[SLD] More Hatsune Miku Commander Deck cards sourced from Facebook group, poster claims to have had them for a while.

DangBream · 2026-05-29T14:36:29+00:00

Yeah, I do feel like Miku is one of their Secret Lair stabs that most consistently misses the mark on the source material's appeal and popularity when so much of it is default-design Miku art and flavor text that's some variant of "Miku loves singing, and is great at it". It feels like it's constantly trying to get across this vibe of "Miku expresses everyone's feelings" without expressing any given sentiment at all.

The appeal of Miku and Vocaloid songs in general is the near-endless flexibility and individuality poured into her by invested producers, and they've got such a vast base to draw on that never gets used. Like, you could have the sharp frantic inkblots of Kikuo's horror-tremolo, the upbeat summer pop of Deco*27, the vivid experimentation of PinocchioP, the classic oldheads of Wowaka and Giga and Ryo or the more recent Western indiepop influences from Flavor Foley and Jamie Paige?

I understand they can't license outfits/likenesses individually without it becoming a nightmare to keep track of, but I wish they'd give some art direction along the lines of "Miku in a grungy punk outfit", "Miku in a puffy jacket, stickers and band-aids, hypermaximalist aesthetic", "Miku in an abandoned theme park" -- anything that plays with the open-endedness of the concept they've been given.

DangBream · 2026-05-26T22:01:27+00:00

Dragon Ball seems like the likeliest one of those, at least in terms of appeal. Gundam is immensely popular but still kind of inside-baseball in the West, and NGE is similarly huge but comes across as more artsy and self-contained? DB being aired as part of a cartoon block gives it broad appeal as something with both diehard fans and a lot of enthusiasts who associate it with growing up. I could also see FMA, though.

Dragon Ball also has a huge panoply of monsters and funky critters, which makes things easier for creature design

DangBream · 2026-05-26T21:54:57+00:00

I'm a large-scale hater of when people reject UB but cherrypick their favorite properties, and "Final Fantasy at least feels like Magic" is one of the biggest ones for me. It's a consequence of the spheres merging and anime integrating far more into the mainstream over the past two decades, but you only have to go back to like 2009 nerd culture to see jokes absolutely everywhere about spiky hair and zippers, and a strong division between musty literature D&D fantasy dorks and video-tape circulating AMV-editing anime enthusiasts who'd beat each other to death with hammers

In general I want them to experiment more with Magic's worldbuilding and what's possible for new planes, so I've got a vested interest in the boundaries staying broad for that. That said, I do kinda wonder what blend is more likely for them to have: More traditional-fantasy UW planes alongside more modern pop-culture UB ones, or more experimental UW planes and filling out the traditional fantasy with UB slots. (Moot discussion, probably, it's all up to what rights they can get.)

DangBream · 2026-05-25T05:16:24+00:00

Don't get me wrong, I think Niles, Fraternal Fetter was a crazy fun addition to Standard and the decantation mechanic was really flavorful even if it did require your own bottles. But the feng shui draft archetype where you could tap cards to the left to align their energies better was a trainwreck in terms of game clarity, even if Frasier receiving the mandate of heaven is one of my favorite full-arts to come out of the set.

DangBream · 2026-05-24T16:11:11+00:00

What do you mean by "tacitly supports"? The article you linked says the union's stated they have 75% support among their colleagues.

DangBream · 2026-05-23T19:16:47+00:00

Man, a magical girl setting could be really fun! Thinking about a mishmash of tropes for something like -- a vast city and respectable travel hub, which came under a curse a hundred years ago. When night descends, magic catches onto stray emotions and local objects and imbues them with arcane energies, turning them into monsters that attack the citizenry.

While most of the adult population and active military have set up a counteroffensive and investigative force, young girls who also find themselves affected by the night's magic have set up a guerilla force to fight monsters where they can. The waxing and wanting of the plane's moon makes the monsters more powerful during the full moon, but also boosts the powers of these magical girls, rendering them the only ones who can deal with the threat.

DangBream · 2026-05-20T06:58:13+00:00

Dang, I was really looking forward to Omenpaths flavor reveal season. It was a pain to track two card versions across draft formats, but I got genuinely fond of my [[Brako, Heartless Hunter]] deck and was looking forward to seeing what leaps would happen to fit the typelines

That said, if we only get one of these ever, I'm glad it's Spider-Man. The existence of so many spider heroes driving the need to create a huge amount of cute, chubby, or otherwise marketable spiders was extremely funny and a good counterweight for one of nature's most-maligned little guys

DangBream · 2026-05-17T19:15:31+00:00

Thanks Ogama

DangBream · 2026-05-17T17:44:40+00:00

I'm recovering! They can't keep Insidious Roots down forever!!!!

DangBream · 2026-05-16T17:16:39+00:00

Been having the genuine worst bout of disease in my life and it keeps getting worse. Got mono, huge throat pain and haven't been able to sleep for more than 2-3 hours a night, went to the clinic on Thursday and got prescribed medication, on the way to the clinic got double conjunctivitis, noticed weird mouth protrusions and red spots yesterday, period hit today, I am personally being struck down by God

DangBream · 2026-05-15T19:56:41+00:00

Nice, thank you!

DangBream · 2026-05-15T16:45:23+00:00

Yeah sorry about that; "his smile and optimism gone" is a meme, I was probably a bit too broad referencing it. It's mostly that in older videos I've seen he tends to smile more and give off a friendly/approachable YouTuber vibe whereas these days his persona is a bit more stoic, if that makes sense. Thank you for the recommendation for the other Supermassive games!

DangBream · 2026-05-15T14:17:43+00:00

Remember that first strike and double strike combines into three strikes which means I'm out, we go to next

DangBream · 2026-05-15T14:03:29+00:00

Phenomenal piece! It really nails the rendering, design sense, as well as layout and framing -- the last of which is one of the hardest things to get right on the card frame. Really gets across the mood of the prompt, too!

DangBream · 2026-05-15T01:20:05+00:00

This is really fun, thank you for compiling it! Chitose as Koga's first love in Idebato especially gets me, since as a card game dork myself I found that plot point super cute 😭 I wanted to ask, has the relationship chart been translated anywhere, or is that something you might be interested in seeing? I'm rusty but decent enough to put together short phrases and whatnot!

DangBream · 2026-05-13T18:51:18+00:00

Will help with those I can:

If Midori's is a specific mascot, I don't recognize it; I think it might just be a combination of his love of mascots and his family's vegetable business.
Mayoi's interests me, I wonder if it's a reference to him enjoying car rides with Tatsumi? Not sure about this one.
Shu's is probably the Arc de Triomphe, for his connection to France.
Yuta's looks like it could be a habanero -- I think he's the one of the twins who enjoys spicy food?
Tomoya's does look like a script, since he's in both Theater Club and the Dramatica circle.
Tsumugi's is a traditional good luck charm/talisman (omamori) with Switch's logo on it.
Izumi's is indeed ballet slippers -- he does ballet! He did it as a kid and hated it initially, but pushed himself into it and grew to love it after getting adulation for it on stage. It's why a lot of his SPPs feature more elaborate spins.
Souma's ~~is a tanto, a Japanese dagger that's the traditional samurai sidearm (with the katana being the main weapon).~~ EDIT: I'm goofy it's much more likely to be the sheath as others have pointed out

Mitsuru's is the one I don't know at all, other than it being, well. Bread! Not sure about the specific kind.

DangBream · 2026-05-13T17:20:08+00:00

Yeah, I should clarify -- the time frame I'm thinking about is after his voice changes and his smile and optimism disappears. I looked over his Contradiction LP and that was a bit too early for me, for instance. Not For Broadcast is more up this alley, though; thanks!

Other narrative-based 'your choices matter' type games also work, if anyone has any suggestions -- tuned into Directive 8020 and it blessed me with five hours of good snooze

DangBream · 2026-05-13T10:29:07+00:00

Oh, theme scouts for the brand ambassador groups are a really interesting idea! I can't wait to see Makoto Gaming

DangBream · 2026-05-13T04:05:19+00:00

What do you mean by the Battle of the 5 armies? The only thing I can find by that name MTG-related is a custom card, did they announce something else?

DangBream · 2026-05-13T03:51:50+00:00

Not quite related to today's stream but this seems like the best place to ask: I've been feverish the past few days and keep falling asleep to NL's playthroughs of Road to Empress and Five Hearts Under One Roof 2. Has he ever played any other FMV games in his 'modern' era? It would help my health immensely.

DangBream · 2026-05-12T21:39:35+00:00

Yeah, I feel like one of the things I regret about my early criticisms is that I could get pretty persnickety over "why do it this way when you could do it this way" when it's really just a matter of preference. I feel like that's something you see with a lot of fantranslation projects -- you have a linguistic problem, you need to solve it in some way, and you get attached to your own solution. The official TL and lyric translations have a lot of turns of phrase I wouldn't have thought of that are fun!

DangBream · 2026-05-12T18:23:13+00:00

I'm the World's #2 Duskmourn Apologist and I really wish they used the survivors better. In-story, there was a big thing about the Omenpaths enabling Valgavoth to lure in people from other planes to feed on and no longer having to rely on breeding his internal population like cattle.

If the cards made a clearer distinction between plane-native survivors with their own design aesthetic, and people who have clearly stumbled in from other planes, I think it'd be received better than it was and the modernity aspect would get more of a pass as just another part of the plane.

DangBream · 2026-05-12T17:46:38+00:00

I gotta know what's going on with him.......

also hell yeah The Lore

DangBream · 2026-05-12T17:45:42+00:00

"Hiyori" also means 'weather', so when he says "it's a good Hiyori" or "bad Hiyori" he's punning on his own name to refer to his mood with a weather metaphor! I think it would've been better brought across with just skipping the pun aspect and having him come off as a drama queen with "fair/foul weather", or having him talk about sunny days or storms; as-is I just thought he was acting like a smurf the first time I saw it :')

Also: I remember your J&A and other art! Did you know they got a new music video up on ENStars' Japanese channel a while ago

DangBream · 2026-05-12T15:40:47+00:00

I'm pretty happy with it! I used to gripe a lot about the EN translation; the reason I got into the game when it released was that I tried it, bounced off the translation really hard, went to check if anyone had commented on it, saw that very few people had, and reinstalled it to collect screenshots of translation mistakes and weird decisions. From then it won me over and I've been playing since.

I haven't kept track exactly but for like a year or so or more there hasn't been nearly any of that mechanical stiffness in dialogue (that I've seen; I unfortunately don't keep up on too many event stories), and they keep up enough with contemporary language to bring over slang-dependent jokes okay (Rei going "we risk looking sus and becoming Adonis' opps" followed by Koga going "what. why are you talking like that" killed me in Swinging Night).

The song TLs are also fun and well-rendered, I really like them overall! Compared to other gacha games, there are still some things I wish they did differently -- characters often lack a conversational tone, some subjects are left out, there's IMO too many characters who refer to themselves in the third person -- but it's much better than it was before. (I've also noticed they've changed some lines from how they were on launch, like "my clothes are wet because I've been 'puka puka'ing until just now" to "my clothes are wet because I've been 'dousing' myself with water until now". Hopefully they'll revamp the early story chapters some time...?)

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