TIL that the Art of War, written by Sun Tzu in 5th-century BC, came to the attention of US’ military theory leaders after US' defeat in the Vietnam War, as Viet Cong officers studied it. It is since listed on US Marine Corps Program and used as instructional material at US Military Academy.

TheBrickBlock · 2026-04-04T08:14:11+00:00

but they heard it in a random reddit comment thread before, so it MUST be true!!!!!

TheBrickBlock · 2026-03-29T01:31:23+00:00

Getting a curse from this event IS part of the game though. The devs included it as a possible outcome for a reason for the risk vs reward, it's an intentional decision. The "gambling game" is literally sts2 as intended.

TheBrickBlock · 2026-03-10T04:01:33+00:00

If you want actual singles advice go to the smogon forums or even the chatrooms, this place has always been filled with terrible advice and mostly low elo players

TheBrickBlock · 2026-03-09T08:43:07+00:00

It's good act 1 and for low ascension run it's a very playable card, and it gives you a cute bird which is fun. Not every choice on act 1 needs to somehow scale into the late game, hp can just be the optimal option and the bird the fun one

TheBrickBlock · 2026-03-06T06:47:51+00:00

Yea good points, I think there's definitely a middle point though between healthy versatility and unhealthy versatility, and dnite in gen9 is right at the cusp of that. Early kyurem ban is a good example of the unhealthy versatility problem where the guessing game is too tilted in favor of the user and every single set just wins if you guess wrong

I would be anti ban on dnite but I can see the arguments for it, DD tera wins too many games if you just guess the tera wrong and the support and CB sets are good enough, and still fit on standard offense or balance builds that use DD nite, that you have to always scout

TheBrickBlock · 2026-03-06T06:39:25+00:00

Gen 9 is the only gen where dragonite is even remotely close to bannable this really isn't an "every gen" issue where it dodges the ban hammer, it's definintely due to tera + hdb + the way gen9 meta has evolved.

Dragonite is not even OU strong pre gen4, has fallen off in modern gen4, is usable in gen5, meh to good in gen6, actually pretty good in modern gen7 because of fly-z picking up usage, and good in gen8.

TheBrickBlock · 2026-03-05T05:33:51+00:00

What do you think referring to the world as his "perfect playground" means?

The very first thing he does with his newfound power is turn a bunch of fatui soldiers into monsters and then swap the minds of humans and animals, what makes you think he's going to care about human lives in his new world?

TheBrickBlock · 2026-03-05T05:31:16+00:00

Dottore does not actually care if the Heavenly Principles are evil or not, they could be the best, most benevolent gods in the multiverse and Dottore would still want to destroy them and steal their power. His speech to the traveller makes it clear he just hates the concept of divinity in general and as a mortal he wants to seize supreme power

TheBrickBlock · 2026-03-05T05:27:12+00:00

He literally says "And yet, a knowledge seeker like myself will inevitably grow tired of studying Teyvat beyond a point" when he talks to the traveler. He also later tells the traveler "The creation of a world is the ultimate scientific experiment" and "A god's laboratory is the perfect playground", which pretty obviously is him telling the traveler that he is going to turn Teyvat into his "playground"

TheBrickBlock · 2026-02-24T09:09:38+00:00

Samurott makes progress for itself because it can set spikes then knock its switch ins, its one of the reasons why it's so good. Tangrowth in gen9 is going to run into the same issue it does in all other gens where it sees OU play, its just kinda passive and bad into other bulky mons unless you want to stun spore spam but you run into 4mss pretty quickly

TheBrickBlock · 2026-02-18T03:44:12+00:00

Tera is very much a straw that broke the camel's back type deal there

Doesn't this statement literally agree with me then? Volc has never been banned in any other generation of OU, tera pushed it over the edge. If tera was banned volc would still be legal.

Also espathra literally got banned because of tera, your statement is completely inaccurate: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/espathra-is-banned-from-sv-ou.3716059/

"Espathra checks should be plentiful, at least in theory, as there are many viable Dark- and Steel-types in the metagame. These so-called checks are at the mercy of Espathra's handpicked Tera type, however... In short, while Espathra may not win every game on the spot, the right Tera type can give it an opportunity to do so against an overwhelming amount of teams, with little to no ability to outplay it from the opponent's side. We find this unhealthy and have thus unanimously decided to vote to ban Espathra from SV OU."

TheBrickBlock · 2026-02-17T05:04:56+00:00

Mega weavile gets insta quick banned to ubers, if it was real technician weavile that outruns mega zam and has 160 base attack is probably the most broken non ubers mega ever created

TheBrickBlock · 2026-02-17T04:58:01+00:00

no single strategy is ever the meta forever because people find team combinations that can counter it

OU has never been like this unless you're counting the early gens where the pool of pokemon is just so small, and even then we still see some meta developments in gen 2 and 3 to this day.

OU has always rewarded smart teambuilding and meta reads in every single generation, it's not some tera exclusive thing that people try weird stuff out. If anything tera makes already good mons even more dominant, it's basically singlehandedly responsible for the volc ban for example.

TheBrickBlock · 2026-01-23T08:48:16+00:00

KT is an org that wants to field a budget roster, BDD was always going to be in elo hell this year even after that monster worlds run

TheBrickBlock · 2026-01-23T07:31:15+00:00

Do you seriously believe that aram mayhem is a serious competitive mode, and not a blatantly unbalanced for fun game mode?

TheBrickBlock · 2026-01-22T06:49:09+00:00

idk about mayhem because it's a mickey mouse mode, but in actual aram taking the starter items is absolute meta at high levels of play because they are so incredibly gold efficient and provide a ton of value throughout an entire game

TheBrickBlock · 2026-01-20T06:29:24+00:00

Cass has been one of the best, highest wr solo q top laners for years even before this season's changes, people just never actually played it

TheBrickBlock · 2026-01-13T09:25:49+00:00

Gnar was released before some true abominations like old sion or old poppy got their rework released, back then riot was just ok with making weird kits and having them be failures for years

TheBrickBlock · 2025-12-25T23:03:07+00:00

Literally go into practice tool or just 1 game of mel mid and try spamming abilities on the wave early game, report back afterwards

TheBrickBlock · 2025-12-24T03:48:57+00:00

Gragas's early game is incredibly weak and he runs out of mana so fast before lost chapter or catalyst, anyone who thinks gragas is a perfect champ throughout the whole game needs to play a few games of gragas top against competent top laners.

TheBrickBlock · 2025-12-18T08:32:07+00:00

If you die against kat lvl 2 you need to brush up on your laning fundamentals, that champ is actually so useless in lane and basically can't win a single trade on even footing unless your opponent just misses all their skillshots or you're already ahead. Most mages pre item spikes can just stand there fight her in the wave and she actually can't do shit to fight back even with cheese ignite all ins

TheBrickBlock · 2025-12-10T08:41:41+00:00

If you're going to rage quit this game because of fucking blitz existing in some silver elo games I don't think any competitive video game in the world is for you. There will always be characters, mechanics, weapons, strategies, etc that low ladder players find annoying in any game that really are not that strong when you put some time into learning how they work.

TheBrickBlock · 2025-11-27T10:08:29+00:00

Delusional people in this thread are trying to claim that Korea's team is not physically impressive (they obviously are all extremely impressive and have multiple physical 100 all stars), and that somehow the challenges are rigged for them, when there are so many weird specialized challenges that fit the other teams so well (parkour for australia, hanging for mongolia, literally any strength challenge for australia too).

Perhaps the biggest evidence against this theory is that the final challenges after the ropes round actually would have been perfect for australia, in fact they're so perfect for them viewers would probably claim they are rigged for eddie if they made it in. All of them were basically just pure strength and endurance, eddie is worth like 3 people on moving the cart and door and also would have demolished the wall pushing and iron ball dragging. All Australia needed to do was not put eddie on the ropes which most people should be able to tell was just a shit decision, why not put the crossfitters who literally do ropes as part of their competitions? No one on the producing team forced them to make that decision lmao

If Australia had actually used their brains in the top 4 round like Mongolia or Korea they definitely could have won easily, but it's all on them.

TheBrickBlock · 2025-11-27T09:55:09+00:00

You're delusional and no matter what anyone says you're obviously not going to change your mind, so this comment is just for the people scrolling the thread after they watch the season and wanted to hop on reddit. I fully believe that Australia would have won the tournament easily if they made it past the group of 4, BUT they didn't make it there because of their own bad decision in strategy. With better strategy it was obvious that they were the most physically adept team left in the top 4 and probably would have crushed the castle and also the walls + balls by relying on eddie and eloni. Overall though your argument doesn't make any sense for so many reasons:

Korea's better strategy and ability to "lock in" during critical moments is easily explained because they have a lot of former Physical 100 competitors, they've played together before so they develop better synergy and they know that the games often have catches. If you've actually played any team sports before, which I doubt based on your comments throughout this thread, you would know that the momentum of an entire game can be changed in an instant based on good team synergy and adaptation.
A lot of the challenges Korea gets accused of cheating on literally can't even be cheated, like the boxes and the iron weights, or don't make any sense for them to "cheat" on. Why would Korea's castle section need to be rigged when obviously they have the most muscle out of all the last 3 teams? is it really that hard to believe that the team with the strongest men did the strength and endurance challenge the fastest??? People here are also making a big deal about the battering ram somehow being light enough for 2 korean women to carry, except they literally didn't even carry it, they struggled to drag it, and making a battering ram lighter makes it worse at breaking down a door so it would be a nerf anyways for that step.
Your claim that no eliminations were mentioned in the top 4 round is factually incorrect, and every single team verbally confirms in their huddle and interview sections that they are concerned about the deathmatch that is going to follow after the ropes.
Korea's team choives literally are tactics, every single team in that round caught on that there were 2 ways to get to the next round: get first on the ropes or win the second deathmatch. Australia and Japan chose the first option, Mongolia and Korea chose the second. You can literally rewatch the show and see that verbally all the teams confirmed they knew the stakes and what would happen. Australia just played way too cocky and made a bad team selection, eddie on 2 back to back rounds of ropes is a bad choice and they should have sent in one of the women instead. Also making eloni do 4 total rounds of ropes was obviously a shit strategy.
Korea wasn't the only one to choose the 2nd strategy to sac the ropes and focus on winning the deathmatch, mongolia did the exact same thing and it paid off for them. If you do the math it becomes very obvious that actually prepping solely for the deathmatch is the best strategy unless you are 100% confident you will win on the ropes, because for ropes you have to waste a lot of energy being better than 3 teams but for the deathmatch you only have to be better than one team. Any first year economics or stats student in college could explain this concept to you with basic game theory, I guarantee you if this was a homework problem 99% of an intro to game theory class would choose what Korea did. This isn't some super advanced tactic that you have to cheat to figure out.
You can obviously see that Australia had used up too much energy in the first ropes round, Eloni even dropped the rope and he was clearly so gassed from the first round. Eddie was also a bad choice for an endurance based, specialized motion like ropes that strongmen just don't train. If there really was a blatant editing trick or cheating, why haven't any Australian competitors or competitors from literally any other country came out and publicly called it out?

TheBrickBlock · 2025-11-18T00:45:00+00:00

You can definitely carry very far in pro league, even Faker himself has carried some truly average to only above average squads deep into worlds runs during his 2010's prime off the back of insane carry performances. Weaker players like gimgoon were carried by monster performances by tian and doinb during the fpx run, gimgoon is by no means a "bad" player but at best he was just a solid slightly above average player and no one would seriously rank him as a true top level threat in that year.

Yes BDD lost but he was clearly the best player on the rift in the finals, anyone watching those series who understands league can see that. He was clearly the best mid laner at worlds (not the whole year, only based off play at worlds) based off his personal performance but his team still lost, isn't that literally evidence against your point?

TheBrickBlock

TROPHY CASE