Mostly Pokemon TCG right now - I really like how little of my time the game demands daily, and I enjoy playing around with various deck builds (I made a deck I call Flips that runs Kangaskhan and Exeggutor EX). Nowhere near a full collection, but that doesn't seem to matter because there's no ranked mode.
I'm probably going to go back to Sea of Stars at some point this month to finish the main game and try out the DLC. I also need to finish Echoes of Wisdom - it's a decent game but I'm still terrible at boss fights.
A deck with 2x Blaine, 2x Vulpix/Ninetales, 2x Ponyta/Rapidash, and 2x Giovanni is probably the fastest way to grind this event - and a friendly reminder that you don't use Event stamina in games that you lose (so you can complete the "Put a Pokemon to Sleep" quest with a different deck, concede, and pick up the reward without losing stamina). But the enemy decks aren't that scary, so you can probably play any deck you feel comfortable with and do just fine.
The way the game grants you the full-art feels kind of manipulative, since its part of a Wonder Pick even though you're apparently guaranteed to get the full-art no matter which card you pick.
In my very amateur opinion:
Exeggutor EX is probably best if you're the type of player who wants to start dealing damage right away; the attack costs only 1 Energy and can do 80 damage if you flip Heads. It's a good early game bruiser that can buy you time to put Energy on a less cost-effective Pokemon.
Arcanine EX feels like a solid finisher: the Attack is strong but does cost 3 Energy to get online, so you'll need to find a way to buy yourself some time.
Marowak EX, in my opinion, is a bad pick for a new player because it has a potential to deal no damage even though that's just as likely as dealing 160 damage (which can wipe out most Pokemon). Probably don't want your first EX Pokemon to be something capable of whiffing.
Almost freaked out because I thought this meant that Velen, Leader of the Exiled could go infinite, but then I realized that this isn't a Draenei (and with good reason).
So Perplexing Anomaly, to my knowledge, is the first Standard legal card to contain a question mark in its text box. Totally Totems (from Caverns of Time) was the first collectible card to have one, and is still the only collectible card with an interrobang, at least as far as I can tell.
The company that's putting out the Mistborn deckbuilding game is also doing a Cosmere TTRPG (Stormlight is coming out first, with a Mistborn "expansion"(?) coming a year later) that did pretty well on Kickstarter a month or so back. It sounded interesting (it's basically the standard d20 rules, but they added in a special d6 "plot die" for bigger moments) but I'm not big into tabletop roleplaying (don't have too many in my neck o' th'woods who I can play with, anyway) so I only sortof paid attention to it. On the "Wax and Wayne" front, I really enjoyed Alloy of Law but am lukewarm on the three that followed - they're fine stories, but I feel they require the reader to have a fairly deep knowledge of the innerworkings of the Cosmere to enjoy them.
So, Books. I've started my slow reread of Stormlight, and I'm in Words of Radiance at the moment (yes, I really do need three months to read four Stormlight books, and anyone who has seem them can confirm this - But I'm also reading Edgedancer and Dawnshard as part of the reread). I do this so I can read other things at the same time because my brain loves getting distracted. Right now I'm doing some spooky reads for October: read Turn of the Screw by Henry James and now I'm trying Salem's Lot by Stephen King.
Before the Stormlight reread got going I read Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett (solid, not the best Discworld) and The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which is a book that is very confused about what it wants to be - it's trying to be both murder mystery and high concept scifi but it can't seem to give either enough space and so it ends up being a confusingly bland rollercoaster which judders to a halt thanks to some incredibly clunky contrivances and vague handwaving explanations. The murder mystery is the kind that ends with so many twists that you're not even sure who, if anyone, was murdered or why (which is usually a good way to tell that the author has no clue what they're doing and is just trying to "outsmart the reader") and the scifi stuff (if it is even scifi) is barely mentioned so you really have no idea why anyone is where they are or why they do the things they do (or how the world they inhabit even exists, or why, or what anyone is doing there). What's even better is that the copy I read had an interview with the author included, where he effectively admits he has no clue about his own story's worldbuilding (which 50% of the time is nonexistent and the other 50% of the time is complete balderdash that sounds like he made it up three seconds before). I hate ranting, but I despise even more books that are so lazily put together that they it feels like they're actively insulting any reader who expects them to hold together for even the briefest moment.
This is probably just a card for memes, because even though Prep and Sandbox Scoundrel exist to make this cheaper... you're still shuffling your entire hand into your deck. You need Knickknack Shack on board, otherwise you're paying 6 (or however much) mana to lose the game.
I've been playing Echoes of Wisdom and it's been OK so far. The summoning system makes combat more interesting for me (although I've maybe gotten a bit too stuck on the "just drop a bunch of sea urchins" strategy) and of course I've also been building bridges and ladders out of beds to reach most places. It feels very similar to Zelda games like Link to the Past and Minish Cap, although it's slightly more focused on exploration, which is something I enjoy in video games.
My biggest complaint is that the two main bosses I've beaten so far took an arbitrarily high number of hits to bring down - but maybe I'm used to Zelda bosses who have specific vulnerability windows and communicate more clearly to the player how far they've progressed in the fight. In my experience, each boss in Echoes had two phases (that I could tell) and the second phase both times felt incredibly grindy, with the same pattern playing out over a dozen times even though I hit them multiple times during their vulnerability window (of course, this could just be because I'm notoriously terrible at boss fights, but this was different from my usual suckage). I have hope it'll get better because there was an optional dungeon boss whose pattern I found a lot more rewarding once I figured out what I needed to do.
I'm not very far into the game, so we'll see how it plays out from here.
Great article, and a nice blast of nostalgia. I didn't have a ton of experience playing PS2 growing, so there's only a couple games I would add to your (already extensive) list.
Guitar Hero. A unique experience, especially if you also had the guitar-shaped controller. The game I played the most was Guitar Hero III, and it was so cool to attempt a tricky guitar solo in front of a reactive audience that would boo you off the stage if you missed too many notes. Through the Fire and Flames is probably the song that is most associated with that game, but the song I remember most is Prayer of the Refugee. It also introduced me to bands I still listen to; I didn't have a lot of ways to discover music back then, so that list includes names like The Killers, Weezer, Rage Against the Machine, and Pearl Jam.
Star Wars Battlefront. I was a big ol' fan of the Star War growing up so of course my favorite PS2 game ever is Star Wars Battlefront II. It took everything great about the first game (which I also loved) and ramped it up with more maps plus the chance to play as a Jedi or Sith or Boba Fett. I never grokked the space battles (the points system is janky, especially when all I really want to do is land in the enemy ship's hangar and shoot pilots trying to get in their ships) but the bigger campaign and changes to Galactic Conquest made it such a great time and I definitely played it way too much.
This is the kind of card you'd run only if you're trying to irritate your opponent and you don't care too much about winning games. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like anyone would want to lose cards from their own deck just to , on the off-chance, take something powerful away from the opponent. It's probably best attacking OTK decks, so it might find a home in slower decks in a meta with heavy OTK presence but we'll see.
I kinda really like this. The Tradeable/Temporary is a nice touch and I'd honestly like to see more cards with that because it's a neat use of Tradeable. The main problem is that this probably works best in a slower Warlock deck, not many of which exist right now, but it's a decent rate for removal and maybe it could see play Tourist Rogue or something.
I like it for a Control Warlock deck that might also be running cards that care about self-damage. Painlock already has some pretty good board wipes so I'm not expecting to see this slotted into the current deck, it would probably need to find a different home.
This could be useful in a DK deck that's heavy on Deathrattles, because there's not much else you'd want to do with a card like this. It might be worth experimenting with, but I don't expect to see it very much.
This is really good. Great value, giving the ability to get extra copies of high impact cards in a class that, as far as I can recall, hasn't had this sort of value ability prior to now. I'd expect it to see play in most slower DK decks, although the Rune requirement might be a bit too taxing (no Rainbow DK for you).
It's a bit too expensive to combo with DK's array of Deathrattle tools, but maybe with a little bit of Mana cheat you could get it on board and spread its Deathrattle or trigger it with Yodeler and or Darkmarrow. Seems like a lot of work for a random effect, but it could be a good time if you're able to get things going.
Probably only useful in a deck that needs the Location discount to set up an OTK. I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I'm willing to bet somebody figures one out, even if it's likely to be a meme.
I like it, but I'm not sure it's going to be that good. I like that the Bears scale so you can wait a few turns to get a big body down; if it sees play I'd expect to see it mostly as a defensive tool against faster decks but I wouldn't hate it if people are keeping the bears in hand to make them as large as possible.
It's flexible as removal for something big or defensive against a wide board of small things; I just don't see how this makes the cut into Druid decks; it doesn't have the synergies of Nest Matron and could dilute the pool of Taunt minions to draw. I like the idea, though.
This could be really powerful for Flood Paladin; the deck runs quite a few 1-Attack cheap minions as well as stuff like Mining Casualties and Muster for Battle, so I could see it possibly finding a place in that deck.
Mostly Pokemon TCG right now - I really like how little of my time the game demands daily, and I enjoy playing around with various deck builds (I made a deck I call Flips that runs Kangaskhan and Exeggutor EX). Nowhere near a full collection, but that doesn't seem to matter because there's no ranked mode.
I'm probably going to go back to Sea of Stars at some point this month to finish the main game and try out the DLC. I also need to finish Echoes of Wisdom - it's a decent game but I'm still terrible at boss fights.
A deck with 2x Blaine, 2x Vulpix/Ninetales, 2x Ponyta/Rapidash, and 2x Giovanni is probably the fastest way to grind this event - and a friendly reminder that you don't use Event stamina in games that you lose (so you can complete the "Put a Pokemon to Sleep" quest with a different deck, concede, and pick up the reward without losing stamina). But the enemy decks aren't that scary, so you can probably play any deck you feel comfortable with and do just fine.
The way the game grants you the full-art feels kind of manipulative, since its part of a Wonder Pick even though you're apparently guaranteed to get the full-art no matter which card you pick.
In my very amateur opinion:
Exeggutor EX is probably best if you're the type of player who wants to start dealing damage right away; the attack costs only 1 Energy and can do 80 damage if you flip Heads. It's a good early game bruiser that can buy you time to put Energy on a less cost-effective Pokemon.
Arcanine EX feels like a solid finisher: the Attack is strong but does cost 3 Energy to get online, so you'll need to find a way to buy yourself some time.
Marowak EX, in my opinion, is a bad pick for a new player because it has a potential to deal no damage even though that's just as likely as dealing 160 damage (which can wipe out most Pokemon). Probably don't want your first EX Pokemon to be something capable of whiffing.
Almost freaked out because I thought this meant that Velen, Leader of the Exiled could go infinite, but then I realized that this isn't a Draenei (and with good reason).
So Perplexing Anomaly, to my knowledge, is the first Standard legal card to contain a question mark in its text box. Totally Totems (from Caverns of Time) was the first collectible card to have one, and is still the only collectible card with an interrobang, at least as far as I can tell.
The company that's putting out the Mistborn deckbuilding game is also doing a Cosmere TTRPG (Stormlight is coming out first, with a Mistborn "expansion"(?) coming a year later) that did pretty well on Kickstarter a month or so back. It sounded interesting (it's basically the standard d20 rules, but they added in a special d6 "plot die" for bigger moments) but I'm not big into tabletop roleplaying (don't have too many in my neck o' th'woods who I can play with, anyway) so I only sortof paid attention to it. On the "Wax and Wayne" front, I really enjoyed Alloy of Law but am lukewarm on the three that followed - they're fine stories, but I feel they require the reader to have a fairly deep knowledge of the innerworkings of the Cosmere to enjoy them.
So, Books. I've started my slow reread of Stormlight, and I'm in Words of Radiance at the moment (yes, I really do need three months to read four Stormlight books, and anyone who has seem them can confirm this - But I'm also reading Edgedancer and Dawnshard as part of the reread). I do this so I can read other things at the same time because my brain loves getting distracted. Right now I'm doing some spooky reads for October: read Turn of the Screw by Henry James and now I'm trying Salem's Lot by Stephen King.
Before the Stormlight reread got going I read Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett (solid, not the best Discworld) and The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which is a book that is very confused about what it wants to be - it's trying to be both murder mystery and high concept scifi but it can't seem to give either enough space and so it ends up being a confusingly bland rollercoaster which judders to a halt thanks to some incredibly clunky contrivances and vague handwaving explanations. The murder mystery is the kind that ends with so many twists that you're not even sure who, if anyone, was murdered or why (which is usually a good way to tell that the author has no clue what they're doing and is just trying to "outsmart the reader") and the scifi stuff (if it is even scifi) is barely mentioned so you really have no idea why anyone is where they are or why they do the things they do (or how the world they inhabit even exists, or why, or what anyone is doing there). What's even better is that the copy I read had an interview with the author included, where he effectively admits he has no clue about his own story's worldbuilding (which 50% of the time is nonexistent and the other 50% of the time is complete balderdash that sounds like he made it up three seconds before). I hate ranting, but I despise even more books that are so lazily put together that they it feels like they're actively insulting any reader who expects them to hold together for even the briefest moment.
This is probably just a card for memes, because even though Prep and Sandbox Scoundrel exist to make this cheaper... you're still shuffling your entire hand into your deck. You need Knickknack Shack on board, otherwise you're paying 6 (or however much) mana to lose the game.
I've been playing Echoes of Wisdom and it's been OK so far. The summoning system makes combat more interesting for me (although I've maybe gotten a bit too stuck on the "just drop a bunch of sea urchins" strategy) and of course I've also been building bridges and ladders out of beds to reach most places. It feels very similar to Zelda games like Link to the Past and Minish Cap, although it's slightly more focused on exploration, which is something I enjoy in video games.
My biggest complaint is that the two main bosses I've beaten so far took an arbitrarily high number of hits to bring down - but maybe I'm used to Zelda bosses who have specific vulnerability windows and communicate more clearly to the player how far they've progressed in the fight. In my experience, each boss in Echoes had two phases (that I could tell) and the second phase both times felt incredibly grindy, with the same pattern playing out over a dozen times even though I hit them multiple times during their vulnerability window (of course, this could just be because I'm notoriously terrible at boss fights, but this was different from my usual suckage). I have hope it'll get better because there was an optional dungeon boss whose pattern I found a lot more rewarding once I figured out what I needed to do.
I'm not very far into the game, so we'll see how it plays out from here.
Great article, and a nice blast of nostalgia. I didn't have a ton of experience playing PS2 growing, so there's only a couple games I would add to your (already extensive) list.
Guitar Hero. A unique experience, especially if you also had the guitar-shaped controller. The game I played the most was Guitar Hero III, and it was so cool to attempt a tricky guitar solo in front of a reactive audience that would boo you off the stage if you missed too many notes. Through the Fire and Flames is probably the song that is most associated with that game, but the song I remember most is Prayer of the Refugee. It also introduced me to bands I still listen to; I didn't have a lot of ways to discover music back then, so that list includes names like The Killers, Weezer, Rage Against the Machine, and Pearl Jam.
Star Wars Battlefront. I was a big ol' fan of the Star War growing up so of course my favorite PS2 game ever is Star Wars Battlefront II. It took everything great about the first game (which I also loved) and ramped it up with more maps plus the chance to play as a Jedi or Sith or Boba Fett. I never grokked the space battles (the points system is janky, especially when all I really want to do is land in the enemy ship's hangar and shoot pilots trying to get in their ships) but the bigger campaign and changes to Galactic Conquest made it such a great time and I definitely played it way too much.
This is OK. It's not the best Silver Hand summoner in the game, and its effect seems best for a slower deck - maybe Highlander Paladin?
This is the kind of card you'd run only if you're trying to irritate your opponent and you don't care too much about winning games. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like anyone would want to lose cards from their own deck just to , on the off-chance, take something powerful away from the opponent. It's probably best attacking OTK decks, so it might find a home in slower decks in a meta with heavy OTK presence but we'll see.
I also just don't like the design of it.
I kinda really like this. The Tradeable/Temporary is a nice touch and I'd honestly like to see more cards with that because it's a neat use of Tradeable. The main problem is that this probably works best in a slower Warlock deck, not many of which exist right now, but it's a decent rate for removal and maybe it could see play Tourist Rogue or something.
I like it for a Control Warlock deck that might also be running cards that care about self-damage. Painlock already has some pretty good board wipes so I'm not expecting to see this slotted into the current deck, it would probably need to find a different home.
This could be useful in a DK deck that's heavy on Deathrattles, because there's not much else you'd want to do with a card like this. It might be worth experimenting with, but I don't expect to see it very much.
This is really good. Great value, giving the ability to get extra copies of high impact cards in a class that, as far as I can recall, hasn't had this sort of value ability prior to now. I'd expect it to see play in most slower DK decks, although the Rune requirement might be a bit too taxing (no Rainbow DK for you).
It's a bit too expensive to combo with DK's array of Deathrattle tools, but maybe with a little bit of Mana cheat you could get it on board and spread its Deathrattle or trigger it with Yodeler and or Darkmarrow. Seems like a lot of work for a random effect, but it could be a good time if you're able to get things going.
Probably only useful in a deck that needs the Location discount to set up an OTK. I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I'm willing to bet somebody figures one out, even if it's likely to be a meme.
I like it, but I'm not sure it's going to be that good. I like that the Bears scale so you can wait a few turns to get a big body down; if it sees play I'd expect to see it mostly as a defensive tool against faster decks but I wouldn't hate it if people are keeping the bears in hand to make them as large as possible.
It's flexible as removal for something big or defensive against a wide board of small things; I just don't see how this makes the cut into Druid decks; it doesn't have the synergies of Nest Matron and could dilute the pool of Taunt minions to draw. I like the idea, though.
This could be really powerful for Flood Paladin; the deck runs quite a few 1-Attack cheap minions as well as stuff like Mining Casualties and Muster for Battle, so I could see it possibly finding a place in that deck.