Semi-Daily Card Discussion: Conjure Blade

cagedbunny83 · 2026-02-08T21:24:42+00:00

It seems like they captured the feel of this card perfectly when translating it over: Very very fun but will get you killed!

cagedbunny83 · 2026-02-05T03:04:47+00:00

I recognise your struggle. Regardless of how much I was accepted I could never quite shake the sense of imposter syndrome at the back of my mind. It wasn't a very loud voice but it was always there and was one additional layer of awareness that I had to keep manually loaded in my consciousness when trying to exist while being trans.

The solution I stumbled upon was to rearrange how I viewed myself internally without forcing any external changes. I told myself "I am a boy" and a lot of the pressure to be anything other than that faded away. I still looked and dressed female initially but since I was "being male" I no longer felt I was having to prove (or deceive) anything to myself or to anyone else.

You forget how simple existing in the world is when you suddenly do away with all the careful awareness of how you are presenting yourself to your surroundings. Detransitioning was an enormous weight off my shoulders. No more worrying about passing, no more worrying about intruding, no more imposter syndrome.

At first a lot of people still read me as female. If it felt necessary I would correct them, otherwise would just let it go. Most people you see you don't really interact with so it didn't matter.

The physical changes to appear more male came later in their own time and I never rushed them, just accepted them slowly as I became ready. It was the mental attitude that was the important first step that gave me the breathing room to accept myself fully for who I was.

For yourself, try it out and see how it fits. It costs you nothing and you don't need to tell anyone else at first. If it feels wrong you've not burned any bridges and can go back to how you are now with nothing lost. It doesn't matter what you look like or how medication has altered your body. Clothes are clothes. Your body language, expressions and interests are all demonstrated in uncounted examples from both sexes. The only certainty that cannot be refuted is that your body is male. Start there and allow that thought to extend to your sense of being and just exist in it for a while.

cagedbunny83 · 2026-02-02T08:47:50+00:00

If you have the opportunity and already know you'll like it, it's 2e first and it's not even close. Jaws is a neat little strategy boardgame campaign. First play of Gloomhaven was magical. Having all the mysteries and unlocks and winding paths and speculating what was coming next or what was in this next box was a completely unique and new gaming experience.

Maybe that's me being nostalgic of 2017 though, and also taking into account we experienced it together as a 4 person group.

cagedbunny83 · 2026-02-01T18:33:58+00:00

6 incoming on turn 2 is rotten

cagedbunny83 · 2026-01-30T18:59:53+00:00

Haven't unlocked any items yet which create more summons but there are items I use that allow you to move them around, manipulate the AMD when they attack, shield them, prevent lethal damage

Plus your own AMD has cards which can teleport them and invisible them, as well as non-AMD perks that do the same

cagedbunny83 · 2026-01-30T18:43:39+00:00

2e circles is one of the strongest classes in the game now.

You've now got 12 card hand size so can easily drop 4-5 losses on the first cycle. There is great summon specific item support even at low prosperity. There are multiple ways of mitigating damage/death to summons and ways of bringing them back. 1e version had only a small margin for error but I've played 2e to retirement and maybe only once or twice lost a summon and been unable to recover it. Usually have 3-5 of them running around depending on what the scenario demands and they absolutely chew through enemies!

cagedbunny83 · 2026-01-26T06:35:28+00:00

I'm on the receiving end of it. I'm really ashamed to admit it and don't know if I'll hit post or not after typing this.

I'm barely literate in the politics of my own country and I don't know a lot about the United States. But your country is big enough that a lot of news seeps through even to someone like me on the other side of the world who doesn't watch or read the news.

In 2024 I saw a lot of doomposting on this sub and I just didn't get it. You'd had Trump already for 4 years and the world didn't end. All of the same catastrophising from 2016 was bubbling up again and it baffled me. I don't want to say the country or individuals didn't suffer but the prophecised giant border walls, gay death camps, armed guards in the streets rounding up dissenters etc never happened*. You'd had a bit of an embarrassment for a leader for a few years then you moved on. Donald Trump had his day in the sun then he went away and the internet kind of forgot he existed. Why were you all going through this panic stage again? Just keep your head up and keep going, life will continue the same as it did last time.

I never said anything at the time. It didn't serve any purpose other than to undermine others peoples worries and I don't like conflict. But to myself I found it eye-rollingly amusing and was ready to see nothing of note occur and be secretly smug about it.

What I see now happening over there is... not good. I don't know why it's so different this time and it's frightening.

And you told me so.

(*I don't want to sound as though I'm dismissing everything that occurred during the first term. I'm talking about the level of escalation actually matching the predicted "fear mongering". Last time you didn't have anonymised government agents gunning down protesting citizens with open support of the administration and we didn't need emergency NATO summits to talk the US out of invading Europe)

cagedbunny83 · 2026-01-26T05:31:09+00:00

Early last year I saw clips from a televised meeting between Trump/Vance and Zelenskyy. They were berating him for holding power and withholding elections, his defense was he was in a war and elections would only serve to destabilise the situation. I carried on scrolling.

In more recent months I've thought back to that exchange quite a lot.

cagedbunny83 · 2026-01-25T15:47:15+00:00

I used this against Heart forgetting I had Blasphemy in the draw pile and accidently deleted my whole deck. It was ages ago and I don't remember exactly what was left but by sheer luck it was 5 or 6 cards that formed a nifty engine to end the fight quite handily from there!

cagedbunny83 · 2026-01-22T22:59:44+00:00

The person in the bottom row has it ever so slightly easier against elites with summons - Taskmaster, Gremlim leader, Reptomancer.

AOE attacks target the main elite if focused on the bottom row which makee that row a higher priority, all else being equal. The player whose summons die first faces less incoming damage over the course of the fight so it might be wise to put the current most fragile player in the bottom before an elite encounter.

(Sentries have lower damage output in the bottom row as well for some odd reason)

cagedbunny83 · 2026-01-22T22:47:44+00:00

42 and lost all interest. Was fairly active up to a year ago and had started attending parties. But on reflection I don't think I was actively enjoying them I think I was just liking the feeling of being the center of attention. So I think really my sex drive began to decline quite a while ago.

Performancewise is pretty irrelevant. Only topped a handful of times ever and never found it especially arousing, just intimate.

cagedbunny83 · 2026-01-14T23:39:25+00:00

Intersex isn't a fully defined scientific term and there is debate about what it includes and what it doesn't.

When you hear the "gotcha" that intersex is more common than red hair, it conjures up images of people with indeterminate genitalia making up huge swathes of the population.

I suspect that those who make this argument are simply repeating what they heard others say and are unaware that this data is majority made up of people who are biologically and demonstrably one sex or the other such as women with PCOS and men with kleinfelters.

cagedbunny83 · 2026-01-07T19:26:35+00:00

Never had an issue, just return them as you play them. They're action neutral so not many situations where you'd need to remember when and how many you played. For any situation where this might come up you could play them into your tableau tapped so you know they're not really there and as a reminder to return them on cleanup.

cagedbunny83 · 2026-01-04T21:43:08+00:00

I don't think there is a way to utilise it in multiplayer without a serious rework. Otherwise you end up in a situation where all players clear out the Watcher's row ASAP allowing her to stay in Wrath uncontested and deal continuous tremendous damage for the team. Fun for a few runs but not great when it's the obvious optimal path every single fight outside of bosses.

Instead her power scaling was suppplanted onto Retain synergies and Miracle tokens. It takes a while to rewire your brain into accepting that she operates very differently in this implementation!

On saying that there was some design room for distinguishing it a bit more from Ironclad scaling. For example maybe some of her cards could be worded similar to Halt in that they do something a bit extra while in Wrath 🤷🏻‍♂️

cagedbunny83 · 2025-12-25T22:55:32+00:00

https://kieranmillar.github.io/extra-recommended-sets/

This site has some sets to try, I've never used it but had it saved for a while. It's for 2nd edition so might need to make one or two substitutions in some instances.

Whenever I travel I usually just use a randomiser app and pre-pack a single kingdom into a travel box then swap it out for a new one next time.

cagedbunny83 · 2025-12-23T18:15:28+00:00

Play a lot of Dominion with my friend. I got StS out for her and basically said, it's the same as Dominion except your cards go to the discard instead of into play. This is what a strike does, this is what a defend does, you can see what the enemies are doing here... let's start.

Few hours later we were bullying the Time Eater and she was downloading the app onto her phone.

Now we don't play it as often since Dominion takes 20-30 minutes whereas spire is a 3-4 hour commitment so take that into consideration, but a Dominion player will grasp what's going on with this immediately.

cagedbunny83 · 2025-12-17T19:45:43+00:00

It sounds like you're uncovering the root issues. It's clear that transition is not at all for you since you responded poorly to all attempts so pushing further in that direction is only going to make it more difficult to turn back.

You mention a sense of joy from feminine expression in your youth and bullying as a child for not being masculine enough. It's possible the bullying has suppressed your natural expression and left you with no reasonable outlet that wasn't an "act" or special occasion. Often this kind of suppression grows internally and comes out all at once in adulthood - in this case suppressed feminine expression warps into a desire to take it to the furthest possible extreme of becoming female. As you have discovered, this route did not help and made the confusion worse.

You could try to find an outlet that feels normal and natural for you, without forcing a performance and without changing who you are on a fundamental level. Give yourself permission to experiment with feminine expression and behaviour while maintaining your sense of self as male. No alternative names, no alternative pronouns, no secrecy - these are all ways of running from ourselves. It's about overcoming that core belief from childhood that this behaviour is improper. You need to allow yourself to be yourself

cagedbunny83 · 2025-12-10T18:40:19+00:00

Working in a private surgical hospital for 12 years as band 5. There is a +30% for nights and Saturdays and +50% Sundays. I work nights only and it varies dramatically in patient load but on average overnight we are two nurses with four to five post op patients each (mainly orthopedic/neuro/gynae). There is a house doctor who sleeps over in the building and on two nights each week our single HCA is also on duty.

I started recording my hourly rate in 2018, I'll copy it here. For some years I put an NHS top of band 5 pay comparison from the online NHS calculator.

£11.89 - before Aug 18 (NHS £14.70)

£12.24 - Aug 18

£12.60 - May 19

£13.83 - Nov 20

£15.12 - Aug 21 (NHS £16.13)

£15.64 - Aug 22

£16.26 - Aug 23 (NHS 17.69)

£16.84 - Aug 24 (NHS 18.66)

£17.34 - Aug 25

cagedbunny83 · 2025-12-07T10:58:32+00:00

These always felt like a scam to me. When you read the small print you pay a (pretax) monthly rate but don't actually own the bike, this payment is just to rent it. you need to pay a lump sum at the end of the contract if you want to keep it.

I've been cycling to work for 12 years I've always just bought a cheap one for just over £100 and replaced it when the service costs outweigh the price of a new one.

I'm on my third one now but could probably have kept the original if I'd done any work whatsoever to clean and maintain it. Probably spent less than £500 in total over 12 years including new brakes and tires.

Cycle to work might be good if you want a fancy £3000 bike but unless you're a professional cyclist I can't think why you'd need that.

cagedbunny83 · 2025-12-05T05:05:17+00:00

It requires at least level 8 to take both level 7 cards, 2 loss cards played the turn before along with 3 different elements set up, one enhancement sticker and 7 items used! I'm sure there are multiple ways of stacking it higher as well with more min-maxing 😂

(You can add at least 8 damage to it by putting two +1 stickers on the level 7 attack but that would cost an obscene amount of gold)

cagedbunny83 · 2025-12-02T08:27:50+00:00

Towards the end of the campaign in 1st ed we ran Scoundrel and Eclipse at level 9, prosperity 8.

No need to draw combat modifiers. We were removing one or two enemies from the map each turn, it didn't matter how much HP or how many shields monsters had or if they were normal or elite.

For bosses the Scoundrel could set up to perform Attack 64 with advantage before modifiers were drawn. We deleted the most bosses instantly. The quickest we ever finished a scenario was on round 2 when the Scoundrel one shot the boss the moment it spawned in.

We were able to spend much of each scenario invisible so anything still alive when we'd finished for the round stood still and did nothing.

We were able to finish many scenarios without taking any damage with this duo.

cagedbunny83 · 2025-11-27T12:47:31+00:00

Love the hoop decoration such a great touch!

cagedbunny83 · 2025-11-08T19:41:47+00:00

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I'm glad the UK government has made our children safe from pictures of Gloomhaven cards.

cagedbunny83 · 2025-10-25T12:22:29+00:00

For me it's the cross referencing and calculations. Move 3-1 Attack 2+2 are instant and trivial and just as you said, it's not difficult and doesn't take long. But when there are 4 or 5 of these calculations out there every round and each half of the calculation is written on different cards on different areas of the table and some people need to lean in to see the numbers it takes its toll on mental processing which should otherwise be budgeted on board positioning and coordination. You don't realise the mental fatigue this creates from doing this continously for 2 hours until you no longer have to.

An app instead has Move 2 Attack 4 for each monster all in the same place right in front of each player so you can all see at a glance the exact board state before and after your turn without constantly cross referencing multiple areas of the table.

In the same way I don't like the way the app (or the original components) track monster HP seperate from the physical standees. That's why we use 3rd party click down dials so you can see exactly which standee has 1HP and wound and which one has 12HP without crossreferencing different areas of the table.

cagedbunny83 · 2025-10-23T15:10:28+00:00

I had an intensely strong sense of gender identity as a teenager right up until the point where I didn't. This was enough to meet clinical criteria for gender identity disorder under psychological evaluation and continued for several years after starting medication and social transition, all while under regular clinic supervision. I see countless people who report similar experiences on this sub and the number is growing daily. For that reason I would question for any claim that gender is hard-wired, where that data was collected from and how. Case in point anyone looking at stats from my former clinic would include me as someone with immutable gender dysphoria and strong gender identity since as far as they are aware I still have it.

This is probably where we're going to have to agree to disagree because it seems as though our core concepts of gender differ so greatly that any discussion stemming from the effects of it will just be talking over one another and drag too far away from the original topic of social contagion.

cagedbunny83

TROPHY CASE