twas a good one

Snap Decks

My Go-Tos

Junk

The Stature Midrange deck and the Junk deck from last month remained unchanged, but still did me plenty good this month. Dracula Zoo is still fine, but I did have one rough session with it very early in the month that made me pivot harder to these two. I played Mr. negative a bit less this month, too. Deck is still a lot of fun, and its nut draws are just about unbeatable in a traditional sense, but I like tempo plays a lot, and it does not do that, so I played it a little less this month.

The Junk list was ironically my best performing deck this month. I had a lot of interesting games with it, and it pulls through when it shouldn’t sometimes. Really appreciate the list even more after this month.

Lucky Surfin'

Surfer

I got Silver Surfer as my free series 3 card this month, and that means I get to finally put Domino to use here in his archetype. I use Domino as my sole 2-drop so I don’t do nothing until turn 3 and she gives me room to run a few more tech cards like Rogue , who is still a game-winning card. The deck is very solid even after Surfer’s nerf a couple months ago.

Tall Rocks

Tall Rocks

I pulled Zabu from a cache and bought Darkhawk from the token shop, allowing me to play this really fun midrange build that was a frontrunner for best deck in the game in the first 2 weeks of the month. This deck is supposed to leverage the Darkhawk package(itself, Zebu, Korg and Rockslide ) alongside powerful tech cards and the cost reduction of Stature and Miles to disrupt the opponent and put a lot of stats into play. Darkhawk is an entire house of a 4-drop, being 6 points of power(which is on rate) at worst and 12 at best in this deck. Korg and Rockslide messing up the opponent’s draws is already valuable;having an additional benefit in making Darkhawk larger is great, especially with Zabu discounting Darkhawk & Rockslide.

Deck runs mostly fine. Zabu’s cost reduction is something I’ve always respected, but being able to actually play with it is nuts. Sometimes playing Shang + Enchantress on 6 just wins the game, and the discount can make some really nice plays happen. I will say that the amount of 4s can make some hands awkward. I don’t necessarily brick often, but it’s entirely possible to draw mostly 4s sometimes, and that always feels bad. Granted, it’s entirely worth it since Zabu into Rockslide is kinda cracked. The hands can be awkward, but nowhere near Mr. Negative levels of “I am doing nothing the first 3 turns of this game, huh?”.

That being said, this deck took a lot of hits from weekly changes. By the end of the month, Rockslide, Blackbolt, and Stature all lost a point of power each + Wave got a rework that overrides Stature and Miles’ cost reductions, the latter being more noticable since part of this deck’s claim to fame was being able to still play multiple cards after a Wave before her rework. Plus, this build has a bad mu against greedier combo decks like Bounce and the Moon Girl decks, which picked up in popularity this month, so there are better builds of this sort of midrange deck now. I still enjoy it; Stature is one of my favorite cards in the game and this list is still reasonable. It just sucks that a fair deck caught a bunch of nerfs.

Once & Always

Once & Always

I sat down and gave the latest Power Rangers special a good watch. I’ve been having a good time getting back into Power Rangers lately, mainly through the comics, so this had some good timing. It’s about Billy, Zack, Rocky, Kat, and Trini’s Daughter fighting off a Robotic Rita Repulsa after she kills Trini. It’s not a very high-budget affair, but there’s a lot of heart in this. Honestly, Walter Jones and David Yost make this whole special. Walter Jones got some actual acting skills + it’s just really cool to see them both back on show after all this time knowing the fallout they had with the original MMPR show.

I heard a lot of bad things about the CGI Megazord fight before I watched this, but it wasn’t that bad, honestly. Granted, hearing all the slander definitely had my expectations super low, so take that as you will. The actual fights, in and out of suits, were pretty good. It was pretty cool seeing Walter bust out the Hip-Hop kido, even if there’s a blaring message in my mind going “That’s racist!” every time I see it.

The special’s the best we probably could’ve gotten in this situation, and I’m glad it’s good. It did what it set out to do very well.

Jetman

Jetman

I have finally finished Choujin Sentai Jetman. What a series. Having finished Agito, 555, and Donbrothers at this point, I am very used to Inoue’s style, and, at least in these cases, I am a fan. The man is simply a master of earned moments, which this series has plenty of, and those are a big deal in getting me to love a series and not just like it.

The Jetman team is a hastily put together team filled with imperfect individuals who clash time and again, and that is the biggest draw of the show. Watching these people from different walks of life come together to do the right thing episode after episode, with all the interpersonal drama that fills Inoue’s works at the forefront. There are some weak links here, the main one in my opinion being Kaori. Raita and Ako don’t get a lot of focus episodes, but they manage to be loveable characters even when the focus isn’t there for them. I can’t say the same about Kaori at all. She had her moments, but she nothing she went through was on the level of Gai or Ryuu, and she wasn’t as fun of a character as Raita or Ako. Speaking of, Gai & Ryuu’s dynamic is a joy to watch. They hate each other’s guts at the beginningm but as Gai matures and we see more of Ryuu’s struggles with accepting what happened to his girlfriend, it starts to turn into respect. This team went through it, man. Arguments, defeats, and triumphs. Their leader deserves a shoutout, too. She was a consistent, enjoyable character, and she even jumped in the robot to help fight sometimes near the end.

The villains are, hilariously, equally if not more dsyfunctional than the heroes. They’re not Saturday morning cartoon villain levels of incompetent - far from it. There are a lot of episodes where they would’ve have won and the show just would’ve been over if they didn’t feel the need to one-up each other or try to hog the glory of defeating the Jetman to themselves. The biggest standout among them is definitely Grey, a wine-drinking, cig-smoking robot who listens to records and has the hots for his teammmate Maria. He’s easily the most enjoyable of the 4 villains and has a great rivalry with Gai that leads to one of my favorite moments in the show towards the end.

I fully understand why this show is so beloved among the fanbase and am very glad I finally finished it. That ending hurt me, but it gave me a lot to smile about, too.

Choujin Sentai Jetman

It’s Not Pink

Masahiro Inoue, the actor for Kamen Rider Decade and Jinga from Garo, started airing his own tokusatsu show on his Youtube. It’s only 4 episodes so far, but it’s pretty cool, and the episodes are a little on the shorter end. Definitely worth a look if you’ve enjoyed him in past toku works. It releases with subs, too, which is really nice.

They’re at it again

Dogengers

Dogengers Metropolis started this month, too.

Dogengers Metropolis

555

Kamen Rider 555 is getting a 20th Anniversary movie called Paraside Regained. 555 is a series that I’m always sorta mixed on. I enjoyed the characters and story, but was kinda annoyed that a good source of the drama came from the at times childish communication problems. I get that there’s supposed to be some irony in the fact that the riders use phones to transform but have dogshit communication skills, but that doesn’t change the fact that some of those episodes were very annoying to sit through. Someone called 555 a soap opera/J-drama that just so happened to have Kamen Riders in it, and that’s very fair. I like the show, and I’m more willing to rewatch now than I was when I initially finished it, but man some of that shit was rough. Regardless, I’m excited for this.

Basketball Jokes

It’s playoff season in the NBA, and that means people are firing on all cylinders for the memes. I’ve fallen off of the NBA very hard in terms of actually watching the games. I kinda lost interest once Kevin Durant went to the Warriors way back; kinda killed any interest I had in post-season basketball for a year or two snce it was very clear they were gonna win, and by the time that period passed, I was more invested in other hobbies + doing research over the summer, so I never really got back into NBA basketball. Still, I’m a frequent enough browser of the bird app that I see NBA memes on the regular, and NBA Playoff memes are arguably the best thing about the internet period during this time of year.

Cooperation Cup and My Feelings on SF

This month was the return of Coop Cup, an annual 3rd Strike team tournament held in Japan. I missed watching the pools live, but woke up in time for top 8 and had a great time watching.

I enjoy 3rd Strike very casually, in terms of actually playing. I don’t play it often, nor do I go super in-depth when i do play. I simply have fun when I do turn it on. I’m a pretty consistent watcher, though, at least relative to my interest in the SF franchise. I catch Coop Cup and the like every time I know of em, at least. The game’s cool.

What does any of that have to do with my feelings on the franchise, or rather, why is that something that’s come up? Well, with SF6 dropping very soon, I’ve gotten a lot of comments and questions on why I’m firmly in the “Happy for y’all. Go have fun” camp instead of trying to jump on it myself. First thing’s first, Street Fighter 6 looks like an amazing game. Not an amazing fighting game, but an amazing game. It’s gonna be an actual package that feels worth all the money you spent on it, and the vast majority of fighting games that have come out during my time in the genre can not say that at all. More importantly, a lot of people are high on the gameplay and what they’ve done with characters. I ain’t play the betas personally, so I have no opinion derived from hands-on experience, but again, lots of people I know and know of like the game. I’m happy for them; I know a lot of capcom fans. it’s good for them to get a good fighting game at launch after going through SFxT, SFV, and MvCI.

It’s just that I am not a SF head. I did not go to arcades and shit growing up, nor did I have a bunch of SF games at home. I was playing NBA Street Vol 2, Mario games, Turtles in Time, and RPGs and shit. When I finally did get into fighting games, it was with shit like Skullgirls and GG Xrd. That does a lot to paint my perception of cool stuff to do in a fighting game, at least 2d-wise. Of course, I was playing stuff Tekken Tag 2 and the occasional SF4 in high-school, but that was before I was trying to properly get into the genre. My point is this - it’s hard to look at anything done in SF and go, “damn, I wanna do that” when one of the first things I watched when I was properly getting into fighting games was Sol doing a dustloop and then stealing the other guy’s burst. That’s just the truth, man.

Now, of course, there’s things to be said about the neutral game and whatnot, and the value of playing slower games and stuff, but that’s always fallen flat for me because I have played slower games, and I still don’t feel very strongly about SF. I’ve played a lot of DOA, VF, and Samurai Shodown, and have always had way more fun in those games over a SF title. My disinterest in SF is not simply because it’s not an airdasher. It’s just not as cool as other options to me. Same thing with Tekken. Tekken’s a fine game, but I think DOA, VF, and SoulCalibur are cooler. I like the characters and systems more. I respect these franchises and it’s not like I’ve never had fun with them or am incapable of enjoying them now, but there’s just cooler stuff to do in my opinion.

Now that that’s off my chest, please check out Coop Cup when you get the time. Some really good fighting game action on display there.

Beat Tribe Cup

Virtua Fighter had its Beat Tribe Cup the same weekend Coop Cup went down. Same deal, I missed the pools, but woke up in time to catch top 8. VF is really good and this is a perfect thing to watch to understand that.

Concrete Optimization

Towards the end of the month, I started back playing fighting games. Of course, that meant +R was back on the table. I took some time to check out what the playerbase has been doing with HOS, and they’ve honestly found some really sick stuff. It’s cool to see this character, and really this game in general, still develop after beign around for so long.