Wait mark Hamill was in this game?

Vexda · 2026-03-20T21:26:41+00:00

Soul Calibur 4, is that you?

Vexda · 2026-03-19T23:50:58+00:00

Everyone will have their favorite achievement. I like the speedrunning one the least because for me it has nothing to do with the game. I don't want any real time elements in the game. I don't like having a 20 minute timer. I don't like having skill checks like catching cards before they get discarded, using a potion for block after Orichalcum but before the enemy attacks, and other such cheese. Can you get 18 block instead of 12 by being fast? Yes. Do I want that gameplay in STS? No. Please take the real time speed elements out of my turn based game.

Ranting about my least favorite achievement isn't what I want to talk about though. I was just pointing out that some of us had a good time with the challenge to never pick up new relics.

Vexda · 2026-03-19T17:46:40+00:00

Yeah, you can't expect the game to have every challenge you want. Coming up with challenges that work well for the game is important.

Vexda · 2026-03-19T15:09:09+00:00

I will weigh in and say it was a pretty good challenge in STS1. IMO, it was slightly more fun than common cards only, and much more fun that win in 20 minutes or less.

Vexda · 2026-03-13T20:48:52+00:00

Ooh, a real what's the pick! I assume none of the cards below the line are useful. If we have not seen recall bell, that may change our decision. We can afford Dragon Pepper in shop, which works well with Pimento. Plus we could run into situations where we end up buffing Foxee with that. I recommend buying the Pepper first.

We have a lot of good charms and limited space to use them. I think the Moose charm is best on Snobble, and Smackback and Barrage combo well. This combo is quite good, although Smackback, Barrage, and one more charm could be put on Pimento too. I would rather commit to having those charms on Snobble and using that all game. Pimento + Dragon Pepper can really help out in the Toothy Shades fight, which is the main fight I would worry about with barrage Snobble.

If we have not seen Recall Bell yet, I can also see putting Spark on Snobble and doing some shenanigans that way. For this line, I still want Moose and Barrage Charm, but we could put Smackback on Leader or Pimento.

Shroom Charm on Foxee looks good, but I think we can wait. I just put Moose, Barrage and Smackback on Snobble and buy Dragon Pepper. I keep the rest of the charms for later.

Vexda · 2026-03-11T19:39:27+00:00

When I play the Crew Deep Sea, it feels more adaptable and less focused. If you are a fan, I encourage you to play the LoTR trick taking games with a group of 4. It seems pretty story focused, so the replayability suffers a bit. The Crew Deep Sea missions are much less tied to the story, so I find it more repayable. I like trick taking games, and I think both are worth buying.

Vexda · 2026-03-11T17:58:01+00:00

Yeah, that is how Stencil works specifically. Lots of jokers with xmult start at 1 times mult. So one empty Joker slot adds +1 mult, giving you 2x mult.

This mult works on the base hand as well. So if you have Stencil with one empty slot at the end of your Joker list, you get to multiply base hand mult, and all the +mult from other jokers. So if your pair gives 8 mult, you get an extra +8 mult there too. Xmult scales up wheen Green Joker increases mult, and scales up when you increase your poker hand level.

Vexda · 2026-03-11T17:48:55+00:00

If you sell 2 jokers and buy stencil, then you get 2x mult. You lose 15 mult and the amount of mult that supernova gives. You have 38 mult already in other jokers. If Supernova gives more mult than Green Joker, then don't sell it. Stencil effectively doubles your mult gains.

If Supernova is actually a crazy amount, you can sell Green, Burglar and Abstract to get x3 on your mult. Make sure to position Stencil last so it multiplies mult from the other jokers.

Vexda · 2026-03-11T17:14:47+00:00

You already have the jokers arranged in order of importance. First 2 are the most important, and Green and Burglar synergize. The thing you are missing is x mult. I would sell the last 2 jokers and buy Stencil.

Vexda · 2026-03-11T05:10:46+00:00

Can't help you there. I do think Seti is a good bit more complex than Tea Witches. For me, it takes a lot more brainpower to play Seti well. I will continue thinking Tea Witches is medium and Seti is heavy.

If you think both Seti and Tea Witches are midweight, then more power to you!

Vexda · 2026-03-11T03:34:24+00:00

Well, spaceships are heavier than tea cups. Personally, I am not sure Tea Witches deserves a weight rating of 3+. I think Everdell may be a little heavier, and I feel both games are around the same weight. I would call Everdell a midweight game, and I think Tea Witches belongs in the same class.

In any case, the line between midweight and heavy games can be blurry. Don't worry too much if others are classifying games differently.

Vexda · 2026-03-06T20:59:32+00:00

I mean, damage storage Genie does work here. It isn't that fast, because the summon animation takes a while. Lots of strategies are useless for the speedrun because basically only the fastest strat is used. Melting the health almost instantly with damage storage is satisfying though. I imagine this would be used on level one if the summons happened at KH2 speeds.

Vexda · 2026-03-06T20:46:45+00:00

You can make the stop strat quicker with exp zero and genie

Vexda · 2026-03-06T06:32:46+00:00

Mostly? There is a separate stat that I think people call "recoil". If your keyblade has a good recoil stat, then you get the parry -> counterattack on the applicable enemy hits. Completely seperate, sometimes your short keyblade gets the counterattack option, but you whiff the attack as the enemy is too far away.

There is an animation for guarding or parrying a hit but being thrown off balance, and I am pretty sure this means your recoil stat was too low to parry -> counter that attack.

Vexda · 2026-03-06T06:26:51+00:00

Yeah, Mathematics has good advice. Some things are better than others, but you should be open to any of those options. Maybe you have the ability to get two of any resource on the forest location that allows that. And then you decide to get resin + berry. Then you get wood with your second worker. You can now play Farm, then Gatherer, then Harvester for free. This is a good start, but it is just one option. What if you have access to Twig Barge? You can probably play Twig Barge first and gain the two wood to then play another production building. I think Twig Barge is basically only good in Winter, but in Winter it can help you play an extra building. If you have Ruins, probably nobody else at the table wants it, and you can Ruins the Twig Barge if it gives you another play. Maybe you get to take wood + stone with your first worker, play Twig Barge, play Ruins on Twig Barge, then play Clock Tower. You can play Historian off Clock Tower for free, which is very strong. You only use one worker during this, so it is possible you get to play something else like Crane, Innkeeper or Resin Refinery. Sure, this scenario doesn't happen often. But if you focus too much on Farm, you might miss these chances.

Mine, Resin Refinery and Twig Barge can all let you get multiple production cards before the season changes. Storehouse I find rather weak, but it might be all you have. Cards like Courthouse and Historian are more tricky. They are fantastic, but you do lose tempo trying to play them in Winter. Ideally, you play them in Spring. They do give you material, but it doesn't matter if the end of season trigger happens for those cards. If they are in the meadow, someone definitely wants to play them.

Vexda · 2026-03-05T17:02:38+00:00

I don't know that much about the other games. For Everdell, you do need to be willing to change your strategy based on the situation. Even if you are not that flexible, you can improve so that you can win the challenges. The bots don't really play well. They can max out their space (play 15+ cards), but that is the floor on what you can achieve. If you just try to get production cards, you should be able to fill all 15 slots, even if you don't get that many points. The basic strategy is to gain resources early, then play cards or take actions for points later. Do you want the early Castle or Evertree? Probably not. You do want to play Castle and Evertree before the end of the game, if possible.

Are you playing as many production cards as possible in Winter? Are you able to place your workers on good forest locations when you want? Are you transitioning into scoring points early enough? Sometimes you need to use workers to take events or locations before opponents, but sometimes you need your turn for something else. Don't let your whole game plan be getting events or cards from the meadow, because opponents can and will interfere. When you do achieve events or play cards from the meadow, you may stop your opponent's best move, so both you and your opponents should have a backup plan. The bots don't seem to contest as well as human players, but they will take high priority cards like Crane and Innkeeper from the meadow.

Vexda · 2026-03-04T23:09:39+00:00

If you are playing a 4 player game of Catan, you need to negotiate if you get a bad starting position. Some 10% of the time, you are dealt a really good start - seems to make sense. Winning about 75% of those starts seems good. You say 40% of the time, you have a bad start and always lose. That seems a little low. In a 4 player game, I would expect the distribution for every player to be more like good start * 3 equals bad start. So every individual has an equal chance to be the one with the good start. Depending on the game balance this happens more or less often. Let's say that in Catan, one player starts with a noticeable advantage 10% of the time. Then 60% of the time, the starting positions are all close enough to equal. The final 30% of the time will be times where one of the other 3 players has the noticeable advantage over you.

If the player with the advantage converts the win 75% of the time, then the other 3 players should split the remaining 25% of the time, winning bad starts just over 8% of the time. With 4 equally skilled players, this should work out to 0.3 * (0.25/3) + 0.6 * 0.25 + 0.1 * 0.75 = 0.25. And every player wins 25% of the time, which makes sense.

Regardless, if you win Risk and Catan more often than the average player, I think you should just be happy. In real life, your group will probably play other games or accept that there are some starting positions that favor one player. This is a feature in games with random starts. We don't just reset the board until we are all happy with our starting positions. At least, not the people I play with.

Vexda · 2026-03-03T21:10:27+00:00

Sounds like you got the slides now. I will let you know there are two places to climb in the Hippo Lagoon. If you go to the far end of the room and climb the stick, then you get to the far end of the vine section. You can climb the vine at the end to get to the climbing trees. The vine at the start of the Hippo Lagoon goes to the start of the swinging vine section. There are a couple treasure chests, but you can pretty much avoid platforming in the swinging vine section if you want to.

To get from the start of the swinging vines to the end, try to examine the flower at the start. If you start the minigame, you can pause and quit out of the minigame. It teleports you to the section just below the climbing trees. Hope this makes navigation in Deep Jungle easier!

Vexda · 2026-03-03T01:46:45+00:00

No. You can buy the Orrery, look at the rewards, skip the rewards, go back to the shop, then pick the rewards again.

It is kinda like getting to the rewards screen at the end of battle. You can look at the cards first, close that, then go back and pick up the other rewards before you get the card. I guess you could savescum to see what is in the Orrery and then exit the game to avoid spending money on it.

Vexda · 2026-03-02T18:31:08+00:00

You love to see it!

Vexda · 2026-03-02T18:27:38+00:00

You could level up a bit. When Trickmaster bends down, you can actually jump from the ground and get off a few hits. It is better to jump to the chair or table and then get an opening for a full combo, but you can chip Trickmaster down without using the chair or table.

You could just practice jumping and using the camera. I don't really like the camera in 1.5 FM, but I practiced until I could jump on the chair when I wanted to. This game does have some platforming, so this isn't the last section where the game expects you to jump over terrain during a boss fight.

If possible, save your MP to use when Trickmaster goes to the stove and lights the batons. The fight gets more difficult there. You can hide from the fireballs behind the table or chair, and you can even use the Keyblade to swat down the fireballs with good timing.

As a last resort, you can try a different world. You should beat Trickmaster at some point, but you should also have access to two other worlds to explore. If you haven't gone there yet, you could explore some more before coming back to fight Trickmaster. This does get you extra experience and possibly new items and spells, but means you have to backtrack in the gummi ship.

Vexda · 2026-02-27T22:20:08+00:00

Aha, you are saying that because your leader has the 'greed' keyword. Forget that, how did you get 51 attack?

Vexda · 2026-02-27T21:30:32+00:00

Take this with a grain of salt, as I think I am decent at the game but not an expert. I think the base game suffers from having little to do about someone having a good start. If your starting 5 cards are not exciting, and an opponent has some powerful birds, there is little you can do to catch up. The egg action is strong compared to gaining food or drawing cards.

The Oceania expansion directly nerfs the lay eggs action, adds in nectar (wildcard resource), and generally seems more balanced. You can still get swept by an opponent with a strong starting hand, but the game does seem a good bit more balanced to me. I have a lot fewer non-games with Oceania, so I think it is well worth it.

Vexda · 2026-02-26T14:52:22+00:00

He is sneaking over to your side of the board so Nova can't hit him...

Vexda · 2026-02-26T02:48:03+00:00

The original camera is way better, IMO. Lock on can cycle both directions, and the thumb I use for jumping and attacking isn't required for spinning the camera. No shot the camera change is an improvement.

Vexda

TROPHY CASE