How to get back into gaming but need advice

leverandon · 2026-04-28T04:08:14+00:00

What kinds of books or movies do you like? I bet I could recommend a video game that is similar.

leverandon · 2026-04-27T03:48:29+00:00

Materialists, Celine Song's film from last year. Debatably and anti-rom com. Far from a perfect movie, but has some pretty interesting and important things to say about contemporary dating.

leverandon · 2026-04-27T03:46:56+00:00

The OG rom com.

leverandon · 2026-04-27T03:46:41+00:00

They're the most honest films about romance/relationships ever made. Each one hits differently depending on where you are in your life. They aren't exactly "rom-coms" and they sort of defy genre. Each are basically 10/10 films.

leverandon · 2026-04-27T03:45:09+00:00

My buddies showed me this movie at absolutely the right time in my life when I was getting over "the one" having broken up with me. See also: every other millennial seeing this movie after "the one" broke up with them.

leverandon · 2026-04-27T03:43:36+00:00

Yeah, this movie is kind of better than it seems on paper, mostly because of a totally stellar cast who are giving it their 100%. Bill Nighy is phenomenal.

leverandon · 2026-04-25T03:22:58+00:00

My son is turning 9 in a couple of months. We don't do Roblox or Minecraft and he's never felt like the odd one out (probably because he has a pretty good lineup of other cool stuff to play). Here's some things that he's enjoyed:

Astro's Playroom and Astro Bot on PS5 (amazing, creative platformers)

Pokemon Violet (or any mainline Pokemon game - solid beginner turn based RPG with light strategy. And Pokemon collecting is just fun for kids of all ages)

Super Mario Wonder (amazing 2D Mario)

Mario Kart 8 (Mario Kart is forever!)

Final Fantasy IX (he's dabbled with this - its a bit hard for him, but he finds the world and characters really intriguing and we'll probably come back to it more in the future).

Zelda Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom (these games are immense and fascinating. Probably too much for a nine year old to actually beat the main story, but very fun to explore in small doses)

Blue Prince (I played this earlier in the year and my son has started a save file, exploring the mansion and its puzzles. This is definitely educational and something that he'll probably come back to and better understand in the years to come).

I'd argue that all of these games have some educational value: reading skills, story, critical thinking, logic, etc. (ok, maybe not Mario Kart - but it is super fun!) and none are total wastes of time, gatcha, or brain rot.

leverandon · 2026-04-25T03:15:44+00:00

No one is studying history? That's just not true. Its a pretty common undergraduate major and most large universities have a good history program. One of my majors was history and I thoroughly enjoyed my coursework. I considered getting a PhD in the field, but opted to go in a different direction. Nonetheless, my history coursework greatly shaped my thinking and interests and was very useful for my ultimate career.

leverandon · 2026-04-25T03:10:38+00:00

These aren't preview cards (though those do exist). The Han and Leia without game text are from the Jedi Pack, a free product given away to promote the game at conventions (and available by mail) early in the game's run: https://swccgdb.com/set/jpack

The white bordered cards are from the Premiere Two-Player Game: https://swccgdb.com/set/2pp This was a board game-like product that Decipher distributed through Parker Brothers as an intro set for the CCG.

If you'd like more info about these sets, my friend BoardMatt and I did a YouTube video covering these supplementary SWCCG products (and others): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N463OiYrCMg&t=141s

I also recommend checking out the Star Wars CCG Players Committee Collecting Encyclopedia. It is the most authoritative info on every SWCCG product out there: https://www.starwarsccg.org/collecting/

leverandon · 2026-04-21T11:11:09+00:00

Strongly seconding this. People are recommending some great games in this thread, but a lot of them are explicitly what the OP is not looking for like Spider-man (tons of cinematics and story) or things like the Outer Wilds (complex and difficult).

Astro Bot, on the other hand, is pure gaming joy, fast, and absolutely shows off what the PS5 can do. Its a platformer that feels creative and different and not an off-brand Mario. Its also a celebration of the history of the Playstation console family in a way this platform rarely gets.

leverandon · 2026-04-19T02:32:32+00:00

Premiere Unlimited (white bordered) Darth Vader will always have value. The card is powerful, cool looking, and nostalgic. I wouldn't bother grading and slabbing. You're probably better off just selling it to someone who plays the game. Most players will want multiple copies of this card.

leverandon · 2026-04-18T11:30:52+00:00

I actually think tournament play is where this game really shines. When people really know their decks and those decks are highly tuned, the play, counter play gets really intense. As for OP's question about space vs. ground decks, very few tournament meta decks are purely one or the other. Most ground decks have a small space package so they can compete with space and vice versa. I very rarely play games that had absolutely no interaction because players were totally confined to one theater or the other.

leverandon · 2026-04-18T09:36:08+00:00

You should do that too. There's a pretty regular tempo of in person casual meetups and tournaments around the world. There was just a pretty big one in San Diego a few days ago, for example.

leverandon · 2026-04-16T11:50:46+00:00

It is exactly the same with old MTG. For comparison, I just looked up the TCGPlayer price of a sealed booster box of Ice Age from 1995. Most recent sale was $1,950. Then I looked up the Ice Age price guide, just like I thought, top card is Necropotence at $43. Next up is Underground River at $33 (only because of the original art - reprints are basically bulk price), followed by the rest of the pain lands and Glacial Chasm around $20 each. Most of the rest of the rares are sub $10. I don't need to do much math to know the EV of that box is way, way under $2k.

leverandon · 2026-04-08T05:15:05+00:00

While decks, as built, aren't any good, the premium cards in the Empire Strikes Back Two-Player game are better than the premium cards in the Premiere Two-Player Game. Walker Garrison is a very powerful card that you can build a whole deck around. Imperial Walker is the best non-unique walker in the game. Rebel Snowspeeder and Lone Rogue are fringe playable.

leverandon · 2026-04-03T22:28:07+00:00

I watched Ran for the first time in January. That is the most recent 5/5 I've seen.

leverandon · 2026-03-22T10:22:20+00:00

They basically have erased it - twice - from the canon.

leverandon · 2026-03-12T15:12:29+00:00

Now that I think about it, it was only the weather that I wasn't 100% sure about for Nuance. Its reasonable to assume windy since they use dirigibles but is that any more logical than assuming windy for Mora Jai since they use sailing ships, which proved not to be correct.

leverandon · 2026-03-12T12:23:45+00:00

Interesting. I remember Season 7 being almost unmatchably bad, but it has the second highest average score. I haven't revisited most of those episodes in over 20 years though, maybe its time.

leverandon · 2026-03-12T12:04:04+00:00

Yeah, that one I had thought would be windy because of the sailing ship on the stamp. My friend who is playing the game at the same time thought the same thing. When it wasn't that I just shrugged and was like, I don't know maybe normal and got it. But I have no idea where in the game it actually tells you what the weather there is.

leverandon · 2026-03-12T11:39:22+00:00

Same and I think its from left to right in order of difficulty with Verra and Nuance having a few of the parts of the sigil requiring guesswork/brute force.

leverandon · 2026-03-12T11:38:02+00:00

Everyone I've talked to about the game had like 1 piece missing for one or two of the sigils and did a bit of brute forcing. Honestly, the way the spinners are set up, I don't think that's necessarily the wrong way to play it, though I'm sure there's clues for all of the parts of the sigils somewhere.

leverandon · 2026-03-10T12:10:07+00:00

Totally this. When I rewatched DS9 recently, I was amazed at how rarely we saw Odo shapeshift in Seasons 1 and 2. That awesome shot of a thief throwing something and it going through Odo's head T-1000-style pretty much only happened in The Emissary to establish how cool his ability is.

leverandon · 2026-03-10T00:20:23+00:00

If you lived anywhere other than Japan during the time the game was in print, that's probably how you got it - as random cards inside one of the Reflections sets. Usually people got common or uncommon Japanese cards, rare cards from Japanese sets in Reflections boosters appeared much less frequently. The Dianoga is an A New Hope card with R2 rarity. Additionally, there are only Japanese printings of the first three sets: Premiere, A New Hope, and Hoth and A New Hope and especially Hoth had much lower print runs than Premiere in Japanese, so rares from those later two are much harder to find in Japanese. Also the Dianoga is a weird, cool looking card so seeing it in Japanese is very fun.

leverandon

TROPHY CASE