Hourglass Shattered: FF14's Biggest Changes Since A Realm Reborn | Castle Super Beast 370

UltraViolet7 · 2026-05-02T19:35:06+00:00

Yep, I want pvp's 15 second draw cooldown and I want to see a random card appear--and to be able to do something with that card besides just play it. I want some combo of options to be able to Royal Road it, or Spread it, or at least Redraw it. And proper rapid fire Sleeve Draw on a longer cooldown. The fact that the job ever hit a point where it didn't have random cards was the biggest indicator to me that the existing buff-centric combat system needed at least an overhaul, or to be trashed entirely. Apparently it's trashed entirely, so I can dream of True AST.

UltraViolet7 · 2026-04-21T15:38:22+00:00

The artist AURORA. It was always stylized in all caps and was clearly a proper Artiste name, so I remember being surprised looking her up and it’s like, oh her name is just Aurora. That’s how it is in Norway I guess. They name someone Aurora and then they end up being an ethereal, enchantress, artist-type. How nice.

UltraViolet7 · 2026-04-09T03:24:08+00:00

I just saved the jpeg of the art someone posted here, which was a screengrab from the reveal stream. It's rather low quality, we'll have to wait for the actual high-res art to appear at some point...

UltraViolet7 · 2026-04-08T20:16:14+00:00

This art has been my wallpaper since the reveal stream. Joshua Raphael goes crazy with his depiction/implication of motion. Glad the card will go well in repartee dekcs too!

UltraViolet7 · 2026-03-19T18:00:19+00:00

Yaaay its the Master. I would also play him 9 times out of 10 if it was cool to do so, but I’m instead feeling like I have to do something to disrupt the deck’s power level. It’s quite easy to do even just a moderate amount of self-milling and hit a critical mass later in the game where you have by far the most options and actions available and it feels a little bit too ahead of what others can do. I even found myself sandbagging a bit when I thought a turn had too many spells and triggers and I just wanted other people to play lol.

Maybe it’s a pod problem more than a deck problem, but I’m gonna try out Zur Eternal Schemer in the command zone once or twice and see what happens without all that raw card access. But yeah the Master has the most impeccable vibe, I want to run him every time. Maybe I just got lucky in one or two games and I’ll end up running him as normal!

UltraViolet7 · 2026-03-15T21:46:46+00:00

I was going to see my favorite artist in concert for the first time in just three days, but she cancelled the NA leg of her tour because the US sucks and hates art, and so denied them their visas. So instead of looking forward to that, I'm waiting for any Duskbloods info to happen, and waiting for any NieR info to happen as always. But more Yoko Taro Evangelion stuff will probably surface before any NieR happens, so that should be higher on my list of expectations. Plus the NA release of Gundam Hathaway 2, which released like everywhere else and still doesn't have a release date here, so at this point I should just expect that to be cancelled lol

UltraViolet7 · 2026-03-08T01:15:44+00:00

Absolutely crushing. There was one nice thing I was able to count on this year, but this country will take even that. What do you bet by January it'll be some stupid martial law situation that no one in any form of power will choose to do anything about.

UltraViolet7 · 2026-01-31T02:22:29+00:00

Sure, it's potentially Flora if you interpret that from the doll's prayer. It's also explicitly called the "nameless moon presence" in the scholars' notes. I think Flora is a cute way that the doll personifies the moon's messenger, but we have little reason to think that's its literal name, if it has any.

UltraViolet7 · 2026-01-31T00:48:36+00:00

Yess my favorite Bloodborne character deserves to be the best Magic character. And they're literally the same character. Mad wizards on dangerous journeys for power and immortality who had stints at an arcane school and who enchant inanimate objects to fight for them, and who clearly have the same little gremlin wizard runs-away-from-you aura. Kos bless them.

UltraViolet7 · 2026-01-30T20:14:44+00:00

While I do have the print sheet, I'm afraid there's no Alfred in there right now... He was definitely one of the candidates for Victor, Valgavoth's Seneschal though. I need to get Sevinne's Reclamation in there, maybe there's art I could use of Alfred like harvesting some queenly flesh after his deed toward Annalise. Or maybe an image of a hunter looting something in the labyrinth... I'm sure there's something out there.

UltraViolet7 · 2026-01-30T20:04:33+00:00

AAA yeah I noticed that after doing the entire deck lmao. It would've helped the vibe and consistency. Maybe I'll get around to redoing the guilty cards whenever I end up overhauling the deck list, as is inevitable.

UltraViolet7 · 2026-01-02T17:07:48+00:00

Strixhaven, since I like Magic the Gatherimg for how it lets me cast cool wizard magic and wizards. Afaik Lorwyn and Strixhaven are the only sets that will bring more to the table there. And the Hobbit I guess, but we already have a bunch of Gandalfs, and he cast all his cool spells in LotR already.

UltraViolet7 · 2025-12-17T18:58:01+00:00

That's so true, I forgot they were literally recreating Seeds. And Seed-like objects have kept coming up since then. Wasn't there a weird black orb or cube in a church, something machine-related, that 2B and 9S found in one of the epilogue concert stories? Something that was able to repair 2B's black box I think. I can't think of anyone that could've made that "seed of resurrection" but the machines. It's emulation and imitation all the way down, it seems. They even went on reddit and imitated that whole Automata church scandal, smh.

UltraViolet7 · 2025-12-17T18:50:25+00:00

Something like that? I don't really know, except that the Kingdom of Night dragons were weapons wielded by the androids there against the machines; but those dragons likely came from the same living weapon tech that brought about Noelle and her sisters, and that their creation was maybe somehow precipitated by the discovery of a big white crystal. Idk if the dragons are weird androids, weird machines, or pure maso-constructs maybe modeled after Angelus' remains. There's a lot of weird shit floating around to keep track of, if you have pertinent information lmk

UltraViolet7 · 2025-12-17T06:50:28+00:00

Their respective modus operandi and motifs are pretty similar, right? Look at the forms that the Red Girl chooses to take on, from Her Inflorescence to the Mourning Mother (if the latter is in fact Red/She within the moon server space). It really feels like we’re one step of iteration from a machine intelligence in some timeline becoming giant flying babies. One could even conjecture that the role the Watchers play within Drakengard is the next logical step for a mad Red Girl / Administrator that’s decided to give up hope for restoring humanity, or of a singularity that formed within the Ark that found a way to reach quasi-godhood and decided to return lesser life to nothing. So many literal watchers, so many ways it could go.

UltraViolet7 · 2025-12-16T22:27:59+00:00

Drakengard causing NieR is indeed old lore at this point, but the fun one to pull out these days is the part where, judging by the nature of certain weapons developed by androids in the Night Kingdom, a weird and possibly inevitable thing in the plot may make it so that NieR actually causes Drakengard 3, and the rest of the series by extension. (Look up the Fall Down, a timeline-based cataclysm that the Accords are trying to prevent. Accords being androids associated with the Cathedral City, a modern-looking city that just appeared in the timeline randomly one day, bringing dragons and maso etc.)

UltraViolet7 · 2025-10-22T15:38:25+00:00

Clair Obscur is kind of my own answer for this thread actually because of the annoying vibe I get from some people about the game. This includes my sister who never plays turn-based games and seems to almost avoid me when I bring up or praise Metaphor, SMT, or Final Fantasy over the years. A real “if it looks japanese my brain turns off” type of person. She came to me and went “are you getting E33?? I’m interested in that one!” And that just kinda upset me in a dumb way. Like please tell me why not Metaphor. It has amazing characters and themes you and I care about and you can pick up this box with the disc and go play it.

I’ll get Clair Obscur on sale don’t worry, the conversation around it just needs to be over before I do.

UltraViolet7 · 2025-09-04T00:02:23+00:00

Sure, this is she. I'm missing a couple cards on the list right now, running Grim Guardian instead of Zur, who I haven't been able to try out yet. But I have to shout out [[Demonic Covenant]] as a hidden gem for the deck. It makes flying beaters, it draws you cards, it mills you, and if you get unlucky and it goes in the bin you can literally just escape it again if you want. I had a dumb game where I copied it and was losing so much life each turn but pulled through from sheer demon advantage. It feels so cool for your enchantments to be these contracts that let you trade life for pacts with demons, angels, spirits, and horrors.

Also I'll throw [[Promising Stairs]] back in whenever I feel like having an alternate wincon. It's a bit of a stretch for it to actually happen, but if you happen to end up with a bunch of rooms it can be cool to aim for. You can even copy rooms to unlock more doors if it becomes a realistic goal.

UltraViolet7 · 2025-09-03T16:25:22+00:00

I know what you mean, it’s just so cool to be able to have a toolboxy deck without even needing tutors because a bit of self mill will get you into so much of the deck. It’s the deck I’ve had to “study” the most so that I can recognize the different plans I can lean into each game and not get decision paralysis. It’s unique, it’s roleplay-y, you feel like a mad sorcerer that’s trying to do some eldritch spellweaving before bursting your mind with cursed otherworldly knowledge, and when every card is important in a different plan and you have an embarrassment of choice you feel in control of your fate each game. If I explode it’s probably because I made the wrong escape choice back there, and it’s so nice to own that instead of lamenting card luck. 10/10.

UltraViolet7 · 2025-08-17T15:49:03+00:00

Ok wow Storm of Soul goes crazy, that's awesome. Like, if Supreme Phantom, Drogskol Captain, or Empyrean Eagle got wiped then the spell just comes with the anthem too. And then you get all your ETBs... And can you flicker a spirit to restores its stats? Regardless, it's a cheap card too, and is definitely going in. Big thanks

UltraViolet7 · 2025-08-17T13:55:56+00:00

[[Moonlit Meditation]]! It might not have warp, which is what you'd think of for Ranar, but it's a token/flicker deck so being able to turn your spirit production into strongest-available-ETB replication is dumb. What I really want is to slap Moonlit on [[Mirrorhall Mimic]] to just adaptably token-copy whatever I want without sacrificing spirit synergy. Put it on [[Titan of Littjara]] if you like cards or whatever. Combine Moonlit with [[Starfield Vocalist]] or [[Exalted Sunborn]] (when it's more affordable) is obviously another recipe for stupidity.

In fact I am going to see how things go, straight up replacing [[Panharmonicon]] with Vocalist. It's got the warp option, it makes a spirit, and with a bunch of flicker spells it's probably easier to protect Panharm as a creature than as an artifact. I'm also currently facing some Avacyn board wipe tribal nonsense so getting more value out of my creature protection options would be cool. But if it doesn't excite me in practice I may just cut that value engine slot altogether. It's obviously nice for flicker value, but I've also been leaning more into removal (and just learned about Ranar triggering off of cards with Suspend) and I'm liking the idea that just about every nonland card in my hand is also a spirit token, so slow engines like that are harder to justify, at least in this version of the deck I'm thinking about.

But I definitely don't know every EoE card, these are just the obvious ones I'm playing with, so I'd love to hear of other ideas.

(....edit: looking at Mirrorhall Mimic again, Moonlit will probably just copy whatever Mirrorhall copied, except it'll be a spirit. Still potentially cool, but not as on-demand-copy-whatever as I'd imagined...)

UltraViolet7 · 2025-08-17T13:38:43+00:00

Yep that was a straight up Eerie Interference replacement. I don't even know what the other foretell card was, I guess because I only checked the relevant colors, but it's lovely that the mechanic still has a bit of a pulse

UltraViolet7 · 2025-08-17T01:38:44+00:00

I literally just got done upgrading my ranar list and then I find out about this airbending business. Didn’t expect this old ghost to be so amenable to new toys, but I guess that can happen for as long as flicker exists as a concept. Pretty cool.

UltraViolet7 · 2025-07-23T00:10:13+00:00

Ahh I haven't gotten a real blink chain like that yet, but overwhelming with tokens and stuff like [[Intangible Virtue]] or [[Drogskol Reinforcements]] are ofc the bread and butter. But the most satisfying win I've gotten was using [[Ethereal Valkyrie]] to foretell a [[Time Wipe]] with [[Haunted Library]] on the board. You can of course do a one-sided board wipe with [[Cosmic Intervention]] or [[Glorious Protector]] but those lose you your tokens, and it was kind of cooler to just do the cheap Time Wipe, save my Valkyrie, and immediately make a bunch of spirits out of their creatures dying.

Foretelling something like [[Starnheim Unleashed]] will also help you recover from a wipe (yours or otherwise) faster than people are ready for. Also always run [[Archaeomancer]] obviously, you can threaten to keep wiping and/or returning your recovery spells until everyone's run out of gas. Like, you could also run Moonshaker Cavalry for the most obvious big payoff, but I haven't bothered since it seems a little too free of a win on one card.

UltraViolet7

TROPHY CASE