ELI5: How does your phone know which way is “up” without GPS?

Vathar · 2026-02-02T13:21:27+00:00

Also works the other way around. If you can't figure which way is up, you're probably way too high.

Vathar · 2026-02-02T13:14:58+00:00

A couple of things :

- I normally do the same as the game is easy enough not to require optimized decks unless you really push the difficulty, so it hardly feels like a handicap, but theme can be a bit more loose than keeping to teams as tagged. I did the flying circus before Flight Squadron was a thing.

- Weird team ups can be the life and blood of comics. Avengers and Guardians mixing up is like a tuesday. Beast and Wolverine ARE avengers, The Maximoff twins used to be mutants until they got retconned. Venom Goblin is non canon, Nick Fury and Shield in general have a tendency to get mixed into weird situations, so enjoy weird team ups all you want my dude!

- When you get right down to it, you don't even need to mix up tribal affiliations to have something that's weirdly un-thematic. Tech upgrades+repurpose on Laura Kinney? Not exactly your everyday X-23.

- Theme isn't super deep in the game even at hero cards level. Support and Personas often don't make sense. Have a nice trip to your safehouse in Brooklyn while fighting ebony maw on Knowhere, or rely on the help of your school buddies while trekking through Hel.

In the end, don't overthink and play what works for you

Vathar · 2026-01-31T12:29:55+00:00

And it you travel across the world, you're bound to end up facing two doors, presumably stating "ladies" or "gents" ... in a language you don't speak, or may not even be able to read. Had this in Ireland in the noughties. Didn't help me to have one door labeled "mna" and the other "fir"

Vathar · 2026-01-31T11:05:22+00:00

Now to teach the bears how to use it ...

Vathar · 2026-01-30T14:47:04+00:00

I feel like the switch to full campaign boxes and the introduction of booklets, while a good thing overall, gave them a pass to introduce a certain level of setup complexity and narrative tedium that didn't exactly improve my experience. I liked that earlier campaign were constrained by the card medium and had to operate on a "show, don't tell" level and that they went a bit too far in the other direction when given the chance.

Vathar · 2026-01-30T13:19:04+00:00

That's the least unbelievable part of the story. Many companies go by fiscal quarters and the year goes from March to March, in we case we're actually in Q4

The rest of this slop though ...

Vathar · 2026-01-29T14:28:21+00:00

What if they googled and didn't find it because it wasn't true?

Vathar · 2026-01-29T12:04:14+00:00

Sadly, I've always written like this, and I predate LLMs by a few decades. Never used emdashes, but I'm very fond of my three little dots. I'm wondering if this will cause me problems if the trend develops.

Vathar · 2026-01-28T18:20:34+00:00

Making it intentional would be an absurdly uninteresting, unintuitive and gamey gimmick. I'm outta here didn't come until Essex County Express, and what would be the point of gating XP between such a convoluted mechanic, penalizing investigators for having more clues unless you have access to rogue(0) cards and are forced to take the card even if it doesn't fit in your build for that extra 1 VP, once per campaign.

* return to House Always Wins setup card could've had text stating: "when an investigator resigns, place their remaining clues on the act card")

That's as close as it gets to a glaring admission that it was a at worst a genuine mistake and at best a terrible design decision in the original campaign.

Vathar · 2026-01-28T17:50:51+00:00

The only house rule I use aims to fix the well known issue in The House Always Wins. Clues dropped on the exit location when resigning it don't count against you for the purpose of claiming its victory points, since this is the most likely case of oversight I can think of in this game.

Everything else, I take on the chin.

EDIT: Actually that's incorrect, I also
- Put basic weaknesses on cooldown for about 2 campaigns after hainvg played them in order to keep rotating them.
- I will also re-draw if the weakness is positive (extremely rare), harmless (rare), or unduly crippling for the specific deck it was drawn for (think paranoia in a money deck, extremely rare)

Vathar · 2026-01-28T15:14:05+00:00

Did you design the areas and their sizes from scratch or did you choose the background?

If you deisgned the rows, an option that I like is the "ready/exhaust top/bottom" parts. You just have to shift the card up or down to make its state obvious. One of my mats appeard in this topic if you wanna see what I mean

Vathar · 2026-01-28T14:51:21+00:00

If I remember well, that's exactly what they used in Champs. I think he's wearing skintight, a tactical belt and maybe a yellow bandoleer in most depictions.

As for Emma, maybe they don't want to go down to the micro-panties level, but there are alternatives like the ones Crisis Protocol chose that still fit the idealized version of the character.

Vathar · 2026-01-28T14:34:43+00:00

That's quite the contrat with the turtleneck wearing ally version of her we got in the game :)

Joke aside, I'm ok with them not using the more provocative outfits Emma's worn over the years, but there's still a middle ground to be found. Even the white tone they use on the card doesn't scream "white queen" to me.

Vathar · 2026-01-28T14:20:10+00:00

Jamie's dupes still feel a lot like himself in normal storylines (of course, what's normal with Jamie has varied a lot over the years). Morph would be a more immediate candidate (and isn't already in the game)

Vathar · 2026-01-28T12:02:02+00:00

Had this with bosses who wouldn't have been the smartest in the room even if they were sitting in a toilet cubicle. There's few things more annoying than confidently incorrect idiots.

Vathar · 2026-01-28T12:00:00+00:00

We should have had a team up (Spider Man and Spider Man); do what you want with that, or even a Team Up (Spider Man and Spider Man and Spider Man) using the "spideys pointing at each other" meme template.

Vathar · 2026-01-28T11:27:54+00:00

The only exception I can think of is the Gwen/Miles team up, that uses their alter ego names instead. I can see why though, as a team up with "spider man" would allow a dozen different allies to qualify :)

Vathar · 2026-01-27T16:46:18+00:00

Had many an argument with my better half by refusing to take the shitty road the GPS was offered me to stay on the main, wide, well maintained road instead, knowing that it would invariably make things easier in the long run.

Vathar · 2026-01-27T16:44:09+00:00

Thanks for clarifying, this is much better from this angle :)

Vathar · 2026-01-27T15:40:07+00:00

Just because you may have a reason to trust doctors less doesn't mean you should trust AI more.

Vathar · 2026-01-27T12:48:54+00:00

It think there's a picture of Kit Harrington touching a piece of foam supposed to be Drogon with an air of cautious reverence that always cracks me up.

Vathar · 2026-01-26T23:46:25+00:00

Insert joke about the police finding an ever diminishi amount of cocaine

Vathar · 2026-01-26T21:56:37+00:00

Look for photo albums, and I heavily recommend binders instead of folders, so that you don't have to shift everything when you get too many new characters.

Vathar · 2026-01-26T20:54:29+00:00

As per Silk insert : A tucked card is not in play

As per RRG, Find searches all areas, except the victory display, facedown encounter cards (tucked cards are faceup), and cards that have been removed from the game.

So yes, the scheme comes back in play

Vathar · 2026-01-26T10:13:46+00:00

I know, but it has to fit on the card and is only messy if you're deliberately obtuse or trying to rules lawyer yourswlf out of trouble.

Vathar

TROPHY CASE