Moments when a piece of entertainment completely rocked you.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 6:49 am

Gurren Lagann is Super Robot, not Real Robot.

Those are the names of Mecha sub-genres, not statements on quality or preference. Mechs in the Real Robot sub-genre are intended to function like actual machines, and is exemplified by stuff like Patlabor. Mechs in the Super Robot sub-genre have basically magic powers and operate like super heroes, and are exemplified by stuff like Mazinger.

There are a few real gems and a lot of crap in both sub-genres. Basically Sturgeon's Law that 90% of everything is crap still applies, and choice of sub-genre is not an argument for or against quality.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 6:56 am

Oh, huh, I didn't realize Real Robot was a sub-genre. There goes my shitty joke.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 10:25 am

The gundam 00 movie opens with the characters watching a movie about their exploits in the previous series.

Said movie inside movie is a direct TTGL parody.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 11:30 am

Forerunner of the Empire+Anointed Procession+Polyraptor is a fun combo. This is the turn after my AP got destroyed, but I had a Fiery Cannonade to double my polyraptors.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 12:26 pm

There are some combos I can think of that would break Magic The Gathering Online if applied, does it have any "repeat forever" protections that allow you to stop doing something at some arbitrarily high number?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 1:25 pm

Kaelik wrote:There are some combos I can think of that would break Magic The Gathering Online if applied, does it have any "repeat forever" protections that allow you to stop doing something at some arbitrarily high number?

I haven't poked around in Arena at all, but MTGO is amazingly bad about loops, where it asks you to click through every single fucking part. You can time out winning with Krak Clan Ironworks or High Tide.

-Username17

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 2:37 pm

HAHAHAHA

Wow, so it does have a protection against infinite repeated actions, and the protection is that there is a game timer, and if you ever trigger a loop you lose instead of win.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 2:41 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Gurren Lagann is Super Robot, not Real Robot.

Those are the names of Mecha sub-genres, not statements on quality or preference. Mechs in the Real Robot sub-genre are intended to function like actual machines, and is exemplified by stuff like Patlabor. Mechs in the Super Robot sub-genre have basically magic powers and operate like super heroes, and are exemplified by stuff like Mazinger.

There are a few real gems and a lot of crap in both sub-genres. Basically Sturgeon's Law that 90% of everything is crap still applies, and choice of sub-genre is not an argument for or against quality.

-Username17

I love and adore Patlabor *-*

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 8:51 pm

Kaelik wrote:There are some combos I can think of that would break Magic The Gathering Online if applied, does it have any "repeat forever" protections that allow you to stop doing something at some arbitrarily high number?

In my limited experience with this deck, the protection against (this) loop is "your opponent is also doing shit, and you probably can't get an actual infinite loop going." But you can get 145 effects on the stack and resolve it if you have enough timers built up.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 10:25 pm

Prak wrote:
Kaelik wrote:There are some combos I can think of that would break Magic The Gathering Online if applied, does it have any "repeat forever" protections that allow you to stop doing something at some arbitrarily high number?
In my limited experience with this deck, the protection against (this) loop is "your opponent is also doing shit, and you probably can't get an actual infinite loop going." But you can get 145 effects on the stack and resolve it if you have enough timers built up.

I mean there are specific Magic Loops that say "whenever X happens, do Y to this card" and then another card says "Whenever Y happens, do X to this card." And the in game understanding that I am used to from casual MTG playing with friends in middle school and high school was "well we can agree that after both those things happened and infininte number of times, my next action would be to attack you with my Infinity/Infinity Creature with trample and/or cast my Infinity Damage spell and/or Tap the card and spend my infinity tokens to do infinity damage and I would win"

Whereas apparently in MTGO you would just be stuck approving additions to your token stack that cause a creature to tap/untap until you run out of time.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Sat Mar 31, 2018 11:19 pm

The official rules at least at one time said that when you do an infinite loop you must choose to end it after a finite (but arbitrarily large) number of cycles. Which means that if you make an infinite combo, and the opponent counters with an infinite combo, theirs will be bigger.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 7:17 am

Foxwarrior wrote:The official rules at least at one time said that when you do an infinite loop you must choose to end it after a finite (but arbitrarily large) number of cycles. Which means that if you make an infinite combo, and the opponent counters with an infinite combo, theirs will be bigger.

There's a difference between a voluntary infinite loop and an involuntary infinite loop. If it's voluntary, you can demonstrate it and then declare that it happens any arbitrary finite number of times. If it's involuntary, the game ends in a draw.

Where MTGO sucks ass is that it can't handle the repeated loop part. You have to click on all the things you are using in each iteration of the loop. Which isn't quite the end of the world when you are doing something like Saheeli Cat, where you click three times for each Saheeli to duplicate a cat (once to select the Saheeli, once to select the second ability, once to select the target), once to target the Saheeli with the Cat, and then repeat. So once you've set "always yield" to the Saheeli and the Cat, you need four more clicks per phantom cat, and each attacks your opponent for 1 so you probably want to click about a hundred times, give or take 20-40 clicks depending on life totals. That's doable enough that your opponent is probably going to concede rather than watch you do it.

But if your combo is getting infinite mana out of a Sneak Attack + Palinchron. Now you click on all the lands for mana, click on the Sneak Attack, click on the Palinchron, click on all the lands you want to untap, click on the Palinchron again to activate its ability, click on the mana you want to pay for its ability with, and then repeat. If you have six lands in play, each cycle nets you 1 mana of any color your lands can make past the cycle's mandatory 1 Red and 2 Blue, and requires you to click 19 times. That's not a fucking joke. Seriously, 19 clicks. Make sure you have always yield up to the Sneak Attack and the Palinchron or it's even more clicks.

And the thing is that your opponent isn't even incentivized to concede. Yes, you're about to make infinite mana, but you haven't demonstrated a kill condition. Even if you have a Walking Ballista in play and can convert mana directly into face damage an unlimited number of times, we're still talking about you needing 80+ mana and then 3 clicks per point of face damage to your opponent. You're going to have to click over 1,500 times, and you have a timer. Your opponent could very plausibly just F6 to autoyield and say "please proceed mother fucker."

In paper you just show the cards and say "I have unlimited mana now, I will have one thousand mana now" and move on to the rest of your turn. But in MTGO you can actually lose the game for time getting your mana to numbers that are still less than 100.

-Username17

Zaranthan · Post by **Zaranthan** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:14 pm

Having played in a hobby shop that developed an absolute fetish for infinite loops (I once played a dozen games in a row against twelve different people who all attempted to go infinite), I'm okay with this.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:28 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:In paper you just show the cards and say "I have unlimited mana now, I will have one thousand mana now" and move on to the rest of your turn.

Unless you have one of those players who will not accept this - mandating that you either go through the full motions or not get the benefit. I had this happen to me in a tournament, and thus ran into the turn limit barrier, and I never found out if this was standard behavior.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:32 pm

I just started watching Santa Clarita Diet last night. So far, it seems to be a pretty good mixture of absurd and black comedy. I've only seen Timothy Olyphant in serious roles before. I love his exasperated deliveries of "What the fuck!?" every time he learns something new about his wife.

Also, the tail end of the first episode: "I really want to make this work."

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 3:37 pm

Oh, that is a fantastic show. I watched it with my mother and grandmother, and they both enjoyed it as well, and they generally don't spring for absurdist OR dark humor. It can get a bit gross at times, though.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Apr 06, 2018 5:27 pm

So, Dark-Carnival Metal Group Raven Black is touring again, and after they blew me away when I saw them live as an opening act last December, I'm eager to go to the show they're headlining.

But the relevant part here is that the tour's lineup of all female-fronted Metal bands includes one of which is named after D&D Monster.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would wear this patch on their jacket regardless of musical preferences Linky to art on Facebook.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Sat Apr 07, 2018 6:27 am

virgil wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:In paper you just show the cards and say "I have unlimited mana now, I will have one thousand mana now" and move on to the rest of your turn.
Unless you have one of those players who will not accept this - mandating that you either go through the full motions or not get the benefit. I had this happen to me in a tournament, and thus ran into the turn limit barrier, and I never found out if this was standard behavior.

Not unless they changed their policy dramatically since I played competitively.

If someone pulled that on me, I'd call for a judge, who would then ask me to demonstrate the combo, then ask me how many times I wanted to do it, then tell my opponent to pound sand. I was an MTG judge at one point, that was the policy on infinite controlled combo at the time. The opponent's only recourse would be to say, after the number of times was set, "I want to interrupt the sequence at X point".

That said, someone did once invent a combo deck that was designed to take the entire 50 minute round limit to finish. It's not that they couldn't kill their opponent, it's just they chose to go through the motions as if they couldn't until time was called. It's impossible to sideboard against a deck that only plays one game.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Apr 07, 2018 9:19 am

Neeek wrote:That said, someone did once invent a combo deck that was designed to take the entire 50 minute round limit to finish. It's not that they couldn't kill their opponent, it's just they chose to go through the motions as if they couldn't until time was called. It's impossible to sideboard against a deck that only plays one game.

Four Horsemen. Basalt Monolith taps and untaps itself infinitely. Doing that mills you one card per twiddle. Everytime you flip The Aeons Torn, you shuffle your library and graveyard.

You do stuff in between. Narcomebas come out for free and you can sacrifice them to play stuff from your graveyard and then reshuffle them into your deck and do it again. But it takes fucking forever because it's a non-deterministic loop that requires multiple shuffles.

Essentially: You keep flipping cards until you have flipped three Narcomebas in play. Then you keep flipping cards and shuffling until you have Sharuum, Blasting Station, and Dread Return in your graveyard. Then you sacrifice three Narcomebas to exile the Dread Return to put Sharuum into play, which lets you put the Blasting Station into play. Then you keep shuffling and flipping for Narcomebas to sacrifice back into the grave to untap the Blasting Station to do 1 point of damage per cycle.

And yes, you can use Cabal Therapy to remove your opponent's Fore of Will before it's time to cast Dread Return. The combo basically can't fail once it's got the Orb and the Monolith in play, but it takes hundreds of shufflings to even get to the point where you can start taking damage.

-Username17

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Mon Apr 09, 2018 1:25 am

I know they've been popular around here for a long time, but I just played my first 'legacy' boardgame. Specifically, Legacy Risk. I was not the first person to play - rather I came in on the 4th game. Over the course of the three prior games there had been significant changes to the board state, which certainly made the game interesting and added stakes - what happened in this game impacts future games. All in all, it was pretty cool.

There was one issue. The box had sealed sections to be opened when certain criteria were completed. Two of the sealed sections were 'switched'. We opened the section we were supposed to, but it was obvious that it belonged under the other section. So we now know what is happening in the next 'event'.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon Apr 09, 2018 2:13 am

IME, Risk Legacy was a fairly entertaining proof of concept, the real gold was Pandemic Legacy (Season 1), which was fucking awesome (I haven't played or heard anything about season 2). SeaFall was... okay; the legacy elements were good, but the underlying game was weak.

Anyway, play Pandemic Legacy 1.

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Mon Apr 09, 2018 2:35 am

Just finished playing through Pandemic Legacy Season 2 myself, and it's just as amazing as Season 1. The plot is a sequel to the first season, so while someone doesn't need to have played through Season 1 first (one of the players in my group hadn't, and didn't have any difficulty following along) they really, should to appreciate all the little lore/exposition tidbits if nothing else.

Whether it's better than S1 is hard to say. On the one hand, S2 is more divergent from baseline Pandemic than S1, because S1 is "start with the vanilla Pandemic scenario, then add mechanics and plot" while S2 is "start with the state of the world at the end of S1 and go from there," so it's less familiar and somewhat more restrictive to start than S1 was. It's hard to describe without spoiling anything, but suffice to say that the first few games of S2 definitely feel more constrained and more punishing if not played "right" than the beginning of S1 did.

On the other hand, a large portion of the Legacy mechanics in S1 copied or were inspired by the various existing Pandemic expansions, while everything in S2 is completely new and so there's much more discovery and surprise for Pandemic veterans. Which also makes it more replayable; I've played through S1 three times with different groups (while avoiding spoiling anything for them as much as possible) and things started getting a bit rote with the third playthrough as the obvious optimal or near-optimal strategies emerged, but I can see enough possible strategies in S2 to easily support 4-5 playthroughs while taking totally different approaches...not that anyone but me a diehard Pandemic fan would want to bother, probably.

One of my fellow players definitely preferred S1, another definitely preferred S2, and I'm still undecided until I play through S2 again. But regardless, yes, anyone vaguely interested in a Legacy-style game should play through one or both of he Pandemic Legacy seasons. 6 out of 5 stars, would definitely force friends to play through again.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Mon Apr 09, 2018 4:55 pm

How different of a play experience would you get if you played Pandemic Legacy (S1) with two players vs three or four? It would be really easy to play this with my wife, without worrying about other people's schedules. That being said, if it's not as much fun, maybe I want to go through the hassle of worrying about other people's schedules.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon Apr 09, 2018 5:33 pm

I think the big thing you'd lose out on is exploring the expansion material. I played through with three players and there were a lot of cool characters we never got to try out because nobody wanted to give up the Dispatcher or Researcher and that third slot was competitive.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Mon Apr 09, 2018 6:02 pm

RobbyPants wrote:How different of a play experience would you get if you played Pandemic Legacy (S1) with two players vs three or four? It would be really easy to play this with my wife, without worrying about other people's schedules. That being said, if it's not as much fun, maybe I want to go through the hassle of worrying about other people's schedules.

In normal Pandemic, you can have one player control more than one character without anything falling apart. I didn't finish my S1 Legacy campaign, but the games I played didn't introduce any traitor or hidden information mechanics that would make multiple characters per player infeasible.