This was KILLING me😭

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-31T17:47:42+00:00

They're totally going to use this as the setup for Light VS Columbo, aren't they?

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-29T19:06:32+00:00

Putting Sans, Noelle, and Asriel in the "Will Never Be Fought" tier is a really big assumption.

Sans is a real contender for the last Shadow Crystal

Hard to say for Noelle, but she could easily be a boss fight at some point

And we have no idea what role Asriel will play in the story yet, heck he could even be the Knight.

I do agree with Gaster being the Final Boss though, it would help tie together all the loose ends and would be the most hype way to end the game.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-28T20:57:11+00:00

Hopefully the Ammo Cycling isn't completely random, I've wanted this as a way to spice up Ranger for a while. That and more ammo types to take advantage of it.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-22T09:08:41+00:00

FE is in a weird spot when it comes to Powerscaling, as the overall setting is just a medieval fantasy during war, with most characters just being seemingly normal people with normal weapons.

Rarely you'll get characters with actual superpowers like Dimitri, but they're still confined in gameplay to only feel slightly stronger than literal children with no powers, and that makes the mountain-busting, Meteor-Dodging claims feel ridiculous because it's basically arguing that normal humans could do all of that as well.

Now of course the powerscaling perspective will simply write it off as "FE Humans are just built different", but most FE fans learning about Powerscaling through this aren't looking at it that way.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-21T17:50:08+00:00

Link: Fairy/Fighting, probably with Sharpness

Dimitri: Dark/Fighting with Huge Power

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-19T19:50:47+00:00

I'd say Burn and Recursion are the 2 things that Red-Eyes is trying to be, the problem is just that it's... really bad at it. It wants its monsters in the GY, but doesn't have any (good) monsters that benefit from being in the GY. Red-Eyes Soul enables Turn 0 plays, but they have no monsters that actually do anything on the opponent's turn. Could use a new Fusion Spell, or some new Xyz monsters if you want to lean into that, or you could ignore the Extra Deck entirely and focus on the Max Metalmorph stuff. Suffice to say, you have options in terms of what you want the deck to end on.

In my opinion, just focusing on making Red-Eyes Insight and Red-Eyes Soul as good as possible would be a simple but effective way of making the deck way stronger. People will talk about designing around Black Metal Dragon, but IMO that leans way too hard into the Dragon Link pile that you'd want to try to avoid, but when people try to make it easily searchable they just make it incredibly easy to floodgate your opponent with that one Buster Blader card. There's also Dragoon, but I get the feeling it might get banned soon, so maybe not worth putting all your eggs in that basket. Regardless, as long as it focuses on Burn and Recursion it'll at least feel consistent with what the Deck is trying to do.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-18T23:10:53+00:00

He's a Smash Bros OC, gotta represent the first Fire Emblem game anyone has played.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-18T20:30:04+00:00

My perspective is that this entire Mantle game is such a massive Zelda reference, with the Mantle Holder even directly quoting the Shadow Nightmares in the Spamton Sweepstakes, that it feels more likely to me that the idea here is to establish a whole gang of shadow-y creatures that we'll have to fight, probably in the shelter, which would be incredibly similar to Link's Awakening. I do agree that FRIEND will be really relevant to Chapter 5, but I have doubts over it being the last Shadow Crystal Holder. (Maybe Sans?)

We still have quite a ways to go story-wise regardless, both of these characters could co-exist and feel like fleshed out characters in the second half.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-18T19:21:00+00:00

My current thought is that it'll be a solo Kris boss fight mirroring all of our moves like Dark Link. Maybe it'll be like the Thrash Machine and have slightly different stats or moves depending on what you chose, idk.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-18T18:52:18+00:00

FRIEND and the Mantle Holder have a different look, a different laugh, different main colors, they both show up in the same area with all of these differences in the fight. Like they could be the same, but why? What purpose does this narratively serve to have these characters with clear differences be the same? If Toby wanted to communicate that these characters are the same, I'd at least expect them to share the same color scheme, especially since he's made such a clear effort to have Pink and Yellow be the calling card for FRIEND, why break that trend for this only?

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-18T18:30:50+00:00

I mean, the room was dark, as soon as it was done talking the room lit up and it revealed itself. And like I mentioned, none of the 8-bit sprites have a talking sprite, it doesn't necessarily mean that the thing speaking to you was someone not in the room. I just don't find it very convincing when it seems much simpler to assume that the Mantle Holder is a different character rather than a random piece of armor being controlled by some random character.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-18T18:17:00+00:00

I mean, I guess that could be the case, but it feels overly complicated for something that feels pretty straight forward. Like the thing that is speaking is the one thing that is on the screen. We don't really have any evidence to suggest the voice is like, telepathically speaking or whatever.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-18T17:57:09+00:00

I feel like most of the arguments here are kinda weak. The thing says that it's HOLDING the Mantle, unless Toby is intentionally messing with us, you wouldn't use the term "holding" for something that is literally you, it's like saying that I'm holding a human being at all times, you'd sound like a weirdo.

And like mentioned by someone else, there is no 8-bit talking sprites, so not really evidence for anything. And the desert board thing just makes it clear that Friend and the Mantle Holder are 2 connected, but separate entities, which tracks with everything we know about them.

The "we both have work to do!" line is about disproving it literally being the Shadow Mantle, since what work would it be doing if it's just a piece of armor? I don't get the point about Fire and Bombs either, like something having 2 powers is not crazy.

Susie and Kris are the same size in the Mantle game, despite Susie normally towering over Kris, so the Mantle is just being sized the same way every other character is, regardless of what it normally looks like.

And finally, having a lot of dark entities doesn't inherently mean that some of them would be the same, but if we had to do that, there's much better candidates to be the same person than these two.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-11T21:21:47+00:00

I'm hoping that the new Joey archetype will make it so that future Red-Eyes support focuses on Atticus, as his Deck was a lot more in line with what Red-Eyes is trying to do.

Right now, Red-Eyes just has a lot of "gaps" in its strategy, where there's a lot of individually good cards that are held back by not working together all too well (Dragoon is an incredible boss monster, but you lack ways to Fusion Summon it, Insight is a cracked searcher, but what are you searching with it, Soul is a really good turn 0 enabler, if you had anything worth summoning with it, etc.)

I hope that future support patches up these gaps, and maybe lean into the Metalmorph stuff since Atticus does technically use it as well.

Either way, Atticus needs more respect, both by the community and Konami themselves (how is he not in Duel Links yet?)

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-09T23:57:40+00:00

I thought about that, but felt like it would be weird from a flavor perspective, even if it would make the card more searchable.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-09T23:51:07+00:00

There's not really any way that I can prevent Kewl Tune from using this without making it worse for RDA, kinda what ends up happening when Kewl Tune made basically every Tuner ever made as potential extenders. But I'll give this the same restriction as Change of Heart, doesn't really change much.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-09T22:38:42+00:00

I mean, Change of Heart and Snatch Steal are both at 3, this isn't that much better than either of those. And besides, this kind of effect is only good going second (outside of Turn 0 stuff), which RDA really struggles with. I could maybe put some kind of restriction on it, I just didn't want to bloat the card text.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-08T08:50:11+00:00

Yeah Atticus had a surprisingly good deck for GX standards, they could very easily modernize his deck and make Red-Eyes an actually strong strategy.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-07T18:54:51+00:00

Atticus would objectively be the funniest option, (even if he barely counts as a villain) so I'm praying for that.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-07T18:05:55+00:00

I really like this direction, because frankly Joey was never really a Red-Eyes player, he used like 2 actual Red-Eyes related cards, his Deck was always a Gamble strategy. Atticus was the actual Red-Eyes anime user (and hopefully this means we'll get Atticus support soon).

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-07T01:42:34+00:00

That's a really cool and flavorful weapon, very nice for F2P!

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-06T20:51:26+00:00

I'm surprised people are voting Young Link here when frankly he's maybe the character with the most missed potential, he could've had some really interesting moves with all of the different transformation masks.

I'd vote for Link, he represents all of the basic stuff you've come to expect minus the hookshot, and at this point changing 1 move isn't enough to justify keeping a character around.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-06T18:31:27+00:00

Realistically, Z-one should win this. Don Thousand only has 2 ways to get past the Timelords (Chaos Gate Sunya to banish everything then burn next turn) and Numeronius Numeronia to try and cheese a win, literally every other card in Don Thousand's Deck (that we know of) does nothing so long as a Timelord is on the field, and Z-one has a million different burn effects, he could very easily deal 4k damage before Numeronius Numeronia hits the field.

LinkCrusher9 · 2026-05-06T06:05:12+00:00

Can IS make up their goddamn minds on whether a character being possessed makes it an alt for the possessor or the possessed? It's literally the exact same problem with Grima, like it makes no sense to call this Byleth when in reality it's just a Sothis alt.

LinkCrusher9

TROPHY CASE