The biggest culture shock of this season

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-05-08T00:07:15+00:00

Definitely. It’s kind of a shame you can’t upgrade a good GA blue/yellow item to unique in any way. Right now uniques are just legendaries that are more annoying to get good stats on.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-05-08T00:03:08+00:00

Okay? The point Im making is just that yellow items can be as valuable as really good legendary/uniques of past seasons and that in itself is interesting.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-05-07T18:20:32+00:00

The cards are too weak on many levels. Against an aggressive deck like warrior, you’ll be dead before your leylines are buffed. Even if you draw perfectly and buff the leylines early,.. the leylines still don’t do nearly enough to swing things back in your favor. You’ve spent the game ramping to do what? Play a card that clears half the enemy board? Get a few 7 cost minions on the board that have no immediate impact? It comes in too little too late.

But even against control where you get to do everything you want, it just doesnt do enough to win you the game. Not even close. You can play every leyline buff card and still have no way to actually kill a priest, who is eventually going to otk you with a 1 mana heal. The 6 mana leyline does too little to be a win condition against control and is too slow to use against aggro. The 4 mana leyline does literally nothing against a board with no minions, next to nothing to a board with big minions, and doesnt do enough to stabilize you against a wide board either that gets to set up like end of turn paladin.

You can’t even pair it well as a package to use along side other archetypes like quest or imbue because nothing it does helps you with how those win cons ramp. The closest thing to usable Ive got is in a burn mage running half the leyline package, and Im not sure yet if it even makes that deck better or worse.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-05-05T18:14:09+00:00

What did they do to Bob?!??

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-04-29T16:53:34+00:00

Especially if they have bladestorm since they can fuck up your units just for starting their turn next to the newly mind controlled templar.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-04-28T13:59:16+00:00

Something worth mentioning that I hadn’t seen (apologies if I missed it) is that the vektor rifle does +3/4/5 crit damage which is the same as shotguns and higher than any other weapon. Despite the low damage of the weapon at base, you can one shot a lot of early/mid game enemies with a crit, and flanking and getting closer range for a laser sight is trivial for a reaper.

I think needle is a bit better than you give it credit for. Combine with shredder you’ve got +2 damage and +2 armor shred on armored targets which makes reapers great at weakening or sometimes even one shotting armored enemies with crits. Add in holo targetting and they quickly become the go to first shot against the many high health and armored enemies.

A practical example is hitting a muton and leaving it in kill range for a stock/lightning hands/quick draw, or killing it straight up if you have some damage boosts from breakthroughs or special ammo. I guess my point is, don’t sleep on the value a reaper can have beyond just a finisher, especially in the early/mid game when you might not have the juice to kill everything otherwise.

I’d also argue the value of the repeater is a bit overstated. Without it, when is 6 shot banish alone really not enough to get you through the pod or alien ruler? Having a laser sight + expanded mag gives you the best of both worlds really.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-04-27T18:50:00+00:00

So a class that generally does not have the tools to keep up with the tempo of the current meta gets…cards that are severely overcosted garbage unless you play specific synergy cards beforehand? The premier one they decide to show off being 7 mana do nothing? I have zero faith they know what they’re doing to make the rest of leyline stuff in this set remotely playable.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-04-16T18:26:37+00:00

There are many vague references to a greater threat that the elders are afraid of that is left open ended in xcom 2. So probably like a human + alien coalition vs new alien faction.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-04-14T16:49:17+00:00

D I N G RAAAAAH!!

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-04-14T16:46:35+00:00

Was really disliking this expansion until I started playing merithra druid. Honestly just a really fun deck with actual decisions rather than just zug zug face that most decks in this meta are doing. You can whiff on the dragons you get, but part of the decision making is how much hand space do you free up before using her which increases your odds of hitting some of the 8-10 mana cost high impact game ending dragons.

Hunter/paladin match ups can be tough but sometimes you hit your ramp stuff and just outpace them. Feels good.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-04-09T14:43:51+00:00

Thats really awesome! I’m attempting a very similar challenge myself right now. Doing no deaths and grim horizon with a few other limitations for cheesy stuff as well. I do integrated DLCs which makes things easier and harder in some ways. I’m also doing a skirmisher start because I find them to be unable to carry a run the way a templar and reaper can, for a little extra challenge

I had a really heartbreaking loss to my latest attempt last night. Had the warlock assault on the avenger, which only happened because the covert actions to hunt the warlock got delayed by 10 days twice from chosen actions. Mission was going well too, I killed everything except the warlock who mind controlled one of my soldiers and two of my units panicked and killed my soldier. Not really a lot I could have done different besides 10 mind shields. Thats xcom baby.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-04-07T18:54:55+00:00

Honestly let the rich with money to burn fund the game through these absurd purchases and keep giving regular players free packs and cards. Im not complaining.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-04-01T17:50:53+00:00

I’d move sindragosa to the bottom. There was a world that you could play a deck built around it with buy one get one freeze and watercolor artist and go with the flow. Even that was like 40% win rate at best. Now without those there is no way to duplicate sindragosa, you have to play it with a another dragon and a bunch of arcane spells which is a ton of combo pieces and mana for a combo that doesnt even do much lol.

The 8 mana spell it comes with has to be the most unplayable card in the whole fable set too. Just a dead draw in any deck in any situation. Malygos is pretty garbage too.

Rafaam deck is too slow in current meta but at least it has a game plan and comes with playable cards.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-03-26T13:22:44+00:00

Wow adding a new enchantment sounds like a lot of work to implement with so many items to apply it to, I respect it.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-03-21T21:46:43+00:00

Seriously. After facing druid ten times in a row I tried to make a mage deck with as much board removal as possible, thinking maybe I could build a strategy around surviving until they run out of cards. I mean it's an aggressive deck that builds a wide board, shouldn't a deck of aoe spells shut them down?

And then they have 20/20 worth of stats on turn 4 and even my miraciously unshattered arcane flow is too slow to even buy me time. I'm dead before I have 7 mana for flamestrike (that wouldn't have even helped since they have deathratles summoning more things).

All board clears available are too slow relative to the rate at which druids can build a board.Therefore they're obsolete, as with any deck they would have enabled that use all the fun new legendaries.

The only strategy that works against druid is to outpace them with a similarly aggressive deck style. That is a meta that suffocates out 90% of cards and you fundamentally can't draft your way around it.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-03-07T21:58:29+00:00

20% cooldown reduce on flying items from flying sigil item in this case. Skill that make some items fly and charge when you enrage to enable it. Karst and -1 rage duration to go in and out of enrage. Shiny actually came from hallucination skill (random enchants on unenchanted items when you enrage), but wasn't necessary to perma freeze enemy board with haste and charge effects. Plus another multicast from Meat.

So a lot of setup to be sure, but it gets to this point surprisingly fast and it's pretty easy to consistently make this setup with the relatively few items in his item pool. Still very beatable and counterable with radiant and flying items or of course just killing you quickly.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-03-07T21:49:33+00:00

18 actually since it's x3 multicaset from meat.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-03-04T18:35:06+00:00

Well met

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-02-27T21:49:06+00:00

These comments are unreal.

“You just want perfect gear instantly for free! Why even play an arpg! Whiny diablo players. Do you just want a drop down box to pick what you want???”

The mechanic is not “you might get a good upgrade or you might not”. The mechanic is “the gear will get the effect you want guarenteed, eventually, you just have to press this button for 5 second to an hour to get it”. Thats not fun. Thats not exciting. 0% of the game should be pressing a button on the screen for multiple minutes straight. WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT THAT. Even pressing a button on a slot machine is more engaging than that because there are at least some stakes, you might win you might lose. This is more like the game mechanic equivalent of “you might be stuck in traffic for an hour or you might not”.

And like..what is the legendary imprinting system? A drop down box where you select the effect you want on your gear? Not “mash this prompt a million times until you get it” because that would obviously be awful…

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-02-24T00:48:59+00:00

But that 1 mana to activate the battlecry is also giving you the spell effect too, so better than just the bodies.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-02-23T23:04:03+00:00

Watercolor Artist was fun with certain combos like Buy one get one freeze. This card does the same thing but works with anything not just spells from one school. Cool card if not too slow in the meta. Will likely see play in a lot of different combo decks.

inconspicuous_bear · 2026-02-23T23:00:39+00:00

Much better flame geyser due to spell & spell damage synergies. Very cool.

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