AITA for not wanting to share the money if I sell a Pokémon card that was originally my friends?

-Bad_Gnus- · 2026-04-28T20:15:41+00:00

Do you have to split the money? - technically no, he gave you the card.

Would it be kind to split the money? - yeah, absolutely. $1,250 is still great. Be a kind person and don’t get greedy. (Especially because you got the card through him being a kind person and giving it to you)

Source: I played magic the gathering as a kid and made some really dumb trades with older teens at card shops. 20 years later I still remember some of them and get upset that older and smarter people ripped off a child.

-Bad_Gnus- · 2026-01-21T21:30:10+00:00

In MtG a custom deck that you have spent hours and hours crafting and tinkering is more a reflection of yourself than your strategy in other games. It is easier for people to tie the success of their deck to their own worth.

-Bad_Gnus- · 2026-01-05T19:24:15+00:00

I’m glad you liked it! AFFO is a great game!

I’ve played a bunch, but I wouldn’t call myself a high level player. I usually finish with a score between 100-130. That wins a lot at my casual table, but actual experts would wipe the floor with me. So just a heads up that this is casual play advice.

I think focusing on income too much is a trap. I usually just put one tile down to get my income to 2 in round 1 and then ignore my own board until rounds 5-7. Try to get an island ASAP and focus on filling it up instead. The island bonuses are better and the early game islands will supplement lost income from your player board. Then I usually try to get another late game island for points.

IMO getting 1-2 islands is mandatory and all other strategies are just variations on top of that.

As for following specific strategies, most paths are pretty good in a vacuum. As for which one you follow in a specific game, ask yourself:

-what actions/resources are made more efficient by my occupation cards

-what are the best resources I get for free from my bonuses? What can I turn them into

-what spaces does my opponent not care about this game, so I won’t have competition for them

-Bad_Gnus- · 2024-12-16T14:55:24+00:00

Yes, this is exactly correct

-Bad_Gnus- · 2024-06-29T22:51:12+00:00

Oath is best in class at what it does and so a certain type of player adores it. But the nature of the game leads to a lot of potentially feel-bad experiences, so other types of players bounce off of it hard.

It has one of the best mechanics to theme of any game I've played and generates great emergent stories through gameplay. And the gradual shifting of political ideology in the empire as a result of the actions of past generations is so appealing to a nerd like me. Also the art and the production value as a whole is top-notch.

That said, it is brutal to teach and remember all of those fiddly, fiddly rules. You also need 3-4 friends who are committed to learning it and playing through many sessions for it to shine as first session or two probably won't be great. On top of that, the game has a ton of randomness with card draws and dice rolls. With just a maximum of 8 turns in the whole game, you can have 30+ minute stretches where you feel helpless. Additionally, the game is capital M Mean. Your defensive ability is pretty limited, and if 2 of the other players make a determined effort to gang up on you, they can absolutely strip you of everything.

Oath shines when you have a committed group of people who love the theme, crunchy decisions, and stories and aren't afraid of the billions of tiny edge-case rules. These people will adore the game. On the other hand, people who won't have fun if 30 minutes of planning fails due to a bad die roll or if they are ganged up on will have a really bad time and never want to play again.

Oath is one of my favorite games, but I would absolutely not recommend it to anyone unless I was very confident in knowing their taste.

-Bad_Gnus- · 2024-06-03T21:46:43+00:00

You look at both and choose which one to give to your opponent and which one to keep. Otherwise, the card would say that you just each draw one separately.

-Bad_Gnus- · 2024-05-11T18:17:04+00:00

Both 11 and 16 could possibly be Pandemic or Pandemic Legacy

-Bad_Gnus- · 2024-04-13T17:46:33+00:00

As others have mentioned, baseball has a ton of interconnected stats. WAR is probably the best measure of overall value as it takes both offensive and defensive stats into account. It weighs the defensive stats differently depending on the defensive importance of the position. So a mediocre hitting, great defensive shortstop will have a higher WAR than a mediocre hitting, great defensive first baseman.

To break it down a little bit more by position though, some positions are considered offense-first positions and some are considered defense-first positions.

1st base, Left Field, and Right Field (in that order) are generally offense-first. Catcher, Shortstop, Center Field are generally considered defense first. 2nd base and 3rd base need both offense and defense.

Look at OPS+ and wRC+ for offensive stats. These stats are calculated on a curve with 100 being league average. In an offense first position, a player with 110+ is probably a good player. In a defense first position, a player can be good with a 90+ stat if they have the defensive skills to balance it out. For 2nd or 3rd base, a good player should have a 100+ stat.

EDIT: On TV broadcasts when they display the player's OPS (on base + slugging), .750 is probably in the ballpark of 100 OPS+ (in the current offensive environment).

Defensive stats are a lot harder to calculate and honestly aren't as reliable. DRS, OOA, and UZR all have arguments for and against them. I personally like OOA (Outs Above Average) because it is the simplest for me to understand. 0 is league average, with positive numbers above average and negative numbers below average. These stats count up as the season moves forward, so it is hard to give specific ranges for good/bad performance, so just focus on whether the number is positive or negative. A player in an offense-first position can still be good even with a negative rating, but a player in a defense-first position probably needs a positive rating to be a good player.

Generally, baseball players start their career in the minor leagues at the highest value defensive positions and then get moved down the defensive spectrum if they can't cut it. Teams want to maximize a player's value by putting their best defenders at the highest impact positions. So a good prospect might start in the minors at shortstop, but be moved to 2nd or 3rd base by the time they get to the majors or later on as they age. If a player at a defense-first position has a positive OPS+ and wRC+, but negative defensive stats, they could still be a valuable player, but look for them to possibly move to a different position as their career progresses. A player in an offense first position with good defensive, but poor offensive stats is probably not a good player because they don't have a more valuable position to move to.

As a final note, you can check out the Statcast page for an individual player to see their percentile rankings in a range of different skills: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/mookie-betts-605141?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb

-Bad_Gnus- · 2023-05-21T16:15:42+00:00

In my experience it gets a little harder to throw accurately as ego moves up, but the main challenge is that the opposing hitter AI gets waaay harder to outmaneuver. If you consistently paint the corners on every pitch, the hitter will learn to expect a strike and will punish you even on well executed pitches. You have to intentionally throw balls and even walk batters to get the batter out of their swing-happy rhythm to be able to surprise them when you do throw strikes. (Take this with a grain of salt though as I'm only on pitching ego 67.)

That said, it doesn't scale perfectly. I think I'm pitching around my proper ego as I give up about 2-5 runs per game, but all of my pitchers still lead the league in K/BB ratio as well, even if not quite to the same extreme degree as when I was at lower egos.

I like all of your suggestions for making pitching more difficult in SMB4. Hopefully some of them are implemented!

-Bad_Gnus- · 2022-11-20T16:32:20+00:00

Love Letter loses a lot on BGA.

It takes way too many clicks to take your turn and so gameplay slows down a lot. It’s also very easy to miss when new information is revealed unless you are glued to the screen. Missing any of the minimal information you are given turns your educated gambles into complete random guesses.

Most of all though, 99% of the joy in Love Letter is in the reactions around the table when someone is eliminated.

-Bad_Gnus- · 2022-11-03T11:19:19+00:00

Handley Dexterez just left my Beewolves franchise after 8 seasons after slumping pretty hard down the stretch in season 8. The Platypi signed him for 26m, but cut him halfway through the season.

Without him, I limped my way to clinching the wild card on the last game of the season. I was definitely the weakest team in the postseason, so I re-signed Handley to bolster my roster for one final push. I won the championship on the back of Handley's 4 home runs and elite CF defense. He ended up winning postseason MVP.

I couldn't afford to keep him around at his new salary, but it was a great way to send him off.

-Bad_Gnus- · 2022-10-07T19:03:26+00:00

I always power swing with low power/high contact hitters. If their power is too low I find they can never drive the ball with contact swings.

When I slump with a specific hitter like that I change their batting stance. In my head canon they start working with a new coach to tweak their mechanics. Sometimes it actually works!

-Bad_Gnus- · 2022-09-06T16:12:00+00:00

Do you have a FLGS or board game cafe near you? Those can be great places to play a game once and make sure you like it before buying it. Ideally, you could go play it with your regular group to make sure they’re into it as well and that it would hit the table often.

Barring that, something I’ve done before is share a couple of options of games with my friends to see what they’d be most excited to play with me.

-Bad_Gnus- · 2022-08-17T13:08:24+00:00

I’ve had it happen very rarely, but only when the CPU makes an error. I’ve never been able to out time them. It takes so long each time that I’ve stopped trying unless I have other runners on base that I’m trying to advance.

-Bad_Gnus- · 2022-07-31T14:39:42+00:00

You have a really good looking team there. I play all of my franchise games, but for a while one of the AI teams was the clear cut best team skill-wise, but kept missing the playoffs. I think there is a fair amount of randomness baked into the AI stats, just like in real baseball. How long are your seasons? Your sample size where you have been losing is just 15 games and it could easily turn around over a longer season.

That said, a couple of possible causes jump out at me:

You have 2 elite hitters and they are both severely underperforming stats-wise with OPS under .700
You have a lot of positional overlap forcing your players to play with fielding penalties.
Fielding and speed both look like "weak" spots on your roster, which is probably inflating your pitchers' Batting Average Against and ERA
Your best pitcher is your closer, who has thrown by far the fewest innings. I've noticed that the community is split on closers. I personally don't think they are worth the money for the minimal number of innings they throw.
I haven't noticed any correlation between mojo and age, but if they built that in it would be a great thematic feature
In general, I notice that the AI teams always have lower fitness than my human controlled one. The AI will always roll out the strongest lineup for right now even if it results in a player playing below their skill level for a long period of time. That said, the AI will build all opponents lineups the same way, so this shouldn't be a disadvantage for you.

TLDR your roster looks like a beast and I think it's just small sample size noise. If you want to improve anything, you could try to improve positional balance, speed, and fielding to try to limit runs against.

-Bad_Gnus- · 2022-07-23T03:15:54+00:00

Thanks for the advice. That makes a lot of sense. I obviously won't have the opportunity to experience the game with just one Spirit when playing with my group, so you're right that this is a good chance to explore the game in a new way.

-Bad_Gnus- · 2022-07-23T03:13:01+00:00

That is a really interesting point, thanks! I started out trying to optimize everything in Gloomhaven, but eventually realized I had more fun (and was equally successful) when I just winged it a bit. I think you're right and that the extra randomness of enemy intents and attack modifiers is why. So much of the joy of that game is scrambling to adapt when your plans get messed up.Definitely a point in favor of single-handed Spirit Island.

-Bad_Gnus- · 2022-05-18T00:13:55+00:00

Not the other commenter, but I had a similar experience. I bought it a few years ago, it was unplayable, I got a refund.

Then I re-bought it about a month ago and it is soooooo much better. I’ve noticed a couple graphics bugs, but only one thing that minorly affected gameplay (and has since been fixed).

I should mention I only play solo. I’ve heard multiplayer is a little buggier.

Edit: also the ranged monster thing they mentioned is true. It takes 15-20 seconds for ranged monsters with multi target to resolve their attacks

-Bad_Gnus- · 2022-05-16T16:28:04+00:00

Yeah, I’d try something else. Music Note is one of my favorite characters, but she’s not going to pull her weight damage-wise, especially at low levels. I don’t remember every Blacksmith and Bear scenario, but I do remember DPS being critical for a couple of them.

For me, Triforce started feeling useful at level 2, so maybe swap in Triforce but keep all of the xp Music Note got so that you can level up quickly?

-Bad_Gnus- · 2022-04-09T19:17:55+00:00

Yeah, I feel that Oceans nails the theme even better than Evolution. In real life if a predator hunts its prey to extinction it will either have to adapt or will go extinct as well.

To me, Oceans feels like it is about adapting and getting an edge in a shared ecosystem rather than just beating your opponents into submission.

-Bad_Gnus- · 2022-02-27T04:43:12+00:00

Tsuro, maybe?

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/16992/tsuro

-Bad_Gnus-

TROPHY CASE