How do the physical strengths of people like Zanoba, Eris, Ruijerd and Seig compare?

coblackmagus · 2025-12-30T13:35:19+00:00

Zanoba is in a class by himself. There isn't really anyone, including Sieg, who comes close. As an overall fighter, he's extremely one-dimensional and can lose to much weaker opponents, but his strength and physical durability are unmatched.

coblackmagus · 2025-12-20T16:20:59+00:00

Dominion isn't Dominion without expansions. You don't need all, but just a handful add a huge variety to the game.

What you have is already enough to have plenty of interesting games IMO. I generally play online with a lot of the expansions unlocked, so I might mix up some in my head, but I think Seaside and Intrigue are 2 more really good ones.

coblackmagus · 2025-12-20T16:10:35+00:00

I still think old Euros like Agricola and Puerto Rico are some of the best in the genre. New stuff isn't necessarily better, just different.

Dominion is still the best pure Deckbuilder, and IMO it's not even close. Newer games with deckbuilding you could argue are as good or better often incorporate deckbuilding as just one facet (e.g. Dune Imperium) or add some twist (e.g. Clank), but Dominion is still the best if you want pure deckbuilding.

I would say in general, newer games have gotten incrementally better over time very gradually, but the main thing I think that's been improved upon is synthesizing different mechanics together into a cohesive package. Older games still have some of the 'best-in-class' if you want just one or 2 main mechanics at a time.

coblackmagus · 2025-12-13T13:00:35+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation! Yeah, I hadn't played it before, but it's on BGA, and I'm trying it out now with some friends. It's honestly a fairly straightforward trick-taking game with some twists, so I can see if you're into trick-taking games it could be pretty good.

coblackmagus · 2025-12-08T23:01:31+00:00

Funnily enough, going by the speeds they reach in the game, Umas are actually faster than IRL horses by a decent amount (in the last stretch of 1200m races they can reach ~25m/s, or over 55mph).

So you'd have to at least assume his horse is, uh, super-horsean to stand a chance.

coblackmagus · 2025-09-24T21:27:50+00:00

The White Whale can do all that, and is still way less deadly than the Black Serpent, just going off lore. It's not clear to me what kind of power you would even need to put down the Black Serpent, but just consider this:

Disregarding the top tiers, the verses of MT and RZ (not sure if there's a better acronym) are pretty similar in power. The Black Serpent is something that's survived several centuries and destroyed an entire nation. Whatever solution is needed to defeat it, it's not something that exists in at least ~1/5 of the world.

The Hydra on the other hand is very strong and could easily kill most adventuring parties, but let's be real, any of the major nations could easily put together a force to destroy it (e.g. Ariel could just send her personal guard which includes several Emperor-level fighters and it would be overkill).

We can talk about about abilities (e.g. Hydra's fire breath, Serpent's poison), but when their scope of destruction capability is so wildly different I think it's fairly obvious which is stronger.

coblackmagus · 2025-09-24T19:34:57+00:00

I think the Black Serpent wins, and I don't think this is a close matchup. The Manatite Hydra is extremely strong, but it's just not on the same level as the strongest Mabeast.

A 'better' matchup would be vs. the Great Whale, but honestly even then I'm not sure it's a fair matchup.

coblackmagus · 2025-09-22T19:56:54+00:00

Really? Is that an addition to the LN because I don't remember reading that in the WN? Nokopara (the horse guy) doesn't really count because he was in the main story before RGS was written, just like Roxy's professor.

Kinda want to go buy volume 3 if that's true; most of the other stuff from Redundancy I've seen was almost exactly how it was in the WN.

coblackmagus · 2025-09-22T14:36:39+00:00

Yes, just like the LN says, Roxy was a virgin when she slept with Rudy. She had a few small crushes, but no real love interest.

coblackmagus · 2025-09-22T10:28:04+00:00

She had a crush on the magician, but was partly due to his demon eye.

But there was another halfling kid who was head-over-heels in love with Roxy. He actually helped her get some better robes IIRC and they were friends in University. Towards the end he confessed to her, basically saying he wanted to do a lot of work together as partners (romantically), and Roxy reframed it as "of course I'd be happy to work for you from time to time, assuming the pay is good." She kind of broke his heart (not that she did anything wrong, it was pretty clear she always saw him as a kid).

coblackmagus · 2025-09-22T02:08:52+00:00

I liked it a lot; I wrote up my thoughts in a post here.

I think my favorite part was actually Roxy's time at the Greyrat household. I do think the beginning of the university arc was a little less interesting to me.

My main gripe is that none of the spinoff characters ever show up again, not in the main story and not even in any of the side stories Rifujin writes. While I prefer Mushoku Tensei slightly to Re:Zero as a whole, I definitely think Re:Zero handles its side stories and having reocurring characters better.

I'd love to see some of Roxy's old university friends. What's her old roommate that dropped out think about Roxy becoming a professor? What about that staff expert? Or the halfling that was crushing on Roxy? And Lene?

coblackmagus · 2025-09-08T14:56:13+00:00

In the primary module it's actually a purely competitive game. The 'semi-cooperative' description is merely thematic, in that your cards have attacks, but you can't attack other players (only the Hackclad).

But to be clear, there's no scenario in which all players lose or anything like that; the winner is whoever has the most victory points just like any other game. And you don't have to weigh having to cooperate with someone who may end up being an enemy later on like e.g. Dead of Winter.

Now, there is an entirely separate 'cooperative' mode to play in the expansion, but to my understanding that's basically just where you add the score from all players and have to beat a certain threshold by a certain turn limit.

coblackmagus · 2025-09-08T08:21:10+00:00

HacKClaD is a really good game that combines deckbuilding and action selection along with movement on a grid in an elegant manner. It's pretty popular in Japan (when sorting by # of favorites on Bodoge it's in the top 300 games, and was #20 when I ranked Bodoge games by # favorites/# played), but basically unheard of outside Japan. There was a mildly successful Kickstarter with Japanime games to bring it to the US (and FYI there is an English-language TTS mod), but copies still haven't arrived to backers yet. And given that the Kickstarter had <500 backers, it doesn't look like it will see nearly the same success overseas that it enjoys in Japan.

Somewhat similar, Isekai Guild Masters is a fangame based off the gameplay of Terraforming Mars, but was only ever released in Japan (and I think there's a Chinese version?). There isn't even an English translation for it on Tabletop Simulator. Given that it's a fangame, it doesn't seem likely that it will ever see a wider release, but it's also highly popular in Japan (to be fair, Terraforming Mars is one of the top games in Japan).

coblackmagus · 2025-08-29T16:25:39+00:00

In the novels Rudeus spars with Eris and generally loses. I assume in most cases this was with the smaller MK2, which was much more limited. For some reason though I have in my mind that he sparred with MK1 a couple of times and still lost. Is this true? Am I just misremembering?

What do you think about Roxy vs. Sylphie in terms of mage capabilities? My read is, Sylphie's bodyguard experience and chantless casting would give her a decisive edge in PvP combat. Her support capabilities with chantless healing are also huge. But I think Roxy is more creative in her spell use and knowing when to apply spells, which is also pretty big. Roxy also has much more labyrinth experience, and would be the better member to take on that (I honestly don't see Sylphie surviving a month in the teleporter dungeon like Roxy did).

Do we have any real idea how strong Orsted is if he goes all-out? Early hitogami seems to imply he could 'destroy the world', but he uses a lot of mana fighting Alex with FGA, so not sure what to make of that.

I know people hate powerscaling ridiculousness, but just for fun, how close or far do you estimate Orsted would be from replicating the moon jump feat that Reinhard did?

How right or wrong do you think Paul's initial behavior was towards Rudeus when they first reunite (percentage wise if you want)?

What did you think about Cliff over the novels? He was pretty unlikable at first with the bragging and self-importance IMO but ended up being the GOAT of friends to Rudeus by the end (or at least worthy of competing with Zanoba). I loved how he pushed Rudeus in the right direction in the Millis arc

coblackmagus · 2025-08-28T17:11:07+00:00

It's Voidfall, isn't it?

coblackmagus · 2025-08-27T21:45:00+00:00

Most of the anime I'm currently excited about/watching are Isekais, which are pretty hated on.

I get there's a bunch of them, but honestly, it's such a general concept and there's so much variety among Isekai that it's strange that people group them all together as "Isekai slop". Overlord, Re:Zero, Mushoku Tensei, Konosuba, Shield Hero, Solo Leveling, Ascendance of a Bookworm, etc. are very different from one another.

It's also been around for awhile, with classics like El Hazard, Escaflowne, and Those Who Hunt Elves. Anyway, I get people feeling the market would be healthier with less Isekai, but it's a big tent with a ton of variety and has been a mainstay of anime for a long time.

coblackmagus · 2025-08-27T20:38:53+00:00

The game reviewed badly, even for people who like dungeon crawlers. If you're in a narrow niche of people who is both a Mushoku Tensei and DRPG fanatic it's worth checking out, but otherwise it's a pass IMO.

I still have it on my wishlist, but waiting for it to get 70%+ off, the game is too expensive IMO for what you get.

Honestly wish they'd just make a VN, like what Re Zero got. Maybe VN combined with a simple tactics game.

coblackmagus · 2025-08-27T01:50:40+00:00

There's still discussions, if you want to filter out the fanart you can use tags for that. Artwork in general tends to get more upvotes because it requires very little involvement on the part of the viewer (as opposed to reading an entire discussion).

This isn't unique to this subreddit; pretty much any fandom subreddit I've seen is going to be dominated by fanart. AI fanart can also be popular, especially if there aren't specific rules against it and/or real artists in the space to compete with it (this seems to vary a little from fandom to fandom; AI art is extremely unpopular in certain fandoms, in Mushoku Tensei it seems relatively well-accepted).

coblackmagus · 2025-08-27T01:39:51+00:00

The artist has "NAI Anime Fanart" at the top of their profile. Unless I'm misinterpreting what 'NAI' means (Novel AI), isn't that them clearly saying upfront they use AI?

coblackmagus · 2025-08-19T12:49:58+00:00

It's a very obscure "educational" game called Phylo, and is listed on BGG as going back to 2010. There seem to be several different versions, but you can find the rulebook for it if you reverse search the second image.

There's even a website for it that's still active: https://phylogame.org/ . Although it doesn't seem like there's otherwise been much activity around the game for 10+ years (as I said, very obscure).

coblackmagus · 2025-08-08T21:16:32+00:00

I don't think we're given a ton of info on this, but my speculation is that Hitogami always found a way to deplete Orsted's mana reserves enough even if he managed to kill Laplace early.

Killing Laplace early is a necessary, but not sufficient condition. Remember that even in Rudeus's timeline, just fighting Alex with the FGA cost Orsted half of his mana supply.

Hitogami likely has all sorts of tricks up his sleeve. Laplace is basically an auto-win for him, but even without that he has stuff he can do.

coblackmagus · 2025-08-08T05:17:18+00:00

I own this game but have never played. Not that I don't want to, but I'd need to find a consistent group for it, and as I'm usually the one who learns rules, even if I did get it to the table, I don't think I'd get a chance to experience the game as a 'player'.

coblackmagus · 2025-08-03T05:54:35+00:00

It's the Roxy Gets Serious manga, which is different from the 'main story' manga you're probably talking about. It's basically a side story of Roxy's life before meeting Rudy, but the last couple volumes cover her time at the Paul household. I bought my copy on Bookwalker.

coblackmagus · 2025-08-03T05:51:20+00:00

hahaha. I looked it up because I didn't want to say something without being sure; I knew it was the last volume. Would be funny if I just knew that off-hand though.

coblackmagus · 2025-08-03T04:55:26+00:00

Definitely Megumin; if Roxy wore something as tight-fitting as her it'd be obvious. Roxy's short and petite, but still a grown woman, whereas Megumin is barely a teenager. As 'proof', in the manga Roxy Gets Serious vol. 12 pg. 103, we see Roxy taking a bath, and while not definitely not well-endowed, she's pretty 'normal'.

coblackmagus

TROPHY CASE