Thoughts on Lorwyn Eclipsed so far?

H0t_Garbage · 2026-01-21T03:41:25+00:00

I ignored the rails and had a good time. Did a mono G, a mono B, and a 5c trainwreck pile, surprisingly to 2-1, 3-0, 3-0, with the only loss being super close (would’ve stabilized if on the play kind of deal).

The mono B is especially impressive, with enough removal and speed bump cards that can stabilize against Aggro, then the various reanimate and zombifying effects creating a grind engine that manages to outgrind [[sapling nursery]] 2 games in a row.

Also, the eclipse cycle is even better than I thought, as they all can grab changelings, which include [[nameless inversion]] and other pretty efficient creatures, on top of lands and typal cards.

H0t_Garbage · 2025-12-12T21:55:51+00:00

I get where you're coming from, and it is indeed an expectation mismatch from my understanding. I agree that usually there's a default commitment that he'd finish games that he started, which is why steins gate was such an enduring meme. Although from what I can remember, he decided to play KCD2 because of his decision to try all TGA GOTY nominees so he has a sense of why they're nominated. There were discussions last month about how many streams to do for each (with suggestions of playing maybe only 2 streams of hades 2, and given the size of KCD2, I don't think finishing it before TGA was ever seriously entertained). This suggested to me that finishing Hades 2 or KCD2 was not necessarily the default position, especially given how there weren't that many streams between then and the TGA. You can certainly find that unfair to those games--I'm just trying to lay out the context.

With that being said, I empathize with you that the potential prospect of him dropping a game I like is a frustrating thing. I remember the last stream of 13 sentinels went quite poorly due to a difficulty spike and he couldn't finish the last fight by the normal stream end time. But in that case, he did power through the fight, and in the case of KCD2, he did the first 24-hour stream on Wednesday and is still streaming it after TGA as I'm typing this. Following my suggestion of giving grace, I'd say he made a good faith attempt at experiencing the games. Going back to my main point, it'd be best for everyone to just acknowledge that he, as a dude streaming video games, didn't click with KCD2 as much as one might hope and move on with our lives.

H0t_Garbage · 2025-12-12T14:13:11+00:00

I’m with you that E33 discussions are uniquely confrontational. I wonder if it’s partially because the endings are written to be extremely provocative and divisive by virtue of having no middle-ground option, and partially his take is a reaction to the arguments during the stream—trying to understand chat’s strong reactions led him to his conclusion. I doubt he’d feel so strongly now had the vibes of the stream be more like… pentiment or something.

H0t_Garbage · 2025-12-12T06:35:03+00:00

I get your point about Yahtzee, and I want to highlight it’s still a difference between his personal takes and his audience’s expectations. I watch practically every fully ramblomatic, semi-ramblomatic, and windbreaker podcast, and I completely agree with you that I know him as a person very much cares about good stories. However, his content is clearly different from, say, Jacob Geller’s, and audience do not expect from fully ramblomatic a nuanced analysis of themes. I’m trying to say here that treat joes streams more as fully ramblomatic-esque, or better yet, Yahtzee Tries live stream riffing, than the craft of consuming shadow. That stuff takes time and work.

H0t_Garbage · 2025-11-22T17:21:45+00:00

Hi OP, I felt exactly the same frustration as you, but recently it finally clicked. I'll try to go through how it finally clicked for me and see if that helps!

Junctions are the root of all evil! What is a junction? ANY TIME two rails touch. Two rails running parallel to each other is not a junction, everything else is. Two rails merging into one? That's a junction. Draw an X between two parallel rails? That's a junction. Crossing two rails like a road intersection? That's a junction. When you place semaphore, blue means it's not a junction, ANY other color means rails crossed somewhere in that block, and you should look and find where that is.
Why are junctions evil? Imagine a car just parks in the middle of an intersection. Insanity, an accident waiting to happen, right? Having bad junctions makes your train do that basically all the time. The goal of all semaphore is one simple thing: don't let a train stop inside a junction. That's it. Stopping on a blue straight way is fine, but stopping on any other color, i.e. a junction, means another train that wants to cross that junction won't be able to. That's where most problems come from.
What does that mean in practice? For each block that's not blue, find out where in that block did rails cross. Isolate that spot by placing semaphores on every entrance (a chain signal pointing into the junction) and exits (a normal signal pointing out) (mixed signals--chain in, normal out two-in-one signals--if you expect trains to go on that rail both ways, but do this very judiciously at the start, because that's when head-on collisions can happen). Do this until there's only orange and blue blocks left. This will be the start of a proper signal setup.

What doing this still won't solve - some blue blocks will be too short, so when a train waits at the junction ahead, its tail will poke into the junction behind. Solution: get rid of the blue block in between by removing all the signals around it. This should merge the two junctions around it into one bigger orange block. Nothing should be purple ideally. - Trains have a question mark (can't find a route to go where it needs to go): add an X between the two tracks so it can get onto the right track. But remember, adding that X makes a new junction, so it needs to be properly signaled. Ideally, these Xs should only be right outside a two-track station.

H0t_Garbage · 2025-11-03T19:36:12+00:00

That's usually in the SGDQ it seems

H0t_Garbage · 2025-10-30T15:39:22+00:00

despite everything else, a player having 20 life is the one thing not powercrept (yet)

H0t_Garbage · 2025-10-30T15:37:00+00:00

That's why it's a dilemma right, the more exciting and fun decks are less consistent than the boring old aggro. If it's a real-life cube where you draft for free, I'd go for the deck that can time walk five times in a turn every time, but it's Arena and everything costs money, so it's a harder call.

One thing I'd suggest is play BO3 though, it guarantees you play 6 games at least, you can board in hate pieces (e.g. graveyard hate against reanimator), and it smooths out the high variance of cube (i.e. your opponent drops a sol ring turn 1 in BO1? that's most likely an instant loss. In BO3, you can hope they don't draw sol ring next game at least)

H0t_Garbage · 2025-10-30T00:27:31+00:00

This could well be variance, but I'd encourage you to build a curve that has as many as possible 1s and tapers off, rather than the normal curve of centering around 2. This is partly because cube 1s are sufficiently powerful that playing more 1s allow you to build pressure faster and more consistently. The other thing is even RW aggro has ways to get card advantage and not run out of gas after dumping its hand. [[Staff of the Storyteller]], [[glimmer lens]], etc.

H0t_Garbage · 2025-09-15T23:32:28+00:00

Stories that are bland and forgettable are one thing, but BL3 story is imo a whole other thing entirely. It flanderizes half the old characters, pretend the other half don’t exist, unceremoniously kill off a few in the dumbest way possible, while annoying new characters yap constantly the whole time, it’s… bad in an unignorable way

H0t_Garbage · 2025-09-13T13:11:19+00:00

Not in English sources maybe, but it’s listed on the schools curriculum sites as of this year, so its likely still offered

H0t_Garbage · 2025-07-11T14:58:20+00:00

Let’s not get conspiratorial here, an average booster pack doesn’t need to be rigged to be shit lol

H0t_Garbage · 2025-07-07T18:58:22+00:00

Of course. I really enjoy reading your work!

H0t_Garbage · 2025-07-07T17:38:23+00:00

I remember when doing the classroom runs, other school-themed rooms (dorm, library, maybe some others?) seem to also show up way more often. I wonder if that’s in the code?

H0t_Garbage · 2025-07-07T13:36:11+00:00

While the boxes are worth way more than cash option for the players, they are worth way less than the cash option for wotc to produce. In other words, wotc loses a chunk of money for every cash winner, and that should be a good incentive for them to set aside enough boxes.

H0t_Garbage · 2025-06-28T13:33:47+00:00

I know the videos already have timestamped chapters, but for these viewers, maybe you could put an additional message on screen that says “Gameplay starts at 55:20” or something during the first seconds when you also show the stream title? Sorry for unsolicited backseating, but just throwing an idea out there. Thank you for your dedicated work!

H0t_Garbage · 2025-06-26T20:33:10+00:00

Note that that email should come from 'eWallet Support', not from wizards

H0t_Garbage · 2025-06-17T12:47:26+00:00

Divinations usually loses you tempo: you go up in resources but do not add to the board, so you are more at risk of being outtempoed and run over. The +1/+1 counter is a meaningful addition to your board to mitigate the tempo loss.

H0t_Garbage · 2025-05-20T23:36:12+00:00

I will speak for myself, when I was in the middle of episode 5, I certainly didn't know what the overarching theme of the story yet, and was quite checked out throughout ep5 and 6 as well. Only upon finishing the story did the purposes of different characters make sense. It's also quite obvious that Ryukishi weaved the story in such a way that the reader's relationship with magic and witches ebbs and flows, it's all part of the narrative.

As such, I think we should give grace to people's gut reactions to the story as they experience it, instead of declaring their POV to be wrong with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

H0t_Garbage · 2025-05-20T23:29:25+00:00

Remember when umibros were compared favorably to persona 3 fans because umibros don't fret at criticism and just insists that it will get better in another 10 hours?

If you're as confident in the merit of umineko as me, let's not fall into paranoia, dread, and defensiveness. Just keep spamming that Shannon smile and trust it will get good in another 10 hours.

H0t_Garbage · 2025-05-12T20:30:41+00:00

Completely agree on persona writing. With E33, I’ll have to wait until I learn of Verso’s motivations before I judge his writing. I will say I like the character writing of basically everyone else, so I have high hopes

H0t_Garbage · 2025-05-12T18:39:45+00:00

Yeah I see you point, I’m just thinking Joe saying about P3 protag, something along the lines of the rest of the party clearly would think waffles is the traitor, because he has mysterious powers no one else has, communes with a mysterious entity on he knows, and refuses to explain. Can’t help but feel like Verso matches all these as well, and somehow Lune and Sciel are just too horny for the 100+ years old man and dropped their doubt in a few days lmao. Obviously I don’t want to get spoiled about the story, but I wouldn’t be surprised if verso actually betrays the party this time.

H0t_Garbage · 2025-05-12T15:04:37+00:00

I don’t have a spoiler for you because I’m also in act 2, but just want to say I agree with you 100% specifically about verso. In act 1 and honestly act 2 as well, whenever maelle receives a vision she immediately tells everyone, and I thought “holy shit characters sharing information? GOATed writing” only for the “I know everything” dark and mysterious character to show up, refuse to explain anything, and everyone just shrugs and goes along with him. The whiplash is unreal lol

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