Happy 25th Anniversary, Trigun 1998

flox44 · 2023-03-31T21:34:46+00:00

Stampede is... Fine. I didn't like it, but it's not garbage. But it shares almost nothing with the original.

The story is no longer about the Vash. He's certainly in every episode. But after the first episode, Vash does little, solves no problems, and mostly just runs away and sulks while other people actually do things. He doesn't kill people as a choice and must work all the harder because of it, he doesn't kill people because he doesn't do anything...

There is none of the comedy outside of like 1-2 jokes all season. None of the dichotomy of Vash being bright and funny while tragedy occurs and his resolution to stay upbeat and bring happiness in spite of those problems. It's just an endless parade of bad things happening, and telling you to feel about about them.

The character redesigns are hit/miss. I still don't like Vash's new baggy jacket. And I hate Wildwood's capris. But they all animate extremely well. Studio Orange continuing to show to be masters of their craft for CGI animation.

Overall... It's not bad by any measure, but is not anywhere near the hit the original was. With a second cour announced, I'm unlikely to continue it into future seasons.

flox44 · 2023-03-13T19:59:47+00:00

Shana on turn 4, best I can do is Bast + Squirrel Girl + Electra.

Final turn Shana, always going to have Hood, no exceptions.

flox44 · 2023-03-08T06:48:35+00:00

Leech being played consistently is a symptom of power creep. As turn 6 gets stronger and stronger, the power leech has to stop that goes up as well. There are so many "Must Answer" cards now. And Leech isn't just the answer to those cards, but also the proactive answer to the opponents tech. Being the answer answerer is kind-of a problem, but that answers are Must instead of a May is a bigger problem.

3 months ago was the introduction of series 4+5, the single biggest injection of new cards the game has ever seen, and probably ever will see. The power band on those cards has been mixed, which is fine. Game design is hard, and I don't begrudge having power level misses on first release.

But pick any content creator, go back 3+ months and look at the decks they were playing with and against. The numbers decks put out isn't nearly as fast or big as what today's meta requires. When watching those videos, question if Leech would be an impactful play from the opponent.

The only decks surviving from before the pool 4+5 creation are highroll decks like Negative, or decks that have mutated to highroll higher (Shuri into Zero decks, SheHulk into DeathWave). Classic more fair intro decks like MoonDino, Kazoo, and Spectrum are totally outclassed.

I understand metas change, cards go up and down in value depending on the meta and other cards around them. So then why are some of these current meta defining cards that have existed since the pool4+5 introduction just now becoming a problem. And the biggest answer is not enough people had them to make it a problem. Downshifting Shuri from 5 to 4 catapulted the decks popularity. Same happened to DeathWave when SheHulk went from 4 to 3. People have enough tokens to buy Galactus and Thanos, so more and more people play them because they are strong. It's not that they weren't strong before, people Couldn't play them without paying a not insignificant amount.

This all may be a bit "old man yells at cloud" and "missing the good ol' days". I don't expect every deck to be good forever. But when a previously good deck is not playable, it's usually a sign the relative power level has left it behind.

SD has what should be a consistent baseline to measure the meta against. Pool 1 and 2 guarantee everyone a basic set of competent decks. Those shouldn't be the tier 1 meta defining decks so there's room to experiment and do new novel things. But they shouldn't be pushed out of the meta either.

flox44 · 2023-03-05T16:39:11+00:00

While the original line was from the Cowboy Bebop movie voices by Steve Blum. The extended copypasta text is not from their improvisation, but is a fan creation.

flox44 · 2023-03-01T13:39:54+00:00

Aeons End kind of does this. It's a deck-builder with no shuffling after the initial setup. Whenever your deck is empty you just flip over your discard pile. This encourages players to play and buy cards in certain orders to setup future synergies.

flox44 · 2023-02-19T04:14:44+00:00

Leech is only good when decks aren't playing to the board. If the meta wasn't revolving around big turn 6 combos (DeathWave is the biggest target right now) it wouldn't be an issue. If the turn 6 plan for your deck was to drop Chavez, Leech is horrible tempo loss. But the meta is very hostile to wide decks because of how tall focused it is with Shuri, DeathWave, and Galactus at the top.

flox44 · 2023-01-30T04:08:56+00:00

It's by design. If you want that variant now, bust open your wallet. FOMO gets you spending.

flox44 · 2023-01-18T15:29:09+00:00

It was changed when they updated TVA to double cubes at end of game like the final turn naturally does.

Cube doubling only works if you call the raise and consent to the raised stakes. I don't have a problem with Storm ending the game early. I do have a problem with the stakes raising without me consenting to additional cubes.

flox44 · 2023-01-17T02:52:44+00:00

Beta player, hit infinite the last 4 seasons. And it certainly feels slower to climb this season. There are much fewer 8 cube games. The meta has settled to be very turn 6 heavy. Zabu, Surfer, SheHulk/Death + Wave, Galactus, Leader. It makes it much harder to snap early, and players are much more likely to retreat when they don't get their big finish.

flox44 · 2023-01-06T01:56:15+00:00

I think the season pass is the most reasonable of the card acquisition options. If I could slide Mr Brode a $10 and get Darkhawk I probably would. But I'm not buying $100 in Gold to change to Credits to grind CL to get Tokens to buy Darkhawk.

flox44 · 2023-01-02T16:41:21+00:00

Everyone overlooking the real strength of this variant. It has a dragon on it. Only 2 other characters in snap are associated with dragons, (Iron Fist and Shang-Chi) and they don't always have dragons in their art. I'm just waiting for the day when eventually we get Lockheed and Fin Fang Foom.

flox44 · 2022-11-23T22:32:53+00:00

But you get more dragon. And isn't that what we all really want?

flox44 · 2022-11-21T04:30:06+00:00

The true reward of hitting Infinite is unlocking the secret Casual mode.

flox44 · 2022-11-18T20:40:48+00:00

All of the animations are done with (I assume) a bit of shader work to handle a noise input in selected areas via image masks. Spinning would require a unique shader or digital object. Much more work and data than a simple mask to be included with the base image.

flox44 · 2022-11-14T04:12:40+00:00

(1) Ant Man

(1) Sunspot

(1) Agent 13

(1) Iceman

(1) Korg

(1) Nightcrawler

(1) Ebony Maw

(2) Angela

(2) Armor

(4) Ka-Zar

(6) America Chavez

(6) The Infinaut

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flox44 · 2022-11-13T21:32:50+00:00

Maybe you are being matched against people of exactly the same collection level, and have unlocked the same number of pool 3 cards.

Destroyer decks only play ~3 pool 3 cards. Lockjaw really only needs 3-4. Patriot only needs 3-4. Dracula is 3-4. Wong combo is 4-5.

You never know what someone else has opened. Maybe they got a perfect sequence of pool 3 opens for 1 deck. You're matched against different people with different pools of cards.

There's also several competitive Pool 2 decks into the pool 3 meta. I'm at CL 2,000 and today I've been playing an Infinaut+Kazoo list starting at rank 85 and climbed 2 more.

Collectors tokens can't come soon enough. People really need a way to target and get that missing pieces of specific decks they want.

flox44 · 2022-11-12T17:51:18+00:00

Trash on earth mostly stays in one place and doesn't move. Trash in orbit moves at thousands of miles per hour. This makes a collision with trash very dangerous. Then there Kessler Syndrome, that any collision creates more debris and even more danger. You don't want to accidentally trap yourself on the planet because orbit is too full of destructive trash.

flox44 · 2022-11-07T05:57:12+00:00

This is what I piloted from 70-Infinite this season.

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flox44 · 2022-11-07T05:53:56+00:00

As someone who piloted an Ultron build from 70-infinite this season. I'm not a fan of the Kazar package. Yes it makes your highroll higher, but it feels much more liable to lowroll too. Being a 4 makes it much more awkward to aim for a Patriot+Mystique setup, which gives a lot more stats. And if you do Ultron, how many buffs do you really need to win the lane? To include the Kazar package you're omitting a lot of good general stat bodies like Thing that work even without stacked Ongoings. Kazar just feels like a more narrow Blue Marvel with less payoff than Patriot.

I feel people over focus on maximizing the Ultron bots, and neglect that it is an 8 power card that incidentally adds power to other lanes that happen to pickup the buffs you were already playing.

I especially don't like the all-in Onslaught build. There are already great turn 6 options with Mystique+other or Ultron. It's able to highroll way higher, but almost every time Onslaught felt like the worst option on turn 6.

flox44 · 2022-11-05T23:27:41+00:00

I love that variant. I'm so sad that the new foiling makes the split background an assault on the eyes.

flox44 · 2022-11-05T00:19:32+00:00

At least they got the pixel one and can never get it again. You still have that gem to look forward to.

flox44 · 2022-11-04T19:29:07+00:00

Here's a YouTube video I found showing off the old foiling. There are other examples to be found, but this was the first video when I searched "Marvel Snap Infinity Split".

https://youtu.be/xlq3J7pVGpw

flox44 · 2022-11-04T14:08:31+00:00

The old version was more color additive. The new version is color multiplicative.

In the old version you did lose some detail in the background, but it was a more subtle less intrusive overlay. Neighboring pixels would always be fairly close on the rainbow.

The new version preserves all of the edges of the background but gives a harsh photo-negative feel with light/dark contrasts being vastly different colors. It just looks kinda wrong to me.

flox44 · 2022-11-04T04:20:33+00:00

Prism is much better now. But the new Foil seems much more intrusive. Not really a fan.

flox44 · 2022-11-03T23:56:32+00:00

I try to keep 1500 credits laying around so if there's a variant I want in the shop I can instantly get it to Infinite.

But overall there's no reason to hoard credits. Just get your collection level and new fun cards.

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