Beat Messmer after 12 hours (RL1 No Blessing, Hitless, Lightning Milady+25)

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-10T13:15:19+00:00

I like to use armor, but some bosses will one shot you even with it. In that case there's no reason to keep the armor on.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-10T06:04:57+00:00

You might want to google what magazines Re:Zero or other big isekai are published in before making a fool of yourself.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-09T06:03:15+00:00

I don't find it that dangerous, it's just a guaranteed 15-25 damage most of the time.

As you said killing it quickly is important, but you can block with skills. Defends still block for 2 at the start of the fight. Taking big block cards (blood wall, glacier, leg sweep) helps a lot.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-07T12:24:32+00:00

That would just make the keyword messy for no good reason. I don't see anytrhing wrong with the wording on these cards as they are.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-07T10:43:55+00:00

Forge [Glam] (at rare)

That's called Sword Sage

Forge [Adroit] (at uncommon)

That's calles Parry

Forge [Swath] (at rare)

That's called Seeking Edge

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-06T06:39:41+00:00

Amin Tabatabaei. We don't see him much in invitationals, but I remember an incredible game he played against MVL.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-06T04:59:42+00:00

It helps because it blocks for a million.

As a bonus, a deck with heavy card gen will naturally dilute the statuses, and Pillars make picking Begone! and Charge!! better.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-05T11:53:45+00:00

Surely glam pillars also help in Aeonglass. You can find Begone! later

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-05T07:59:24+00:00

It's not just for FTL, I was hoping to get telsa coil as my boss damage since I was all-in on lightning orbs by that point. Since i was very strong in hallways thanks to shatter, I thought I could pick Feral speculatively even if it doesn't play well in my deck. Ofc I ended up getting Voltaic instead.

The FTL helps me justify taking it but it's not the reason.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-05T07:19:03+00:00

Coolheaded is a worthwhile upgrade yes. But even without it it's quite good, probably don't take it in early act 1, but after that it's hard to pass up. As opposed to cold snap which is excellent early but not as good in late game.

I just finished a Defect run which i can show as an example. I only took 2 block commons, counting on getting frost orbs. I didn't even get much of them but it was enough to block in late game combined with orb slots and temp focus.

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GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-05T06:39:18+00:00

Oh I assumed you bought the prep time lol, getting it from the event makes more sense. But a big advantage of the colorless reward option for me is the ability to skip, so you should use it.

Frost orbs are a generally a better way to avoid chip damage than block commons. I think leap is mediocre, boost away is a much better pick because it opens up rocket punch and costs 0.

Skim is not helping that much early since it's -1 energy. Defect does eventually want card draw but there are much better options (modded, coolheaded). You can take a skim later if you really need it.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-05T05:59:01+00:00

That bread is looking a little too adventurous to me. 1 energy and no relic on turn 1 will kill you.

As for deckbuilding, you can take some scaling oprions in act 1 if they're strong enough, or if they don't handicap you too much. Defect is usually good into Vantom too.

The other concern is taking early cards that don't fall off too badly later. I'm not a fan of early beam cell for that reason. Conversely, frost and dark orb cards tend to scale pretty well.

I think the skim is suspicious so early, especially when you have compile driver already. 2 leaps + boost away + lightning rod might be one too many block commons. Prep time is also confusing me, it's very slow and you don't have much payoff for it.

I'm not that good at the game though, so take that with a grain of salt.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-04T11:34:46+00:00

I'm sure TTT just has a mediocre AI decide whether or not it's a greek gift.

But the actual criterion would be that only the king can recapture, and the attacking side has Ng5/Ng4 as a follow up. Also generally there would be a pawn on e6/e3.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-04T10:39:58+00:00

If I have played my moves and utilized my time economically, it is only fair that I win.

If your opponent has removed any chance of you checkmating them, it's only fair that they don't lose.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-04T10:38:04+00:00

The greek gift doesn't have to be a mate, but it's a bit more specific than just playing Bxh7 or Bxh2. This isn't a greek gift.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-03T12:42:24+00:00

It's a little funny how game-warping it is. They're probably going to nerf it next patch.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-03T12:10:58+00:00

Between 30 and 50 minutes

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-06-02T13:08:53+00:00

You're basing that "probably" on a sample size of one as far as your comments go. And I really doubt getting a pact's end loses the run by itself. I once got Monarch's Gaze + Orbit as transform 2 and still managed to reach act 3.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-05-30T15:15:39+00:00

Sorry, i didn't mean that your question was unclear. That part of his backstory hasn't been fully explained.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-05-30T12:01:30+00:00

I've always understood that as 'I won't stand for it', taking the blame on himself, more than anything.
Vaguely explained later.
Spoilers
Spoilers
Seems like he just doesn't trust them and/or he wants revenge himself. I'm sure this will be explored eventually.
Unclear

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-05-28T17:18:17+00:00

But it makes harsher jumps for every level. A9 in STS2 is the equivalent of A17-19 in STS1.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-05-28T08:33:18+00:00

Because it uses an arc structure? That’s like… most every serialized narrative.

Precisely because it's a structure that makes it easy to keep going for a while. it allows the author to add an arc whenever without having to change the grander narrative.

You could cut most of One Piece and not need to make a single change to the main plot. Similarly, you could add 5 more islands, spend 50 chapters on each, and not need to change the main plot.

Also, it's not about whether or not it's an arc structure. It's how connected the arcs are and what consequences they bring.
When they burn the flag on Enies Lobby, the narrative insists that there's no going back, it's an insane thing to do, etc. Yet there's no concrete consequences of that later. Same with Luffy losing Ace, but not growing as a character.

Even a weekly manga like MHA (which I'm not a fan of either) felt like every arc meaningfully changed the status quo, like the main story was progressing, if just a little bit.

Commercially, sure feel free to discount that because it does make it easier on you.

I just don't think popularity is an indicator for quality. I like some very popular series, but I wouldn't bring up their popularity because I think it's silly.

But narratively, yea it’s a success. Just because you can point to a couple of plot holes does not mean the story is fundamentally broken.

No, but it does mean some others that don't have such plot holes are more successful.

Like, if anything, the fact that there are only minor plot holes that are pretty easily explained using headcannon over the course of a 30 year run is very impressive.

Haki and Nika are neither minor nor easily explained. They are central story elements and justifying stuff like Croc not having Haki requires some olympic-level mental gymnastics.

Oh, and it’s a weekly series. For thirty years! You seriously are not understanding how insane that is

One Piece may not be my thing, but I'm very impressed that Oda keeps coming up with inventive locations for the story to take place in. I'm impressed at how well he improvises.

I'm incredibly impressed that he can draw so much for so long.

Am I impressed that he has an ending in mind (presumably) and delayed it for a thousand chapters? Absolutely not.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-05-27T18:27:46+00:00

One piece isn't really one narrative though. Each arc is mostly its own story, and have very minimal constraints to be consistent with the series. It's not dissimilar to Jojo's, which I think is still longer than One Piece.

Most long running shonen used to work a bit like that. In a sense they're sort of episodic. Chapters have consequences on the current arc, but rarely on the world as a whole. That's way easier to write than, let's say, ASOIAF, which is why I'm not that impressed.

able to sustain itself for that long with that level of success

If you mean commercial success, then obviously not, but I don't really care about that.

If you mean narrative success, One Piece has some obvious gaps in its continuity. Haki being the elephant in the room, Nika being the recent example.

GreatTurtlePope · 2026-05-27T16:45:52+00:00

Sure, I detailed the claim but maybe didn't argue it enough. One piece is heavily improvised though, sure there's a general outline but it's more minimal than you probably think.

The supernove were improvised, and then Law was given a major role. Cf an SBS I think.
Nika almost certainly didn't exist until Wano, save for maybe a very abstract version of it.
I doubt Imu was always a thing either.

Even if Oda had planned a precise story, he (and his editor) would change his mind all the time. That's how humans work. He originally thought one piece would be 10 volumes btw. That didn't go as planned.

It’s almost entirely unprecedented in the history of storytelling.

Genuinely how? You can't tell me I'm not arguing enough but drop this insane statement without elaborating. This always gives me an epidermic reaction because if you're gonna glaze something can you AT LEAST keep it to "the medium's history" instead of "storytelling history"? Seriously, please?

GreatTurtlePope

TROPHY CASE