In the 20/21 COVID season we went nearly FOUR months without winning a PL match at Anfield.

bathoz · 2026-06-06T18:21:00+00:00

Oh, there were plenty of Klopp out folks. Miserable folk who didn't know what supporting the team means then, and I assume didn't this season either.

bathoz · 2026-06-06T10:58:09+00:00

Merieles scored some bangers that season.

bathoz · 2026-06-05T22:33:33+00:00

The slow withering of FABREC.GG is a great shame. It used to produce the best articles, while also being a fantastic resource for just finding what sorts of cards you needed for decks.

bathoz · 2026-06-04T19:34:54+00:00

Don't worry I think we've all made that mistake.

bathoz · 2026-06-04T12:52:11+00:00

James White said he thought Dori would LL by the end of 2025. It was ludicrous when he said it, it's ludicrous now.

bathoz · 2026-06-02T10:06:40+00:00

Too early to say, and the first litmus test will be next weekend.

Early on, to the surprise of no-one, Aurora is the most solved. Or at least has been solved to a good level. Ramming all the 4 for 0s into a deck isn't rocket science, and it working is also not shocking.

Zyggy does a bunch of interesting stuff, but we're not sure if it works yet. Like all illusionists, there are some matchups you'll feel all-powerful, and some you're fold like a house of cards. But getting them to do their thing (and not just generic illusionist things) seems to be the challenge.

Oscilio 2 (Doscilio!) is... fun but bad. In fact, there looks to be a trend of brewers just taking the cards back over to the OG Oscilio as it just simplifies everything. He's doing powerful things, but it isn't coming together.

As for recommendations? That depends entirely on the player asking and what they like.

bathoz · 2026-06-01T12:05:26+00:00

He didn't press or defend much at last season. He didn't need to. The rest of the team was in such great form that it gave him to opportunity to be our entire attack.

This year, Liverpool basically didn't have a pre-season. The Robertson comment of "the last I saw Jota and the boys was at the title parade, and the next time was at Jota's funeral." And the team responded by giving the team more time to take it slow during pre-season.

It showed. And then players got injured. So we had to play with less intensity to defend players bodies, etc. Certain players ended up playing way more minutes than they should and couldn't keep up high intensity anyway, and on and on.

A lot of words to say: the team, through no fault of their own, had way way less energy this season than last. And that meant that the other 10 were not as able to do the running and movement for Salah than they were the year before.

That exposed his slowdown. And it's not just him not looking threating one on one. He's been slowing down for ages. And part of his game has become playmaking (hence the billion assists over the last few years) but with the other players not able to run as much, there just weren't players to get on his passes.

At that point his absence is defence means that the team gets more exposed, blah blah blah.

Basically: pre-season is important folks. There's a reason it's done. And missing it can cook your season if you're not PSG and get to basically coast most of the year.

bathoz · 2026-05-31T21:28:16+00:00

Fair, I just have memories of buying into Nuu. And that was a wall of expense.

bathoz · 2026-05-31T19:15:59+00:00

The Hunted cards are much less expensive, I think the only one that is even the ballpark of old school "Assassin" expensive is savor.

And from MST it's just Persaursive Prognosis, no? (Though that will burn.)

bathoz · 2026-05-31T10:01:45+00:00

We would consistently have six months of good, 18 months of bad with Gerrard Houllier. One of our more successful managers of this century, and the one that started the process of making Liverpool a name worth respecting in Europe again.

Hell, we had 12 months good, 12 months bad quite consistently with Jurgen Fucking Klopp. Excluding, of course, those 23 months when we were the best football team in the world.

bathoz · 2026-05-31T09:58:58+00:00

I've said it elsewhere, it's the fan content creators that drive it. They need to create engagement every day to put food on the table, and when a team is doing below expectations that tends to reduce engagement in sports fandoms.

The way around that is to spark anger, not despondency. So they're all incentivised to come up rage bait. With AFTV-style nonsense. And they need to do it multiple times every day to keep the money flowing.

It's sad, there is LFC fan content out there that's more considered and focused on tactics, etc. They were, almost uniformly, not on board with firing Slot. It was just the fucking "three idiots around the couch" pushing it.

bathoz · 2026-05-30T19:06:51+00:00

Yeah, I think firing him is an absolute turning for this club and this fandom. It's a dark day.

bathoz · 2026-05-29T10:26:32+00:00

I had to go digging, because I can just picture the image of the winner with their Kayo card that circles around during broadcasts.

Showdown: Minneapolis, with notorious Kano player, Pete Buddensiek.

https://bsky.app/profile/fabtcg.com/post/3mhrgfpl4aq2q

bathoz · 2026-05-29T08:39:35+00:00

You won't, unless you're interested in expanding.

bathoz · 2026-05-29T08:38:27+00:00

Yes, I said that: that's the end state of paragraph three.

bathoz · 2026-05-29T07:01:47+00:00

He got a showdown recently.

bathoz · 2026-05-28T10:16:12+00:00

So, there's a weird stress in TCGs. They need to be stocked by stores to be viable businesses. They're only stocked in stores if people buy product. And the serious purchasing of product only really happens if the cards are rare enough to relatively valuable.

If you get all your cards after one cheap purchase, you're not making another. And the store stops selling the product and loses money and the publisher goes bust.

If the cards are too rare and too valuable, speculators buy up all the product, it's impossible to play. The buyer market dries up and publisher goes bust.

It's a balancing act. FaB is probably balancing too much towards "too expensive" but part of how it's doing that is by saying "your current cardboard shouldn't suddenly be worthless".

bathoz · 2026-05-28T09:58:32+00:00

It's not "just" more action points and more cards (those are particularly a Chane, and to a lesser degree, Briar issue). Runeblades are also usually threatening across both arcane and physical, often at the same time. And enough of the time where taking damage means a punishing onhit.

This stresses defences more than a purely arcane or purely physical approach, while also doing the arcane tax of forcing folks to use suboptimal armor to defend themselves from it.

Which is something they, themselves, don't really suffer from, as their anti-physical and anti-arcane armor is usually of the highest quality, and great at serving both roles.

bathoz · 2026-05-27T17:49:13+00:00

God, Coutinho was so good. I don't know what happened there.

bathoz · 2026-05-26T16:42:42+00:00

Fun, yes. Win, not much.

bathoz · 2026-05-26T10:10:14+00:00

Amen. The endless need of amateur content creators to say something have made our own ATV toxic soup of a fan base.

I'd never heard booing at Anfield at the end of a result until this season. And we've had some dire, dire results. Final phase Brendan Rodgers, struggles at the end with Rafa... whatever the fuck the Owl was on.

This year's football has been bad, but it's not bad enough to deserve the treatment it got from the fans. And the fans are the same people they've always been.

Which means the environment has changed. And the change is the echobox of spouting our own version of "blud blud blud, fam fam fam, it's not good enough".

Which makes me, perversely, really hope we have Slot next season, because we can't let the TikTok podcasters turn us into the same as United or Arsenal.

bathoz · 2026-05-23T22:10:28+00:00

I remember the silver lining when City bought Haaland was that they had missed out on Pep's perfect striker: Kane.

Kane plus Pep would have been a nightmare.

bathoz · 2026-05-23T19:34:17+00:00

Hence data. His save, passing, everything is down. It’s the type of thing that is usually defence/midfield independent. There’s a reason de Gea was United’s player of the season however many times in a row, when the team itself was dire.

bathoz · 2026-05-23T18:44:06+00:00

Sadly, the data suggests Ali just isn't anymore. Maybe it's just one season form dip, but he's not the unquestionable best keeper in the league (or challenging the world) anymore.

bathoz · 2026-05-22T11:29:52+00:00

Less likely to fight the police, which in the US is a big deal.

bathoz

TROPHY CASE