this would be a great card, but with it there I just think it will break... everything.

@industrialsalad - Genju of the Future

Callbacks on callbacks on callbacks. I like the use of frame, considering it’s using a future sight mechanic (and has future in the name). I like the card! Paying two to make a land into a 2/2 is pretty good, especially at uncommon, and making it repeatable is nice. It’s a good way to deal with flood but has use in the early game if need be. I don’t understand the need for the unattach clause, other than to prevent animating multiple lands in a turn, but that doesn’t seem like THAT bad of an idea. Upping the fortify cost could have covered that, which I probably would have suggested anyway. I just worry that playing it, fortifying for free without intent to use it for a few turns, then getting hit with a naturalize that also takes out your land is rough. I know it’s flavorful, but it makes for some disheartening gameplay. I think this is a really cool idea and a lot of it is done really well and cleverly, but it just needed a little more time in the oven.

@kavinka - Face Island

I liked this card when I first read it, but the more I thought about it the less I liked it. At first I liked how it has a straightforward enters-tapped taps for blue base, and I like how the ability is really pricey, meaning it’s meant only for late-game decks (which is what blue usually wants). But there are a bunch of minor things that bug me. First, the last ability is worded such that it isn’t obvious if it needs to be a creature or not for it to “die.” If not, this is very strong with cards that let you sacrifice lands, but I don’t think that’s the intent. I like how it gives you a consolation prize if your opponent kills your expensive creature, but the prize is 2 more lands when you already had at least 11. And lastly, the fact that the giant has reach, while I’m sure it’s just for flavor, makes me think you’re going to block with it somehow, which seems... unlikely. So, as whole it’s very good, but starts to break apart after some thought.

mardu-lesbian - Barricade Inciter

In soviet gruul, gate crashes YOU. Old memes aside, a neat card. I like gate synergies, I like the menace. I don’t quite understand the 2brid mana, it seems kind of unnecessary, since at rare this is mostly going to be constructed, and you should be able to make triple green pretty easy by turn four in ravnica blocks. I also don’t quite get the untap. Usually animation spells that untap are nissa abilities that use them to generate mana. If it’s just there so you can target a gate that you already used to pay for the ability, I think that it’s okay to ask them to pay attnetion to what they’re tapping. As for the ability itself, I like it, but I really wish that fight were optional, especially with a three toughness creature. I know you could always just target a basic, but the fact that it could actually be a downside on a bad draw is a little awkward. I don’t know how I feel about it also being gate hate (since you can target opponent’s gates), but I don’t think it’ll come up except in super awkward mirror matches. There’s a lot of things I like on this card, but I wish it had just a few less quirky interactions.

@monoblue82 - Mountain Memorialist

Mount Rushmore maker? Cool concept. I get why you made it red: red gets land animating, red is the color of artists, and its got mountain in the name! But this is definitely a black card. Even though it’s happening to a land, this is a reanimation spell. It is taking a creature card in a graveyard and making it be in play. If it were black, I’d say the card was fine. It seems weird that the card would still be a land, but all of the land abilities would be overwritten. I think. I don’t know if keeping it as a land lets it keep its land subtypes. I think the ability might be a little overcosted, based on Obsessive Stitcher, but I’m not sure. This is a tough card to evaluate, but my main concern is just that it isn’t red.

@nine-effing-hells Hojamu, Quiescent Caldera // Rohojam, Raging Heart of the Land

The volcano requires a sacrifice. Nice. So, sacrifice a creature, get an 8/8 first strike trample? And your opponent can only stop it by sacrificing creatures? And if they don’t have any, they’re screwed? I think this might be a bit too good compared to effects like jinxed idol that also bounce back and forth by saccing creatures, but kill much slower than this. It also seems weird that this god isn’t indestructible, considering the amount of effort it takes to bring him out. I really like the story it’s telling, but I think it would have played better on an enchantment.

@reaperfromtheabyss - Sacellum of the Sun

I like what this card is trying to do. I like the very slight but not insignificant downside. I like how the color ability requires a permanent in play, and the animate ability also requires permanents in play. I also like that this is in white. I’m sure it’s meant to be a cycle, but white specifically has access to a lot of high-devotion permanents that are relatively hard to remove. I really like how this card helps enchantment (especially prison) decks close out the game, even getting through Enduring Ideal. There is a little bit of issue when it comes to summoning sickness, since you don’t want to give it haste as it’s sort of a white card, but if you have two in play, it’s very easy to misclick if you’re playing on a digital client. I’m also concerned on the blowout potential of removal in response to the activation, which isn’t fun, but I think if you’re at the point where you’re turning a land into a creature with only one card giving devotion, you know what you’re risking. so yes, a very well made card with a couple of random minor nitpicks.

@shakeszx - Standing Battlements

More fortify! Cool! I like the replacement effect, I think it is phrased correctly. It’s actually kind of cool how, even though damage doesn’t get removed, it’s no longer a creature, so if it dies in combat you’ll end up with a land with damage marked on it (just don’t attach another standing battlements to it). I also like how the replacement effect interacts with it being a fortification. If it was an aura, it would just have totem armor, but you instead give the player the opportunity to just lose out on a land if they would rather have the battlements out. I’m not sure on the cost of this fortification, since you’ve basically got a blackblade reforge that can attach to lands, but also costs colored mana, but also protects the user. If I were playing it safe I’d tack another mana onto the casting cost, but I kinda just like playing it safe. I also don’t know what deck outside of limited wants this, since it feels aggressive but kind of requires a lot of mana to make use out of. There’s some real cleverness to it, but I just don’t know where it goes.

@shandylamb - Consuming Marsh

You asked, and yes, this fits the bill. This card compares very favorably to Hissing Quagmire. gaining haste and dropping the cost but instead sacrificing a creature, which on its own isn’t a fair trade, but having the land itself enter more than makes up for it. In fact, it makes up for it a bit too much. Any land that enters the battlefeld untapped unconditionally already has some power concerns, but tapping for two different colors of mana and being able to turn into a creature pushes this way over the edge. That said, in a world where lands were allowed to be a little stronger than basics, I could see this being a very cool, fun, good card. Deathtouch and haste is a good way to get through board stalls, which is when sacrificing a creature is easiest. If it weren’t for power level, I think this card easily could have made it into the runner ups.

@shootingstarhunter - Soiled Spirit

I’m down with this bog. I like the tap condition (I would have been fine if you put the Morbid ability word on it) to power it down just a little, but still comes into play tapped if played on turn one or two. I like how powerful that last ability is, letting you slowly accumulate counters over time until you’re ready. I like how it still needs some building around, since you need to find a way to kill a creature before combat. I think in the deck that wants this, it’ll be a fun, good enough card, but requires enough to go your way that it’s not too powerful. I think it’s a nice card, but I do wish it had a bit more of an out if you’re going against hard control or something else creature light  and counter heavy. I think this guy would end up stranded in play pretty often. Though thanks for making it a may! You were one of the few who caught that.

@snugz - Blackgrove Bastion

So, if you’re really flooding, you can use lands in hand to turn lands in play into big beaters. Honestly, you could have just stopped there. I don’t think having to bounce the land is necessary. You’ve already discarded a card, paid for the fortification, turned your land into removal bait, and risked your creature in combat. The fact that you can’t even tap it for mana without it bouncing is rough, too. I think you could afford to drop that ability or turn the equip into a mana cost and be fine. I appreciate the haste concern.

@socialpoison - Garom, the Loamwarden

I know plant thing when I see him. I like how this is a new type of land animation that plays on a few angles. If you ignore everything else, he’s a 5/5 for 5 that you can basically regernerate by paying 2 or more and sacrificing a land. I also like how it keeps getting pricier everytime you do it so he’s not too tough to kill, but he can make that cheaper, though even with that I think you didn’t need to up the price THAT much. It’s already pretty difficult to make sure it dies when you have mana open, I don’t think you also need to punish players who take advantage of its main mechanic. The flavor of him coming back is really cool, too. At first I didn’t really understand the last ability, but I get that it’s a way to offset the fact that you keep turning your land into creatures and having them die. It’s a little hard to judge how powerful that ability is on its own considering it’s a free sac outlet and graveyard recursion, but only for the weakest permanent type. Newer players might also think that they could return the land they sacrificed, but on a mythic (though I think this would be fine at rare) I think it’s fine to be a little counterintuitive. Altogether it’s a cool card, but for a legendary mythic I kind of expected something a little bolder.

@starch255 - Iotrene, Vengeful Arbor

So what if Urborg was alos dryad arbor? I’m not a judge (well, not that kind) so I’m just going to pretend that it will never cause rules problems. At least none of the effects take place in zones other than the battlefield. Anyway, the card itself seems... just kind of bad? It seems really risky to turn all of your lands into very tiny easily killable creatures, and if you’re not mono-green, then you’re just turning some of your lands into 1/1s. I think it has combo potential, but I don’t think this card is worth the headache to play. Points for trying though, your execution is perfect, no formatting issues I can see and you even got the reminder text in there! 

@teaxch - Stalking Hemlock

What if Kamahl was a Stronghold Assassin? I actually like all of the intersections of abilities on this card and how many options it gives. Four mana and tap to sac a land/creature to kill a land/creature is cool from a design stanpoint, but it’s really hard for me to approve of repeatable land destruction in standard. This is one of those “if it survives, I win, if it dies, I don’t” that reminds me of cards like Mercurial Chemister and WAR Nissa. I think that makes it tough for this to see play in competitive formats, and the land destruction angle makes it hard to play in casual formats. A very clever card, but I just don’t know what to do with it. The flavor text, however, would have gotten you into the winners circle alone if I didn’t have the fair’s reputation to uphold.

@thedirtside - Unhallowed Ground

I like the understated nature of this card. It starts off as just a guildgate, and the ability is a little tough to activate, being two colors and requiring a card in a graveyard, and the size of the creature is a little small, but altogether it comes off as a neat little uncommon. As I said in my example post, graveyard hate in the land slot is always nice, and this serves as a great way to punish slower graveyard decks like some of the god-pharoah’s gift decks in historic right now. Even at uncommon, I think this card could afford to be pushed just a little more, perhaps by making a bigger creature, because as is it’s hard to reason spending effectively 3 mana for a 2/2 for a turn compared to cards like mutavault and Mishra’s Factory. Still, not a bad card, I like what you’ve done.

@tmstage - Facsimilake

Love the pun. The card’s pretty good, too! I like how it’s got a bit of a pricey activation compared to a lot of landfolk, but this one definitely needed it. Five mana reanimation on a land is very strong (Atzal comes to mind), and the fact that it doesn’t exile the card means you can do it again next turn. I think the enchantment nature of the card does more harm than good in both design and play: the fact that your land can be erased for a single mana at instant speed is a nice downside to bring the power down a bit, but there are going to be some decks that ignore its activated ability entirely ad just play it as a constellation enabler. It just seems a little unnecessary, at least before it transforms. I also think you probably could have skipped the “still a land” and mana ability since it’s unlikely to become relevant unless something has gone terribly wrong, in which case it’s fine to punish reanimator players. So yeah, a little unfocused and overpowered, but a neat card that has potential.

@walker-of-the-yellow-path Spine of Lasai // Lasair the World Eater

Getting some very nice hideaway land vibes, but what if valakut? I like random red rares that are just like “sorry you didn’t burn them out, have a consollation” like Valakut and dragonmaster outcast. Big red is also always fun. So this is already looking very good! I like the flying 8/8 trample, I like how it being a land is flavorful but also sneakily lets it avoid some removal considering it’s a finisher, and I like that its ability ties into its flip condition. I kind of wish the front half weren’t legendary, but I know that feels really weird, but legendary lands are just always a bit of a bummer, especially tapped ones that don’t even act as one-of mana. Making it fetchable kinda evens that out, meaning that you can have just one in the deck but still have 8. Anyway, the real meat of it: that activate ability. I think it is way too strong outside of multiplayer. If you do nothing but play mountains and this card, you can win as soon as it flips by tapping all of your mountains to pay for themselves and dealing 21 to your opponent’s face. I know that doesn’t make it that much stronger than valakut, but valakut is a broken card. I think if the mana cost was even just two mana this card might be fine. That’s my only problem with the card. otherwise I love it.

-

That’s all folks! See you at some point in the future

-Mod Mr. ShinyObject

[utilitycaster]

freckledmccree

replied to your post

“Cumulus Rocks reminds me that once I made a list of the most goth...”

okay, but i'm gonna need to see that list

Oh believe me I wrote this with this list on hand just in case. I split it by class and to an extent alignment and I’ve updated the commentary (and in the case of the rogue, the subclass itself). I had forgotten about Yasha, Fig (kind of), Vax (kind of) and Liam (Wilhemina, not O’Brien). Liam W. is not quite as pastel but he is a very pink boy and Fig ended up changing to college of lore but she is more of a punk goth. I posit that as soft lovers of flowers who also happen to be very good at killing, while Vax and Yasha are more classic goth in their aesthetic they could be swayed into the romantic goth category, if not full pastel. Oh and also I believe Emily’s character on NADDPod’s recently finished campaign, which I will start listening to very soon as I’m almost caught up on RQG, is Circle of Spores but in a very not goth way, but don’t @ me or spoil me on that.

Barbarian:

Inherent gothness of the class: unless you want to make easy jokes regarding the Germanic tribe, low, usually. You get angry and you fight things.

Path of Zealot. In addition to the necrotic damage option, you get the most goth ability of all, the ability to keep fighting while raging even when you are technically speaking, dead. You are also very hard to kill and easy to bring back from the dead.

Bard: 

Inherent gothness of the class: very low in the classic interpretation although between the spell list as is, magical secrets, and RP you can do a pretty good job. I’m of the opinion, however, that it’s best to lean into the glam influences here, since bards are pretty glam. Think Lovecats Cure, not A Forest Cure.

College of Whispers. You can capture the shadow of a fucking dead person and cause all kinds of fear effects.

Cleric:

Inherent gothness of the class: medium to high. D&D is rife with religious imagery and having a cleric in the party is an opportunity for the DM to put you up against all kinds of undead, have you explore catacombs, etc, etc. Plus, all clerics get plenty of necrotic and radiant damage access plus resurrection spells and similar.

Grave Domain, in which you respect death as a part of the life cycle and hate undeath. (note: Death Domain is only in the DMG so usually players can’t pick it and it’s also pretty explicitly Evil Only).

Druid: 

Inherent gothness of the class: as in the PHB pretty low - you turn into animals, and you can’t even turn into a bat until like, 8th level. Outside of the PHB it gets a little more Fey and a lot more goth.

Circle of Spores, which is into death and decay and okay with undeath to an extent, so a good way to be sort of neutral on vampires without going full evil. Circle of Twilight is a very close second.

Fighter: 

Inherent gothness of the class: I would have said super low back in the day before I saw the continuum of Goth v. Prep rather than Goth v. Jock. For truly, these are the jocks of D&D. As such I’ll still say low, but not unheard of.

Monster Hunter. It is literally in the Unearthed Arcana: Gothic Heroes, and it lets you slay monsters, plus engage in some light mysticism. It also provides the ability to improve your arcana skill. Do you want to play John Constantine in D&D? Yes you do.

Monk:

Inherent gothness of the class: low. You’re sort of too busy being both a nerd and a jock (martial artist) to get really deep into Cocteau Twins.

Way of the Long Death. You study death extensively (goth nerd with jock tendencies?) such that you can drain the life from others (but only after you already brought them to 0 HP, so it’s not vampiric), scare people, avoid death yourself (but not in an undead way), and do necrotic damage.

Paladin:

Inherent gothness of the class: medium. Despite the fighting nature, it’s one of the more aggressively medieval classes, plus we again get that religious imagery/catacombs option.

Oath of Vengeance. It’s also a bit more dramatic and definitely dark, and they get the Bane spell which is pretty goth. (note: the Treachery option is also pretty goth but again it’s more geared towards villainy and evil alignments only).

Ranger:

Inherent gothness of the class: medium. You live in the forest alone and have weird nature magic. Whereas Druids are a little too hippie to be goth, Rangers fit the bill.

Either gloom stalker or horizon walker. Gloom Stalker is a little more industrial and gritty; Horizon Walker is a little more ethereal. Both go into dangerous and arcane places and tend towards shadowy evasive maneuvers. I think Gloom Stalker wins, but only just.

Rogue:

Inherent gothness of the class: high. You skulk in the shadows in black leathers like, as a class.

The Revived. Not sure why this is explicitly a rogue class because presumably anyone could be revived...unless maybe the process of being brought back makes you want to be a rogue? But anyway you slowly realize that you are not on your first life and sort of channel your past life and also are sort of undead and can talk with corpses.

Sorcerer:

Inherent gothness of the class: high. The arcane casters, bar the Bards, are all pretty goth as a concept, and the innate ability of the sorcerer is a nice touch.

Shadow Sorcerer. You literally are said to exist between life and death. You can get a hound of ill omen. You can teleport between shadows. You have ties to the Shadowfell, aka the plane of gloom. It’s very extra.

Warlock:

Inherent gothness of the class: literally as high as possible without fucking Pretty much all of them. I’d argue in fact that Celestial and Archfey are the least goth, but you could get Archfey to work what with the planar magics and scaring people. As written, Hexblade has Shadowfell elements although everyone kind of ignores that piece of lore; also per mostly ignored lore the Raven Queen is the queen of the Shadowfell. Undying involves a pact with an immortal who gives you basically the top hits of the necromancy spell list, the Seeker sends you into the astral plane, the fiend is literally a being from hell, the Great Old One is all Lovecraftian and eldritch, and while I’m not a huge fan of the modern setting idea, the Ghost in the Machine sounds pretty fucking cybergoth too. I think Undying probably wins (especially since most disregard the Hexblade lore) but all can get there.

Wizard:

Inherent gothness of the class: medium. Robes and a wizard hat aren’t as fashionable as you’d think, and that nerdiness can end up being a little too cheery, but still as an arcane caster they’re naturally pretty goth.

Necromancer, obviously

[cinnbar-bun]

Mystic Messenger: Chess AU

So guys, here’s the AU I’ve been working on for a while! I had some sketches for it and wanted to write some stories with it, and I hope you guys are interested enough in it to want me to continue with it! 

And just real quick, if you are interested in this au and want to use it for inspiration for some of your works, could you please message me or give me credit on your work? I’d really like to see some of them!!

Warning: Contains spoilers regarding the characters!!!

“In this world, not everything is as black and white as it seems.” 

In a land of magic and secrets, two kingdoms struggle with the rift their own mistakes had caused. Brother turned against brother, and the divide has only worsened as time went on. The breaking point was the introduction of a new player, one who’s very identity could ruin or reform the kingdoms. 

The White Kingdom

The King- Jumin Han

A man of calculated and stoic appearance. His very presence sends those near him in awe, and his voice commands respect. Although seemingly cold and detached, he keeps his kingdom’s best interests at heart and does what he must to improve their lifestyle. Guided by the kindness of his queen, he has learned how being a leader and king takes much more than riches and power. So long as he is breathing, he will stop at nothing to reach his goals, all with his friends by his side. Contrary to the previous king, Jumin was difficult to marry off, and because of that, many rumors had circulated concerning his sexuality. Of course, he denied every single one and explained how he simply didn’t care about entering a relationship right now. It all changed once he had met the queen. 

The Queen- MC

A woman of many secrets and mysteries. No one knows how she wound up in the kingdom, how she met the king, and where she is from. Some claim to have never even seen her face, or heard her real name. Her identity is something few truly know, but despite her rather strange appearance, she had quickly gained the affection of her subjects. They might not be able to see her, but they can feel her. Her love and kindness can be felt throughout the land, and many will say that the day she arrived, the kingdom had never looked prettier. Her devout followers would call her an angel, but she merely giggles and claims she is just doing her best. 

The Bishop- 707

A man of many mysteries and a trivial past, he has become a devout follower of God to help those in need. His eccentricities might fool others to believing he doesn’t take his job seriously, but he ignores that in exchange for working in the shadows. He used to work for the Black Kingdom, but left to sort out his own feelings. Now, after having met the Queen, has been devoted to keeping her safe. He dreams of another life in which she could be his, but due to many unfortunate circumstances, he sticks with simply having her company. He isn’t above doing the ‘dirty work’ if it means his Queen is safe. He is the first to protect her, and is usually seen by her side telling her of anything that might be of concern. 

The Bishop- Jaehee Kang

A rather quiet and hardworking woman, who despite being a religious figure, has sometimes been known to help the King. The King, while seemingly uncaring for her, trusts her immensely to help, and she always gives her best effort. She does have plenty of admiration for one of the Knights, Zen, and when not working, usually stops by and watches him train or helps him with anything he may need. While at first suspicious of the Queen, she has since become great friends with her and the two hang out for tea and coffee whenever they can. She confides in her Queen whenever she can, and appreciates her for encouraging her to achieve her dreams. Doesn’t like conflict and is quick to end disputes. 

The Knight- Zen

A passionate and outgoing knight who takes pride in protecting his kingdom. He tends to joke about saving ‘damsels-in-distress’, and many females adore him for his looks. Although he can be considered narcissistic, he hates when people only see his face, not the hard work he contributes. Even though he gets on the ire of the King, both have some begrudging respect for one another. His love for the Queen is what fuels his desire to be better, and he takes his job as protecting her seriously. Zen occasionally forgets himself and gushes about how wonderful she is, and has tried to make songs to showcase his passion for her. Even though he has absolutely no chance with her, he still dreams of one day finding a lover who’ll appreciate him for him, and who he can spend the rest of his life with. He tends to be more brotherly with his fellow knight, Yoosung, and the two tend to spend time with one another, wallowing about how forever alone they’ll be. If he’s not working, he is most likely to be found get drunk at a pub or playing cards with some other knights. 

The Knight- Yoosung Kim

A fresh recruit to the order of knights, admittedly, many don’t know how he got in. Some say the King promised the young knight a chance, but whatever the reason is, many can’t see it. He is prone to get emotional and lonely, and while he appears sunny on the outside, holds a lot of trauma internally. Originally born into the Black Kingdom, he grew up with a loving family and his biggest motivator to become a knight was his cousin Rika. After she committed suicide when she was supposed to become Queen, he cursed the Black King and left to the White Kingdom, where he could start fresh. He may seem childish, but when matters turn dark, he is the first to sacrifice himself and help whoever. Animals seem to flock to him as well, and he says they’re a lot easier to understand than people. He is one the dirtiest knights to bunk with, but Zen manages to stand him. He has grown close to the White Queen and likes to chat with her about anything-leaving many of the servants to compare him to an excited puppy. He has much to learn, but with his kind heart, he is sure to become an excellent knight. 

The Black Kingdom

The King- V

A rather quiet man who grew up as childhood friends with the White King. He seemed to be promising, and many looked up to him to help them. The stress of being king didn’t deter him until he met Rika. The couple was to be engaged and married soon, but during that time many things changed about him. His sight had grown increasingly worse and his betrothed had become more unstable. Combined with the lack of trust between him and Jumin, a small rift formed. No longer was he the bright monarch his people could count on, but he submitted to the Black Queen and became a hallow shell of his former self. The sins he had committed will forever haunt him, as he tries to salvage whatever bit of humanity was left in himself and his queen. The supposed “suicide” of his queen only made him even more of a puppet to her schemes, and he prays for a day in which things could return to normal. 

The Queen-Rika

A once caring woman who became corrupted by the image she had to uphold. Hated from birth, she grew attached to V and wanted him to save her. She did her best to try and stay sane by helping others, but they had grown so dependent on her as they called her their ‘savior’. With no way to find an outlet, she began taking her pain out on V, the one thing that mattered in her life. She needed to be needed and devised a plan with V to stage her suicide. After her ‘death’ she grew a cult following behind the scenes to recruit more followers. She is the puppet-master, running both the cult and the kingdom with her iron fist. Her soft voice and words can lull anyone to her beck and call, as she tries to overtake the land to become the savior everyone wanted her to be. Her original goals and morals lost, she has abandoned rational thought in exchange for complete devotion to her and her ideals. There is absolutely NOTHING that will stop her from getting her way. 

The Pawn- Unknown

The Queen’s most prized player. Mistakenly thinking he was abandoned by his brother, he was quick to fall into Rika’s divisive hands. Abused and reduced to nothing more than her personal pawn, he forgot who he truly was. His emotions numbed by the elixirs, he cannot remember much of himself except the name, ‘Saeyoung’, and a constant feeling of misery and pain. He carries out all her duties and takes his aggression out on supposed traitors. Unknown has difficulty understanding his own self and the world around him, instead longing for a place called ‘paradise’. He has no clue of what it will look like, but he has a feeling that if he kidnaps the White Queen, she’ll be the answer to what he’s looking for. 

Unknown Pieces

Killer Queen

Her appearance is similar to that of the White Queen, although that’s where the similarities end. She is a conniving and selfish woman, who craves whatever her hearts desire is at the time. Nothing can stand in between her and her beloved, and she’ll make sure they feel absolute hell. She is an anomaly, a figure who had no previous background or history. As the White Queen becomes more brilliant, the Killer Queen becomes more repulsive and destructive. If the two halves were to meet...it is unknown what would happen, but the very fabric of the universe could possibly tear in two. 

[wisteriafield]

So, Nioh

Overall I had a really enjoyable experience with it, I’d like to be able to try multiplayer but it’s a thing that’s kinda hard to get an organic experience of, PS+ aside.

The mission system is something I like to be able to replay stages/bosses that I enjoyed instead of having to wait for a NG+ cycle, the problem is that only a handful of bosses stand out, the final boss Kelley/Yamata-no-Orochi was kind of a letdown as a fight, Hundred Eyes was a cool design but a strange boss, I don’t think I’ll like it on NG++ when it turns into Touhou. The bosses I liked the most were something halfway between youkai and humanoid like Otani and Mitsunari.

Auxiliary abilities like Ninjutsu and Onmyo start out slow, but get more useful once you can stack skills to get more uses out of them, especially when you get the instant cast to be able to keep up buffs mid-fight. The slowdown talisman basically makes every boss a sandbag which is great for farming/stress relief.

The stance and skill system is what I like most about Nioh, player animations have actual discipline in them compared to a DS character, and it creates a higher skill ceiling of the R1 poke-roll to butt dynamic in a DS boss, for room to do stylish aggression with stance dancing and Ki pulses, on top of having a visible stagger break meter to know when to take advantage of it. I found high stance the hardest to use, it didn’t really increase stagger on high toughness NPCs, so it was more of a liability with its speed and ki cost. Though on Spear I preferred high stance, but things like low stance having a spinning pivot sidestep instead of a straight line dodge in mid? Really small things that I enjoy.

The game is very responsive, it doesn’t have queued inputs so you don’t roll after getting hit just because you were quarter of a second later, occasionally my item use inputs get eaten up, but its a lot less confusing managing items with Nioh’s control scheme (it’s very friendly)

The level design is amazing, having great setpieces and backgrounds use for dueling (Ohashi Bridge, Yomotsu Hirasaka, Azuchi Castle), and winding levels that have branching paths that lead to the same end, for different players with different means and attitudes, its very much like Dishonored’s excellent level design. I also like the sub-missions remixing the stage layouts. All in all, if DS level design can be compared to a metroidvania, Nioh feels like a more complex Castlevania: Harmony of Despair. It caused me some degree of frustration or confusion because I wanted to map out all of the areas in my head like I do with Dark Souls, but unfortunately I’m still not familiar with all of them, so I ended up running in circles or not knowing how to access some off-path areas.

My favorite weapon designs were the Douji-kiri Yasutsuna and the Hinomotogo, runner ups include the Tombo-kiri, Hozoin Jumonji Spear, Munechika Mikazuki (Gramps...!!), “Craneboy” Juzumaru Tsunetsugu, Raikiri, and the Furewakegami Hiromitsu. I haven’t gotten the DLC to try any of the Odachis.

The game’s aesthetic and approach, to me, make it more of a successor to Otogi, which was ironically made by From Soft before DS, but they have said before that their inspirations were taken from Onimusha as well as Diablo (the gameplay dynamic reflecting that strongly in particular) on top of DS. The levels didn’t have as much variance as DS in aesthetics, but they do hit all the right ones as a period piece.

For the player character being its own character, William was unfortunately underused and felt kinda boring, he mostly just reacts to stuff around him and doesn’t talk nearly as much in cutscenes as he ought to (when people are addressing him directly for instance), and him being the player character brings in some very traditional play of white savior tropes. 

I thought that the naturally conclusion that Europe is trying to stir conflict around the world to create Amrita would set the stage for the sequel taking place during the Bakumatsu and the forced opening of the borders by the US to be for them to try and secure Amrita for themselves, and, in essence, have the player continue the fight after fighting for Ieyasu Tokugawa by fighting for his shogunate in the Shinsengumi against imperialists, but oh well, they’re obviously not taking that direction, as much as I’d have liked (probably because its hard to justify wearing armor for war in that age, among other things). The other idea I had would be to set it in the Heian period during the Genpei War.

Anyways, its understandable that the RPG elements aren’t for everyone looking for that masocore action experience, so I might be an outlier because I played MonHun for over 1000 hours and plenty of hours in CV HD and have minor experience with Diablo

I’ll just suck it up and buy the season pass now, I wanna build an odachi and stream the Osaka DLCs blind for yall since I get good bitrate on the PS4 now.

Stuff I’d like to see revised to the sequel

More skills/an active Mystic Art

Revise enemy damage output, allow players to learn from mistakes midfight and don’t completely trivialize the health bar by making everything 1 or 2 shot you at literally any point in the game

Design challenges that aren’t the Monster Hunter approach of Putting Two Bosses in a Arena That Weren’t Designed as a Single Fight (only one I cleared so far was Nobu+Noh)

I wasn’t sure how to make the best use of Blacksmith functions (Soul Match, Reforge) until halfway or near the end of the game

Make it a little easier to understand where specific Smithing Texts drop when they aren’t one-time quest rewards

Rebalancing Guardian Spirits/Living Weapon, every GS felt useless or extraordinarily niche compared to Kato, the starter offensive GS. I really like the unique animations for LW but its really overpowered to build around it

In fact, the way the game handles its RPG elements, you don’t really build anything until you finish your first run through the game, which doesn’t really set in habits of what players should do with their equipment for the new difficulty, how to look for sets for their weapons, or guiding them through substat rerolling. Your build isn’t based on your stat allocation nearly as much as how you pick your armor set and give it the proper substat bonuses

More types of youkai

I feel like due to the differences in nature of the games, a procedural generated dungeon like Chalices would fit Nioh a lot better than BB

Edit: almost forgot, almost all weapons within the same type have the same stat scaling, they should really change that up

[drkungfus-customs]

Mtg Custom Card Competition Round 1: Rabiah

Hello everyone and welcome to the first custom card competition for mtg cards that I have judged. For this round, submissions were gathered from a discord server and the results have been judged by myself and my partner in crime Alyssa. The theme this week was Rabiah. Participants were asked to design a card that could have been printed if the set Arabian Nights was designed in 2019 with modern design sensibilities.

Alyssa says:

Flavourwise, it’s real fun! Trade as a method of getting white card advantage is really nice, and the art, name and flavour text all flow together. It’s not really that exciting, though. There’s nothing particularly mystical about the capitalism of antiquity!

Remember to capitalise Human and Treasure. Is it meant to scale to every Human everyone else plays too? If so, that’s a little too strong. Keep it to Humans you create.

The draw effect being “free” mana-wise isn’t that much of a problem. I’d add a tap to the ability so you can’t abuse it so freely. If this were blue, and cost 3 mana, then that effect would maybe fly, but white doesn’t get that.

Michael says:

So this card seemed a slam dunk at first, it has excellent flavour, very pretty art, and an appropriate white effect as we have seen the colour move into treasure generation a lot more in recent sets to compensate for its core weakness of mana ramp. This was until I got to the last line. Card draw in white is something that must be carefully monitored as it is one of the fundamental aspects of colour balance in magic. A good litmus test for this kind of effect is mentor of the meek, if a card can draw better or draw easier than mentor it probably crosses the line from a bend to a break in white.

Because the card itself produces treasure at a considerable rate, on a good body (thankfully still within bolt/push range), there is no real opportunity cost to the drawing as the treasure tokens also come incidentally by doing things a mono white deck wants to do. If this was a tap ability or had some kind of limiter the card would probably be acceptable but as it stands it represents a potent draw engine in any creature heavy deck, and god forbid what would happen in a Selesnya token strategy or an EDH deck running smothering tithe.

While the human type rider does help to limit this card, it is the most common creature type and so more often or not this card will provide good value even in decks not built around the card. Overall I really dig the treasure creation as a reward for building to a theme but the card draw is far too powerful and generic to be considered acceptable in mono white.

Possible improvements:

o   Currently this card is a break in white, either adding blue or limiting the rate of card draw would bring it into line with whites modern design philosophy.

o   It shouldn’t activate from your opponents Humans, symmetrical tribal effects have been retired due to poor gameplay.

o   It feels a shame to tie it to Humans, which are such a supported type. Making it rewarding to a more obscure tribe such as Advisors could be interesting.

Grades:

Formatting – 4/5

Function – 2/5 (would be a 4/5 with the drawing ability fixed or removed)

Flavour – 4/5

Alyssa says:

The formatting here has several notable issues:

o   As-written, the cast from hand effect gives temporary unblockability but the combat damage Treasure-making effect is permanent because you haven’t given it a duration.

o   Every time you define a token on a card, unless you’re writing a modifier for how many of the same type of token are produced by the same effect under different conditions (like Increasing Devotion, Gather the Townsfolk or Saproling Migration) you need to define those tokens again, so you’ll need to write out the Treasure text for the second effect. Make space on the card by omitting the reminder text on Flashback.

o   Magic uses numerals to refer to life, damage, stats and costs, but everywhere else they write out the numbers, so you create five Treasures rather than 5.

o   The destroy effect on casting it from the graveyard should just be sacrifice. You don’t need to make it a targeted destroy just because the original effect destroys, because you can use the cast-from-graveyard replacement effect to override its targeting, just like how Overload makes a targeting spell into a non-targeting one.

It’s fine as a card, but it feels kind of weak and the two effects don’t feel connected. The first cast feels like a good effect with good flavour ties, but I’m not sure how the second effect ties into it. The first incentivises high creature quality (giving a big beater evasion) while the second incentivises low creature quality (sacrificing a worthless token to get advantage) and while the environment for those two interacting can exist (read: Rise of the Eldrazi) it’s rare.

Triple black feels far too colour-intensive in an effect we’ve seen at 2B and 1B before. I am also not entirely sure what is happening from a flavour perspective when the creature gets destroyed. If it’s being closed off in the Cave of Wonders, how the hell do you get the treasures out?

Michael says:

The flavour on this card is very apparent, showing off an iconic scene with using the alternate flashback effect to progress the story of this card. I very much enjoy how well the flavour and mechanics have been integrated on this card especially in a way that is in-colour for Dimir. However the templating very much needs work, the effect can be unclear on a first read. Something as simple as a paragraph break between the regular and flashback effects would do wonders to the overall card. 

In addition when designing black costs, sacrifice is usually a preferred choice both flavourfully and mechanically as the flashback just becomes a seething song when you possess an indestructible creature. I think this card has very strong flavour and story but has a few formatting concerns that take away from its impact. While the card can go mana positive I think the card is balanced well enough to not create any dangerous situations. Solid workhorse uncommons are just as important as flashy mythic rares and this card could help to signal a more aggressive or saboteur based blue black deck in the limited environment, although the card is a little disjointed in effect possibly due to it being created to match the flavour rather than the other way around.

Possible improvements:

o   Formatting changes as Alyssa has acknowledged.

o   Changing the effect so that it doesn’t split the card’s focus. If you want to get increasing Treasure value, perhaps just make it mono-blue, the flashback cost 2U and make the damage dealing effect create three Treasures instead.

o   Perhaps a small pump of +1/+0 to help solidify its role in limited decks.

Grades:

o   Formatting 3/5

o   Function 2/5

o   Flavour 3/5

Alyssa says:

Flavourwise it’s fine, but not particularly imaginative. Genie wishes have been done before a lot and this doesn’t really do anything new with the effect except some ridiculous efficiency. (I’ll get into that later.) Formatting wise, it’s mostly fine. “It gains suspend” should be its own sentence. You missed “on it” for the land card drop.

Are the extra cards put on the bottom of your deck? I feel like you’re trying to make the “cost” of the effect be that it mills you slightly, which isn’t really that dangerous for reasons I’m going to get into, because the card is ridiculously strong.

It’s not hard to just casually spin this in your opponent’s end step with basic tutors or Brainstorm-like effects to find your best card, put it on top of your library, exile it with suspend and one time counter on it and just drop it like it’s hot. Five mana Emrakul, the Promised End with its cast effect? Anything that isn’t a land obtainable for free as long as you wait till your upkeep for it?

The second effect really doesn’t need to be there and is still really strong. Even though you can whiff, it can still effectively mean colourless 0 mana ramp every turn even if you lose the lands eventually. But it’s not like you’ll really want an effect like this when you’re doing top-deck manipulation to drop your biggest and best cards for free. It’s just overkill at that point.

Michael says:

This card feels intended to be fun but I believe has accidentally became far scarier than intended. I believe this card is firstly a lot more complex than it needs to be. The second ability that searches for lands adds a lot of extra complexity for this card and doesn't really add much to the overall playability. I believe it could be cut without losing the core effect of the card.

I would express serious concerns over power level however. Its nature as a colourless artifact means any deck can include it, miracle shells and cards such as sensei's divining top and scroll rack allow for significant levels of top deck manipulation which would make its random nature a lot more controlled especially in older formats and EDH. Being able to activate this card in your opponents end step for almost no cost also takes away any kind of risk to playing this card as even played fairly this allows for serious cheating on mana costs with a bit of luck.

There is also the slight problem that there is no rider to return the exiled cards to the bottom of the deck which would be standard for this kind of effect. While I assume this was accidental, it means that as submitted this card can mill your entire deck for a jace/lab man kill. There is clear potential in this card as a fun semi-random value piece but as it stands right now it has too few safety valves, and there is a clear risk of variance where one game you mill twenty cards to get to a one drop and the next where you rip Ulamog off the top on turn four. If anyone tried to play this card unfairly, as competitive players will certainly try to, this card will fundamentally break the mana system. Adding a mana cost to the effect and possibly increasing the casting cost is going to be the easiest way to preserve this card's intended purpose without being used as a combo piece, or just tying the suspend cost to cmc as opposed to how many cards milled. Also don’t forget the artist credits, that’s always important to have on custom cards.

Possible improvements:

o   Remove the second ability entirely. It’s superfluous at the best of times.

o   Jack a hefty mana cost on that ability. To keep the artifact at 4 mana, I want to make the ability cost 5 or 6. Alternatively, make you shuffle your library as part of the effect to make it a bit less spooky. Compare to Temporal Aperture or Mind’s Desire, which have a similar effect but deliberately shuffle your library beforehand. One thing you could do is make it a static suspend value, maybe 3, rather than however many cards you flip, because if you have to shuffle your library for that you might get stuff exiled with suspend 7 or whatever.

Grades:

o   Formatting – 4/5

o   Function – 1/5

o   Flavour – 2/5

Alyssa says:

Beautiful flavour. This card looks gorgeous and makes me very happy to read. Your formatting is flawless as well. The flavour clearly stems from his portrayal in the original arabian nights stories so I appreciate the top down design here.

Unfortunately, this card kind of pays for itself with what might amount to an upside in a bad spot by making additional chump blockers/sac fodder, like a bargain bin Bitterblossom. Additionally the downside is also relatively small, as is the payoff. I wouldn’t have a problem with leaving him tapped for a few turns which I feel isn’t good for a sexy black 4 mana 6/6: those stats and that colour want to have a stronger downside for a stronger payoff. Think Phyrexian Obliterator or Death’s Shadow: Black’s big creatures go hard on the pro and harder on the con. I don’t feel like I’ve lost anything if he doesn’t make a big splashy impact on the board.

Michael says:

This card I quite like. While it’s unusual to see humans as powerful as a 6/6, that is about the maximum I would realistically expect to see for the tribe so that isn't too much of an issue. The flavour of a mono black king who uses his subjects is absolutely on point though and feels very in fitting for the feel of arabian nights so good job on that front. My foremost concern with this card is that there is no real downside to this card, while the king requires a sacrifice in your upkeep he has a built in method to mitigate this in his automatic ability to create soldiers. However there is a really easy fix to this, just include a cost to his ability to create tokens. Replacing this with a repeatable activated ability for an amount of mana feels too white so instead I would propose adding a cost to his end of turn trigger, possibly discarding a card to ensure that there is a price to splashing the king. Although given humans are the most popular tribe and many cards are incidentally human, I imagine that there will be plenty of sacrifice fodder in both constructed and limited. Overall good work on this one, a strong design that just needs a few tweaks to be good to go and really screams arabian nights flavour (in a good way).

Possible improvements:

o   Include a cost for the human token production. Perhaps “At the beginning of your end step, you may discard a card. If you do, create a 1/1 white Human creature token.” The card disadvantage is a real downer, but you have an option not to if you can’t.

o   Go a bit harder on his power level. Something on the level of a keyword ability such as menace for example wouldn’t hurt.

o   Make the damage life loss. Possibly amp it up to 3.

Grades:

o   Formatting – 5/5

o   Function – 3/5

o   Flavour – 4/5

Alyssa says:

The flavour is nice, perfectly evocative of what Aladdin is. Perhaps it’s a bit too safe? This is what I’d expect Aladdin to do: maybe I was hoping for a little more. The formatting is mostly good, but as of now the steal effect is permanent and not tied to Aladdin staying in play. Was this intentional? Permanent steal effects are Blue’s wheelhouse, not Red’s, making it a colour bend. (Red does get to steal stuff, especially artifacts, but it very rarely gets to keep it.) I wouldn’t be averse to seeing this effect on an Izzet Aladdin for example.

It’s a simple, clean effect that has the potential for sick card advantage. I like it! It feels like something you could open in an artifacts matter set. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a similar card when we return to Kaladesh.

Michael says:

This card is interesting. As a four cmc legendary creature that fixes a core problem with mono red in an in-colour way, this card is clearly very good in EDH. However this card also is a significant tempo play and value generator in an environment that is heavy on artifacts which would probably give it legs in standard, albeit constrained thanks to the legendary supertype. My main concern with this card is that there is no condition or limitation to the steal effect. Indefinite stealing of cards is a very blue effect, while playing with artifacts is red, so I would like to make this an izzet card, but the flavour clearly does not support blue. Therefore to make this card more in line with the colour pie I would add either an end of turn clause to the steal, a limit on the cmc of the artifact, or at the very least have stolen artifacts return when this card leaves the battlefield. Return on leaving the battlefield seems the most appropriate option to me to help avoid flicker abuse in commander while still preserving the flavour of the card. Other than that good job, this is an excellent effort to provide a balanced and flavourful red card that I believe would excite people to play with.

Possible improvements:

o   Address the colour pie bend, or otherwise tie the stealing effect to Aladdin’s survival.

Grades

o   Formatting 5/5

o   Function 4/5

o   Flavour 4/5

So congratulations to Shanobi and her submission of Aladdin, Prince of Thieves as the winner for this week. It was a close race between Aladdin and King Shahrayah but where we could point to a few areas of improvement for the King, Aladdin felt perfect with just a minor tweak to bring his effect more into red’s area of the colour pie. 

It has been a fun week to judge and hopefully we should see these competitions continue if there is renewed interest in our judging. If any of you have any feedback or improvements to our judging style, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Thank you all for your hard work and submissions!

As a bonus Alyssa and I worked briefly on what our theoretical submission could have been to this contest which we based off a monster from Iranian folklore and posted for fun here in Zahak, Hunger-Cursed.

[elly-bird]

How come you famously can't stand critical role?

Before I get into it, let’s attach a warning

WE ARE ENTERING THE OPINION ZONE

That’s right, I don’t contain mystical knowledge that is going to spoil Crit Role for you.  Similarly, I doubt there’s anything you could say to fix what is, essentially, just a distaste for me.  I also deeply respect the various performers and crews that go into producing CR, Matt Mercer especially (I love that man dearly).

"Famously” refers to the fact a lot of people talk to me about CR, and I’m always forced to stop the conversation with “well I don’t actually watch that show...” which leads into the question of why, which leads into me simply saying “you don’t want me to get into it.”

So the clarification at hand is I’m treating this question as; “why don’t you actively watch anything D&D related?”  Critical Role will simply be our stand-in for a franchise title.  It’s not any better or worse than the competition for the flaws that bother me.

So let’s start from the beginning.

This will not be a conversation.  It’s not worth messaging me “you should look at it like-” because I can’t.  This isn’t blind hate or fanaticism, it’s the way my brain’s been trained through the hobby.

I’ve been writing and roleplaying all my life.  For as long as I can remember I’ve been a mixed-modules DM, a guild manager, a public event organizer, and an RP planner and guide for everyone that’s ever asked it of me.  This had its ups and downs; at one point I embraced the lows so hard that I found myself in a string of projects I utterly despised working on just because it felt vaguely familiar to older, more interesting work.  Even so, I got very good at identifying and managing personalities.

You’re sort of forced to put people in little boxes.  Boxes like “the drama queen,” or “the OOC talker,” or “the shy one.”  Boxes help you micromanage the various archtypes of players you’ll deal with in big campaigns.  It’s not hard for someone to simply not have fun at an event due to their various hang-ups, and it was frequently my job to make the event cater to all the types of people I could identify as we progressed.

You do this because, as an admin or an organizer, your fun isn’t a priority; you’re a referee.  The event itself is just a puzzle of IC and OOC problems for you to solve.  You enable everyone else the ability to enjoy themselves, whilst you pull your hair out in the corner in admin chat, discussing how to whack the moles as they pop up. 

It turns out Group B’s DM is late and didn’t leave his documents for backup with anyone in the crew.  Or wait, this is a PVP event, but Group A is completely imbalanced in that regard and won’t be able to compete.  Or wait again, you’re literally the only piece of management that showed up, and three people want to have chats with you about the future of the campaign or issues they’ve been having.  Etc, etc, etc.

(This is obviously not the dynamic for small, tight-knit D&D sessions - I’m talking MMO events and campaigns involving multiple groups and DMs.)

Working this hard for other people’s storylines, or the enactment of group projects, really coloured my attitude towards RP as a whole.  I started to realize how easy it was to see players through their characters.  I’ve talked before about how I can’t follow a lot of authors because their personalities outside of their writing have become so transparent through their works to me.  RPers are, unsurprisingly, not any more tactful.

Which leads into the fact that; I can’t stand popular D&D.  I just can’t.

When you have a show that is essentially just a large group of actors trying their best to put on a good performance, (the very nature of commercializing roleplay) it can feel a lot like being thrown back to those management days, trying to find the right words to keep Steve from godmodding too much, or to tell Anna to please stop tugging the spotlight into her own face so god damn often.

D&D/improv shows feel a lot like staring at a popularity contest, the very attitude I used to work tirelessly to prevent from happening.  Everyone is their own main character and their livelihood can actually depend on making themselves the most entertaining of the lot, which can often mean aggressively blanketing their character over everything.

D&D groups usually aren’t as vulnerable to these flaws as bigger, more public forums, but that’s exactly what happens when you turn it into a show and start making money off it.  The public forum that used to be contributing RPers is now sitting, waiting patiently for the moment to throw money at the screen in the name of their favourite.

So while I do deeply love and respect Critical Role and the work put into it, actually watching the show leaves a person like me incredibly drained.  My brain goes into overdrive trying to work out what decisions are made organically and what ones are made for the sake of branding, same as it does every other piece of performance media.

So that’s why I don’t watch Critical Role.  Or The Adventure Zone.  Or Friends at the Table.  Or- you get it, now.  See?  You get it.  I don’t like commercializing performances because in my experience, even the best RPers and writers I’ve ever met would either crumble or completely rewrite themselves under that pressure, and that’s not something I enjoy witnessing people going through.

I’m naturally drawn to analysis and pulling apart the rationales behind decision-making in all creative worlds.  Hell, I once got told off because I was informed the way I looked at someone’s favourite show was “like an autopsy.”

I’m not above these things.  I’m not better than them.  I don’t think they’re bad, or poorly written, or poorly performed.  I also don’t think getting paid to do your job is a bad thing - holy shit, duh.

I’ve been condensing this rant down to one single sentence whenever I’ve been asked in the past, and I’ll likely return to it now;

“It’s just not for me.”

Crit Role is a fantastic show.  I’m never watching it.

[s0wingsalt]

Standard and Banning

Two posts in two days? Who is this guy?

Sup nerds I’ve got thoughts on bannings and I feel like typing them out, because that’s what people do when they’ve got strong feelings now: they rant about them on the internet.

Now, as a disclaimer I don’t play standard and I’m far from an authority on what’s actually good in the format. Luckily, I’m not actually talking about whether those cards in particular should or shouldn’t have been banned, but rather about the idea of banning cards in standard at all. There’s been a lot of debate about whether that’s a good thing considering how many cards have been banned recently after a long period of no bannings whatsoever.

To start with, I’m going to voice what I think might be a somewhat unpopular opinion: I think bans in standard are a good thing, or at least a good tool to have available in the format. Wizards has been taking a more aggressive design standpoint lately, printing cards that are interesting, unique, and above all, powerful. Part of this has to do with promoting standard, while another part is expanding design space and a growing comfort with what is and isn’t okay to print. Wizards has by and large been pushing the envelope of power ever so slightly without falling into power creep or ludicrously busted designs. But as long as they’re pushing the envelope, they need to be prepared to deal with the cards they print and their impact on the format rather than abiding by an arbitrary rule of “can’t ban cards in standard.” Leaving the format as hallowed ground would mean they wouldn’t be able to be as creative and aggressive with the cards they print, so I think being comfortable with bannings is a good thing (and also with errata-ing cards when necessary. Lookin at you, Hostage Taker).

That being said, there have been a lot of bannings compared to other formats and even historical standard formats in the past year or two. Most of the cards banned haven’t been super egregious either, just cards that were maybe a bit too powerful, too ubiquitous, or too annoying to play against. That’s probably because we’re in the calibration period for that aggressive design philosophy I mentioned - they’re just now starting to print more uniquely powerful cards because they’re just now becoming really well aware of what is okay and what isn’t when it comes to certain aspects of card design. As such, most of the new banned cards actually won’t be things like Jace the Mind-Sculptor or Stoneforge Mystic, cards that are clearly broken that slipped through the cracks. Rather they’re going to continue to be things like Smuggler’s Copter and Rogue Refiner, cards that were maybe just a little bit too powerful in the creature based game Wizards has been developing. With this in mind, I don’t think it’s ridiculous for Lay of the Land + 2 energy to be banned, because it shows that Wizards is aware of what kind of format they’re trying to create, and what cards they should remove from it in order to prevent certain strategies from becoming too dominant. I also think they do a decent job of avoiding banning expensive cards - banning Felidar Guardian and Ramunap Ruins instead of Saheeli Rai and Hazoret the Fervent meant that peoples’ cards by and large retained their value, which is another big problem with bans in general.

That’s about all the cushioning I can provide for this rather large BUT I’ve got coming though. While I’m a big supporter of bans in standard, they’ve made something very apparent - standard is in what appears to be a pretty rough spot right now. While the format is still developing around RIX and the bannings are still shaking themselves out, Temur Energy was replaced by Grixis Energy almost immediately. Many of the decks in standard have been the same or similar since Kaladesh or Amonkhet, merely picking up new cards with every new release (the return of Mardu Vehicles to the top of the metagame is indicative of this). To me as an outside observer, this is indicative of a few things: first, standard decks are currently in a state where, no matter what you’re trying to do, there’s a definitive “best deck” for it. Temur Energy was the best midrange deck, Ramunap Red was the best aggro deck, and so on, and after the bannings we’re in a position where it seems like those slots will be easily filled by only slight variations to what was just replaced. This brings us to the next point, which is that standard has a series of decks which are potentially bannable based on the current metrics which are waiting behind worse offenders. Since Aether Revolt, people have been discussing some of the cards in Mardu Vehicles such as Heart of Kiran and whether they should be banned.

How do these things relate to bannings? The main point is that the bans we’ve had so far have revealed one thing: standard as a format is becoming more powerful than Wizards wants it to be, and it would take a whole lot of bannings to bring it back down to where they want it. That puts them in a rough spot where they can either ban a boatload of cards, which would obviously anger players, or they can deal with having them in the format. I think they’ve found a decent middle ground since there’s no good solution, but it’s hard to say.

To close, remember these are my thoughts as an inexperienced observer. By all means disagree with what I’ve said here. But as someone who hasn’t played standard in years, never have I felt less inclined to start than in recent years, and it’s not because of the bannings but rather what the bannings mean about the format. If anything I’m of the opinion that Wizards needs to change a bit of its design philosophy when it comes to standard cards, because you can only print so many creatures with super powerful effects on them before things get wonky. That being said, I’m glad they’re willing to admit when they’ve made mistakes, and when they need to take direct action to fix those mistakes, even so far as to print sets that feel distinctly less powerful (in my opinion, certain individual cards nonwithstanding) than their predecessors to act as palette cleansers of sorts. Maybe we should just stop visiting artifact-based planes...

[thekuroiookami]

Otome Mania

This is no longer a secret, I have played, do play and will play a fair number of otome games. I’m weak to cliched romantic plotlines, okay?

Since I did promise @lethesomething a list, here it is. The summary is...I’ve played a lot of games.

Games organized by console, arranged from meh to great.

PS Vita

I pretty much got a Vita so I could play otomes. Don’t judge me too harshly. And while a lot of these are incomplete (i.e. I haven’t played through every route), I feel like I can give an opinion.

Norn 9: Var Commons - Admittedly I haven’t gotten far into this, but lord is the plot confusing. Like, what is happening? What is happening? So many pretty people, though...

Sweet Fuse - Cute, fun, though not high on replay value. The characters are really weird, but don’t let that stop you. They have charm, and the parody elements are worth it. Plus blowing your top has never been so satisfying.

Collar x Malice - I almost finished one route and I’m really enjoying it. The heroine has so much personality and she chews out the dude whose route I was doing, and the mystery is so intriguing, if a tad weirdly investigated...

Code Realize: Guardian of Rebirth - By far the best otome game I’ve played on anything. A beautifully built world, excellent artwork, a heroine with backbone, massively diverging plotlines, and just about every love interest is actually interesting. I’d encourage everyone to play this when it comes out on PC. The Suwabe character is just the icing on the cake for once.

PS3

Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom - Hugely overrated, I think, though not many games can match the artwork. Incredibly long, painful storylines that made me yawn. Heroine has zero presence. I do love Saito though.

Mobile

Mystic Messenger - Is entertaining, but every love interest needs immediate help from a psychologist. The format works to the game’s advantage, and the voice acting is good, I spent a ton of money on it. But the romance doesn’t always feel like a romance.

Liar: Uncover the Truth - This is a surprisingly fun game, but I didn’t have the patience to wait for tickets, or spend money on the black hole. Sad but true.

PC

Games you should definitely never play:

Amnesia: Memories - out and out horror, that one. I don’t know why player character has a sprite, because her personality is non-existent.

Ozmafia - Theoretically very interesting, but in practice, suffers from a spineless heroine. I have a knack for finding the yandere route the second time I play any game, and...let’s say if you play the doctor’s route you’re in for some surprises. Yeah.

Men of Yoshiwara: Sigh. Terrible translation, first off, backed up by terrible writing. Just don’t.

Games that are okay to pass the time:

Seduce Me and Seduce Me 2: Demon War - It’s not like this one is bad, just not amazing. It’s decently voice acted, and the first one is a cute rom-com. The second game gets a lot more complex and weird, and it’s super easy to die. The first game is free.

The Lady’s Choice - A Regency romance otome game with only two choices, but it’s nice how much you can shape the MC’s personality. Free on itch.io.

Dandelion and Nameless - Both of these are Korean-origin, produced by the same company that did Mystic Messenger, and while they do have strong writing plus original concepts, somehow the games never keep my attention for long. Nameless is a bit dark in tone, if that appeals to you. Dandelion is a stat-raising sim, which I hate with a passion.

Loren the Amazon Princess - I think this was one of the first ones I played, and it was pretty ahead in the range of LGBTQ characters, but now that I think back on it, the RPG/romance combination was a tad strange. But I do recommend it.

Days of the Divine - Another of those free itch.io ones, I can barely remember this. It was passable.

How to Take Off Your Mask - Cute, but I can’t remember what the point was.

Games that are super cute and definitely need to be played at least once:

Cute Demon Crashers - It’s a pretty short game, but utterly wonderful in its simplicity and earnestness. An R-18 novel that is very high on sex positivity, I’d recommend this one a lot. Free on itch.io.

The Blind Griffin - An odd but good work set in the age of flapper dresses and speakeasies, following a Chinese heroine who accidentally stumbles upon a secret magician’s guild and trains as an apprentice. Great art, comes with a slang dictionary, and makes up for its abruptness with cuteness. Free on itch.io.

Heartbaked - Lots of aggressive pastry references in this one, and one guy who is? a sheep? Or something? I dunno, it’s adorable. Free on itch.io.

Hustle Cat - A cat cafe, only the staff are the cats. Light hearted fun, though it is easy to mess the game up and get a bad ending.

Autumn’s Journey - So cute. So much fluff. Dragon boys. A girl knight. Enough said. Free on itch.io.

Magical Otoge Ciel - If you want to simultaneously have your soul uplifted and go “WTF is this meta”, play this. It’s so irreverent and sweet, and the art grows on you. @batensan‘s Magical Otoge Anholly is a good read as well, though it is technically a linear novel. Free on itch.io.

Taarradhin - A beautiful fantasy short, but incredibly hard to figure out. The high probability of getting it wrong kind of put me off. Free on itch.io.

Lads in Distress - Exactly what it says on the tin. Overly competent princess with pink hair takes matters into her own hands and saves the princes. I only wish we also had the option to date the childhood fried cum fairy advisor.  Free on itch.io.

Re: Alistair - This one is really good, and honestly would have been included in the best games list if it had more LIs. There’s a cute mystery to sort of solve, and I don’t even mind the stat-raising elements. Free on itch.io.

Ristorante Amore - Gorgeous art, and a major plot twist once the story really gets started. I can’t give away anything for fear of ruining it, so just go play it.  Free on itch.io.

Yo-Jin-Bo - One of my guilty pleasures, honestly. Yes the MC is a wimp, but the absolute comedy that passes for dialogue is worth it.

Games that sink their claws in and don’t let go:

Cinders - I cannot recommend this enough. Sublime story-telling, the option to be Machiavellian, naively sweet or something in between. The LI’s are good, of course (guess who’s my favourite), but the real star of the show is female relationships - Cinders and her stepsisters, the daughters and the mother, the godmother in disguise. There’s so many possible outcomes as well. I wish the original fairytale were half as interesting.

Cinderella Phenomenon - A free game I backed on Kickstarter, and it’s looking pretty good. The heroine is unapologetically bitchy, but goes through some satisfying character development in the routse I played. Intrigue abounds, and even though I wish there was a little less blushing to go around, it’s pretty good overall.

Demonheart - I am a little torn about this, because it’s an ongoing game on Steam (released in chapters). On the one hand, I feel like romance things happened really abruptly in the last chapter. On the other, the concept is executed very well and there are so many choices. Plus, excellent worldbuilding.

Nachtigal - A really good shorter game about a spunky heroine trapped with two vampires. There’s a whole variety of ways to die in this one, so it’s extra satisfying when you do land the guy.

The Royal Trap - Say what you will about it, but as one of the first VNs I read, I still quite like this one. So many romance options, and so much intrigue. Each route reveals something different about the overall plot. Good stuff. 

The Second Reproduction - Starts off typical, but then it goes down some truly unexpected routes. Strong heroine, attractive demon king. Be sure to play it with a guide to get the whole story.

There are plenty I haven’t played at all, or not enough to comment, but this is the list I’d give out to anyone who wanted some recs.

[pauperpedia]

What’s the future for Aggro?

Pauper will never be the same after Commander Legends. This has been the set everyone wanted, but at the same time it seems everyone is fearful of it, and rightfully so. We've gotten access to some very powerful cards in regard to control, midrange, and tron strategies which will shape the format for a long time to come. Aggro decks, however, did not get any new toys or bigger creatures with which to counteract all these new cards. So which cards am I framing here that could make aggro a less than viable option when figuring out a deck to play in the future?

Well, Pauper finally got the sweeper that people have talked about for years in the form of Fiery Cannonade. Now, if you look at the sweepers we had before, they mostly did one damage or gave -1/-1 to each creature until the end of turn, which was fine because most of the time these were sideboard cards you would bring in against token decks or go wide strategies. One could argue we already had Pestilence, Crypt Rats, and Evincar's Justice. My argument would be is that Fiery Cannonade is not only one mana cheaper, but a heck of a lot easier to cast when it comes to color requirements. It's also instant speed which is a huge deal when it comes to control decks or anything that runs Mystical Teachings. Some decks already run Suffocating Fumes in the mainboard, in part due to its cycle ability when it's dead, so I'm curious to see if any decks would run this mainboard as well. This set also opened up the playable color pie when it comes to Monarch cards. Monarch is a mechanic that was created primarily for multi-player formats. It is an effect that cannot be permanently removed from the game state once it's introduced. If a player controls the monarch, they draw a card at the beginning of their end step. The only way to lose or gain the monarch is to deal or have combat damage dealt to you via creatures. In multiplayer formats this is a fun mechanic that encourages people to attack in the face of any in game politics. The player holding the monarch becomes a target for other players to come after them. In a 1v1 scenario, however, this means that the main focus once the Monarch once has been introduced to the game state is to protect it. I think we can all agree protecting something against one assailant is a lot easier than protecting something from multiple. The main goal is to amass more resources than your opponent and eventually kill them in the long game. In order to protect the monarch, decks utilize fog tacticts to delay the game in the monarch's favor. This leads to long, drawn out, and uninteresting games for the aggro player once this situation presents itself. Commander Legends gave blue two very powerful monarch cards, Fall from Favor & Azure Fleet Admiral. Fall from Favor is an unprecedented enchantment-aura spell which can give a player the monarch for three mana. Being able to lock down a creature that would threaten to take the monarch away and give you the monarch at the same time doesn't bode well for any aggressive decks not holding up targeted protection. Then you have the Admiral, which not only gives you the monarch, but also makes it so that you can take it back relatively easy allowing you to set up situtations to lock your opponent out from getting the monarch back in the future. I guess Azure Fleet Admiral dies to Lightning Bolt and Savage Swipe, but any decent player running monarch cards will most likely have resources at hand to deal with that outcome.

So how will aggro decks adapt to overcome these hurdles? I've had the great plasure to chat with some of our formats well known players. A common concern regarding aggro decks is their ability to recover from board wipes now that Fiery Cannon is a thing. Stompy is the biggest deck that could suffer. Most of Stompy's creatures are 2/2s so they can take full advantage of Savage Swipe. As the deck stands now, it will hinge on whether or not they can represent lethal by turn three or have a creature big enough by casting Hunger of the Howlpack. The problem with that is that even a really good hand, presenting lethal by turn three is highly unlikely. Even having one big creature puts a Stompy player in a bad position due in part to Skred, Cast Down, Defile, and Snuff out to name a few removal cards that could be run alongside Fiery Cannonade.

Calpine, a notable Tortured Existence player and daily Pauper Twitch streamer, told me he thinks aggro decks will have two paths moving forward. One path relies on going even harder on faster kills, and ignoring midrange stuff like Elephant Guide, in favor of Groundswell. I wonder if perhaps Stompy will go back to its roots and focus more on one drops that go in for a quick kill? Calpine said another path is for aggro players is to build a deck with more resilient threats or rely on burn more. Calpine noted that creatures like Mogg War Marshall, Safehold Elite, Young Wolf, etc. will become more popular. He also said that red decks will lean more heavily on burn them out strategies. I think creatures like Viashino Pyromancer & Orcish Hellraiser are decent candidates that could see more play. Goblin decks could also run pirates which dodge Fiery Cannonade, so I think creatures like Fanatical Firebrand & Goblin Trailblazer have a chance at seeing more play as well.

Zimplfy aka NotGood on MTGO, host of the UnFamiliar Territory podcast & all around good guy, went on to say that Elves is definetely going to get hurt by Fiery Cannonade. There was some discussion floating around that Wrap in Vigor could be an option, but both Zimplfy and I don't think that would be good enough. So, like all good investigative reporters, I sought out an Elves expert to find out how Elves could adapt. Thankfully Walker735 was willing to give their insight. Walker735 went on to say that Elves already has a lot of answers. Hydroblast, Prohibit, Negate, Dispel, and previously mentioned Wrap in Vigor are the best examples. It's just a matter of which ones will end as the best answers moving forward as it pertains to the metagame. Walker735 said this about what they want from their protection spell suite: 1) 2-3 protection spells in the main that are useful more or less in every matchup. 2) A combination of 4-6 protection spells in the 75 for every relevant matchup. 3) The protection spells used in the matchups have to not only be effective, but also efficient. Post Fiery Cannonade, Elves will probably have to give up on some sideboard slots that used to be dedicated to other things. This is a shame because it will weaken the overall deck, but hopefully not too much. Walker735 said it's difficult to theorycraft a specific protection spell suite already, beacause we dont have the data for what the metagame will look like. They're confident, however, that with all the good options available, Elves will be able to come up with a suite of protection spells that meet the requirements.

As someone who loves playing the white slice of magic's color pie, there are only two options when it comes to aggro decks. You have Heroic, a deck focused on buffing your creatures and holding up protection, or you have White Weenie which can either go wide or try and play like Stompy albeit not as efficiently. I think its pretty safe to assume any White Weenie strategy is now most likely dead, if it was even alive to begin with. In order to combat an efficient sweeper like Fiery Cannonade, White Weenie decks would have to run mainboard protection spells like Hallow or creatures like Loyal Cathar and Doomed Traveler. The main thing holding White Weenie and Heroic back, is the lack of card draw playing white has to offer. There's no coming back from early removal followed by a boardwipe, there's no Winding Way or Lead the Stampede. Until pauper gets downshifts or new relevant white cards in the format that not only combat sweepers more efficiently, but spells that can bring you back from the brink, white will continue being a support color in pauper strategies. Moving Forward now that we have an interesting downshift in Champion of the Flame and a new card in Benevolent Blessing (a more efficient Cho-Manno's Blessing), Heroic could become a Boros deck. This could change could give Heroic more reach, but at the same time you run the risk of losing early tempo now that you run two colors. Hexproof is already a really good deck that often loses to its own manabase, and I think running Boros Heroic just makes the deck a worse attempt at what Hexproof already does.

I think early on in the Post Commander Legends era, aggressive decks will find it hard to grab a decent foothold in the metagame. I think the most viable aggro decks moving forward will be Hexproof, Affinity, and I think you might see a resurgance in Tireless Tribe if you could classify that as an aggro deck. All three of these decks have ways of killing an opponent early, dodge Fiery Cannonade, and have answers when it comes to fighting monarch style decks. Deluxeicoff, original deck designer & host of Pauperganda, stated that Benevolent Blessing will be a house in Hexproof. It will be hard to measure how many feel right in the deck, but the deck will just "feel better/more consistent. In addition to that, I’d like to add that Hexproof also has access to cards like Essence Harvest which it brings in against decks that try to fog combat or prevent damage with Prismatic Strands. The two paired up do sound nice. Affinity is already a strong deck that has been on a recent trend of playing Jeskai Colors. I think the new addition of Fiery Cannonade will force Affinity to go back to playing Myr Enforcer and Carapace Forger and forgo the white splash in Glint Hawk, Thraben Inspector, and Kor Skyfisher. Tireless Tribe is a fun deck that could see a rise in success. Benevolent Blessing is definitely a card that can give this deck a boost. The built in ability for Tribe to dodge sweepers and mainboard counters to beat fogs, could make Tireless Tribe a sleeper deck that could spike a tournament or burn through a league with good results.

Of course, all of the above is heavily reliant on Fiery Cannonade being the major factor when it comes to aggro's demise. It will most likely be an abundance of factors that combine the influx of newer and cheaper monarch cards as well as the new sweeper. Keep in mind, the sweeper hits non pirates only and the new relevant monarch creatures are both pirates. I actually had a dream where a new UR Pirates deck was running amok and was the new deck to beat. While this nightmare scenario is just that, a fictional nightmare, it's not that crazy. I think you will see UR Faeries try to make a comeback. You started to see the deck deploy a more robust land selection so that it could reliably cast Crown-Hunter Hireling. Let's be honest, while it did put up results briefly, Crown-Hunter Hireling is a horrible card. Now, you can have the monarch on turn three with Fall from Favor if you need it, and can continue to get the monarch back if you lost it thanks to Azure Fleet-Admiral. This kind of tempo and card advantage will spell disaster for opposing aggro decks. Only time will tell which will be worse for aggro decks; the introduction of an easy to cast three mana "sweeper" at instant speed, or the new monarch cards in blue which was already a strong color to begin with.

[evakuality]

Archetype fic infodump

Because I thought far too often about this in far too much detail before I started writing, here is a small glance into the bts ideas behind this archetype fic of mine.  The final (!!!!) chapter is written and with my betas, and this is here now because I’m pretty sure there’s nothing new in the fic itself.  So there shouldn’t be spoilers in here for anyone who’s read up to chapter ten.  Okay, so first, I’ll put the notes I made for myself before I started writing.  Then I’ll try to answer specific questions or comments/theories people have had over the course of this thing.  Anything that was answered in the fic itself I tried to leave out (because it’s already so long ugh), and there was some stuff I added to the notes on chapter one which I didn’t bother to replicate.  If anyone has any questions about anything here, or wants more detail, please do ask.  I’m finding it hard to remember everything I thought about as I created this world, but I am perfectly willing to talk about this at length when prompted.  As this is mostly self indulgent (so self-indulgent; I feel quite cringey even posting it) I’d love to answer things other people want to know so I can indulge more than just myself.  As usual, this is long!  Keep yourselves hydrated while you read.

Characters and their types:

Even: Beast.

Isak: Outcast

Sonja = Beauty

Emma = another Outcast (note, we never met her in Even’s PoV even though we did briefly hear about her, but she was formative in Isak’s and so we may meet her in the Isak PoV sections)

Eskild = Fairy Godmother

Sana = the Seer

Jonas = the Wise Man

Magnus = the Fool

Mahdi = Prince Charming

Eva = Princess

Noora = Princess.  (fun fact: Noora was going to be a Charming, but then I decided that given how long the damn fic already was that I’d just make them both Princesses and have them out of archetype.  If I was going to do more with Noora, I do feel like Charming would work for her.)

Vilde = the Sidekick

Chris = the Sidekick

Elias = the Hero

Yousef = the Fool (in the sense that he tells the truth in an uncomfortable way)

Adam = The Sidekick

Mutta = the Sidekick

Even’s mother = Beast

Even’s father = Beauty

Isak’s mother = Beast (fun fact: I see her as the ‘Pack’ type discussed in the book Even finds)

Isak’s father = Beauty (we never meet him, but his absence was a factor in how Isak turned out, of course.  I see this relationship as one where the Beauty is mismatched to the Beast type and that’s at least partially why the whole thing fell apart)

Common archetypes (note, this isn’t an exhaustive list, just the ones mentioned in this fic):

Outcast, Charming, Wise Man, Princess, Fool, Sidekick, Hero

More rare archetypes:

Beast, Beauty, Damsel, Seer, Fairy Godmother

How does being a Beast affect Even [note, some of this didn’t make it into the fic itself] -- he’s expected to be dominant and aggressive, having temper tantrums and rages.  Needs ‘control’ to keep him in line.  He doesn’t enjoy this at all and it’s never felt truly natural to him.  Yearns to be allowed to be playful and ‘childish’ - reckless and free spirited.  ‘Director of his own life’ -- is allowed to be silly with Isak.  Running, jumping, little things like kissing in a stupid way through to big things like running naked through the streets or skinny dipping.  Adventure sports etc.

How does being an Outcast affect Isak [note, some of this changed as I was writing] -- he’s mistrustful, stays on the sidelines, feels left out, wary of society and pressures, fed up with expectations (eg the bad boy, the rebel, the player etc etc), simultaneously anxious and wants to fit in.  Creates his own little ‘in group’ with Even.  Finally feels like he fits.  Anti hero of a sort.  On the margins, never quite accepted.  Expected to end up with another outcast or to remain alone.  But he wants something more.  Is entranced by Even when he meets him, but very wary because he’s a Beast and is he only tame-ish because he’s with his Beauty.

Questions from various places:

I'm wondering if, given there's Beast's Beauty but then also Sleeping Beauty (and Snow White is also a lot/all about her beauty), if you're going to go into that? Like, different types of Beauties (maybe different types of Beasts?)?

Strangely prescient idea presented in the comments of chapter one by @fille-lioncelle.  The answer, of course, is yes.  There are different types of each of those things, though not quite in that way.  The types weren’t quite so structured as this, but the basic idea behind this is right: the types are a lot more complex than originally considered by many of the characters, and just as there are multiple Beast types, there are multiple Beauty types as well.

It was also heartbreaking to see how deeply internalized is Even's belief in the destructiveness of his beastly urges, so much so that he pushes away even good and positive beastly traits (like protectiveness and caring for others) because he's so conditioned to think beastly urges are a disaster.

Comment from @arindwell on chapter 3.  That was one of the things I most wanted to do with this fic: to show how destructive a rigid set of expectations and behaviours is for a society and the people in it.  That Even believes all his good traits are tied to being a Beast and that they will eventually, inevitably betray him and make him hurt the people around him was essential to his progress.  But it was really hard to actually do :(

It was also really interesting to find out that Isak has had to learn to behave like a Beauty because of his mom. It makes me interested in whether there are other people who have learned to take on characteristics of other archetypes for various reasons.

Comment by @arindwell on chapter 4.  This one, the answer is definitely yes even though we didn’t really see it in the fic itself.  That’s central to the nature/nurture premise: that the society has decided on these rigid ideas of what each type must be like, and any deviation is bad and wrong.  But, of course, human nature is not like that and we all have aspects of all traits.  It’s just to what degree and how they manifest, and hopefully that’s shown in this fic somehow.

I think in the last chapter you talked about how Isak learned to behave like a Beauty and that Even might have recognised that in him and it's just throwing so much more nature vs nurture questions at this haha are types genetic? Are there dominant and recessive ones? When can you tell?

Comment on chapter 5 by @fille-lioncelle.  Are types genetic?  No not really, at least not in a way I can quantify because I am not a scientist.  I mean, there’s a slightly higher chance for offspring of certain types to be those types but due to mystical fic magic there’s no real scientific genetic pattern here.  So, eg, Even the Beast is a product of a Beauty/Beast archetype pairing, and yet Isak the Outcast is the product of another.  Certain types are more common but that’s just a thing that happens.  Maybe it’s a hormonal thing?  Who knows?  Certainly not me.  So, of course, this mean there are no recessive/dominant genes etc etc.  However, when can you tell?  It’s something which is inherent in the kids, but they don’t get formally typed until they’re older toddlers (4-ish?)  So for those first few years, parents watch their kids like hawks going, ‘I wonder if he’s a Fool’ or ‘What a cute little Damsel’ etc etc and generally they a) know by the time of typing and b) have some pretty set expectations already when the typing does happen.

I was wondering - if Eskild is the Fairy Godmother type, how does that work? Do they usually find people to take care of, like a single person they choose to help and focus on? Or do they take care of multiple people in general, like specific types like Outcasts?

Comment by Rissa on chapter 5.  So, yeah in a way Fairy Godmother’s do like to have their little projects.  So they might adopt one or two special people to nurture and mother.  But they also just really like looking after everyone; their nature makes them want to make sure everyone is at ease and doing well.

Also, does everyone remain the type they are for the rest of their life, or do they change? And also, how are types determined when you're born?

Comment by Rissa on chapter 5.  Yeah, everyone keeps their archetype for their whole lives.  But as we’ve seen with Isak, they can adapt and take on traits of other types.  As for how the types are determined, this is one I’m a little fuzzy on.  ‘It just happens?’ was my go to hand wave while I was writing.  But basically, I imagine it as a process which is half observation and half testing.

You know what's really interesting? and stop me if I'm wrong haha, im just thinking out loud! But I think one of the main differences between Outcasts and Beauties (aside from the obvious ones) is that Outcasts seem very protective of others that they take under their wing. Kinda like a fairy godmother type, almost? But in that Outcasts take care of other types that maybe feel like Outcasts as well.

Comment by Rissa on chapter 7.  I think there’s definitely something in here.  The Outcasts do tend to take each other under their wings, and that’s why they make their little in groups.  When you’re pushed to the margins and assumed to not fit, you find those places to fit on your own.  So they are super sensitive to those close to them who also feel on the outer.  So of course, when Isak starts to get close to Even, his own feelings of alienation and being on the outside would have resonated with Isak and made him a lot more willing to drop his guard faster than usual.  But Jonas was right: they don’t usually do it for people outside their archetype and so isak is still a little unusual.

I wonder if, like gender and sexuality, they're treated differently by different groups throughout history.

Comment by @fille-lioncelle on chapter 9.  Yeah, pretty much.  I mean, Isak talks about that a little in chapter ten of course.  But it wasn’t until the church decided it needed a better way to control the population and started embedding the stories that things became so rigid and defined.  I’d like to take this chance to say I was a bit nervous about this idea because it’s about humans, of course, not religious beliefs themselves.  Church leaders, wanting to retain a power they felt slipping away, doing what they can to take it back and keep it for themselves.  It’s reflective of real things that real people did in our world but it’s not meant as a suggestion that religion itself is a problem.  Just the way it’s weaponized sometimes.

This makes me wonder if the subcategory thing applies to all the types? I'd think it would, or at least for most of them. Also, I wonder if it applies to Isak/what subtype he'd be.

Comment by @kapplebougher on chapter 9.  Well, as we’ve seen, yes other types do have subcategories as well.  The interesting thing about Outcasts, however, is that for the most part they don’t have any one single defining characteristic.  This is why Isak himself is able to say ‘I’m an Outcast because I’m attracted to guys’ - because it’s not as defined as the others.  Which makes it both easier to live with and harder in some ways.  But all this will be explored in a bit more detail when we get Isak’s PoV.

[junker-town]

The Mystics trade for Tina Charles is the ultimate fleece

The Mystics were already title-favorites. Now they added another all-star in a lopsided deal.

Seven-time all-star Tina Charles has been traded to the Washington Mystics in a three-team deal that will send Shatori Walker-Kimbrough and Tayler Hill to the New York Liberty, according to the AP’s Doug Feinberg. In addition, the Liberty will receive the No. 9 and 15 picks from the Dallas Wings, and No. 12 pick from the Mystics in Friday’s draft. The Wings will receive the Mystics’ 2021 first-round pick and Liberty’s 2022 second-round pick.

The WNBA’s reigning champion Mystics just pulled off a heist, moving late draft picks and a role-player for one of the league’s aging, but still quality, superstars. Charles averaged 17 points per game last season with eights rebounds and two assists, though she shot a career-low 39 percent from the field last season. Still, it was a low cost for a potential high-ceiling return.

Let’s breakdown what exactly happened.

The Mystics are beyond stacked. It’s terrifying. But there are questions.

The Mystics were debatably the favorite to win a second consecutive championship before this move was made. The Seattle Storm, with a healthy Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart, were their biggest preseason competition.

D.C. lost Kristi Toliver in free agency to the Los Angeles Sparks over guaranteed money, and instead opted to pay a not-as-good, but still very solid replacement in Leilani Mitchell. Otherwise the rest of the group that ravaged the league into oblivion, crushing offensive records by the day, was back. Now they’ve add a scoring legend to the mix.

How Charles fits into the group is a head-scratcher, at least for now, though. Without Toliver, the Mystics could likely have started a group that includes all-star snubs Natasha Cloud and Ariel Atkins, MVP Elena Delle Donne, Finals MVP Emma Meesseman and defensive anchor LaToya Sanders. Then bring Aerial Powers, Tianna Hawkins and Mitchell off the bench. That lineup probably shouldn’t change, though it’d require Charles to do something she’s never done in her entire career — come off the bench.

The Mystics’ offense thrives because of its defensive versatility and aggressive shot-making from the perimeter. Charles, at 31 years old, is a few steps slower than she used to be moving laterally, and she’s never been much of an outside shot-maker (29 percent for her career.) If she replaces Sander for stints, she could be extremely effective in a rim-protecting and mid-range role. It’s just not something she’s done before.

The move has risks, especially if Charles isn’t as willing as she thinks she’ll be to play a decreased role. But the costs were minimal. Walker-Kimbrough was a deep-bench player, and the draft picks surrendered may not have even made the Mystics’ final roster anyway.

Why did the Liberty make this move?

The Liberty are rebranding in a new city, and the all-time leading scorer in the franchise’s history didn’t fit the new model. When the WNBA season does resume, everyone expects Sabrina Ionescu will be wearing a black and green jersey in Brooklyn, next to Asia Durr and Kia Nurse, the team’s first-round picks in the previous two drafts. New York is getting younger and has the building blocks to push pace and space the floor like the league’s elite teams now. That’s just not in Charles’ game.

What did the Liberty get?

The Liberty get a fresh start with another set of picks. Ionescu will go No. 1. The question is who will be there at No. 9, 12 and 15. Ruthy Hebard, one of Ionescu’s screen-and-roll running mates at Oregon, could be there at 9. Maybe with the other picks, they’ll opt for another shooter in South Carolina Mikiah Herbert Harrigan, or take a flier on 6’7 Miami post Beatrice Mompremier. New York will have options.

Still, it’s unlikely this return will net them anyone close to Charles’ talents. New York has been fielding offers for Charles all offseason, but watched as teams filled cap space to retain players or trade for other stars. Her market shriveled up, and the Mystics took advantage of that.

What did the Wings get?

The Wings are the toughest team in the WNBA to get a read on. They’re sitting on a ton of draft assets with little roster space and only one surefire star piece in Arike Ogunbowale. Dallas wasn’t going to keep all four of its first-round picks in the 2020 draft, but the market for them was dry. This might’ve been one of a small list of moves they could’ve made.

This trade will buy Dallas time to figure themselves out and pick from of a potentially better draft class. Tayler Hill was unlikely to play in this year’s rotation as Ogunbowale and Moriah Jefferson have possibly phased out her minutes anyway. Still, their return seems paltry. The Mystics’ first-round pick in 2021 is likely to be in the bottom-two, and second-round picks could be cut more frequently than ever in the WNBA’s new economy.

So who won?

The Mystics just got a legend for a small asking price.

Charles finally has a chance to win a WNBA title.

And who lost?

The Liberty’s return to Charles is fine, maybe. Walker-Kimbrough can play. But the trade is nothing to brag about.

The Wings, maybe? It’s hard to call them a winner.

[blogging-phelddagrif]

Legacy Deck Tech: Death & Taxes

[you can see every deck tech here]

Hello & welcome to this weekly deck tech! This week we’re delving into legacy for a deck that has been in the meta for a long time: Death & Taxes. When I used to play legacy I had a love-hate relationship with this deck; it’s easily one of my favourite decks of the format, but playing against it is such a pain in the ass...the deck is really strong & aggressive, while really hindering it’s opponent’s plans. We’ll go over it and you’ll get what I mean.

the Tax Part

This fun little card makes for the taxing part of the name, making sure that your opponent will have a hard time casting anything that’s not a creature. I’ve seen some people play Thorn of Amethyst in the mainboard or sideboard on top of this card, but that’s really up to you. The new Thalia Guardian of Thraben can also be played in the sideboard for creature heavy decks. But this card by itself is really game-changing. Most legacy decks are very non-creature spell heavy, which hurts them a lot.

Revoking their Fun

While this card is usually seen in sideboards, here you want to play it in the main. Being able to completely shut down any card from your opponent’s deck is huge and since legacy has usually a pretty known meta, you’ll know in the first couple of turns what your opponent is playing and what to name with this. This requires you to KNOW what each deck plays, what are their win conditions, etc. Death & Taxes is one of the deck that is the hardest to pilot because you need to make a lt of decisions like these that will decide of the fate of the game.

Motherly Love

If you’ve ever played legacy you know how good and important this card is. It’s so hard to play around it with removal and it really fucks up your opponent. You can give your creatures unblockable too if you want, or make them be amazing blockers. There’s just so much you can do with this cheap & powerful card! Speaking of protection, the deck sually plays Mirran Crusader in the sideboard to deal with Black & Green decks. Let me tell you that Crusader is almost impossible to deal with if you’re playing those colours.

Serra’s Wrath

I’m sure a lot of you have never seen this card being played before, but oh boy is it good in this deck! To be honest, a 3/3 flying vigilance is incredibly hard to deal with in a format with so few creatures. you don’t really care that you cast cast it for the first 3 turns, no matter when it comes down, it’s going to pressure your opponent a lot and get the job done. Plus, there’s a way to cheap it in play early that we’re going to see later.

Stoneforged Death

Good thing this card is banned in modern because it’s really really strong. This might seem like it doesn’t fit too well in the deck, but it sort of does. You can go fetch one of your 3 equipments that we’re going to go over in a second, and just take the threat level up a notch. Your deck wants to attack with all your small & efficient creatures; making them more threatening with a sweet equipment is just amazing.

Big Ol’ Skull

A good target for your Mystic, this card will apply MASSIVE amounts of pressure on your opponent and can negate the pesky attacks from a True-Name Nemesis. The lifegain is amazing and your huge creature will require an answer right away or you’ll steal the game from your opponent. Good thing you have a Mother of Runes to protect that creature now.

Sword of Shock & Draw

On top of having a GREAT effect of shocking anything & drawing a card when you hit a player, this card gives your creature protection from red and blue. With this you’ll be safe from about 80% of the format’s removal spells. Seriously. If your opponent is heavy on removal, this is the equipment to get first; making sure your creature stays safe.

Unban Jitte 2K17

I often jokingly say that Jitte should be unbanned in modern and anyone who hasn’t played legacy would look up the card and think “they’re right, it’s not THAT good, why is it banned?” and everyone who HAS played legacy will send me hate messages telling me I’m the personification of the devil. This card is insane. Really. If you’ve ever had play against a Jitte you will know the gut wrenching feeling of hatred towards your opponent and the feeling of helplessness facing this atrocity. This card gets out of hand so quickly and is so hard to answer. If you play this, you will out-value your opponent, no matter what they do. It’s disgusting.

Blinking Friend

You’ve probably seen this card being played in modern & EDH because it’s, well, a good card; and that’s also the case in legacy. Being able to blink any of your creature is just good value and depending on what you’re playing, can get you really ahead. I mean, you can blink your Stoneforge Mystic to go grab another equipment, does that feel nice? You can also blink your Phyrexian Revoker to name another card. And you can blink the next card I’ll go over for some sweet value, and to make new choices.

Chalice on a Stick

Pretty much being a creature version of Chalice of the Void (I still think it should’ve been named Magus of the Void, but whatever) this card is probably my favourite card from the new Conspiracy set and is just what this deck needed. From the experience of playing Chalice of the Void in legacy, if you choose a cmc of 1, you’re turning off a majority of spells of the format. If you’re able to choose 1 AND 2, you just completely rendered useless a wide variety of decks. I shit you not, I’ve had a game where I’ve played CotV on 1 & 2 on the first turn of a game and my opponent just scooped. That simple.

Cheating Stuff in Play

This is the bread & butter of the deck. If you can get a Vial down on turn 1 you’ve just pissed off so many decks. With this you can cheat some creatures in play to overwhelm your opponent, as well as being really efficient on mana. Oh and you can Flickerwisp at instant speed, as well as play a Serra Avenger earlier than intended.

Mandatory Swords

The same goes for Path to Exile in modern; if you’re playing White in legacy, you need to play Swords to Plowshares. It’s most likely the best removal spell ever printed and there’s no reason not to play it. Period.

Legendary Mana Base

There is some cool little trivia about this card. It was being played in the deck some time ago to mostly protect your own stuff, like Thalia. It was also used to deal with Sneak & Show decks that were pretty popular. Then there has been a surge in Reanimator decks and Lands Depths deck, which all rely on playing a singular legendary creature to win the game. The Death & Taxes deck just didn’t care about those and saw it’s winrate skyrocket because it just so happen to already have an answer to all those decks with included in their mana base. The more you know.

Wasted

You shouldn’t be surprised that this card shows up here since most decks in legacy play Wasteland and since part of your deck wants to “Tax” your opponent, getting rid of their lands is a good way to do that. Not much else to say, it’s a pretty solid card in a format with not a lot of basic lands present. Also, since you play Aether Vial, you won’t really care about losing a few lands.

Should’ve Been Printed in EMA

I really would’ve loved seeing this card being printed in EMA alongside all the other important lands of the format. This card is amazing in the deck since it goes so well with the taxing aspect of the deck while being repeatable. You can really screw over your opponent with this and they’ll hate you for it.

Modern Version

There’s a modern version of the deck, which I don’t think is as effective, since you don’t have access to Sanctum Prelate, Umezawa’s Jitte and Stoneforge Mystic & Mother of Runes. Instead the deck plays Path to Exile (to replace Swords to Plowshares), Aven Mindcensor, Leonin Arbiter, Blade Splicer & Restoration Angel. Some decks even play some Eldrazi Displacer to utilize the “blink” aspect of the deck more. To be honest, if you’re looking to do a 2-for-1 you can play the deck in Modern and have the necessary card to turn it into the legacy version when needed, especially since it’s a deck that requires a lot of practice to get good at.

Wrap-Up

That’s it for this week, I hope you guys enjoyed this deck tech as much as I did. The deck isn’t really cheap, but is one of the top decks of the format, even if it has fallen out of flavour in the past couple of years. You have a good match-up in the majority of the meta and a lot of decks will struggle against it. In any case, if I missed anything let me know. I’ll see you guys next week for an EDH deck tech!