howdy y'all, im back for a bit with some internet. Going to be traveling back to the states so going to have some time to play some more demanding games which I'm excited for! Anywho, I've been doing a fair bit of indies recently still. Slowly playing through Scarmonde and YIIK (again, but they updated it now and its soooo much funnier now), and at the start of the month I absolutely clobbered the entirety of Chained Echoes.

In terms of the two meat-and-potato games, I've been playing a ton of Rotwood and an even larger ton of Crystal Project. Rotwood is just a fantastic game, kinda like Hades if you replaced everyone with potentially fluffy (?) animals/non-humanoids and made one of the weapons have the ability to dunk on people. It's build-crafting leads to some of the most stupid looking gameplay I've ever seen, with my favorite so far being one based around putting on a bunch of heavy clothing and fat rolling into people and just having them die. It's still in EA, but its going to have a price bump towards launch, so I'd check it out if it's something you're mildly interested. Oh and it has multiplayer but I obviously haven't gotten the chance to try it.

As for the other one, MAN is Crystal Project probably my favorite JRPG of all time. Base game is a wonderful experience through and through, but I've been having fun making mods recently. Currently have two, one is more or less finished and it takes the whole 'yeah I want to decide what skills I want" leveling you usually would have in a JRPG and throws it out the window of a Slay the Spire-esque "draft abilities to add to your toolkit" method. Pretty fun so far but I want to change a thing or two because it's a bit overtuned. As for the other mod, it just kinda doubles the game's playable unlockable classs from 24 to 48. Been learning how to sprite things for it so some are hit or miss, but some are really decent if you ask me. It's a precursor to a larger mod I want to make, releasing just the classes to make sure they are more balanced so I can try to avoid a balance nightmare. That being said the 24 new classes are a bit funny looking back on, because some range from "yeah this is just a plant themed support mage" to "yeah this is just a bunch of casino games some idiot coded into this game for some reason", ie something that only someone who is really bored and lacks internet would do. All that said (and despite what Sera says), play Crystal Project, game is very good.

hey hey hey, due to a sort of involuntary exile from my home (aka training on the other end of the country for 3 weeks) I've had a good amount of internet to finally grind a bit of Marvel Snap. Bit rough being several very strong season pass cards behind (especially missing kate bishop and agent venom) but been able to get back from like, rank 13 to rank 87 without much struggle, probably gonna try pushing the last bit in the next couple of days.

Besides that, finally going to take the time to clear out the last couple of achievements in a couple games cuz I can't be damned to do it without a guide. Stuff like "collect every relic" in Ara Fell is such a painful achievement on what was otherwise a pretty cute jrpg. Also need to replay a bunch of Can of Wormholes since for whatever reason achievements don't unlock on that game if you get them when you are offline. Three days ago I'd also be checking off Sea of Stars but the new update brought a bunch of local coop achievements, which I uhh.... can't really do here that easily.

The last thing that has been eating up my time has been with Crystal Project. Turns out that the game has a ludicrously in-depth (but also weirdly limiting) modding client so I've been slowly making my own mod. Haven't gotten around to playtesting it yet but its been really fun coming up with just class concepts for what's probably my favorite rpg (maybe even one of my fav game of all time too tbh, pretty tough competition by I digress). Its been a bit funny looking back because some classes are just "glorified druid focusing only on plant magic" to eventually "Shapeshifting monstrosity that transforms itself into different enemies and stealing their skillsets" and "Mecha with a heat meter in a game that does not have anything remotely close to a heat meter". Been slowly learning how to sprite things so I can create the 96 different sprite sheets needed, then some amount of animations and status icons which has been pretty fun. All this to say that I will probably be working on this mod until the day I die, but c'est la vie its been fun so I don't mind it. I know some people cough Link cough have tried it and not been a fan, but the game has a very generous demo so I'd definitely recommend atleast taking a peek.

Oh I also got Void Stranger recently and that games been very cool as well, not far enough in to really go in detail but I know theres some meta puzzles that I'm looking forward to getting irritated-then-ecstatic about like I did with Baba is You.

Sorry for the late response (don't travel into the city where I get wifi to chat here much haha) but I've played HotA! Cove is pretty fun to play albeit I never really got the feel of Factory.  I think the HotA cannon might be my favorite bit of spritework + sfx I've seen in a long time, the little swivel and massive boom was a lot of fun. My biggest issue is that I couldn't get into the HotA campaigns. I think part of why I loved the base Homm3 campaign and the WoG ones that come with the ERA was that they just feel so campy and I love them, while the HotA ones all take themselves serious without reaching the same level of campy.  I'm not sure when I'll come around to playing more Homm3 but when I do I'll have to check out VCMI.

As for the online play stuff, it's never been a concern for me because the of the whole "needing to spend an hour and a half traveling into a city to have working wifi" not really allowing me to consider it haha. Though I have been considering trying to do a hotseat game with my brother where we send the save file back and forth to create like a mail chess situation since my wifi is just barely able to transfer files, but then the issue is we'd have to do Co-op and thats not as fun to me. Also I'm well aware that I should have 1 installation for each expansion now, hindsight is 20/20 and all that. Maybe someday I'll try to reclean it all up again.

Howdy y'all been a minute but I'm back and been playing some games to say the last.

First one, Stardew Valley has hit me hard the past couple of weeks and I'm slowly on my way to getting a perfect farm. Don't get wifi at my house so it's been a journey playing that game without a wiki but it's been pretty fun. I also picked up Tactical Breach Wizards a bit ago, that games really good. It's a bit funny playing through it, stumbling into bugs, complaining to a friend about it, then having them tell me it was updated like a week ago to fix it.  Overall though very solid game, great writing, great mechanics. Probably going to be chewing on Stardew Valley and the original Divinity trilogy from Larian the next couple of weeks, but since I've had a bit of a backlog since the last time I posted in one of these I'mma talk about them as well.

I've gone through a couple phases the last couple of months. Arguably the biggest was with Heroes of Might and Magic 3, beat the entire base campaign, biked out to remote areas to download mods, and then ended up bricking the original executable by having too many mods collide with each other, but very fun overall. Its pretty great going from such a well-balanced base game to installing Wake of Gods that 'woggifies' everything into a horrible balanced state where all it takes is enough stupid ideas to win every combat flawlessly, but it was fun.

I also went through a big jrpg phase again. I've replayed through Crystal Project, Epic Battle Fantasy 3-5, YIIK to name a few, i'd recommend crystal project and EBF5 for actual good fun games, then YIIK if you have a group to laugh at horrible bad things with.

Then the last big grouping of games I played with was pretty much every oldschool pokemon game up to gen 5. I decided to make a complete gen 5 dex which wouldn't be too hard if it wasn't for the fact I'm only playing on emulator and not using any additional software to transfer between games. It's been a bit of a struggle getting the early games pokemon up but it's been fun.

No fun games from Ghana this time around, I'll stay on the lookout for fun games for y'all to try though.

Recently been reading through the Silo Series by Hugh Howey and it's been really good. Haven't gotten much into the third book since I just got it today, but read the first two in like, 3~ days and couldn't put them down for the life of me. Lots of suspense, great world building, unique world, big recommend if you are a fan of like, sci-fi/dystopian. It's also being turned into a TV show but don't know anything about it.

Also got around to reading the newest book from Sylvain Neuvel, 'For the First Time, Again' and it's a pretty weird situation. It's the classic "3rd book in a series that ended pretty well in the 2nd book" situation, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. I can never tell if I love Neuvel's stuff because it's genuinely really good or if it's just because he somehow became my comfort author, but both I enjoyed both the Themis Files and the "Take Them to the Stars" quite a bit. More standard Sci-Fi stuff, though bit of alternate history mixed in and a whole lot more grounded compared to Silo.

Oh and on a completely different angle, recently also finished 'The Elephant Vanishes' by Haruki Murakami. I don't understand this guys writing and why its so enthralling because, to put it simply, he talks about the most painfully mundane stuff imaginable but at the same time you just cannot put it down. Its a collection of a bunch of short stories that are all really nice, but I don't think I can ever like explain them in a way that does his writing style justice. For example

Congrats on getting married!

Since I'm going to be in Africa for the next 27 months, don't think I'm gonna be able to get much video games in so I'mma stretch the intentions of this thread a bit hehe. Brought a couple decks of cards here (Ghana) and it's been a very neat experience. The people here, for whatever reason, mostly only know one card game called Spar. So been playing a bunch of that and slowly teaching people in my village how to play other card games like Texas Hold em or Tycoon. Don't know if any of you have like, board game nights/friends to play something like Tabletop Simulator, but definitely would recommend trying out Spar for just how quick and easy to learn it is to play. To say its popular here would be a huge understatement (I'm trying to google the rules to link it but my internets really chugging right now and not cooperating sorry D:). There's also this weird like, Sorry!-esque board game I've been playing but I don't have the foggiest clue what to call it nor all the rules to describe it, but that one's fun too.

Oh, and I guess I also still have Marvel Snap on my phone and still trying to somewhat keep up with it. Been playing probably the worst deck ever conceived of just every conditional 10 power card and Skaar and just preying on the fact nobody expects the 3rd/4th 10 power 4 drop. Don't recommend trying it if you want to rank but winning with proper garbage like Attuma has been pretty fun.

Yeah I think that's something a lot of people didn't properly evaluate with Raid the Docks when it was first revealed. Sacrificing some early-game potential to be able to win more easily in the late game definitely proved worth it.

Honestly I'm not sure if Odyn really falls into the same issue. Even though it is 1 card that lets you start pressuring the opponent down, the deck needs stuff like Shield Block or Heavy Plate to actually start clocking the opponent. I think its just one of the few times in recent HS where we've had 1 card that is a concise win condition as opposed to the usual "my win condition is the opponent falling asleep". Last card I can think that truly took up that mantle was Archivist Elysiana or Dr. Boom, Mad Genius.

And yeah Deathstalker Rexxar is definitely up there for cards that I love but also should never have been printed. I feel like it did what Order in the Court used to do of letting you swap your early game aggression for a killer late game, just on steroids. I still think the whole 'triple phase hunter' deck from Rastakhan's Rumble is probably my least favorite deck I've ever played against.

Glad you enjoyed it! It's always fun diving into older metagames and really taking a deeper dive in them.

I'm incredibly torn on the Stormwind meta for wild to be honest. It was 100% a miserable meta balance wise, but I am just an absolute sucker for playing metagames that are so heavily warped around a deck. There's something about just taking 1 deck that's pretty popular and deciding "I'm going to build a deck so bent on targeting this one deck and just hope I queue into them" that I love. That and I also have to come clean and admit I was a questline abuser but that's besides the point >_>. When I was doing my research there was a couple Demon Seed lists popping up from earlier this year but for the sake of brevity (and not having that one card take up like half the article) I didn't go too in-depth on it like I did for other cards since showing off the different variants from the cards initial launch was more interesting in my opinion.

I could be wrong on this but honestly a decent chunk of questlines being poorly received is more of a power level issue and with the rate of balance updates recently I don't think it will ever get to the point where they were at beforehand. I think that labeling the entire mechanic as a mistake is a bit hasty when just the standalone quests were pretty well received both times.

As for the comparison with Excavate, I think each method of 'play a bunch of cards leading towards a big reward' has some merit over the other. Personally, I'm more of a fan of knowing what the rewards for each step are going to be so I can plan around it more. There's also the fact that questlines do a much better job at telling a narrative, which while not as important now, for a year filled with 10 different characters all with their own special story to tell, having actual cards in the set that tell the story is pretty huge. Meanwhile Excavate has been much healthier in the metagame (partly because most of them were pretty lackluster and had to be buffed to start seeing play but that's besides the point) and the fact that less of the deck has to be dedicated to a theme helps make it more of a package of cards that can be fit into a wider variety of decks. If Excavate is the way Blizzard wants to push forwards in the "mechanics that require you to jump through hoops to get a powerful payoff" camp then I'm happy with it, just that I wish there could be some way to incorporate a story into the expansion the way questlines did.

Oh also as one quick last side note, talking about repeating mistakes of the past instead of moving forward is pretty funny considering the fact that on numerous occasions balancing has fallen into the same pitfalls time and time again with stuff like cost reduction. I'm sure that the HS team is going to continue to repeat mistakes every once in a while, regardless of whether questlines return or not.

With the current card pool, I'm not too sure where else you can go with it. The biggest issue with trying to branch out is mainly just that Sludge either goes to the bottom of our deck or to the hand, so cards that would benefit from discard can only really use Tram Mechanic and Pop'gar the Putrid while mill support would get to benefit from Disposal Assistant, with both being able to use Sludge on Wheels. That being said, I think that if we get some better discard support in standard I wouldn't be surprised if Tram Mechanic and Sludge on Wheels break out of the rest of the Sludge Shell, especially if said discard support is things like Disciple of Sargeras that requires you to discard something for it to be strong. It's hard to say for sure what would be needed, but as of right now I don't think there's enough payoffs to warrant going in another direction beyond just being a Zoo Deck.

Oh and glad to hear the deck is working for you!

I've been messing around with a few different versions, one that was a bit more teched against Paladin with stuff like Defile but once I started facing more Rogues, I swapped over to this list.

Sludge I feel is the best when your playing into how innately aggressive a lot of the creatures are, which I don't feel like Undead Warlock is going to do great with. Tried messing around with Furnace Fuel but just felt like I couldn't discard them regularly enough given that Trolley Problem and Disciple of Sargeras are the only targeted discard. I did mess around with a version that was lighter on all the Imps and Imp King Rafaam and instead opted towards Tome Tampering and Steamcleaner which is really funny when it works, but probably not worth it if your aiming to seriously climb. I will say though that the Fatigue package has been feeling really strong. Crazed Conductor on turn 4 after playing a Baritone Imp feels very good to help create enough of a board presence to push Barrels of Sludge face. Overall though the deck for the most part has felt fine, though I feel like a big reason why is because people are expecting slower matchup like Undead Warlock or Control only to be beaten down by a bunch of random zoo creatures, so I'm unsure how well its going to perform in the long term.

Hi Ho Silverwing definitely helps a lot of the strategies, especially now that Order in the Court has fallen out of favor resulting in the dragon being able to help find The Garden's Graces. Though honestly part of the strength of the deck is just that its uses so much of its early turns very efficiently and so even when there are dead draws in the mid-game, you can usually still string together some amount of pressure off of the Silver Hand Recruits from Sinful Sous Chef or turning even random hero powers into threats with stuff like Deputization Aura. Its to the point where I don't think you can label any one card as 'the problematic one' since more or less all of them just are solid midrange cards on their own.

Not sure what your list has been running in terms of finishers, but I know that a lot of variants that were seeing success before the nerf didn't run Gromm to begin with so could always possibly adapt. If you still want some big pricy finisher that works fairly well with all the enrage cards, I'd highly recommend playing around with Remornia, Living Blade as it just plays so well around with Anima Extractor and can force your opponents into some awkward spots where they can't play any minions or else you'll be able to get some face damage and reequip it.

Oh yeah totally. While there are still some gross highrolls, its definitely more on the fair side compared to what we've seen recently. I'd also be surprised if we saw any further adjustments until the mini-set as right now major issues in my opinion is that Demon Hunter's win rate for most players is astronomically low. I'm sure if Dragon Druid continues its upward trend, the meta will be able to adapt to it.

Yeah the state at which they balance things has been pretty great for the most part. It kinda sucks for F2P players, especially when the nerfs that kill the deck are to some common, but in terms of gameplay its easily the best its probably ever been.

That would definitely be a decent change for the card, though I feel like there will be a lot of other changes that'll be hit in the crossfire. Having cards in deck change their cost hits Holy Wrath, Taelan Fordring, and Aquatic Form in weird ways. Personally I feel like reworking how the mechanic has worked since the start of the game because 1 card is a bit strong seems a bit over-the-top.

Big issue with Tony and Jailer was also that both cards are so unique that they can either do a numbers change or just change the effect. With the main offenders in stuff like Enrage Warrior being stuff like Imbued Axe and Battleworn Faceless, I can definitely see them just going with a minor numbers change to knock them down a peg.

Also I could be wrong but have we gotten constructed nerfs/buffs on the same days as new Battleground seasons? Given that and the fact its like only a week of data I'd be surprised if there was any more changes, atleast for a little bit. None of these cards got the same treatment The Azerite Snake had earlier this month so I feel like these changes are going to stick for a bit.

Yeah I definitely think the community is on a bit of a negative feedback loop, and I realize the irony of saying that on an article I wrote talking about how the metagame is doomed. My biggest gripe mainly comes with the fact that Enrage Warrior was a top deck after Fall of Ulduar and continued to be one of the highest performing archetypes in the new set running 0 of the new cards. The fact that 4 decks built around/utilizing new cards got nerfed before it just feels a bit wrong to me.

But yeah ultimately the meta will evolve and hopefully adapt in a way where Enrage Warrior falls a bit out of favor but we'll have to see. I do definitely agree though with the whole idea of the 'rotating deck that everybody hates'. Its a whole lot easier to say "wow that deck is busted why are they abusing it" then adapting your own playstyle to better tackle it.

The start of this month had a lot of games I was exciting for dropping.

I've already gotten my grubby little mitts on Thirsty Suitors and For The King 2 which have both been pretty fun. I'd highly recommend Thirsty Suitors. I know what the game sounds like, but it is filled to the brim with style and charm, on top of being absurdly funny. I don't know how Annapurna Interactive finds games to help publish but my god are they great at finding them given that they've also published Sayonara Wildhearts, Outer Wilds, Neon White, and Solar Ash which are all games that I've loved playing. As for For The King 2, singleplayer has been pretty fun but unfortunately the multiplayer has been pretty broken so far, but the developers have been pretty fast to hotfix a lot of the issues so hoping I'll be able to jump in and complain about whiffing 80-90% hits with my friends sometime later in the month.

Risk of Rain Returns is dropping on the 8th which I'm so stoked for. The original is up there for my favorite multiplayer games of all time but having to use LogMeIn Hamachi made it such a pain to get other people interested in giving it a shot so I'm hoping this. Already made plans with my brothers to play it when it comes out so looking forward to that. Also helps that I finally get to go back to boar beach which is always pretty nice.

I've also been very slowly going through my 3rd Baldur's Gate 3 with some friends. My character was an Owlbear cursed into being a druid halfling, resulting in her either A, spending all the time as an Owlbear or B, throwing and breaking things in the background of my friend's cutscenes because she doesn't know how to speak. It has been without a doubt both the most scuffed and cursed playthrough I've ever had, with us somehow despawning important characters, saving the Tieflings only to have them suddenly cease to exist and appear dead later on, having the corpse of Lae'zel just appear at random points in time, and accidentally abusing the AI and circumventing some difficult battles in act 2 by accident. It's the type of thing where if it was our first playthrough, it'd be upsetting but since all of us have finished the game at least once, it's just funny at this point. I've also discovered my favorite detail in the game, that being if you are wild shaped into something and sit in a chair, it looks incredibly goofy.

New Hearthstone expansion also looks pretty cool, don't know what I'm going to play yet but it'll probably just be whatever I open up thats cool. Probably leaning more towards Coin Rogue or Naga DH because I love playing 400 cards on my turn, but highlander DH, highlander Paladin, and Sludge Warlock all seem pretty fun as well.

Last things I'm probably going to be playing is just a bunch of random 4-5 dollar indie games that I've slowly accumulated a backlog for. Probably also going to reinstall the Echo Point Nova demo or Severed Steel and play through them again because they are just such endless adrenaline rushes and I want to do kickflips on people.

Edit: Told myself constantly that I'd play through Thirsty Suitors slowly to be able to enjoy it and that did NOT happen. Besides somethings being a bit clunky here and there, game was incredibly good. Pretty much exactly what I was expecting for a game all based around generational trauma and over-the-top psychodrama therapy. Highly recommend it, albeit its a bit short.

This may just be me but I've always loved matchups that flip the traditional game on its head. I never played much Final Showdown once it started to catch on, but the song and dance of learning the ins and outs of a specific matchup and how precisely to navigate it is always so satisfying to me. Granted, given how the OTK Final Showdown list operated, I can definitely see it getting old eventually as its just two people playing solitaire, but atleast for those initial weeks of people playing the deck it seemed like it was a ton of fun.

Also its always so much more satisfying getting good predictions before a set comes out, they definitely outweigh the negatives. While in the back of my head I'll always remember that I called Maiev Shadowsong one of the strongest cards in the game, I'll atleast be able to drown it out knowing that I predicted Rebuke to be awful. Its honestly a big reason why I try to have strong opinions on every card since while sometimes it leads to me being very wrong, atleast its fun to laugh at.