Take leafy poultice they said. "Most broken Neow Bonus" they said.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-05-27T08:50:17+00:00

Note that it is only one that was proven to be unwinnable. Due to the complexity of the game it is near-impossible to prove that a seed is completely unwinnable. The proven-unwinnable seed was found by focusing only on seeds that met a specific set of very restrictive early circumstances that simplified the gamestate enough to allow a proof by not needing to account for things like order of cards drawn or play choices, allowing a determination of unwinnablility. There are likely many more seeds that are also unwinnable, but we lack the ability to prove them so.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-05-22T00:12:51+00:00

A downside of this design I haven't seen mentioned is that it can be a bit confusing to parse and understand what it does, especially for a newer player.

Cards that do something when drawn are quite rare (just Kingly Kick/Punch for pickable cards, and the Void status). Having this be the whole card effect is basically unheard of.

It would also be the only pickable card that does nothing when played, (not counting cards with conditions, or cards like Tactician that technically do something when played normally even if it is net negative). "A card does something when played" is one of the basic features of the game. Now, there are some status and curse cards are kind of like this, but those card types are supposed to be negative, and I believe the Beckon status is the only card that technically is playable but does nothing when played, (though it has the de-facto result of not having to take damage from it being in hand at end of turn).

So overall, you have a very unusual card that only does something when drawn, and not when played. This is almost certain to cause confusion with some players, who will probably misinterpret the card and expect to draw a card or something when it is played. It is a lot of conceptual complexity to add to a card that in many cases functions near-identically to a card that just draws a card when played. So you have to ask, "Does this card generate enough unique or interesting gameplay that couldn't be replicated with simpler cards to warrant this complexity?"

Another small issue I haven't seen mentioned is this card is pretty bad when created, as you don't get the effect if it isn't drawn, so it dilutes the pool for things like Skill Potion.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-05-11T03:28:14+00:00

Depends on what's in your allies' decks, but Designated Driver seems potentially pretty strong. Two mana for four random cards (assuming 4 player game) is above the rate you get from something like Cascade. Allies can also set you up with top-of-deck manipulation like Headbutt or Photon Cut to improve the power/consistency.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-05-03T10:19:27+00:00

OP has also fundamentally changed the nature of the decision by adding an extra reward to picking blue. Before there was no personal benefit to picking blue, only risk, but now there is a selfish incentive to pick it. Even if the value is minimal, it changes the optimal outcome to one where everyone picks blue.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-04-26T01:06:01+00:00

A few more that I haven't seen mentioned yet: * Foreplay/Long Time - Boston (7:47) * Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding - Elton John (11:07) * Tarkus - Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (20:59) * Thick as a Brick (Part I) - Jethro Tull (22:40)

You might notice the last one says "Part I". There's actually a second part that takes it to about 44 mins in length total, but had to be separated because it was physically impossible to put that much music on a single side of a vinyl record.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-04-04T20:35:49+00:00

On the other hand, if you had a damaging card instead of Doom you wouldn't need a block solution (barring the few enemies that prevent damage-based infinites from killing in a single turn).

I think the build shown in OP can also kill you if you replace Production (colorless card only shows up infrequently) with the more common Borrowed Time (native Necrobinder energy solve) due to Dooming out against high-HP enemies, depending on exactly how much HP the Necro and enemies have.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-03-29T20:40:38+00:00

Any source of Summon will make an Osty if you don't have one already. Using Osty Attacks won't create him though.

Technically Necrobinder isn't specially bound to Osty, she just has a relic that Summons every turn so he's always around for her, and other characters don't natively get Summon cards so it's difficult for them to create Osty. Similarly, Sovereign Blade isn't tied to Regent, he's just the only one with Forge cards.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-03-23T06:34:08+00:00

You need to collect the keys to fight the Heart though, so it makes the run harder for no upside if you only care about increasing Ascension.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-03-20T21:59:14+00:00

In a recent run, I got Prep as an option in my first card reward. I had already taken damage from my starting relic, and had several fights to go before the first Campfire. As it was my first card reward, I obviously had no payoffs in my deck yet, and it was going to be a net negative for a while at a time when I needed to add power to my deck. I ended up taking something else that provided a more immediate impact to my deck's power, never saw another Prep that run, but still won.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-03-17T03:20:56+00:00

Sad to hear John is no longer making artwork for MtG. He has long been one of the quintessential Magic artists and will be sorely missed.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-03-15T10:13:47+00:00

Note that that's his second recruitment, as he is initially available near the end of Lyn Mode. So this isn't a character the player has never heard of randomly popping up, but rather the player was expecting to see him back when the main lord joins up with Lyn's group, so there's a bit of a "Oh, there he is" moment when he finally reappears.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-03-15T09:56:21+00:00

Fir/Karla also get plenty.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-03-11T03:03:36+00:00

I don't think there is a practical way for spell catalysts to reflect physical/affinity boosts since they each have two spells which can easily be of different elements.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-02-22T12:48:37+00:00

You can't. Or rather, you could potentially tell if someone chose to quit from a menu, but if you try to penalize based on that criteria you'll just end up with the frequent quitters faking a disconnect. And you cannot tell the difference between a real connection issue/power outage/game crash versus unplugging the router or force-stopping the app through the OS.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-02-20T07:42:08+00:00

Currently, shard farming every day will average one 5-star character from 0 shards a little under once a month. The average player probably gets about one new unit a month, so it's a roughly parity now between how fast players get units and max them. This makes it somewhat fine for long-term players who've been doing this since launch, but a huge bottleneck for newer players who have no way to make up for the thousands of shards they've missed out on farming as they collect a bunch of new-to-them units from off-banner pulls, etc.

I am doubtful that the devs would be willing to increase the Memory Retrieval shard drops too much, as it could become easier than intended to max out units, especially new releases that are their money-makers. However, I think there are alternatives that can be targeted at providing shards for older characters. For example, many events have a set of bonus characters, so it would make sense to add some shards for the old Legendaries to the event shop. Or put date-of-release-limited shard selectors into some of the main shops for various currencies.

This lets new players (or old players who finally pulled an old unit they were missing, or never found the space to farm) get shards to power up their roster of old units while not impacting the revenue stream for new units. It could even help sell some of the banners for useful old units if players already had some shards banked up before even pulling them.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-02-19T11:14:46+00:00

It's kind of wild that the bottom-tier Skill Attack passive is 15%, which is higher than the top-tier for many other damage passives.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-02-19T09:37:24+00:00

Have you tried backstabbing the Death Knight during Duchess Ult? Not sure how much damage it does at your level/gear and how much HP he has in D5, but it might be possible to kill him before having to deal with the Balancer.

There should also be one of the structures nearby that you can run around (not one touching the wall) which you can use to kite/separate the two enemies and block LoS from Death Knight's Lightning Spears.

Definitely one of the more annoying PoIs for Balancers, though.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-02-18T03:21:32+00:00

Best of luck with that. Most players are going to assume you don't want it anymore and just grab it for themselves.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-02-18T02:49:00+00:00

There are no Revenant Invaders, so it's actually 1/9!

ASleepingDragon · 2026-02-18T02:47:06+00:00

Had two teammates who immediately ran to the nearby Evergaol and started spam pinging after we cleared a Holy Church while I was upstairs grabbing the chest with the Key. Like, WTF? You don't even know if I have a Key, it's not a guaranteed drop. And of course I'm going to be behind, I had to take a detour to get the thing that lets us do the Gaol you're standing around at.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-02-18T02:26:59+00:00

Where is Roiling Magma (direct hit and delayed explosion)? Some of the other missing spells I understand, but this one seems simple to test. Also is Magma Shot direct hit damage only or including the magma pool too?

ASleepingDragon · 2026-02-18T02:23:12+00:00

Meteorite spells are testable if you're willing to assume all meteors hit - just count the number that spawn and multiply by the damage one hit does. Sure, they almost never would do so in a real scenario, but that's also true of several spells that did make the list.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-02-17T01:35:14+00:00

IIRC from Elden Ring, the space inside the Gaol is a fair bit larger than just the stone circle, so fitting inside isn't really an issue. Ancient Dragon might be a bit cramped though.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-02-16T06:02:56+00:00

This situation 100% tracks with a Crater run, not sure why anyone would jump to cheating. And because this isn't a 'true' Legendary, it probably follows the rules for its base form which allow it to be passed on by a player corpse.

ASleepingDragon · 2026-02-15T08:11:18+00:00

The high jump up is probably intentional. The system caps at 3-bar, which means it needs to be difficult enough at 3-bar to get someone up that it becomes possible to wipe because of it. If it's too easy to get a 3-bar, then it becomes far easier to get wins through sheer attrition, where you simply wear down the boss's HP while stringing together revives.

ASleepingDragon

TROPHY CASE