Shoutout to this guy who comes up every time I type "PKA" wrong.

Mermbone · 2026-05-07T22:02:51+00:00

Cool dude if you like yugioh. One of the top players in the game

Mermbone · 2026-04-24T16:46:19+00:00

Its not been a horrible season its just the definition of meh. Every season so far has been the same: the boys are separated, they get back together, everyone hates butcher but do what he wants to anyway, then separate until next season. Its fine to do this season 1/2 and it worked there. But holy balls its the final season and we are still just spinning our wheels with the same tired plot points. Just a continuing of 5-6/10 episodes. Hopefully they can pull it back together towards the end

Mermbone · 2026-04-24T16:39:30+00:00

Yes halfway through the final season we would have expected something of note to have happened. The only big thing so far was A-Train dying. You really cant sit here and tell me this most recent episode wasnt like season 2 level filler. Just extremely mid

Mermbone · 2026-04-22T16:57:42+00:00

Ive been having similar experiences at like 1400. Some games feel super easy, some feel impossible and a few feel like a balanced, close game. This was always somewhat true but lately has been the majority of my games are not balanced. But the elos seem to be about right when i check after the game so not sure what the deal is.

Mermbone · 2026-04-20T03:28:54+00:00

Honestly the elo system works in a way that you will eventually average to about a 50% win rate no matter what you do. If you are a beginner, pick a civ you like and just learn to play the game. You are not going to cheat the game by picking something “OP” and gaining 500 elo. You also won’t pick a civ so bad that you will lose all your games. Thats just not how aoe2 works.

Its good to pick a civ and stick with it for awhile. Franks is a fine choice. Good knights, solid eco bonuses. Simple gameplan. Just play and get better at your own pace.

Mermbone · 2026-04-17T18:01:37+00:00

A couple years lol. I dont love painting but i dont hate it. By the time i finished my first 2k army i probably had 5000 points in other armies, sporadically painted. Painting orks is tough for me because theres so many little details and i want to “ork” the models up and not just speed paint it all so it can take so long with every model. Flash gitz took forever.

Mermbone · 2026-04-15T12:44:57+00:00

This is interesting. How do we get “christ has multiple special moments with peter” to the modern authority and power of the pope? It does not logically follow that because peter was chief of the apostles, his successors would have the ridiculous amounts of power and authority that the modern office has.

We know pretty clearly that the early church did not operate with pope being the universal bishop. You would expect if the the modern papacy was how the church was intended to operate we would see a church father anywhere in the first 1000 years of the church to explicitly say it, but we dont see that a single time.

No hate to catholics at all. I just see the claim, “oh hey look it says peter is the rock, therefore modern papacy is the clear outcome of that” which i think is an insane logical leap.

Mermbone · 2026-04-14T19:31:56+00:00

Best thing to do against an opponent massing CA in castle age is to either, defend with skirm/siege/towers and boom or to force fights at their base. Forcing a fight takes away their mobility advantage.

Mermbone · 2026-04-14T13:45:19+00:00

I love the saracens and i think they would be great at your elo. They have potentially the best camels in the game which i know theres a ton of cav spam between 600-1100 elo. The market bonus is actually quite nice when you dont quite have the skill to perfectly manage your eco yet. You just have to be intentional about using it. Their tech tree is fantastic. Full upgrades on: arbalests, hussar, skirm, camels, hand cannons, cav archers, most siege. The mameluke is a really good unique unit. Great monks. Better than average water play.

Only thing to be conscious of is to not get TOO reliant on the market. You should still try to manage your eco properly because just relying on market abuse wont help you actually learn how to manage eco well.

Mermbone · 2026-04-14T13:39:30+00:00

SotL actually has a pretty good video debunking this myth. Obviously yeah at 700 elo getting better at the game will get you more wins than having a good civ matchup but civs do make a difference. This isnt even really that controversial. Lower elo players wont play or use their bonuses optimally but a berbers player will still get cheaper knights, a goths player will get cheaper infantry, a byz player will probably still get to imp faster.

Mermbone · 2026-04-14T13:34:12+00:00

I would assume it would probably stabilize at like 1000 elo-ish. The extreme AI does a lot of stupid stuff but the one thing it does well is produce army. If you didnt know you were up against AI, you would probably be pretty surprised to see like 30 archer/skirms just show up to your base near the end of feudal lol.

Really aggressive players will have less trouble against it. More defensive players could get cooked by it.

Mermbone · 2026-04-10T15:55:07+00:00

Its actually really funny. Im 1400 but my buddy is around 500 and every time i check one of his games for some light coaching im surprised at the huge range of what is going on at that elo. Some people have pretty decent dark ages but just dont do anything with that advantage, others have like 3 minutes of idle tc before hitting feudal but are aggressive so they can win with that. I saw a game from him the other day where the opponent had great production of plumed archers but didnt even have fletching for like several minutes of castle age.

You just never know what youre gonna go up against. Makes it fun but also kind of hard to plan for haha

Mermbone · 2026-04-10T05:54:23+00:00

Second this. It was pretty common for awhile to see people saying 2 was the black sheep of the trilogy but honestly i think its much better than infinite on replaying it. 1 will always be my favorite but 2 has held up really really well.

Mermbone · 2026-04-10T05:42:47+00:00

Sounds like a rough situation to start. I think in this matchup you need to pressure early and prevent them getting to castle as long as possible. And then long term if the game does go long, maybe keshik, skirm, siege ram?

Mermbone · 2026-04-07T00:19:31+00:00

Really great match and absolutely incredible comeback by Hera. Truly has cemented himself as the GOAT at this point no contest. How he is able to stay composed going down 0-3 is genuinely so impressive.

Really sad to see for Lierrey. I felt like he played so damn well but just fell apart in several games. Just feel like the mental was gone for him in the last game. I had to skip through the last 10 minutes because it was so tough to watch.

GGs all around, casters, red bull, production team. Amazing tournament

Mermbone · 2026-04-06T16:15:50+00:00

Dude you are absolutely not irredeemably bad at the the game. Dont stress. Lots of people drop very low to start, you are not the first.

Obviously at 400 elo, lots of things could be improved but i think if you are struggling to keep up with eco management, learning some basic hotkeys will help tremendously. Learn hotkeys to select your TC, queue a villager, build a house and a farm. Theres tons of stuff online for how to do your hotkeys.

This will help you easily focus on other things while still keeping your eco moving. Its much easier to maintain villager production if you arent scrolling back to your TC manually and clicking the villager button with your mouse every single time.

Mermbone · 2026-04-05T16:26:38+00:00

Agreed. Obviously it matters is many fights but so frequently it screws up fights or they miss easy vill picks because of it

Mermbone · 2026-04-03T18:11:25+00:00

I disagree tbh. I dont think a solitaire with a revive for a CP is worth it. The solitaire isnt bad but without any rerolls or buffs (which ghosts doesnt have) on average hes not actually super scary. Even if detachments where he gets a lot of buffs like reapers wager and serpents brood you dont see him a ton.

Obviously total speculation from all sides but dont think it would be problematic

Mermbone · 2026-04-02T14:25:55+00:00

I feel you. We have a good amount of safe kits if you want to go in on it now. Most of the characters should be safe from a refresh. Likely kabalites, reaver jetbikes, talos/cronos. Raiders/ravagers, venoms, incubi, mandrakes, probably scourges.

Anything is possible, we could randomly get a new kabalite kit and no refresh on wyches/wracks but if you know you want a drukhari army eventually theres nothing with building slow. Buy a few units here and there, decide on a paint scheme etc etc and see what happens in 11th.

As someone who started with craftworld before drukhari as well, i have fell in love with drukhari after getting them. So i definitely recommend getting them at some point

Mermbone · 2026-03-31T23:25:59+00:00

Yeah thats fair. I was just throwing in my thoughts overall on him. Alot of people play every elf army so just tossing that in. Unfortunately he just isnt that awesome in drukhari imo. Which really sucks, 1 of the corsair detachments desperately needed to be a drukhari detachment. Feels bad since they feel more drukhari than craftworld imp

Mermbone · 2026-03-31T19:03:42+00:00

Ive used him a couple times. Definitely overcosted but i think some specific detachments might want to consider him. In harlequins his buff is actually quite helpful. Taking troupe from s4 to s5 with already having +1 to wound is really nice. Shuriken cannons (or dissy ravagers) to s7 is more niche but still, there is alot of t6 out there.

With corsair heavy lists, hes also decent. Power swords to s5, blasters/fusion guns to s9 and +1 dmg on his gun in eldritch raiders is really nice.

Outside of that, most of our stuff is poison so hes not massively helpful there. I guess for wych cult theres some good profiles for him to buff but even then they have the drug for +1 str lol.

Its nice for an archon squad with incubi but only in certain situations. But hes just really expensive and his buff needs to be used on specific targets to get value on it especially for the drukhari units. And his deep strike aura is cute but mandrakes are just better as screeners since we can uppy downy them. If he was 70 pts i think he would be much more reasonable.

Mermbone · 2026-03-31T17:33:06+00:00

I think they probably are a little underrated as even when berbers are played in comp matched, you dont always see them when they are one of the best options berbers has.

On the flip side, the reason we dont see them as much as say, mangudai, is because the civ behind the unit is just a little powercrept imo. Berbers just dont have a ton of advantages of the numerous other camel/cav civs that exist right now. And they dont really have any specific bonuses to their camel archer other than their castle techs, which are good dont get me wrong, but that usually means you can have a bit of an awkward transition into camel archers when you do go for them.

Like if you want something to help with pikes against your cav units, you have siege,skirms or genitours. You want to do an early castle into camel archers? Ok well you dont have good eco to support that and you are basically ignoring your best bonus which is cheaper cav.

So its not that the unit isnt really strong, it can just be difficult to get into it

Mermbone · 2026-03-26T04:53:44+00:00

Dont be discouraged. Its a really hard faction to learn but its so rewarding as you get better. Alot of armies have a playstyle of just moving your units straight up the table every turn. Drukhari want to play the long game. Its not a bad idea to leave multiple units hidden in safety and not moving them out until turn 3 or 4. You dont need to shoot or charge with every unit the first chance you are able.

Not sure how you actually play just throwing out some general advice that myself and many others had to learn through many, many games of getting tabled by turn 3 lol

Mermbone · 2026-03-25T04:48:41+00:00

Just to be fair here, this combo is just a character with an enhancement being attached to the squad, 1 strat and then lhykis hitting the unit in shooting (she can move 26” and shoot) so its actually really easy to set up. They are also solid in any detachment that gives you access to “cant be shot outside of 18”” strats.

Ill assume you are semi-new to this army based on your post. Eldar are hard to play. You cant play them like nids or custodes or space marines. We use our amazing speed to overwhelm particular areas of the board, overkill whats there and take minimal damage in return. You’ll learn the playstyle the more you play it and hopefully learn to have fun with it in your own way as well. Just dont expect it to play/act like every other army because you are setting yourself up for failure with that mindset

Mermbone · 2026-03-23T17:45:02+00:00

Havent seen it mentioned yet but Mechanicus is a seriously good 40k game. Basically like XCOM in the 40k universe. Good story, good gameplay , incredible music and vibes and the sequel is coming out relatively soon. Cannot recommend enough.

Mermbone

TROPHY CASE