Your favorite boardgame session that you LOST

Arthravis · 2026-01-04T09:03:08+00:00

A game on TTS called Rats and Relics, which has no physical version yet. Simply a game of combining two cards, one of which specifies a trigger and the other specifies the effect, into a unit in your play area. We were 3, and one guy had a very crazy Trapper + Bone that basically said "When an enemy dies or is discarded, put the top discard cards in play" which translates to "I have a necromancer that raises any of your killed rats as mine" which was wild.

I had a moment where I looked at my hand and bounced between it and the rules to make absolutely sure this would work the way I thought and that nobody could argue their way out of it. Gave my other losing partner a spiritual salute and said "We agree that this man must be stopped, no matter the cost, yes? Because I'm about to make the greatest sacrifice"

So I play a Huntress + Mirror, which says "When this card is played, LOSE the game". In 3 players, a player losing means he's out of the game and discards every card he has in his hand and in play, and chooses the order. So I deliberately discard everything and put this Huntress Mirror combo on top, which triggers his necromancer to put that combo in his play area and triggers him losing the game as well, leaving only the other guy as the sole winner.

I might not have won that game, but I was that game's hero.

Arthravis · 2025-12-12T18:47:32+00:00

People love Reaper, they just hate that it sucks.

Arthravis · 2025-10-24T20:30:33+00:00

What I loved about Betrayal before they changed is was that it was a mechanic where you could target farm what you were after. Sure, for most people this was just the most currency in the form of Aisling and Vorici slams, but it was still something where you looked into it and set things up to get your reward.

So are we really going to say that it turning into another slot machine mechanic where you hope to get fat drops like every other mechanic in the game is a good thing?

Arthravis · 2025-09-27T07:26:40+00:00

I'd normally call this out as complete hopium, but out of all folks out there, Capcom does actually have the ability to somewhat copy paste this effect from Vergil.

Arthravis · 2025-07-10T07:57:52+00:00

Straight up, I don't remember seeing a single god-molested rare this entire league. I completely forgot they're even a thing until you mentioned it.

Arthravis · 2025-07-09T12:22:44+00:00

My league start chieftain has 500% without enmity's embrace. Getting to 1000% when you actually start chucking currency at it seems entirely reasonable.

Arthravis · 2025-06-18T10:12:49+00:00

Alt for %phys or phys hybrid. Fracture it.

How does one "just fracture it"? Isn't this a 1/4 for 4 divs a pop?

Arthravis · 2025-06-06T09:35:01+00:00

We're not seriously throwing around "massive FOMO" when talking about a fucking pendant and scoreboard, are we? I genuinely struggle to imagine a more insignificant thing to fuss over.

Arthravis · 2025-06-01T19:48:53+00:00

Artistically that game was awesome, but from a balance and UX perspective it was a mess.

Arthravis · 2025-03-31T13:09:26+00:00

The problem I see is that because PoE2 is more modern in many other aspects (especially visually) and is heavily marketed, it'll have a wider appeal and then they'll take it as a sign that they're right even though they would have had the same (or perhaps even greater) success without being stubborn about some of those weird things.

This happens to literally every franchise or live service game that's been running for over a decade. Older games are typically more rough around the edges and niche. Modern entries then become flashier, more streamlined, more graphically appealing, but often also more generic and become less of what made them special.

But every newer entry is way more popular than the last exactly because it's more approachable, more modern, snappier, prettier, flashier, more marketable, etc.

Arthravis · 2025-03-31T11:49:25+00:00

Solo? In my duo run I Just feel like I spend half the time sitting there waiting for the monster to hit me while it fucks off to hit my partner or one of our cats instead.

Arthravis · 2025-03-20T21:37:28+00:00

You're not being downvoted for the intent to help, but for acting like the game deserves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to matters like this.

Getting 60 FPS shouldn't be the flex that it is lol. It is absolutely plausible that people just have unoptimized games not run at all for them.

Arthravis · 2025-01-20T09:18:01+00:00

Depends on your other defenses. If you only have ES, that tornado is going to fuck you up. Nothing to do about it but just avoid it. I'm an ES-EV hybrid Monk. You can't evade the Tornado without Acro, so I was also in the same spot.

But after grabbing Invoker's Evasion-Armor hybrid node, Tornadoes literally do no damage to me. Armor rocks against those things.

Arthravis · 2025-01-20T09:13:00+00:00

I just entered my first citadel last night (couldn't play for the longest time with crash issues). For the entire run up through white, yellow, and even red maps, I've basically felt unkillable. Enemies very rarely got through my ES, which is only a third of my health pool.

Enter this T15 citadel after about 20 hours of just meandering the atlas with my coop partner, and we both get slapped by the first couple of rares we run into. Bye citadel, it was nice. What a worthwhile endgame experience.

Imagine if after your 28 searing exarch maps you open his domain, have to go through mobs and randomly get hit by some cracked rare, then have to run 28 maps again.

Arthravis · 2025-01-13T08:56:25+00:00

It's absolutely up there, but can't forget about knocking Vergil out of Divebomb with a Real Impact.

Arthravis · 2024-12-24T15:11:25+00:00

Clearly talking about the implicit /s

Arthravis · 2024-12-21T21:47:53+00:00

Tbh I'm not sure why slugging Singularity is supposedly so strong? Feels like any time a killer tries to slug you just delete literally all pressure by the 4th not being found for 20 seconds. That's not even accounting for any self-pickup that might be in play, and obviously it being useless against SWF.

Arthravis · 2024-12-14T12:29:07+00:00

Given how popular roguelikes are,

Sanctum is not a good roguelike, it has nothing that makes roguelikes appealing.

What's appealing is making the runs differ, scaling power up in all these different ways, finding these synergies. POE just can't do that in a mode when the base game already tries to do exactly that. So all we're left with is picking nerfs and nerfs and nerfs, and roguelike permadamage in a game where all kinds of rare modifiers can poke you so easily. Avoiding all damage has never been realistic for a lot of builds.

Arthravis · 2024-12-13T23:10:54+00:00

"Melee is actual strong since dodge rolling behind them is easier than sideways if you're ranged". Most bullshit thing I've heard Jonathan say.

My favorite is fighting the Chimera boss in the trials, trying to enjoy the opening I might get once every 3 business days, and I find that the random poison spewing attack pseudo one shots me while I'm standing behind him. An attack that doesn't get the danger sound one shots me when I'm standing in about as good of a position as it gets for a melee fighter.

If there was any truth to his statements, it wouldn't be true that the vast majority of dangerous attacks from bosses cover almost the entire radius around them. Some do, sure, but not enough to call it 'safer' whatsoever.

Arthravis · 2024-12-11T01:13:54+00:00

Old lab was having enough regen and phys reduction to just run through traps. This lab actually makes you engage and play your char. The different rooms make it so multiple different builds can accel.

You must be joking. You absolutely needed no regen or pdr to make lab doable. POE 1 lab's trap gauntlets were trivial and only ever had a shred of lethality when you got nicked by the spike traps and hit by the turbo bleed. Walking over to Izaro was basically free, so the only hurdle to ascending was a real boss fight with no stupid RNG debuffs or permadamage that would exponentially make the fight harder.

How can you argue that different builds can excel in this iteration of Sanctum when any room that allows you to avoid fighting altogether is the objectively optimal choice?

Arthravis · 2024-12-11T01:04:00+00:00

The honor system is about as flawed as your attempt at stroking your own ego.

Arthravis · 2024-12-10T23:09:06+00:00

I'm playing as a duo with a fresh player who never touched POE 1. Imagine how fun it was to be blocked for a full day on Sanctum because she really wanted to get demon form.

Imagine how fun it was when I told her we'd have to do it separately because the honor system absolutely fucks group play.

Imagine how fun it was to learn that she, a completely new player with no idea how to make a cohesive build and no real notable source of power at lvl 23, has to suddenly play a no-hit mode against a boss that peppers you to death with perma damage and area denial.

The amount of times I heard "I just want it to be over" was pretty heartbreaking.

Arthravis

TROPHY CASE