A very interesting month.
Card Games
Yugimons
I went back to YGO for a little bit. I dismantled Earth Machine not because the deck wasn’t good or fun, but because I’m not playing enough ygo regularly to learn all the lines to avoid misplaying a bunch. So, I went back Ole Reliable Invoked. Invoked Dogmatika is still a really solid deck, and it’s fun despite being linear. It honestly feels good to normal summon the homie Aleister after so long.
Shaddoll Fusion is an absolute bomb going 2nd, and doing it while Magical Meltdown is up still feels like cheating. I really like Ultimate Slayer in this deck since it already runs targets for Maximus and can help set up Invoked plays before Aleister even hits the field.
This month was also the XYZ festival for Master Duel. Dinomorphia and Invoked are both fusion focused, so I needed to pull something out of my ass if I wanted to earn gems. Luckily, the Zoodiac archetype is dirt cheap and very effective. Zoodiacs are an archetype of literal 1 card XYZ summons, being able to XYZ their archetypal cards with only one archetypal monster to start, and further stack as they please. While Zoodiac has some other plays(which I haven’t bothered to learn yet), its current claim to fame is being able to make a 6-material Zeus off of one normal summon without even activating any monster effects, making it very good going 2nd. This is even better in the XYZ festival, where the nature of the format means less omni-negates running around. Playing just enough Zoodiacs to make sure I open one or acces to one, and the rest of the deck is a bunch of going 2nd cards. I love Ultimate Slayer, and it’s even better in a format with only one extra deck mechanic to take into consideration. Deck is pretty fun, and I’ll definitely keep it.
Shadowverse
It’s mini-expansion time! The base expansion is really good, so I’m excited to mess around the little bunch of new cards we’ve got.
Snap
Negatively Charged
I got enough tokens to finally buy Psylocke from the in-game token shop, and then pulled Bast and Adam Warlock back-to-back on my collection track, so my Mr. Negative deck got a huge boost. Psylocke lets me play Mr. Negative a turn early while Adam Warlock can help me draw extra inverted cards. Bast is great for making a lot of the cards in the deck more threatening/respectable on curve, especially Negative and Warlock. The deck is definitely a lot better with them in it. At the moment, my experience with the deck is a good amount of 1-cube retreats and then a 4 or 8 cube win. The deck is a lot of fun, although I do have the gripe that it’s not very disruptive. Most of the disruptive cards in the game are not worthwhile Negative targets. Rogue is very good for being the sole one here, though. Stealing Wong, Devil Dino, Dark Hawk, etc is so good. Also, my build is very all in on Mr. Negative; I don’t have back-up plan for the very possible situation where I can’t play him on curve, hence the several 1-cube retreats. Still, the wins I get balance it out. It’d take a lot to make me regret snapping when I See Psylocke and Negative in my hand by turn 2.
I got Magik at the very end of the month, and she makes a difference for sure, just as I expected. Getting rid of an annoying location on top of getting an extra turn is so good for this deck.
Have Some Bullshit
This an asshole deck. The entire gameplan is to fill up your opponent’s side of the field to limit where they can play. Using Viper to send over the -2 power Hood , Debrii to send Rocks to their side, Doc Oc to rip cards out of their hand, etc. It’s pretty fun. Very disruptive deck that can catch a lot of people off guard and just mess up their plans. However, I do have to get better about snapping early because this yet another deck that I play that makes it very obvious when the other guy is beaten.
This is probably the deck that enables Mojo the easiest out of the ones I played this month since I can just put crap over on their side of the field myself to proc him. Titania is a card I got late into the month, but she’s so very good for the deck, being able to be played out early to help clog up a lane and then take her back during the end or just be played out alongside Gamora at the end of the game for a 12-17 power play.
YOLO Doctor Octopus is a way of life. He is also the reason I’m packing the homie Shang-Chi . Ripping all the big bois out of my opponent’s hand and then killing them with Shang is super funny. Ripping an opposing Shang and getting my Doc OC killed is less funny, though.
Skullgirls
Skullgirls was the fighting game I played the most this month. I spent most of my time practicing resets. I spent a lot of time watching tournaments and long sets this month, too.
The character Black Dahlia will be released in full soon. I’m pretty excited to check her out. I would check her out in her current beta status, but I don’t think I’d wanna learn a bunch of stuff that could still potentially get changed on full release. Granted, it’s coming pretty soon from the looks of it.
Also, if you’re reading this and wanna keep up with Skullgirls, a new community site popped up to help direct people to resources and tournaments . The series also has a Webtoon that started a while ago that’s pretty good.
+R
I didn’t play much +R this month, but I did watch plenty of hype sets.
Really Cool Demos
This month had the Steam Next Fest go live,giving a lot of studios the chance to show off demos of their upcoming games. I hopped on Grim Guardians and Gestalt .
I’m a big fan of Inti Creates, the people behind Grim Guardians. I’ve played past games of their’s - Bloodstained: Curse of The Moon 1 & 2 and Master Blaster Zero 1 & 2.
A friend put me onto Gestalt late last year, and the aethetic hooked me instantly. I missed the first demo, so I was really happy to be around for this one.
Gestalt is very straightforward, but very fun. The level in the demo was a lot of fun to explore, and the ability progression system is reminds me of Final Fantasy XIII-2 & Tales of Xillia. The story setup is very interesting and the music was godlike throughout.
Grim Guardians has a very different aethetic compared to Bloodstained(Which makes a lot of sense, seeing as it’s a spin-off of the Gal-Gun franchise), but is very similar to it gameplay-wise, which is great in my book,because Curse of The Moon is one of my favorite video games. I gotta give props to the voice actors of the two sisters; they killed it.
My gameplay from the demos:
Apex
New Apex season, same me. I’m still having a lot of fun, but I still got a lot of work to do. I’m seeing some progress, though.
I got some nice cosmetic rewards from the anniversary event. Still, I forgot how long it was running and couldn’t get the heirloom. Always next time.
Rumbleverse
Rumbleverse ended its service this month. This game was a ton of fun, and I’m sad to see it go. I’ve had a lot of fun playing this game with my buddy Xero. A real gem. It will be missed.
Shouldn't have turned his back on my boy @xerocool19 !!!https://t.co/QWsGC5OL2l pic.twitter.com/8F8wnLplTh
— Waterfowl_Evaders (@Jushido_Brown) October 18, 2022
Comics & Manga
Gods of Thunder
Continuing my journey in reconnecting with comic books, I read Jason Aaron’s Thor: God of Thunder. I looked into this run because I heard a lot of praise for the God Butcher storyline that opens it. It easily lives up to that praise for me.
The God Butcher storyline has Thor fighting a deicidal alien named Gorr across three different periods in his life, all shown alongside each other. I am personally a sucker for stories that make use of multiple periods in time to tell a story/make a point. We see Thor’s tense first encounter with Gorr in his youth, his frantic hunt for him in the present, and his depressing battle to defend Asgard against him in the future. It all ends with all three versions of Thor teaming up in the future to try to finish him off before he tries to literally nuke every god out of existence.
Thor isn’t necessarily my favorite Avenger, but this storyline probably shoots him up there for me. He just gets a lot of moments to be a badass in this arc. It helps that we have three different versions of him here. We have his cockier younger self, his serious, but still kind present self, and his straight-laced, beard-flexing older self.
Widow’s Bite
Samnee’s 2016 Black Widow run is pretty good. Pretty straightforward premise: Natasha gets blackmailed into stealing from SHIELD and has to take down the guy blackmailing her and stop the next generation of red room assassins.
I like Black Widow. She wasn’t the most interesting character in the MCU, but her character alsways had potential to me, and it was realized sometimes, like during The Winter Soldier. She’s a cooler character here than during an of the movies I saw her in, and she has some pretty badass moments. Solid run.
The Galaxy’s Guardians
I also read a good amount of Guardians of the Galaxy this month. I read Duggan’s 2017 run and Ewing’s 2020 run. The first GotG movie in the MCU is one of my favorites, so I was excited to start reading the comics.
Duggan’s run is about the Guardians…doing a lot, honestly. They start off doing a heist, then they’re trying to gather the Infinity Stones, and they’re also helping the Nova corps, and they have to take down the guy who hurt Groot prior to the story. There a lot of moments that really endear the team to me in this run, especially Gamora and Drax. Gamora’s personal motivation in this run is to quite literally regain a piece of herself that’s trapped inside one of the stones, while Drax simply wants to not have to destroy things. These two end up having a nice moment together at the end of one of the issues that’s one of my favorite moments from the run. Star Lord gets an issue to shine where he mainly talks about music. His attachment to his physical media is a real relatable one, even for someone like me who has mostly gone digital(because my physical media colelctions are too big to grow anymore). Rocket is the lovable menace to society I remember him to be, and his love for his homie Groot is always gonna bring a smile to my face.
This run ends in a big crossover event that was kind of a stinker. I just skimmed through it once it lost me. It did let me see where that famous Moon Knight & Spiderman panel came from, though. Gamora also has a kickass outfit during this stretch.
Ewing’s run is a more dramatic story. Nova aska for Star Lord’s help with a fight against gods, and the Guardians have a falling out after Star Lord dies in the fight. This run adds some more characters to the Guardians line-up aside from the main 5, which makes sense an early conflict is that the Guardians split into two groups once Star Lord dies: one led by Gamora and the other by Rocket. I don’t mind the additions, but I’m not even remotely familiar with most of em, so this book is really me getting used to em. One appreciated addition is Richard Rider, the Nova from earth. I’ve always liked Nova mostly because of Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, where he’s just a fun character to watch go to work. Nova was in Duggan’s run, where he was good, but he’s used much more in this run. This book gives me some time to actually get to know him a bit better and humanizes for me in a really good way. He has a really bittesweet conversation with Gamora during the first half that really hit me.
All-New Guardians Guardians of the Galaxy
JOJOLands
The newest Jojo series began this month, and it’s off to a really promising start. The newest Jojo is a teenage drug dealer, and he has to team up with his Cross-dressing brother, their coworker, and a guy he sells drugs to in order to pull off a daimond heist. Really fun setup. His stand looks pretty badass. It’s kinda interesting how Jodio, our MC, is like the opposite of Giornio.
Ned
I loved Ned’s Declassififed when I was growing up, so this was a pleasant surprise. Not a lot to say, but it’s really cool to see these three again. Also, fun fact, Cookie’s actor is from the Sipp!
Sayonara, Donbrothers
Avataro Sentai Donbrothers wrapped up this month. This series has been nothing but a wild ride from start to finish. The finishing episodes of Donbrothers were not about any sort of confrontation with long-standing antagonists. Instead, these last few episodes were about the characters. Confronting Beastials, resolving the convoluted mess between Tsubasa and Kijino, Jiro accepting reality, etc. These were incredibly fun and gripping episodes. I especially loved the stuff with Jiro since he is probably my favorite out of the cast. He was out of focus for a while, so I was glad he was able to get some development and closure during the closing episodes and grow up a bit. He’s been “that friend that nobody likes” damn near the entire time, so him coming out a better person after a really huge personal tragedy is something I liked seeing.
The final episode was amazing. Everyone got their earned ending, Taro got to show us he’s that motherfucker one last time, and it really did a good job of just bringing almost everything full circle. Key word there is almost. The series does have a lot of unanswered questions, and there were some very sudden changes/decisions, including things in the final episode. Still, seeing as how this series did just about everything else right, I frankly do not care at this point. This shit was amazing.
This was the first Sentai series I watched to completion and it was a great time. The action choreography was great, the music was great, and of course, the characters and their relationships were A1. I said it when I talked my first impressions of the show last year, and I’ll say it again: Inoue is way too good at character relationships. I tuned in every week because these characters and how they interacted was honestly addicting. I’m gonna miss this show, man. Definitely gotta rewatch one day.
Looking forward to Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger!!!