It’s been a fun month.
Apex
Late last year, I picked up Apex Legends, a really popular battle royale shooter with tons of unique characters. I was a bit hesitant about picking it up since BR games aside from Rumbleverse haven’t really been my thing in these past couple years. Once I got bored of Fortnite back in its early days, I kinda left the genre alone. To my surprise and delight, Apex has been a ton of fun, largely due to its really cool characters and the fact that I’ve been playing with a buddy.
So far in my Apex journey, I’ve been playing Wraith and Catalyst, and I’m looking forward to trying Newcastle once I get enough in-game currency to buy him. I’m absolute dog shit with both Wraith and Catalyst, but the learning experience has been fun and I’m slowly getting better with them. Aside from my general incompetence in shooters, I really have to get better at the times I use my characters’ abilities.
Splitgate
After taking some time off, I’m also back to playing Splitgate a bit. Since the last time I played, they’ve announced that development on the current game is over, and that they’re focusing on making a new Splitgate game . This doesn’t mean the game is left high and dry, though. They introduced an infinite battle pass and have been continuing to highlight community plays and maps all the same.
I still love playing Splitgate. I just love arena shooters, so I’m glad there’s still one around for me to play. Forever grateful they made this game run natively on Linux.
Card Games
Card game stuff shook up a bit this month. I’ve been playing Shadowverse and Marvel Snap on my own time and playing Master Duel with my buddy. Trying out new decks in all 3 games, as well.
Rage Against the EARTH MACHINE!!!
The latest deck I’ve been trying out in YGO is Earth Machine, a deck built around, well, earth machine monsters. It takes all the good earth attribute machine archetypes and puts them all in one deck, similar to how Dinosaurs, Zombies, Warriors, and Cyberse decks do with their respective types.
Earth Machine is pretty fun. Going first, it doesn’t really set up negates. It just tries to survive because its followup is absolutely disgusting. Going 2nd, the deck has some power play cards that can definitely help it go into boards, such as Urgent Schedule . The release of Therion King Regulus gives this deck a nice power boost since he provides a negate to protect its plays and combos very well with Machina Gearframe .
One of the archetypes in Earth Machine, Machina, is also very fun on its own. Pure Machina is usually played as a trap deck, aiming to out-resource the opponent and play beatdown with its big monsters with Skill Drain in play.
Finally, Rexterm got released in Master Duel, so Dinomorphia is a real deck now. List is damn near the same as the one I posted on here some months ago. Still my favorite deck.
AAARGH, Nigga
After not playing much Shadowverse these last two expansions, I’ve been playing more this expansion now that the meta has changed and become more board-focused. Mid-range decks are probably the most fun decks to play to me in card games, so I’m glad when they’re good.
After basically a year of Loot Sword being a package, it’s now a full on deck, and it’s a fun one. The deck aims to fulfill the “use or fuse 7 loot cards” “quest” that the new Loot cards have in order to gain access to their powerful spell, Dread Pirate’s Flag while gaining value with their effects. Tidal Gunner burns, Storm-Wracked First Mate summons followers, and Deep-Sea Scout draws a card. They combo very well with each other and existing Loot cards. The deck can pretty easily kill on turn 7-8 by Making use of Remnant of Hollowness at full power along with Barbaros, Briny Convict .
This deck is so much fun. It has a bit of learning curve, and I’ve misplayed more than once since coming back and picking it up, but it’s so satisfying to play. It is in a bit of a weird spot, however, because a good chunk of cards the deck runs that are important to its strategy rotate out at the end of this expansion. Cards like Octrice , Adherent , and Kagemitsu leave rotation. There are some other Loot cards, but it’s gonna take some adjusting and probably some time for this deck to be scary after the next expansion because Cygames does not often follow up on Sword archetypes. My assumption is next expansion will see a new sword archetype come in instead of cards that fill this deck’s holes, which is unfortunate. We gotta see, though. For now, this is the most fun deck I’m playing in any card game right now.
There is another deck that came through, and that is test Subject Rune, which aims to summon multiple Volunteer Test Subjects and then OTK with Sephie . Really cool deck that I gotta mess around with more. It doesn’t lose much going into next expansion, so I’ll probably play it more there if Loot Sword is in a weird spot support-wise.
Negative Norman
Mr. Negative is a powerful card in Snap, being able to cause really wide swings in power thanks to his effect. I got bored and decided to try to play a deck with him myself. It’s definitely fun, but without Psylocke or Magik to help you play negative early or get an extra turn to draw another inverted card respectively, it’s not as scary. I will definitely look into this deck more whenever I get either of those cards.
Vampire Reign
I FINALLY GOT COLLEEN WING !!! This makes playing Discard a lot more fun since she can guarantee Swarm discards. I also have Dracula now, so the deck goes up more in power level because I can play the Chavez I draw on turn 6 and let Dracula discard Apocalypse to power himself up.
Midrange
I got this deck from streamer/youtuber Jeff Hoogland . It’s a pretty fun, flexible deck that’s fun to pilot. Captain Marvel is one of the sickest Marvel characters to me, so playing her in more decks is always welcome. I don’t have Mysterio or Titania , so I slotted in Black Widow and Rocket Raccoon .
Ole Reliable
Spectrum Destroyer is still a very fun and solid deck to climb with. The deck has been powercrept a bit with all the Zabu and Silver Surfer builds around, but it is still perfectly playable. However, because this deck used to be meta and is very accessible compared to other decks, people know how to play against it, so matchup knowledge and proper snapping and retreating are pretty important for this deck. I rotated some cards through this list, mainly Mojo , Sandman , Iron Man and Warpath . I really like this deck and will probably make a concentrated effort to climb with it next month. Electro and Invisible Woman are two cards I’m looking forward to trying out in this deck once I have them.
Fighting Games
Skullgirls
I’ve been more into Skullgirls recently. The game is very fun and I have so much I can learn in it. I’ve done a couple sparring sessions with a buddy and have been labbing some more resets so I can more properly stay in control of a match once I get a hit.
I’ve also been watching a lot of footage. Dekillsage uploads vods of the tournament he runs regularly, and I keep tabs on pages like MunozScyther and Tyrone O’Canada .
DNF Patch
DNF Duel got a patch mid December of last year, and it’s made the game a lot wilder. Frame 1 rolls, buffed guard cancels, and buffs to literally everyone. Not a single nerf found anywhere.
I’ve had a lot of fun on the patch, although I do have some gripes, mainly with Grappler specifically. Grappler’s buffs are nice, but they just translate to “You die if you get hit while I’m in awakening.” He didn’t get any buffs for his neutral, which is what he actually needed help with. My man has no pokes! He’s still fun and satisfying, but his problems didn’t really get addressed all that much. Hoping a patch later on touches him up.
Vangaurd and Inquisitor are doing pretty good, tho. Inquisitor got some nice changes to help her routes and a health buff that put her in the health range she probably should’ve been in to begin with. Vanguard got a lot of good changes, from his DP hitting crouchers to being able to kara into his 5m followups immediately.
There was probably a better combo here, but it wouldn't have looked as funny to me pic.twitter.com/6ND1CVZX4v
— Waterfowl_Evaders (@Jushido_Brown) January 4, 2023
Spectre got announced for the game along with a season pass, so there’s definitely a lot to look forward to with DNF this year.
+R
+R is still a great game. No other fighting game gets my heart pumping like it does. I’m also never death-matching a Sol before eating breakfast ever again.
— Waterfowl_Evaders (@Jushido_Brown) January 12, 2023
Xrd Rollback
Guilty Gear Xrd, my first GG game, got rollback on the 20th of this month . It’s a wonderful time to be alive.
Posting one of my favorite Xrd sets to celebrate.
DFO
I hadn’t played DFO for a good while because a security update broke it on Proton. However, another security update has corrected this, letting me play DFO on my Linux desktop again. I still gotta watch out for getting Captcha spammed if I play too much like a bot, but otherwise, I’m eating good.
Crazy Diamond’s Demonic Heartbreak
I learned about a Jojo spin-off manga called Crazy Diamond’s Demonic Heartbreak . It follows the unlikely team-up of Josuke and Hol Horse when the latter comes to Morio to find a parrot for an old woman.
This has been a blast so far. I’m a huge part 4 fan, so seeing Josuke again is amazing for me. And who doesn’t Hol Horse? Be honest. A really cool thing this manga takes the time to do is show how part 3 affected people. We get to see how Boingo and Hol Horse feel about themselves and their servitute to Dio back in part 3 and we also get to see how Kakyoin’s death affected his family.
The whole thing is just a blast. You can check it out here .
Ultraman Decker
I started watching Ultraman Decker on the official youtube channel and have been enjoying it a lot. Ultraman Trigger stuck its landing, but that didn’t solve or excuse the problems it had throughout its run, character development chief among them. Ultraman Trigger had a very weak cast and that hurt it in a lot of spots, especially the ending.
Ultraman Decker is already a big improvement, character-wise. Kanata, our hero, doesn’t have a grating catchphrase like Kengo did, and his team members are getting their development early and in a more tolerable fashion than the likes of Akito did back in Trigger.
All in all, it’s got some good montsers, good action, and good characters so far. I’m excited to finish the rest of it.
You can check out Ultraman Decker here