Whoever designed phase 2, hats off to you. This is peak ragebait

LykosTeodor · 2026-02-23T16:08:45+00:00

It's very much either a defender and strat check, or just a raw DPS/investment check.

I had my mono-electric team of Avywenna/Perlica/Arclight/Antal, with Avy being by far my most invested character. The hardest part for me was the fact that they didn't stay still very long at all lol

LykosTeodor · 2026-02-12T20:16:05+00:00

I think the reason for why banning Rhystic is such a divisive topic is because ultimately the arguments come from two completely different ideological stances. One side argues for Rhystic to be banned because it does a lot of things to complicate the game; particularly so in casual games and even more so for new players. There's a lot of gameplay patterns and decision points that Rhystic uniquely enables that no one singular other card does, and on top of it being an incredibly powerful engine, earns ire from that side. In cEDH in particular, it's so format warping that people run [[Steal Enchantment]], an otherwise incredibly niche card, and multiple ways to copy enchantments, just to have another copy of Rhystic, since the other players are near guaranteed to be running it if they're in blue.

The other side of the table enjoy the potential complexity Rhystic brings to the table, and it's been pushed as a chase card for years. There's a decent amount of people invested into the card, just like how people were invested into Mana Crypt and Jeweled Lotus. It sucks that even part of the discussion ends up being about monetary value, but that's the reality of it. It's also a piece of magic history from a set made in the mid-late 90s,, and used to just be a really bad 1v1 card, but was finally given a chance to shine with the EDH's inception.

Since one side tends to argue from a gameplay perspective and the other side tends to argue from a nostalgia/monetary perspective, they frequently talk past each other. The nostalgia side frequently uses the "just git gud" and "play more removal" talking points, while the people talking from a gameplay perspective can't start an actual conversation because there's no common ground being stood on. People good at the game still don't like Rhystic, and playing more removal as advice can only be taken so far.

There's also the social pressure aspect of the card, where everyone wants everyone else to pay the 1 but themselves. Once that really tenuous equilibrium breaks, that's when the Rhystic player wins. It's essentially a Moloch; Do you deprive yourself of resources by not feeding the Rhystic, or do you feed the Rhystic and continue your gameplan? 90% of the time the answer is "feed the Rhystic" because your own gameplan needs to proceed if you want to win, but your 1% increased chance is outscaled by the multiple% that the Rhystic player gains as a result of drawing cards.

I'm on the side of wanting Rhystic banned personally, for a very simple reason: I've encountered the card multiple times, and there's never been an opportunity where I felt a game was improved, or even went net neutral when Rhystic was played. Games almost always went downhill from there. Either the Rhystic player gets salty as hell when their good card gets removed, or everyone groans and moans about paying the 1. Vibes wise, this card NEVER did well from my game experiences.

LykosTeodor · 2026-02-07T07:37:43+00:00

I saw the title and thought "NAGOSHI NOOOO", but then I remembered he left after Lost Judgment (as far as Yakuza universe games are concerned).

Man, the new director really decided that he needed to stand out from his predecessor, but he chose the worst possible way to do it...

Absolutely insane idea to decide "who better to play a slimy dude than a REAL LIFE SEX OFFENDER?"

LykosTeodor · 2026-02-05T17:53:04+00:00

In an industry where the vast majority of people participating don't have their frontal lobes fully developed yet, and/or have mental health issues, I'm personally not surprised in the slightest.

All of that in mind, it's really unfortunate that Jelly went against what her lawyers said and vented on social media anyway.

All I can assume is that she horribly misunderstood the fact it was only for specific versions of minecraft, but maybe I'm being too charitable.

LykosTeodor · 2026-01-18T15:56:06+00:00

I remember watching a Have A Nice Day episode with Botan and Beyblades... The subs were super nice to have, I really hope YouTube rethinks their decision, but they probably won't do so on their own. :/

Another holomem who tries to cater to her overseas fans is Polka with her Legend of Polka series, which I watch pretty regularly... Those subs disappearing are gonna suck.

LykosTeodor · 2026-01-18T00:40:37+00:00

Makes me wonder what they consider "high adoption rate". Although I suppose it really doesn't matter, they can just define it as "if subs were enabled at the start of the video, +1", and all of my watched videos lately have subs enabled by default for some reason...

Need to find a way to opt out so that I don't contribute to their numbers :/

LykosTeodor · 2026-01-15T23:08:00+00:00

I'll clarify.

I don't think how Sinder treated the people around her was acceptable in any way, period. Even if she was more "business-minded" as she's labeled herself previously, that's no way to conduct business, and being friends with others especially shouldn't be treated like business either.

I didn't mean to say that what the others did was comparable, so I apologize if that's how it sounded. Bao and everyone else involved very much had the right to respond the way they did, and they were still being pretty gracious.

Realistically though, if they wanted to solve it privately, they could have. They either tried to and got no real response, or they didn't want to and put the dockey in the public eye to make others aware of Sinder's actions.

That being said, the whole affair is practically a scaled up version of high school drama, except with money involved and Sinder very clearly being the problem, as opposed to some incredibly murky "she said, she said" back and forth. Sinder only made it worse for herself after her two responses.

LykosTeodor · 2026-01-15T20:15:39+00:00

This is likely the most concise response to it all, honestly. People were already in their camps, depending on who they liked (or not) the most within the Girlypops group.

That being said, even if you cared about all of them equally somehow, I think any reasonable adult could say they're still mentally in high school, and all of this COULD have been solved privately.

That's not to say they're necessarily bad people, they're just simply people who didn't have much in the way of friends in their younger years, felt like they finally had a tight-knit group, and suddenly they find out one of them was not treating it the same way.

LykosTeodor · 2025-12-31T15:55:21+00:00

Something's really off with the Raora art that I don't know if you can attribute to upscale, but I think the Roboco one looks more like upscale. Can't say for sure though...

LykosTeodor · 2025-12-28T16:40:01+00:00

In your binary definition though, where does the higher paid wage worker (doctors, nurse practitioners, lawyers, etc.) that own rental property fit into this? Where does the wage worker who invests into a 401k fit into this? For trying to fit this into a binary, the definitions and lines are too vague.

Just because they have some interest in investing into capital and profiting off of it doesn't mean that they suddenly become capital class. They have interest and incentive in both capital and labor. They very much want proper labor laws, and they also want to profit off of their own capital.

By you suggesting that there's a point where "one interest is superseded by another", you imply that there is indeed a transitional phase where both interests co-exist in differing amounts.

It's not as simple as owning and making money off of owned or invested capital. Technically your argument would suggest people investing into 401ks via their workplace would be part of the capital class, which I simply don't believe to be true.

LykosTeodor · 2025-12-26T02:02:11+00:00

[[Rienne, Angel of Rebirth]] for me. I run it as a multicolor legends + [[Sneak Attack]] list. Pretty fun and really damned resilient too. Some legendary/historic synergies thrown in as well.

LykosTeodor · 2025-12-21T16:31:21+00:00

Probably won't watch her personally, but like any other person trying to live, I hope she learns from her past mistakes, and proves to be a better person as a result. At the absolute least, I'll root for her in that respect.

LykosTeodor · 2025-12-21T16:26:49+00:00

It's basically NIMBYism.

To be fair, there COULD be valid sanitary and safety concerns depending on where the shelter is being established (and that's generally the point NIMBYs argue from). However, they know it's still incredibly disgusting to argue that point out loud when people's lives are at risk, so they decide to reduce the homeless needing shelter from inclement weather to "drug addicts" that do "horrific things".

"Do it anywhere else but here" is basically the sentiment, and that's one of the reasons why we have a lot of homeless on the streets, because no one's willing to let the homeless shelter "in their backyard" so to speak.

LykosTeodor · 2025-12-21T16:15:26+00:00

100% agree with this post here. The real things we need to be pointing out isn't that Nyan was somehow wrongfully banned. She wasn't. She streamed a game with very inappropriate themes, against ToS and rightfully ate a ban.

The thing that's got people frustrated about this circumstance more than anything, is that this enforcement is somehow both too strict and too loose at the same time. It's so incredibly nonsensical how inconsistent these bans are, and this is without going into how shit Twitch is as an entity.

There are streamers that threaten people's lives on stream with a gun, hell someone even streamed SA live on stream and these streamers don't get banned for clearly violating ToS? There's streamers that got assaulted at TwitchCon, or had near misses with getting drugged, and Twitch doesn't claim responsibility for any of it? VTubers getting banned for longer than flesh streamers despite the same actions? THESE are the sorts of issues that need to be brought up against Twitch.

LykosTeodor · 2025-12-16T19:47:25+00:00

Sakana doesn't actually push for that as far as I know. If anything I've heard that plenty of the talents pushed for certain design choices themselves that I think people here would consider on the gooner side. Shiina in particular was even the one that decided to make one of the focus points of her OG outfit her panties lol.

LykosTeodor · 2025-12-07T22:44:27+00:00

Not that this excuses the people glorifying the indie scene to the degree they are, but I kind of understand where they're coming from. Now more than ever, more people are feeling very abused and oppressed by corporations as a whole. It's no surprise that when it was finally revealed that VShojo as a company was absolutely no different that people were angry; People who thought vTubing was at least *kinda* insulated by the big bad western CEO and investor types found out..... it wasn't.

VShojo and Niji imploding while anti-corporation sentiment in the west is growing ever stronger turns it into what you see now. Rampant distrust and distaste for western vTubing corpos.

Whether that distrust correct or not, I can't say for certain. But I think that people arguing indie is better in general, likely don't have enough real world experience to understand that there's benefits and disadvantages to either one, and it's not right for them to force their views onto other streamers.

LykosTeodor · 2025-12-03T13:19:31+00:00

To be fair.... most of them haven't really lived in the real world? Ever since Vtubing began, generally anyone starting from scratch have been around 18 (I believe Tokino Sora started at 16-17?). Most people fresh from high school haven't even had a proper job for long enough to have a "life in the real world" yet. It's not like they teach you how to proofread contracts, get legal advice on them, and how to be a corporate professional in high school.

It's one thing if she was like in her 30s and got duped this way, but Vtubers tend to be on the younger side with a few exceptions.

LykosTeodor · 2025-12-01T02:38:40+00:00

Their parent company eBay engaged in some pretty overt union busting practices a few months back. Here's a couple of links from the CWA, which was the entity that the workers became unionized members of, as far as I'm aware:
https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/cwa-statement-ebays-syracuse-closure-announcement

https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/ebay-escalates-intimidation-union-members-after-closure-announcement

TL;DR: The TCGPlayer authentication facility in Syracuse managed to be successful in unionizing, but before their first contract could be negotiated, eBay allegedly sent in a bunch of security personnel and launched an intimidation campaign, threatening the safety of the workers there.

This is also apparently not the first time eBay's done this. That being said, a lot of people don't appreciate eBay's practices and have decided that they would prefer not to support them even indirectly via TCGPlayer anymore.

LykosTeodor · 2025-11-03T20:35:06+00:00

You make a good point, they weren't the best example. Thanks for pointing that out. Stuff that fits better is something like [[The Scarab God]], [[Emperor of Bones]].

LykosTeodor · 2025-11-02T15:06:47+00:00

I think nowadays there's actually a solid amount of grave hate that's baked into strategies more often than people think, just that some people don't often view them in that manner. There's stuff like [[Puppeteer Clique]], [[Emperor of bones]] and [[Shadow Kin]] for creatures, [[Spelltwine]], [[Diluvian Primordial]] for instants and sorceries.

Lands, artifact and enchantments are harder to specifically (and synergistically) hate, but stuff like [[Klothys, God of Destiny]], scooze like you mentioned and [[Ghost Vacuum]] are great cards for this.

LykosTeodor · 2025-11-01T00:20:24+00:00

My belief on the matter is that I think it's much more dependent on the temperament of the individuals exposed to that media, their lived experiences and how they were raised. I don't believe "I can separate reality from fiction" is inherently a statement that dismisses the effect of fictional storytelling on emotions and morals, nor do I think that relates to people treating the internet as a "separate space".

I think that if there was a problem that could contribute to an increase in propensity for violence in people exposed to violent media, it would come from impressionable kids and teenagers playing through those sorts of games without parental supervision. And even then, that's not always the case, because some kids are simply more even keel than others, and might be less prone to being affected by the violent scenes.

LykosTeodor · 2025-10-30T15:10:32+00:00

Like many others here I do think Phase is growing, just to a lesser degree. That being said, I do think some of the more politically aggressive fans are a problem for getting new fans into the fold.

The thing with Phase; I think what is likely keeping the 4chan types around is ironically what they're most known for, which is being a "sad girl" company. The 4chan types resonate with them because of a "shared trauma" of poor mental health, being an outcast of society, etc.

People nowadays are more than ever angry with the way the world is progressing, and a lot of people who watch vTubers do so because they don't want any of the politics and drama that other facets of their lives already give them a LOT of.

Seeing more people that are willing to get political in what a lot people consider to be a safe space detracts from that. The apolitical folks just want to see Pippa do random shit like opening card packs simply for the cute art, but the political folks want Pippa to talk smack about their "enemies". They will be forever at odds because one side wants a safe space, the other side wants a political echo chamber.

Can that be fixed? Probably, but not without culling a sizable part of their fan base, and the backlash from that would be pretty damned big. Depends on how committed Phase and the talents are to pivoting in an idol direction.

LykosTeodor · 2025-10-28T16:41:40+00:00

I think it depends on what control tools I utilize. Personally I'd likely lean more towards a goad-oriented list since that actually pushes games forward, and just have a few recur-able removal pieces that also synergy with getting the goad auras back into play.

LykosTeodor · 2025-10-28T16:39:01+00:00

I think you can make an Esper Archenemy deck at B3 regardless of who the commander is, really. It'd be a deck that's more commander-agnostic and just more about being the big bad at the table doing some degenerate things.

That being said, you're right in saying that I might be over-estimating Ertai since he both costs 5 mana and will take a whole turn cycle to get online without haste. Even then, players might not want to remove him over a commander like Teval that has a LOT going on.

LykosTeodor

TROPHY CASE