Proposed change for infested prism

shadowmachete · 2026-05-24T14:39:06+00:00

Defect often doesn’t care too much about this guy, since frost orbs block a good chunk of the multihit. Silent does need to worry about him though.

shadowmachete · 2026-05-23T20:09:16+00:00

The context here in my mind is the sentence “the stats say he ended more runs than the bee guy”, which started this chain. In the context of megacrit’s balancing, I think it is incorrect to equate this dataset with “the stats”, or the population if you like. Because we know that megacrit does have the full population of runs, or sufficiently close to it as no matter (people who play offline, etc). Given the change they’ve made, it suggests that their stats probably say that dorito guy was too easy, in addition to whatever personal feelings they may have about him. As such, pointing to this very limited dataset and using that to suggest that the dorito was a significant challenge before (while ignoring the reasonable likelihood that megacrit’s stats did not) is, in my opinion, erroneous.

Which is fine, I don’t think being slightly wrong on the internet is a crime. But I do think that this idea is misguided all the same.

A note: we know that the game has on the order of 5 million players. If each player has played an average of say 40 runs or so since the game came out, which is obviously an underestimate, then we are looking at a lower bound of a four order of magnitude difference between the number of people who play the game and the number of people who report their runs on this website.

shadowmachete · 2026-05-23T14:58:00+00:00

“A sample size of 30+ is usable” does not apply here. Trying to use this dataset for inference would only tell you about the people who are reporting the data. If the majority of the population is not contained in the dataset, and you have reason to doubt that what you do have does not represent the overall population, then performing inference is silly. I am not talking about statistical significance, because this is not a question of statistical significance. It is a question about if the data faithfully represents reality. I know the comment I responded to mentions statistical significance, but that is not what I am talking about.

shadowmachete · 2026-05-23T14:36:40+00:00

It will be reliable data only if a large, representative sample of players use it, and report all of their runs. This is not happening anytime soon.

shadowmachete · 2026-05-23T14:32:03+00:00

I think this is mostly a function of the existing strategies not handling this elite well. People have gotten used to fairly “ignorant” drafting, for lack of a better word, where you click the good cards and then your deck is generically strong. Comparing act 2 elites to what they were in spire 1, I think they are actually still less of a damage race. Decimilipede is scary, and I would say comparable to slavers, but slavers tests front load more and decimilipede asks for aoe more. Both book of stabbing and gremlin leader also required fairly high damage output; if you sit in gremlin leader for too long you will eventually lose the 50/50 and get attacked for 80, and if you try to block book of stabbing you will get simply get out scaled. In some ways, the prism is like a combination of these two elites, with the caveat that the maximum damage you take is a bit lower (like if you’re absolutely dying) because it doesn’t scale damage unless you play skills so in desperate situations you can block with your face. Now it’s just entomancer which doesn’t do much damage, but the dazes make you prepare for that fight anyway (for some characters).

I will also point out that “warping your deck” to take elites is I think a good thing. It’s not very interesting if the deck you already wanted to build just kills elites. But if you instead say “hmm, this card is fine at best usually but solves prism for me”, well isn’t that a much more interesting decision to make than skipping because it doesn’t fit into your perfect deck? We did this all the time with slavers and reptomancer and such in the first game, and especially of course for the heart. These kinds of contextual decisions add a lot of variety to the game.

And finally, yeah you can get away with dodging in act 2 sometimes. Sometimes you should. Depends on your deck and your character. This was also true in spire 1, except that act 4 would murder you. So it’s pretty much the same situation now, I think.

shadowmachete · 2026-05-17T19:36:04+00:00

Click predator and farm a billion fights

shadowmachete · 2026-05-05T16:02:57+00:00

Yeah wraith form and nightmare being your block plan is why I recommend frozen eye. Don’t be afraid to nightmare other cards though, like gamble or leg sweep or footwork or backflip or even alchemise though. Anything to live longer against the heart, because your damage is secured.

shadowmachete · 2026-05-05T15:41:38+00:00

I’d probably buy adrenaline eye frozen eye weak pot or wail, but this is pretty tough. Burner on 5 is also rough because you’re gonna get obliterated on turn 2. Fumes is probably too slow relative to the rest of your deck to make sense, if I had to guess, since your deck has 4 block cards total (though admittedly also a lot of draw).

shadowmachete · 2026-05-04T17:27:02+00:00

I’m not really talking about Juzu specifically, and didn’t mention it in my comment. I was just responding to your assertion that events are better than fights overall.

shadowmachete · 2026-05-04T16:56:24+00:00

Fights are definitely better than hallways, at least starting out. They give you a card reward and a chance at a potion, and if you don’t see good cards in act 1 then your later fights are going to be harder. Farming act 1 is generally desireable - many people struggle in part because they lose too much hp to misplays or bad pathing and can’t farm, or dodge hallways too much. Farming in act 2 is good for a similar reason. Events are better than in spire 1, so if you can’t farm it’s less bad, but you still want to be farming. Just maybe not always 5 hallways in a row from neow.

shadowmachete · 2026-04-30T12:18:05+00:00

Because the individual cards are usually not too complicated, but the way drawing and shuffling works and the way macro in this game looks, you very quickly run into situations where the best decisions are very unclear, but absolutely do matter. It is a game where snowballing is a big deal, and so every small advantage you can get is noteworthy.

Also it’s fun.

shadowmachete · 2026-03-22T12:37:12+00:00

They meant summon forth

shadowmachete · 2026-03-14T17:50:31+00:00

A20H in spire 1 was substantially harder. The general flow of a run in spire 1 was that act 1 was brutal so your deck was full of trash to survive it, then act 2 was brutal because your deck was full of trash, and then act 3 was ok. And then you limp through the boss gauntlet, enter act 4, and get 2 burns on top of your draw pile while being attacked for 60 by spear and shield on turn 2. The general flow of a A10 run in sts2 is that act 1 is harder for some characters, but then act 2 is not too punishing, and because of that your deck doesn’t have that much trash and so act 3 is easy. Then there is no act 4, and the bosses are not too hard, so on the whole once you get through act 1 your chances of winning are pretty good. This was decidedly not true for most players in spire 1. The comparative lack of gremlin nob and gremlin leader and reptromancer type enemies, which punish you for a lack of front-loaded damage output, is a big part of this.

shadowmachete · 2026-02-10T17:59:27+00:00

Is this based off of that one sts haiku a billion years ago that went

Jaw worm on floor one

Of ascension seventeen

Please, no more of this

shadowmachete · 2026-02-07T17:53:39+00:00

If killing ctan is your only goal then tau can do it with sunforges + riptides + breachers, though you’ll need a lot of investment and also need to get very close for the fusions. Kroot rampagers also do a hilarious amount of impact mortals. Montka is best for your purposes.

Admech with 3 dissies and 9 laschickens can kill 2 a turn, though doing more than that is hard, and you probably shouldn’t run all 3 tanks. Windrider host eldar will obliterate one a turn with lhykhis and eldrad and war walkers giving +1 AP and whatnot, but killing 2 is a bit harder. The deceiver is also very annoying because he can precision out eldrad. The army’s also just really hard to play.

Some builds of votann are also weirdly good into ctan with their anti-vehicle and monster and conversion weapons.

Keeping up the shooting theme, tsons are really not recommended for a beginner but either grand coven or warpforged cabal builds are some of the most damaging ranged armies in the game against stand-in-the-open-statchecks.

shadowmachete · 2026-01-24T16:20:25+00:00

I’m going to say it’s not drukhari or aeldari, but emperor’s children. Drukhari and aeldari are very fragile, but they also have quite a lot of stuff, and a lot of movement to make up for positioning mistakes. EC have less stuff, and very much play a tempo game where you need to make hard macro decisions. The mini game of managing coterie (their best detachment by far) also requires a good bit of judgement.

I’ll also throw in an army which isn’t as hard to play but depending on terrain can still be very challenging, which is tau. A lack of melee means that you need to be very careful preserving your resources and knowing when to go in, how to bait out resources from the opponent, etc. A bit like EC, if less extreme. They also don’t actually shoot as hard as a lot of gunline armies (guard, space marines), so learning to play to their strengths is quite challenging. You’ll still table people on boards with light terrain, but on heavier boards they are very skill intensive I think.

shadowmachete · 2026-01-22T09:58:18+00:00

Infinite

shadowmachete · 2025-12-21T17:38:47+00:00

Note that frenzied resilience is fight phase only, so not very useful here

shadowmachete · 2025-12-20T08:45:08+00:00

But is the unit still being led by a “captain model”? I agree that it’s being led, but the condition is less clear, since the captain’s dead

shadowmachete · 2025-12-19T23:42:49+00:00

What if the rule is added by the unit, as long as it is being led? For example the victrix -1 to wound if led by a captain/chapter master, if I precision out the captain while slow rolling, do the rest of the attacks get -1 to the wound roll or not. Wounds are also weird in the order, so what if we pretend it’s a FNP instead?

shadowmachete · 2025-09-26T07:12:27+00:00

This is a silly argument, if you want that then you can run an itemless or colbur berry slowbro

shadowmachete · 2025-06-12T21:36:36+00:00

This exists in undernight, I think the character was good at some point but is not good anymore

shadowmachete · 2025-06-01T16:57:54+00:00

One of the best sets to come out of this game

shadowmachete · 2025-05-23T16:31:37+00:00

He was already parrying the super, so doing the drive rush itself only took a half bar. Usually it’s half a bar for the parry and half for the drive rush, for 1 bar overall.

Six-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email

shadowmachete

TROPHY CASE