Some people sell their code packs online, though I guess it could be risky.

I’m basically in TCG Live to practice the game and to figure out how a deck is working before sleeving up in paper.

TCG Pocket is just a fun diversion. 2 free packs a day is like little dopamine hits, for better or worse. I can let my nieces and nephews “rip” a pack open as a reward without thinking “that’s $4 gone.”

TCG Live is for people who actually care about Pokemon TCG and the complexities and depth it offers. It’s not that confusing; there are maybe 3 currencies, and one of its features, like it or not, is that you can’t just swipe a credit card and get everything you want. The only money-to-game translation is buying IRL boosters and scanning in the codes. Yes, the app can be fairly buggy, but it’s what we’ve got for now, ever since they closed Pokemon TCG Online. It doesn’t have trading, which is to prevent people from just having a dozen accounts and amassing all the value into one.

The currencies aren’t too bad: Coins are for cosmetics. Crystals are the “premium” currency for unlocking the battle pass or buying the equivalent of IRL sealed products (boosters, display packs, bundles, etc). Credits are like dust from other TCGs. Duplicate cards beyond 4 are “dusted” and you can convert them into the singles you want for deck building.

TCG Pocket is to slowly attract people into collecting actual cards again. After you get into the cadence of opening your 2 free packs a day, people might start to be interested in collecting physical cards, which pulls them into paying for boosters (rather than just buying singles) and trying the actual card game. It’s just a small bonus that TCGPocket might also earn them a bit of money, largely off of old art and minimal playtest work.

Aggression should be part of a game, but shouldn’t be the only way to play it. Obviously, when a game is optimized, it may be the best way to play (Monster Hunter and HAME speedruns come to mind), but a lot of great games try to design so that different archetypes can coexist and play off one another.

Street Fighter 6 encourages aggression. The Drive Meter system makes it so that turtling and blocking forever will end with you in blowout, taking chip damage and having worse frame disadvantage, as well as removing your ability to use Drive moves and opening you up for stuns. However, also hidden within the Drive System are some of the tools to deter mindless aggression. Drive Impacts are big moves with armor that lead into a full combo, so if you can read a braindead attack sequence, you can Drive Impact to absorb a hit, smack them, and then combo them for 35% of their life total. There are also parries, which can refill your drive meter.

Magic: The Gathering has tried to balance the various archetypes (Aggro, Midrange, Control, and Combo) so that every format should have at least 1 competitively viable deck in each meta archetype. Typically, Aggro will be too fast for a Control deck to stabilize and kill them before they can get their engine set up. But Midrange will trade just efficiently enough (with good 2-for-1 removal or creatures) to stop the aggression, and then start plopping out creatures that Aggro will have difficulty overcoming. And Combo often has nothing to fear from Aggro, since Aggro oftentimes can’t interact with the game-winning combo pieces. And because of this system, Aggro decks have to have sideboard plans ready for whatever meta they expect at an event or tournament. Removal or protection to get over or under Midrange, and faster speed or other types of interaction to take down or disrupt Combo. Magic’s systems (Mana/lands, instant speed removal, and even the variance that comes from being a card game) don’t punish aggro directly, but they make sure that there are usually answers out there.

Bam, Brotherhood’s End. Or something like that.

You’re right, I guess I wasn’t thinking it all the way through. Guess it’s up to SE to decide if they want to hire more artists and spend their time polishing bits of older content.

I’m hoping that the Spotlight Series next year really highlights Pioneer, because there really isn’t anywhere else it’ll get the eyes of the tournament grinders.

UB in everything is definitely a big pill to swallow. I obviously love a lot of the media that the crossovers are coming from, and I’m certainly going to enjoy buying the cards. But it does take away from the cohesion of what Magic is and feels like (even in its multiplanar setting). And now that it’s making its way into Standard and Pioneer, instead of a casual space (Commander) or a place where I never played (Modern, Legacy, and Vintage), it does feel icky to think about sitting down with my deck that’s all in-world, and my opponent is playing some amalgam of Magic cards and Sephiroth and Spider-Man.

Usually when a dev studio says “budget”, it’s primarily a time budget, not just money. Yes, money can be used to hire more staff, but everything we know about software development says that output doesn’t scale linearly with man-hours.

Fixing hats in the way they would like (which isn’t just the modded method of having ears or parts of heads clip through whatever hats/helms exist) would require them to go through every headpiece created so far and rework them for the races’ head shape. Is it possible? Yes. Is it the best use of their time and effort? Probably not. It’s a live game; they’re always pushing on for the next bit of content.

I can build a new PC or whatnot, but one thing that has helped the Deck along is that it’s established a clear standardized set of specs that some developers have chosen to build for. Obviously there have been plenty of games that won’t run on the deck, but sites like ProtonDB basically create a sticker for “this runs well on the Deck.”

I’m a Marvel guy, so I’m definitely interested in these Secret Lairs… But they’re limited print again, so they’ll be sold out within an hour and then scalped for 4x the price. Yay.

It’s a real shame; Irvine has lots of great food, and it’s another large east-Asian population center within the LA-OC metro area, but it’s also so staunchly Republican that I can’t stand to watch local news down there.

That’s nothing against the university, though. I have family who got their degrees there, and I even took summer classes on campus once. I dig the school and it was my fallback when I applied for colleges (back when it was possible to have a fallback).

I was gifted Tokaido for Christmas, and while I haven’t played a game of it yet, I’ve gone through the rules and simulated a few turns, and it doesn’t feel interactive or exciting. It feels fairly solitary, aside from the entire “do I want to be ahead of the group and get the bonuses, or trail in the back and get more actions?”

On the other hand, my playgroup has largely enjoyed Wingspan and Wyrmspan. Wyrmspan specifically felt like a good step forward, because the resources felt much tighter, and it felt like there were various approaches to the game that could work well.

I haven’t delved into this game much, and I’m not well-versed in 40K lore, but do you only get to play as the Ultramarines, or do they have other legions/chapters to customize as?

I think it’s a shame it had to come to this. I trusted the RC and CAG to make good decisions for the direction of Commander, and there will always be a risk of business execs higher than Gavin and MaRo pushing things to maximize profits, but I also understand why it had to be done. People apparently just can’t be civil online.

This talk was a good look into who the format will be resting with, and it’s encouraging, at least. They look like they’re putting a lot of thought into how they want people to approach Commander, even if I think the entire tier system is wonky. I have some decks that are full of absolute junk and fun cards, but of course they have to run some efficient cards, whether it’s removal or ramp, and if those are tier 4 and the rest of my deck plays like a 2, it would be frustrating to have to label it as a 4. Overall, it should just be a shortcut to indicate the general strength or speed of the deck, so people can all have fun in a game. It shouldn’t replace rule 0, that’s for sure.

I dislike the Epic Launcher and almost every move they’ve made as a company, but I’m glad that competition exists. People should have choices of where to get games, in ways that make sense for them. Unfortunately, I don’t really see a reason to choose EGS other than exclusives and freebies, but hopefully they actually develop it into a valid candidate.

In general, having more publishers and storefronts and developers in a place of stability is good for the industry. It sucks when studios have to get shut down because the funding isn’t there.

Any big finds in this list?

I’ve personally really enjoyed Sea of Stars. I don’t know if it’s too short or too long, because it did drop out of my attention for a bit, but the good moments are great. One of 2 games where I actually teared up/cried last year.

I like Into the Breach a lot! I’m not much for roguelike/roguelite games because I feel like I’m not improving/learning at the rate that the game expects, but Into the Breach is just so cool and fun, and it’s the tactics-based game that has made me think the most on every individual move. Each team plays so differently, and they do make use of the run-based system in interesting ways.

The study isn’t from Oxford. It’s from a team of Chinese scientists (likely in China) who used a large dataset collected in the UK.

The study is published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, which the Oxford Academic collects and reproduces for their academic press.

If you care about story, I’d recommend going 0, Kiwami, Kiwami 2, 3,4, 5, 6, 7 (Like a Dragon), Man Who Erased His Name, and then Infinite Wealth (8).

If you specifically want turn-based combat, you can start on 7 and honestly be pretty OK.

If you just want to have an enjoyable time, you can jump in on any side entry, like Judgment/Lost Judgment, Isshin, or this new Pirate one.

Overall, the mainline Yakuza games have an earnest and serious plot, with moments that take it over the top. But all of it is interspersed with moments of random goofiness and levity. My cousins have spent months on Yakuza 0 because they got really into learning Japanese Mah Jong and enjoyed the slot car racing.

It seems like most of your issues are not with the Magic Arena client, but with the formats being played on Arena (namely Historic and possibly Timeless?).

If you’re into a slower, more methodical format, look into playing bo3 Standard and Explorer. Decks can still be explosive, but not as ridiculous, and typically the level of threats is about equal to the level of answers available in the format.

Alternatively, lean into limited formats. Draft decks will always require some personal thinking, every set is like a brand new format, and in limited, Tempo is key. Card advantage is key. Threats are key. Answers are key. Everything matters, and most people aren’t going to even have 4-ofs in their deck, so there’s a wider variance in cards seen. Plus, it’s a place where commons and uncommons can shine!

Also, I don’t mind when people copy decks. Some people are trying to learn how to play well and efficiently, rather than express themselves with deck building. One Standard deck I was playing last year was based on a Gruul Haste deck I saw on YouTube, and then I made it and modified it based on what I had and how many wildcards I wanted to spend. I ended up doing the same for a different deck I built in paper: start with a deck list, modify it based on what I have and how expensive buying the remaining pieces would be. I still brew my own silly decks, but there’s a reason that a meta can exist. Fine-tuned competitive decks are typically more consistent at winning than random brews.

As for my personal dislikes…

• The timer should exist in best of 1

Not just the rope system, but the chess clock. Maybe have it set to 20 minutes per player or something. It drives me nuts when I touch bo1 and realize that I’m spending so much time waiting, but I can’t quantify it. In bo3, I can hover over the timer and see that I’ve used up 3 minutes while my opponent has used 7, and at least feel justified in my impatience.

• Better deckbuilding and deck categorization options

Deckbuilding is frustrating. When I want cards that are green, it gives me all cards with green in their color identity, which I wouldn’t play in a mono-G deck. The search feature is slow and makes me wonder if my game froze up each time. Trying to move multiple of a card into the sideboard is multiple click-drags. The crafting interface feels barely slapped on, and makes it too easy for new players to accidentally spend their wildcards. And overall, while we have space for tons of decks, I really wish I could just save all of my decks, or at least a revision history of each deck so I didn’t feel the need to duplicate it along the way to have something to turn back to if my tweaks are bad. I turn to third party trackers for this functionality, but it should really just be part of the client.

• As a newer player, Draft was intimidating because it required a gem (money) investment every single time

I know this is how it works in paper Magic, but I really wish there was a way to draft and practice for free in the client. I know there’s DraftSim and you can get a group together on Discord, but that’s too much to ask of a new player. I don’t mind dropping a few bucks now and then, but the “stakes” of it all get me anxious and pushed me away from even trying it for the first year.

I believe Erdogan (and Turkey in general) were big players in getting the wheat trade deal settled, as well as the prisoner exchange, though I could be misremembering. It’s just a weird situation of Erdogan having a history of centralizing power, but also making moves to be more relevant on the global stage.

Is it covert if you know it’s happening and have agreed to it?