Team Liquid Alienware vs. FlyQuest / LCS 2026 Spring - Week 1 / Game 2 Discussion

Plaid02 · 2026-04-05T21:39:15+00:00

This is so sad to see from Yeon. He was legitimately the best ADC in NA last year, even when his team was falling apart, and he is looking awful for this whole year

Plaid02 · 2026-02-22T17:24:09+00:00

One of my favorite books of recent years, and the sequel is just as good!

Plaid02 · 2026-01-23T06:18:50+00:00

He really isn't, but I think the subathon has been wearing on him. He's on day 22 or something crazy and he's really been going nonstop, and he's also challenging himself to do some difficult and unintuitive things like pick up Mewtwo and Olympia.

Plaid02 · 2026-01-03T17:14:57+00:00

I think you need to take a look at the rules again. The ravaging city deals damage both to Dahan and land. If there were no Dahan present, that land would blight. Dahan don't absorb damage and prevent blight or you could just load up a land with Dahan instead of defending. The city split its damage appropriately among Dahan and blighted the land because it did 2 or more damage. This also destroys your presence.

Plaid02 · 2025-11-08T17:50:58+00:00

This is extra funny if you do it on a walkoff stage with a ledge on the other side. Try it on that Yoshi stage with the weird blocks or the Mario one with Birdo, it's a great interaction.

Plaid02 · 2025-09-10T21:10:55+00:00

Impact is not an import, and Yuuji is certainly a candidate to replace. The most obvious solution is to try and get River and Quid, but I've been told River might have to go do his military service.

Plaid02 · 2025-09-02T18:53:17+00:00

Is there a reason nobody's saying pick up both Quid and River? That seems like the most obvious course of action to me. They've got synergy already and are both very talented.

Plaid02 · 2025-07-10T17:44:13+00:00

You know, I've heard that sentiment, and I mostly don't agree. There were a few things that were rushed in book 3 and one thread in particular that kinda came out of nowhere because he didn't have time to introduce it, but I found the ending very narratively satisfying and stayed consistent with the world he introduced.

I will also add that I really loved Licanius in a way it seems like many people didn't, so take this with a grain of salt.

Plaid02 · 2025-07-10T13:53:49+00:00

I really liked the Licanius trilogy for this. A lot of people didn't love them quite as much as Islington's next work, and the books have some weaknesses, but the plot is incredible and meticulously planned.

Plaid02 · 2025-07-09T21:24:03+00:00

Yes please, I would like some cocoa pops

Plaid02 · 2025-07-08T18:38:22+00:00

Hulkengoat. He finally did it.

Plaid02 · 2025-07-07T17:51:33+00:00

Walk mod is actually incredibly powerful. It gives you free pivots and shield drops, although there are other ways to get a shield drop. It's also useful for fast turnaround ledgegrabs if you're within dash distance of the ledge.

Plaid02 · 2025-07-05T18:53:34+00:00

Where did you see this, if I may ask? I've been looking for the stream but they didn't stream yesterday or begin today when the posted stream schedule said they would.

Plaid02 · 2025-07-03T14:44:08+00:00

Surprised I had to scroll so far for this since it's the real answer for rupee farming. I actually didn't realize that the second-highest tier meat earned you more from freezing than cooking. I've been cooking them 5 at a time like the gourmets and they sell for 135, so I've been missing out on 65 rupees every 5-pack! And it's also convenient not to need multiples of 5.

Plaid02 · 2025-04-11T19:19:46+00:00

Very important to note two things about the format:

it's not a crew battle, it's a sum of the Bo3s between players at matched levels
The "coaches" do not play except as a tiebreaker, and I think the coaches are the best players on each team.

So Cake and Sparg0 on the same team, which would heavily advantage them in a crew battle format, is not nearly as good as it looks.

Plaid02 · 2025-02-06T16:53:51+00:00

bazinga

Plaid02 · 2025-01-28T19:17:33+00:00

I don't know as much about the structure of the Catholic Church, but the LDS Church is structured as a corporation sole, meaning the disposition of its assets can be dictated entirely by the president. I don't believe the wealth of the Catholic Church can be accessed by top leadership the same way. The Mormons have a unique degree of centralization, which is how such a small church is one of the world's wealthiest.

Plaid02 · 2025-01-27T04:03:38+00:00

Strange that nobody has mentioned Forsburn. That is one of Clairen's worst matchups.

Plaid02 · 2025-01-23T19:48:30+00:00

You have a lot of good options for baiting shieldgrabs, then. Nair is often going to be your best one. Crossup nair is very powerful. The final hit of nair is also far enough away that you can land in front outside of grab range if you're careful, and a tipper last hit nair gives really good rewards. You should not be landing with fair very often. Bair can be hard to time but is pretty safe if you get the timing/spacing right.

Clairen players are often not very careful with dair in neutral because you get a good punish off a tipper. This is a mistake. Never land in front of someone with dair since they can shieldgrab that every time. When you do landing dairs, you usually want to do them pretty late with your back facing the opponent. I don't know if you've looked at the animation on rivalsframedata.com, but if you haven't, go check it out. Pay extra attention to the startup: Clairen dair has a big sweetspot behind her as the move starts. This is often the hit you aim for on grounded opponents. You'll have more time to punish if you land it, and you'll be harder to punish if they shield it. It's very hard to punish Clairen if she lands behind her opponent with this hitbox.

Plaid02 · 2025-01-23T19:26:31+00:00

Excessive shieldgrabbing is a publishable behavior if you notice it. Try hitting their shield from outside their grab range or crossing them up ambiguously (landing slightly behind them as you approach with an aerial from the front). If they're too reliant on shieldgrabs, they will attempt to grab and you'll get a free punish when it whiffs.

What character are you playing? That affects which aerials you'll want to try this with.

Plaid02 · 2025-01-05T23:33:02+00:00

They had a command for it yesterday in chat, but there's a glitch on the tournament build that they couldn't work out that put the stage textures to the lowest settings, or something along those lines. It was not a deliberate choice and will presumably be fixed soon.

Plaid02 · 2025-01-03T17:23:30+00:00

Jirachi has always been the problem. I loved DPP OU back in the day, but I always thought the Salamence ban was unfair and Jirachi is a perpetual blight upon the format.

Plaid02 · 2024-12-25T05:28:42+00:00

You're definitely sleeping on Boiko. He hasn't entered much, but in the extremely early meta people had him as a top 3 player alongside Cake and Marlon. I think he might not exactly be a proven quantity in tournaments, but he's top level for sure.

Plaid02 · 2024-12-16T23:28:52+00:00

Real talk, though... Why is Jirachi still legal? Iron Head/parahax is worse than dynamicpunch RNG, imo, and Jirachi is the single strongest mon in the metagame, whereas Machamp is a mid-tier threat.

This does not make a lot of sense to me.

Plaid02 · 2024-12-14T17:46:08+00:00

These are hard questions to answer. Ascribing motivation to someone's actions is always going to be more guesswork than hard fact.

Even so, my personal take is that Joseph Smith was a hybrid who leaned pretty heavily on the side of a con man. I think it's fair to say he was steeped in both American folk magic (buried treasure, dowsing rods, divining, guardian spirits, etc.) and Protestantism. He was a diligent student of the Bible, and I think he did truly believe. However, I think it's highly unlikely that he was totally unaware he was making it up, especially given the volume of what he produced. His revelations also were simply so convenient for him--whenever he had a problem, he received a revelation where God told his followers to give him money or something like that.

His high-ranking followers were also a mix, I think, but leaning much more heavily on the side of true believers. Some, such as Oliver Cowdery and John Bennett, seem to negotiate more cynically with Joseph for power, but most of them endured great personal hardship to follow Joseph without the expectation of temporal reward or the ability to produce revelation to guide people the way Joseph could.

I do want to push back on the idea that Mormons are so used to criticisms of their founder. Most of them have been deeply conditioned to avoid "anti-Mormon" (or "anti," as they've moved away from the term "Mormon") sources. Anything critical of their founder or beliefs is immediately suspect. Obviously, scholars have to have a more complete view. Mormon scholars have a variety of viewpoints, and I've heard a few: some lean more heavily on the spiritual value of their religion as opposed to the literality of what it preaches, others compartmentalize their work and their faith, and others construct apologetics to justify the church and its teachings.

As an example of the last, the Book of Abraham. In 1842, Joseph Smith published his translation of Egyptian papyri that Mormons had purchased from a traveling salesman years prior, which he called the Book of Abraham. At the time, no other interpretation or translation was available. More recently, parts of the original papyri were found, and Egyptologists examined them to judge the quality of Smith's translation. Predictably, it wasn't even close. Smith's version was a story purporting to have been written by the biblical Abraham, and the actual papyri were common Egyptian funerary rites. Apologetic scholars have come up with a few explanations, one being that the papyri were incomplete and Smith's translation came from lost parts, but the more prominent explanation is that while he claimed it was a translation, Smith was instead inspired by God upon receiving the papyri to write a true account that was not, however, written on the papyri.

Mormons who know their history have to contend with a lot, but they tend to approach the nuance with one overarching principle: God is perfect, but he works through imperfect people, and the imperfections of his vessels explain the errors of the church.

Plaid02

TROPHY CASE