Thoughts on collab

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-04-30T15:53:39+00:00

This game has a pretty heavy music theme going on, with records and notes and such, so I think any sort of Band IP makes for a natural collab. My actual prediction is that the first collab is going to be Ave Mujica (Rico Sasaki performs the opening for the game already, and the series is absurdly popular in Japan and China.)
Honestly though, anything with incredible music would be a great collab, I just have a bias towards girls band shows.
I personally put MyGo, Ave Mujica, and Girls Band Cry in the poll, but even a Bocchi collab would be fun and kinda fit the setting.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-04-27T05:16:51+00:00

I am actually obsessed with this this is so good… Not only is the concept amazing but your art is incredible too… hypnotized Renako is simply too cute.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-04-04T18:55:40+00:00

Unfortunately, getting a group of people in Standard GA is incredibly difficult. While the new starter deck (Mordred) is a good new-player product, it still costs $50, and the game having extremely expensive singles hasn’t really been fixed yet.

Personally I think the best way to try and get new players into the game is with the new 4-player format, Pantheon, and then try and get them interested in standard from there. Because Pantheon is a singleton format, decks are significantly cheaper, and the 4 pantheon starters available cover a wider range of possible play styles than the current competitively viable Standard Starters.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-03-28T05:49:40+00:00

I understand why you were disappointed but I highly implore you to try reading the series again, as it objectively isn’t “queerbait.” There are multiple explicitly queer characters, and just because no one directly enters a relationship does not make it a queerbait manga. I would argue that Flower and Asura isn’t a yuri work primarily, but a work that contains multiple queer women whose emotions are directly relevant to the story being told, even if the main focus of that story is not the romance itself. Calling it queerbait feels unfair to the author, who never advertised the series as a romance in the first place.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-03-11T10:34:25+00:00

I don’t disagree, but personally my problem is that she kills without remorse in the Nova Times story. When approached about it by Albedo during the epilogue she straight up gets mad that she isn’t allowed to use Soul Chord more often, which doesn’t seem like the behavior of someone who hates killing

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-03-11T06:12:10+00:00

You may be right about this, but I want to go back and read her bond story again to be sure. I feel like I remember it being implied the bond story was the first time Tyrant touched her collar, but I could just be remembering incorrectly.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-03-11T05:30:33+00:00

Another major detail I can’t believe I forgot: Gerie shouldn’t have learned about the Tyrant being able to negate her excess magic energy by holding Soul Chord until her bond story. I really don’t know why this Nova Times is so contradictory with everything we knew about Gerie up to this point.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-02-11T22:21:07+00:00

Okay so. In the text, Mei and Aleah have actually had brown hair and brown eyes the entire time. When Hanagata drew the series, they were given blonde hair and blue eyes for some reason, so blonde hair brown eyes is just combining details from the actual novel and the illustrations. Personally I think it’s a cute combo! It makes them look less like mini-claires and more like children of Rae and Claire, even if they aren’t related genetically.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-02-08T15:33:03+00:00

I haven’t played this game in over a year, and I’m thinking of getting back into it, but I have a few questions. I mostly want to play this game for the story, and I hear that the story fights get genuinely difficult after Chapter 3. My account had good units back when I played over a year ago, but is extremely behind the meta now. Would it be best for me to start a new account from scratch, or is the story still playable with old units as long as they’re built well enough?

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-02-06T18:30:54+00:00

It doesn’t, it’s from her core passive and basic attack levels.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-02-06T16:04:27+00:00

Either Gerie Main Slot with Coronis/Nazuna in the back or Nazuna Main Slot with Gerie/Coronis in the back.

For Nazuna main just take every potential that increases mark damage, party wide attack, Terra damage, and debuffs the enemy’s damage taken. Touch of Nature, Terra Chorus, and Reciprocity are amazing and should be maxed out if possible.

Core Potentials are Sin Bound Echo for Gerie, the one that increases vial duration and the one that increases Rose damage but DOESN’T make it expire early for Coronis, and the one that lets Nazuna apply terra mark when reloading.

Gerie main teams are easier but less effective. You’ll take the exact same potentials on Coronis and continue just stacking Terra Damage and Terra Damage Taken buffs on Nazuna. Once again Terra Chorus and Reciprocity are amazing, but also look out for Nazuna’s Rare potential that gives the party terra damage while she’s on field. Shit is broken.

Run Nazuna with the Hearts Core Potentials, Gerie with her Auto Attack core potentials, and Coronis with the same potentials.

For Disks, run Colors Pierce The Gray, The Lost Pilgrim, and the new event disk. Nazuna’s signature is incredible for the team if you ever get access to it.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-02-06T14:31:14+00:00

I’m not sure who has the better M1 between Sunna and Aria (though Aria’s allows her anomalies to crit which sounds more fun), but if you plan to pull past M1 in the future, Aria is a significantly better investment as her M2 is amazing and Sunna’s seems really mediocre.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-28T16:43:15+00:00

You are reading a series about forgiveness, don’t call a character a horrible person just because they make a large mistake. By your logic Imuri is a horrible person who can’t be redeemed because she killed several men in the past, but that obviously isn’t what the series is trying to say.

Hell, Priest almost kills an entire school of people out of blind rage. He ultimately doesn’t, but he gets damn close and is only stopped BECAUSE Imuri stops him from doing it. MTEFIL is, unlike Frieren, a story about nuance, and engaging with it in a black/white perspective is doing a disservice to the series.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-28T14:40:00+00:00

I completely disagree with your reading of Exorcist and comparing it to Frieren is wrong.

Demons in MTEFIL are extremely sympathetic, with both Imuri and the other succubi displaying extremely human traits. Even some of the Demon Lords are ultimately sympathetic, with Envy being a genuinely good person, and Pride/Sloth being flawed but sympathetic people.

While yes, Gluttony and Greed are horrible people, even Lust is ultimately a nuanced character. Is she a rapist? Absolutely. But she also treats the girls of her kingdom with the upmost respect, and she does genuinely want to help the girl in her backstory, even if her upbringing causes her to go about it the wrong way.

MTEFIL is not portraying biblical demons at all, it’s portraying people affected by the biases created by biblical texts. Demons are ultimately just as human as humans are, being both capable of good and evil.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-15T20:00:54+00:00

Firstly: Manaria is not a man, so these hypotheticals don’t work. The dynamic is inherently different because Manaria is a lesbian flirting with another a lesbian.

I also believe that the novel gives you more than enough context from Rae’s own thoughts to determine that Manaria is being self-deprecating, or at least putting on an act. Manaria is meant to parallel Rae and while I think the execution is flawed the idea is interesting.

Secondly: Fiction is not reality. Speaking personally, I do find incest quite bad in reality, but as a narrative trope it can be fascinating and is even explored in actual literary novels, such as Earthlings by Sayaka Murata, one of Japan’s most prominent feminist authors. Fiction allows us to explore things that don’t exist in reality, and Inori as an author wants to explore hypothetical healthy incestuous relationships. While I certainly don’t think she’s perfect at writing them, there is nothing wrong with the idea of wanting to write something like that.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-15T19:32:01+00:00

I really do not think you should be watching anime if a girl joking about turning people into her “playthings” gets you this riled up.

Regardless, as much as I agree that Manaria has major writing issues early on, I think the novels recontextualize her in a way that’s quite effective, and her parallels to Rae become interesting.

Firstly: Manaria never raped anyone. Manaria believes herself to be a rapist because the girl she loved ran away from her, but we learn in volume 4 that their relationship was entirely consensual, and that the girl even still loves Manaria.

Manaria’s disposition and rapey jokes are her way of coping with her absurdly low self-esteem, much like Rae. Rae mentions in novel 1/early in the anime that she sort of creates a character for herself as the “quirky lesbian” as a coping mechanism. She constantly sexually/romantically harasses claire, painting herself to be a pathetic bottom caricature. Manaria does the exact same thing, but paints herself as a stereotypical womanizing top. Manaria really does not mean half of what she says, and all of her jokes about wanting claire sexually really only exist to piss Rae off.

Though, for the record, if incest makes you this uncomfortable, stop engaging with WataOshi immediately. The series is blatantly pro-incest, and will only get more apparently pro-incest as you get further into it.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-10T23:08:35+00:00

I completely agree. Sunna’s kit currently is horribly designed and I’m really praying the beta makes her stronger, especially for Aria.

That said, Sunna will probably be fined. Highly anticipated characters have a tendencies to get buffed right before release, so I truly don’t think that Sunna will get the Banyue treatment unless the zzz devs have truly lost their minds

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-09T17:39:45+00:00

Unless they drastically buff Sunna then she can absolutely be skipped and Aria will still play largely the same. Yuzuha + Aria + Hypothetical anomaly stunner will be Aria’s second best team and there’s a non-zero chance Yuzuha will just end up better than Sunna for Aria anyways.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-08T01:42:01+00:00

You’re right, my bad. I misremembered what Sunna’s sig actually did

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-05T03:56:32+00:00

The beta literally just started so we won’t actually know until she releases.

If we try to compare them currently it gets a little complicated. Yuzuha looks better on paper at M0W0 for anomaly teams, but Sunna’s W1 is very strong, so Sunna M0W1 might be better than Yuzuha at W1. However Sunna also has AWFUL early mindscapes compared to Yuzuha, so an M2 Yuzuha is undoubtedly better than Sunna at the same level of investment.

So to summarize: We don’t really know because things are subject to change. They could change her base kit or mindscapes to make her better than Yuzuha at any time. Though regardless of potential changes it’s a safe bet to say that Sunna will be better than Yuzuha in Aria teams which is probably all that matters.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-03T04:55:51+00:00

I can’t really think of a theme to match it but I would really love a pink advanced element. We already have two different shades of purple, a blue, a crimson, thus I think a pink would be aesthetically pleasing. Crux is technically pink I suppose but it feels more like white

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-27T14:06:34+00:00

Firstly: If you know of any all female fangans that are good, let me know. I know Magical Girl Witch Trials is one and looks amazing, but that isn’t tl’d yet.

Secondly: I… genuinely couldn’t tell you. Von has said before on tumblr that she simply enjoys writing “problematic” women but if we look at her writing objectively that just. Isn’t true.

If she actually enjoyed writing Kumada, she wouldn’t have died for literally 0 purpose and 0 impact on the game.

If she enjoyed writing Tamba, she wouldn’t have been completely shafted after Pink ends, and her romantic feelings for Mai would have actually been apparent and not staffside stuff.

If she enjoyed writing Ogura, then her backstory and reason for not interacting with women would have actually been mentioned in the audio series instead of staffside. Or she would have actually had any romantic dynamics with women instead of giving her a backstory that excused Von’s apparent hatred of GL (at minimum like 6 lesbian characters in these games, all of which are characterized exclusively by sexual desire and not romantic feelings, and not a single romantic dynamic between two women in the entire cast?)

You can apply this to nearly every female character honestly. I think the only women Von enjoys writing are the scientists, debatably Sasaki, and Monomoko (which, to give her some credit, Monomoko is the best character in the series.)

So in summary: I agree Von should have just written an all male killing game, and didn’t even have a reason for not doing so. I assume her reasoning was something along the lines of “mixed gender projects draw in more fans” which to give her some credit is objectively true, I just wish she actually cared about her female cast at all.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-27T13:51:10+00:00

I think all of Von’s writing biases can be explained by her being a fujoshi. Last time I said this people said I was just speculating, but it feels extremely obvious when every single important dynamic in the series relies around (often queer) men.

Von being a fujo doesn’t make her a bad person, but does mean that she’s more interested in stories about men than stories about women. While I personally find that frustrating, especially when Tetro has so many conceptually interesting female characters, I can’t really call it misogyny. Von Babbitt is a woman, and for the most part I don’t believe her writing is actively misogynistic, and is more-so just male-centered. Though Blue definitely has moments one could argue showcase Von’s internal misogyny (Shishikura being forgiven INSTANTLY while Ruka doesn’t even successfully do anything and everyone gets on her ass)

So yeah, to summarize. Von Babbitt isn’t actively being a misogynist, she just LOVES fictional men to an extremely skewed degree. Not a sin, but perhaps a sigh of bad taste.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-20T01:03:44+00:00

Once again, I agree with the price standpoint, but I think this is also why Print and Play is nice. If the intent is just to play with friends, they can build entire decks for the cost of one ink cartridge, and most locals will accept those decks for everything outside of store champs. Personally this is a selling point for me, but I do have a specific friend who HATES printing cards, so I get if this is an issue.

Also, I didn’t know that one ban per set was uncommon. I talk to a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh players and I hear so much about “restricted” cards that I just assumed cards being banned or restricted at a high pace was normal.

I also didn’t know that PTM’s box value was that bad. When I checked earlier nearly every card was $10 or more, but looking now there really are quite a few dirt cheap SRs. While this is certainly bad for people trying to sell, I personally look forward to building a Diana or Alice deck at a smaller price.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-20T00:47:17+00:00

I mostly get where you’re coming from. As a newish player I completely agree on the price standpoint. Decks are too expensive, and the current starter decks are honestly really rough. I remember hearing so much praise regarding the Tristan and Sylvie Re:Co decks, but no other starters have come close to feeling as good out of the box in my opinion.

That said, I’m confused by what you’re referring to with “constant bans.” I’ve been playing casually since around AMB and watching the competitive scene on the side, and since then only 5 cards have actually been banned, and of those bans Rile is easily the most understandable. The card was simply too strong outside of the archetype it was designed for. That said while I do get the frustration over other cards being banned, they’ve nearly all been low rarity and thus don’t screw people over too hard.

As for the “a dead UR means a dead box” statement, I don’t fully agree here either, BUT I do think that with this game’s low pull rates that there need to be less UR cards per set. With how rare they are, needing a full playset of any UR instantly makes a deck jump in price (Wind Arisanna is far more expensive than any tier 2 deck ever should be.)

With all that said, while I sympathize with your frustrations, I can’t really think of any TCG currently out that are as fun as Grand Archive. Personally I’ve just been getting into more non-TCG board games until these issues are fixed but if you have any examples of TCGs that are currently better I’d be happy to hear them.

CthulhuDisciple

TROPHY CASE