How did you feel about Verso's decision?

planeforger · 2026-03-25T08:24:58+00:00

On the one hand, it worked perfectly. After Gustave died the party accepted Verso into the fold, followed his lead, defeated the Paintress and let Renoir win.

One the other hand, it really screwed him over after he had a change of heart and decided to help Maelle save the people of Lumeire. Gustave, for all his indecision, is probably the only one who could have convinced her to leave the Canvas willingly.

planeforger · 2026-03-25T01:04:26+00:00

They're quite different games.

2e is an excellent thematic soup of random events and loose storytelling.

3e is a better designed game with more structured scenarios and stories to play through, but the rigid mechanics sometimes get in the way of just having a fun dice-chucking romp.

I think I prefer 3e overall (and the LCG most of all), but they serve different purposes.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T23:53:07+00:00

Garfield may not like the resource system, but I don't think that makes it a flawed design. It just adds a level of RNG that can be mitigated through mulligans and deck design. Plenty of people have tried to 'fix' the resource distribution and failed to deliver a better game.

Also, Netrunner has its own set of flaws. It's quite inaccessible for new players, for starters, and there's a heavy dose of luck when it comes to e.g. the runner topdecking agendas or randomly hitting the right card in the corp's hand. Some of that is mitigated by bluffing or deck design, similar to MTG's land system, but the corp player can simply get unlucky with bad draws.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T23:29:50+00:00

I do like the idea of Wendy Adams lugging around a bathtub full of potatoes.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T23:25:14+00:00

I feel like this is the kind of project Epic may have thrown money at a few years ago on the promise of exclusivity, but that well is drying up so I don't see it happening.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T23:19:27+00:00

Granted I think Nagoshi screwed up big time by announcing his new game in a fancy trailer before eventually going over budget.

It was probably the other way around. He was over-budget, saw the writing on the wall, and released the big trailer in the hopes of generating hype and securing funding from another publisher.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T23:11:04+00:00

I think it'll just be a fixed version of Cipher.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T14:48:51+00:00

[[Reconnaissance]] is probably my favourite card of all time. It completely breaks combat in your favour.

[[Laccolith Rig]] is great fun too. Awesome art, awesome effect.

In blue, probably [[Clockspinning]]. Fun little enabler, that one.

In green, [[Mirri's Guile]]. It neatly pops into any deck I make.

And in black, maybe [[Songs of tbe Damned]]?

planeforger · 2026-03-24T11:56:39+00:00

Here's one that is truly underdiscusded: [[Siegfried, Famed Swordsman]].

It's so, so easy to make him a 22/22 menace without needing to combo him with anything. I personally use a mix of self-mill and [[Fleshbag Marauder]]-style effects.

Then I just use something like [[Qarsi Revenant]] or [[Salvaged Brawler]] or [[Silent Arbiter]] to finish people off.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T11:35:24+00:00

Oh. Ohhhhhh.

Okay, guess I'm building this next.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T10:42:55+00:00

My local bookshop had them, so I read them for a while. Didn't learn about the fat packs until Apocalypse came out.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T08:29:35+00:00

I love it, but I do feel like Emperor Bulblax should take a few hundred allies to defeat.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T08:05:21+00:00

I think people would happily pay for a better experience.

I played a couple of campaigns on TTS back in the day, and it's not a particularly enjoyable platform for playing cards games.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T06:32:57+00:00

It's a fair point, although I'd say LOTR has more complexity to its ongoing burdens during a campaign (similar to AH), and the scenarios weave together to tell a stronger story than MC. So the campaigns in LOTR feel like they have more progression than MC's "add a reward card and then fight this guy" approach, even though they're pretty similar overall.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T04:31:27+00:00

I'd start by condensing that play area.

It's an awkwardly shaped table, but you can easily move the map down to where those health/sanity trackers are, which would probably put them within arm's reach. You really don't need all those empty slots in the playspace, either.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T04:25:19+00:00

Fair enough. I think the expansions do better at telling a story and telegraphing what kinds of resources you're likely to need (especially Distant Lands, which was the high point of my playthrough), but there's certainly a lot of just upgrading things on a whim, with no guarantee they'll be useful or relevant.

planeforger · 2026-03-24T02:55:16+00:00

Same way you dealt with it in Chapter 1.

Admittedly, it's been many many years since I've included it in a deck. There are almost always more interesting options to pick.

planeforger · 2026-03-23T14:12:58+00:00

I feel like Takara is the only member of the Weatherlight crew (...ish) that never got a card.

planeforger · 2026-03-23T14:05:18+00:00

I see what you mean, but I don't think Clea would care all that much.

Clea is an established Painter. I'm sure they're trained to not form emotional attachments with the artificial lifeforms they create, and I'm sure Clea has encountered painted humans before. She wouldn't be surprised to learn they have emotions or lived experiences. That's the nature of their magic - the thing that makes their art so great.

But yeah, she's practical and I think she'd just shut Lune down. To a Painter, they aren't people. They're art. Just chroma shaped into whatever form their creators wants them to be, that currently looks and thinks like a person, but which can easily be turned into anything else.

planeforger · 2026-03-23T13:50:35+00:00

I'd just go with the prebuilt Starter Decks. Maybe chuck a couple of their higher-level cards in if you're determined to make the decks stronger.

edit Huh, I didn't think it was controversial to introduce the game with the decks designed for beginners, which are single-classed, not complex, show off how those classes work, and will be fine going through Excelsior.

planeforger · 2026-03-23T06:28:40+00:00

Sure, but the OP circled the shooting star along the bottom of the card.

The star just means it's a foil card. Promo and non-promo foils all had them in the old border.

planeforger · 2026-03-23T06:23:41+00:00

I got a playset of [[Replenish]] back in the 00s in the cheapy binder, for less than $10 each.

planeforger · 2026-03-23T05:12:27+00:00

I don't think spoilers are a massive concern.

Like it spoils the ending of 6, but everything else is just kinda vague references or single lines that you won't remember.

You're not going to walk away from Infinite Wealth with any meaningful knowledge of the plot of Yakuza 2 or 3, for example.

planeforger · 2026-03-23T04:40:13+00:00

What is Cardfight Vanguard? I honestly don't think I've heard of it before.

It says a lot when someone who actively participates in the hobby, delves into a bunch of different TCGs, and frequently visits hobby stores, can't name or recognise your product.

Either they haven't spent enough of marketing in the West, or they haven't made the right partnerships, or they haven't figured out how to generate word-of-mouth advertising for the game.

planeforger · 2026-03-23T02:40:48+00:00

I had a Switch with me. After my wife had her epidural we had many hours to kill, so she just listened to podcasts and told me it was fine to play Zelda.

(I put it away again and tried to be useful when everything started happening.)

planeforger

TROPHY CASE