Arbalest's Big Crossbow

On 12/7/2020 at 3:33 AM, LordCowCow said:

I'm sure you've answered this before but I forgot but what got you so attached to the ABC thing?

I know there's a setting that notifs me when a thread I follow is replied to but the day I figure out how to actually get those notifs without them being emails (???) will be a great day. Edit: I might have just fixed it. Today may be that day. Who knows.

I actually think that throughout my entire time on YCM and NCM I might not have actually answered this. At the time I thought it would've been funny if my username wasn't an actual name and that I was just some nameless character. It was even funnier to me because I thought the ABC acronym was amazing. And there's even a bit more than that! During the early 10's I was way more into South Park than I am now, and whenever a crowd was shown I always tried to skim through it to find as many side characters as I could. As it turns out, there is a student in that show that looks very similarly to Craig, and every time I think I found Craig, it would be this guy. This one random background character that looked like Craig. He doesn't even do anything in the show. Anyways I decided that he is the best character in the show for this reason alone, and that made the A Background Character name even better to me.

Quote

(Also which was your favorite so far that you remember and why was it All Beef Cow)

Fuckin' hell why did YCM get rid of name history. I know there were some bangers in there. All Beef Cow and A Background Character are both great, the Agaio-bangtail whatever one not so much, and I cannot remember any of the rest of them. A Burgerking Crouton was amazing for the joke but that's been a few months now and it is kinda getting old and weird.

Destroy all monsters your opponent controls.

This section is dead, and as much as I'd like to see more activity pumped into it I don't play the main game so I kinda would just stumble through making presumably bad and boring card choices to talk about. But this card, this card, frankly astounds me. It was banned for 12 years because it was a free one-sided board wipe. You just play this and bam, there goes the opponent's entire frontrow. But now, not only is this card no longer on the banlist, it's bad. Raigeki is a bad card. Last I played the main game was sometime around the time this card came off the banlist, and the fact that this card isn't really all that good frightens me. Like, what the hell happened.

Bitch I'm cow now

Wait, it's been two weeks since I last updated this? Holy shit. I thought I was getting close to unlocking the game's Zombie pack, and wanted to try to do that for this character. But nope, that pack is unlocked later on. I'll have to do this without that pack.

Tagforce 1 #5: Bawnji

Bawnji is a bit of a secret character, spending all of his time holed up in his dorm room - room 101 of the Slifer Red facility. This room is shared with Blair Flannigan. What does Bawnji do in his room all day? Well, the same thing everyone else does in their rooms:

He doesn't really interact with his roommate at all, which is a damn shame. I guess he's such a reserved bookworm that he doesn't want to talk to anyone. In fact, he seems to prioritize books first to the point where you would have to wonder if he even wants to be a duelist. Like, dude, get out of here, and go be a librarian or something. Not this librarian, but a librarian. If you challenge him to a duel, he does mention he was reading a book about dueling, but when I see his deck I suspect he meant the type of dueling where you take ten steps then shoot someone. Overall, he is a very boring character.

Bawnji runs a deck that tries to be both a Skull Servant Deck and a Blasting the Ruins deck. His deck runs on the card Human-Wave Tactics to more easily dump Skull Servants into the GY while also setting up for his explosive Traps. Bawnji may have book smarts, but he apparently does not have counting smarts, which would explain the presence of Dokuroizo and 13th Grave in his deck. Even if he wanted to be thematic and run low-level vanilla Zombies, he could have done so using Clown Zombie, Pharaoh's Servant, and Pharaonic Protector. I can see the appeal of Silent Doom and Soul Resurrection to set Human-Wave Tactics back up, but running both at 3 is overkill. And then there's Miracle Dig, which is completely unusable here unless he floats King of the Skull Servants... several times.

Now for the part of the post where I tell fictional characters to run Pyramid Turtle and Vampire Lord, even a Vampire's Curse. He could also run Foolish Burial to set up his King of the Skull Servants even faster. Goblin Zombie to search his boss (and even further thin his deck). Even though I think his use of Poly and the Fusion subs to fill his GY with even more cards is creative, it isn't very impactful on the board and he can absolutely cut them for more good generic cards. And get a third Blasting the Ruins. He runs a very interesting deck and when I eventually unlock the Zombie pack, I really wanna remake it myself.

Score: 7/10

The next character I will talk about is another Obelisk Blue student. In fact, there's gonna be 3 Obelisk Blues in a row.

I was today years old when I found out Cliff the Trap Remover's name was errata'd to make him a Dark Scorpion for realsies.

Anyways, while I am unfamiliar with regular Yugioh today, if it's still anything like it has been within the past near-decade I don't think 500 ATK would be enough for Dark Scorpions to start beating over much. But at the same time I don't really think it'd be justified to boost them by much more than that. Maybe it can let a Dark Scorpion make a direct attack every turn or something? Anyway, it's always great to see old archetypes get a boost!

My number 1 pick would probably be a local Greek restaurant that also makes pizzas. They let you customize the pizza and I can get one that's basically "What if gyros but it's a pizza?"

Out of popular pizza places, I'd probably have to go with Little Caesars. Might be that I'm just more used to their pizzas but when I have pizzas from most other pizza places it's just slightly worse in ways I don't really know how to explain.

But out of the two options listed here, definitely Pizza Hut. I'd rank them Little Caesars because their pizzas are tastier and why tf don't more pizza places do stuffed crust, it's just that they can be a bit pricey.

Tagforce 1 #4: Andrea

The first of two Dinosaur duelists (unfortunately, the other one is not Tyranno Hassleberry). Andrea is a timid girl who loves to use the Ellipses of Shyness. I mean, look at this.

She even apologizes to you if you try to give her a sandwich.

As the screenshots show, she was once up against a duelist who used Gravity Bind on her, and she wasn't able to counter it at all. During the long years where MST was Limited, cards like Gravity Bind were definitely scary. One thing I like about Andrea is that this Random Helpful Tip From A NPC actually has an impact on her deck, as you'll be able to see when I get to that part of this post. Anyways, back to Andrea herself. She arrives to class early with her friend Jewels, and then the two of them head over to the shop after their lessons. Unlike the Anca and Rei situation from the previous post, Andrea and Jewels are always close to one another. In class, they're even turned towards each other as if in conversation. And then they're together during Tag Duel Sunday.

With MST, Heavy Storm, and even cards like Gilasaurus and Super Conductor Tyranno, Andrea is ready for Gravity Bind now. The AI in this game (and probably every other game) refuses to Special Summon Gilasaurus if the opponent has any monsters in the GY that they could possibly get back, even though her deck has a neat combo in which she could use that SS to play Hunting Instinct and cheat a high-level dino into play. She also doesn't seem to be the biggest fan of Big Evolution Pill either. Instead, she insists on Summoning her boss monsters "the right way" through tributes. This significantly weakens her as an opponent, though she can still pose a bit of a challenge with decent ATK dinos with piercing damage.

Aside from getting her an AI that lets her use her own tricks, I'd probably change her deck by taking out Treeborn Frog and Tail Swipe. Treeborn Frog provides infinite ammo for Super Conductor, but she puts down so much backrow that it can oftentimes be a dead card. As tribute fodder, it's nice, but again, she has ways to cheat in her bosses, she doesn't really need Treeborn for that. As for Tail Swipe, it can be nice for stubborn defenders like Marshmallon, but her bosses are good at destroying everything else. And if she does run across Marshmallon, that's what her piercers are for. This would bring her down to 39 cards, She could probably run another high-level dinosaur, since she only runs 5 of them in her entire deck. It just doesn't seem very consistent to me. She could probably also swap out Morphing Jar for Cyber Jar since that one is just plain broken. Maybe even switch out Jurassic World for Gaia Power since her deck is so EARTH-centric and she definitely gets a huge edge from stronger Hyper Hammerheads and Sword Beasts.

Score: 7/10

The next character I will be talking about is a big nerd! Stay tuned!

On 11/15/2020 at 6:41 PM, LordCowCow said:

I feel like I should mention I'm enjoying reading these. I have very little idea what is going on but still.

Appreciate the effort of linking to the cards!

I'm glad to hear that! I guess I missed rambling on and on about cards lol.

Tagforce 1 #3: Anca

And here's the first of the Obelisk Blue students. She seems to be fond of the ocean's scent as you can find her in the harbor during mornings and then she spends the rest of her time after class at the beach. Or maybe she just really likes looking at the ocean. If that's the case, she's missing out because the ocean looks best at the cliff. Interestingly enough, the Slifer student Rei always appears in the same zone as her, though in the mornings he is closer to the lighthouse. Anca will talk to you about North Academy and wonders aloud if they really go to that place via submarine. Apparently according to the Wiki, if you lose a duel to her she will suggest that you buy her a sandwich, but won't actually accept them. If you challenge her to a duel, she will warn you not to underestimate her. She is an Obelisk Blue after all! However, if you beat her, she will ask that you take it easy on her (unless you win under 4k LP, then she asks if you actually did take it easy on her). She also will appear as an opponent during Tag Duel Sundays, teamed up with Rie (not to be confused with Rei. Rie is another Obelisk Blue girl whose name is just really similar. AND THEN THERE'S ANOTHER STUDENT NAMED RAY. STOP IT). She is honestly a bit of a weird character, since she doesn't want to be underestimated and at the same time she wants you to take it easy on her, easy enough for her to win and try to get a sandwich out of you. A SANDWICH WHICH SHE REFUSES TO EAT. I guess her entire character is the whole "Lol girls are so confusing, amirite fellas?" trope.

If you thought that she would have a WATER deck since she appears near the water all the time, then get stick bugged lol. Anca runs a Warrior Toolbox deck. Her main go-to cards are Command Knight for bonus damage, Mataza the Zapper for the double swing, and Marauding Captain for the extra damage and possible attack lock. A common tactic for her to use is to use Creature Swap on one of her floaters, then swing into it and get an extra Warrior out of her deck. She also isn't too keen on Trap Cards, since she runs Jinzo and three Royal Decrees. With RotA, she can access removal cards like Exiled Force and D.D. Warrior Lady faster than most other duelists that run them just because. The AI doesn't make very many mistakes with her deck, the biggest ones being that she tends to float through all of her floaters before finally summoning Mataza or Command Knight.

I'm not too familiar with Warrior Toolbox decks, so I'm not too sure on what I would do differently if I were to make a Warrior Toolbox deck in this game. Maybe just take out the third copy of a few monsters to replace with D.D. Assailant/Warrior, and then switch out a few of the floaters for a few Warrior Ladies of the Wasteland. Generally, you would want Giant Rat for the broader search range, but she doesn't take advantage of that in this deck, plus the Warrior Lady could further bolster her monsters' ATK through The A. Forces.

It can be wild looking back at past banlists and seeing what was on them. Exiled Force? Breaker? United We Stand? Another reason why I'm so interested in these past formats of Yugioh is looking back at all these cards that are utter garbage now but used to be really good.

Score: 2/10

That concludes this entry. Next duelist will be another Obelisk Blue girl before we head back to Slifer Red.

I'm doing another one of these. Time to be rude to fictional characters again.

Tagforce 1 #2: Alvaro

Another Slifer Red student, Alvaro can be found at the volcano whenever he isn't in class. His deal is that he's made the classical blunder of thinking that dueling strength can be improved by increasing your own physical strength. But despite being put in Slifer Red and losing duels, he refuses to stop working out. It's the only thing he cares about. He refuses to accept sandwiches from you because they don't build muscle. Probably not a good idea for him to hang out at the volcano all day long then. It's pretty neat to have a character who is so utterly wrong about a basic concept like strength, but since he's a generic side character they unfortunately don't flesh him out at all. He's just the silly muscle guy who runs a semi-annoying high-DEF deck.

Alvaro's deck actually has a focus, unlike the previous duelist. Just castle up with a Petit Moth equipped with Cocoon of Evolution, then protect it with cards like Chorus of Sanctuary, The Reliable Guardian, and Castle Walls (which he runs 3 of instead of a third Shrink). Then, after he does this for a while, he sacrifices his Petit Moth for Larvae Moth, making him an absolute chad and deserving of Obelisk Blue rank. If only the faculty understood his power. Ok, to be serious, I think the only reason he runs Larvae Moth is so that the AI messes up its own gameplan if he happens to start up the Cocoon timer. This, coupled with his AI spending his DEF-boost cards on his searchers, and his AI sometimes not putting Cocoon on his Moth even when he can for some reason, makes what would be a decent Slifer Red significantly worse. If you can't defeat his high-DEF monsters, you can just deck him out, destroying searchers to shift the favor more in your favor.

If I were to remake this deck, I would probably drop the DEF-boosting cards and instead use Heart of Clear Water and other cards that will help protect against effect destruction. After all, no amount of DEF will save you from a Lightning Vortex. Well, neither would Heart of Clear Water, but that's where other protection cards come in. Or even some Counter Traps. Spell Shield Type-8 would also be really nice here. There would also be plenty of room for cards like Doom Dozer and some staples, though by this point he should definitely stop being a Slifer Red. He deserves it though, because of Larvae Moth. Then again, there are several Insect Duelists in this game, so Doom Dozer might fit better with one of them. He definitely needs an extra win condition aside from Cocoon though.

Score: 5/10

Next time, I will finally talk about someone who isn't a Slifer Red!

Ok, full disclosure, this is the first time I've ever done anything like this, so I'm probably going to be kinda sloppy here. Tagforce 1 is an old-as-hell game and I only recently discovered the power of emulators, so I picked it back up. I personally love the idea of a video game that takes an era of an ever-shifting card game and preserves a particular era of it. In fact, I'd love for there to be such an option for literally every era of Yugioh, but that would probably never happen. I plan on reviewing all the characters and their decks through the entire series (if I don't get disinterested first, that's something I worry will happen), but unfortunately Tagforces 3 and 6 are not on the emulator. Maybe they're out there somewhere and I'm bad at finding them though. If a character appears in multiple games, I'll only discuss them in the current game I'm going over. I'll first talk about the generics from the 3 schools, then the non-generic side characters, then the main ones.

Tagforce 1 #1: Aite

Annie:

Aite can be found in the store before school, and in the Slifer Red cafeteria after school. He spends his entire time in there, even when it isn't dinnertime. He talks to you about not having enough DP (that's the currency used to buy packs and sandwiches in this game, he doesn't have anything to do with Duel Portal) to buy all the cards he wants. He also implies that the price of packs could change from time to time, but this doesn't actually happen. Some packs stop being available depending on the day or character relations, and you end up unlocking a bunch as you play, but that's it really. If you try to give him a sandwich, he tells you that he just ate, which is actually a clever line in retrospect because he appears in the store and the lunchroom most of the time, and that response makes sense in both places. He probably is just lying though, but you can't call him out on it.

Aite goes in several different directions with his Zombie Deck. He has Castle of Dark Illusions & Pumpking, which were unplayably janky even back then. He runs a bunch of Normal monsters, but has little reason to. A few duelists in this game run Heart of the Underdog but Aite is not one of them. Then he also has the Decayed Commander+Zombie Tiger Union, but only two copies of each and no support whatsoever for them. Also I should mention that it's an absolute crime that GobZom can't search either of them. Return Zombie can stall pretty decently, but he has no other cards that help him do this. Reborn Zombie doesn't even work without a select few cards that skip your Draw Phase, which, you guessed it, he has none of at all. It only works if you Time Seal him. His best move is Fusion Summoning his dead elephant for a 2200 attacker. Great Mammoth of Goldfine shares a fusion material with Skelgon, and is a significantly better card than it. Get dunked on, you weird zombie serpent dragon thing, whatever you're supposed to be. Aite's deck is one of several that demonstrates to the player the danger of not having a focus for your deck. Yeah, his deck is Zombie themed, but that doesn't mean you just toss in a bunch of zombie-themed cards (ROBBIN' ZOMBIE I'M STARING DIRECTLY AT YOU) and call it a deck. It also demonstrates to the player that they shouldn't run a bunch of bad normal monsters. Very important pointer everyone needs to hear. Dude's just a living, breathing tutorial tip.

Whichever direction he wants to go with his Zombie deck, he would benefit greatly by having Pyramid Turtle in there. He has 3 Books of Life, so surely he must've pulled at least one Pyramid Turtle. Maybe even a Vampire Lord, even a Vampire's Curse. Actually, I should stop considering that he might not be able to afford all the cards when thinking of how to fix his deck. Just, triple Pyramid Turtles, throw in some Vampires, add a fuckton of staples because where even are those in this deck, and the rest I guess can be filled out with GobZom and uhhhh maybe the Great Mammoth of Goldfine thing. I haven't reached the Zombie pack yet, but when I do I could try rebuilding his deck with more thought. It does seem like a fun idea, but that's probably just because I really like Zombie monsters. You can also make Skull Servants or a Bone Tower mill deck in this game iirc, but that's more in the territory of another duelist I should be getting to soonish. If you wanna keep the Slifer Red feel, you could just replace some vanillas with Pyramid Turtle and go all in on the Pumpking angle, because with his current deck he is one of the weaker Slifer Reds.

Score: 3/10

Next up will be Alvaro, who's like Weevil Underwood if Weevil was a bodybuilder. That's gotta be interesting.

1 hour ago, radio414 said:

NCM says it's your birthday, so what's your favorite thing you've done for your birthday?

Also, happy birthday

For my 11th or 12th birthday, I went to see some sort of show with Jack Hanna and got his autograph. I don't remember much about it anymore though but it was pretty neat.

Also, thanks.

1 hour ago, Comrade Duck said:

What's your plans for Halloween?

I might be helping a friend organize a Halloween party in a MMO we play together, as part of a way of helping him grow his Discord server. I'm not sure when it'll take place or how involved I will be yet though lol. As for irl plans, I probably won't be able to do anything this year. Money is stretched so thin that I don't think I'd even be able to go "trick-or-treating at the store." Could watch something for Halloween but idk what. Halloween's probably just going to be a regular day for me this year.

I know this is my first post ever on this site, but I guess I can make one of these thread thingies. I've only recently discovered I can play various old Yugioh games through an emulator so I've been kinda doing that. I also play a few other games I guess IDK?

This would probably be a controversial take, but, Skyrim. I just think the music in it is really uninteresting. It's so easy for me to forget that I am even listening to soundtrack as I explore. For such a large game, I really think it should've had more than five regular combat themes (if my brief stint of research serves me correctly. I actually had to look this up because I thought there were even less), and it doesn't help that they sound kinda similar to one another. The big epic theme against dragons is nice, but again, large game, needs more tracks.

In the Dragonborn DLC, they do remixes of music from Morrowind, which I haven't played, but I like these themes much more than the ones from the mainland of Skyrim. And it's probably unfair of me to say this just of Skyrim, since it is a trend in video games where music becomes more quieter and passive to make way for voices and ambient noise. Just not a fan.

Duel Links literally just added the Zexal world today. Coincidence? Apparently yes.

I'm the kind that abandons ideas 30 seconds after having them. Let nothing ever be complete. A complete disaster.

Oh, the quiz? I'm also a Dreamer.

I'm no good at remembering the terms for the 3-color combinations and I will absolutely forget what Temur means within a day.

3 hours ago, DaemonLord6787 said:

For Passion Fruit what do you mean lacking a hard OPT

A "hard OPT" is when a card says "You can only activate this effect of <This Card> once per turn" or some slight variation of that. What you have, the "Once per turn: You can do this thing," is called a "soft OPT." They may seem very similar, but there is a difference between the two.

• Soft OPTs can be activated multiple times per turn if you have multiple copies of that card on the field. If you have more than one Passionfruit, you can search a card for each one of them. Additionally, if you are able to remove a Passionfruit from your field and put it back within the same turn, you can use the effect of that card twice in the same turn.
• Hard OPTs do not allow for any of that. If you activate Passionfruit's effect to search for a card, you cannot activate the same effect for other Passionfruits you have on the field. If you remove and return that Passionfruit, it will not be able to use its effect a second time.

I cannot really say much about the cards you made as these days I am only familiar with Yugioh via Duel Links, and in there I have not had much experience with Magician Girls. At the very most I may have ran one or two in a very early (and bad) deck that tried to Fusion Summon Quintet Magician.

More.

https://imgflip.com/ai-meme

An AI makes the memes for you. They almost never make any sense. And they're funnier than anything humans can make.

It's time to d-d-d-d, d-d-decide which Yugioh character I am!

I prefer turn-based games over, well, not-turn-based games. So naturally, this makes me an RPG and card game dork. I especially like games where positioning yourself matters (cementing Final Fantasy Tactics as the best game of the series imo). Other games I enjoy that do this are the Geneforge saga (which btw the first game is getting remastered next February and I'm 1,000,000% excited for it) and games like Sword Legacy Omen, once you get past the mouse lag, bugginess, and the fact that the game has like only 4 OSTs.

I also enjoyed some hack and slash games like Dynasty Warriors, but that's probably more because cutting down hundreds of enemies within a matter of seconds is one hell of a power fantasy.

Didn't know this band until today. I think once I stop blasting this on repeat I might check out their other stuff.

Legend has it that if I change my avi the mods will finally do another funtimes thing in a week or so.