absolute best i can do is let you top if you admit your taste in formats sucks and agree to learn YGO so you can learn to navigate a gamestate more complicated than “i cast Monstrous Rage and swing for game”

(this is a rent-lowering post but) as an aside to an aside, i once came across a self-published work where a trans girl forcefemmed the POV after beating them with Slickshot in Standard

no shade to the writer but if you have to ask me to play Standard, you cannot be the top in this relationship

chess has been changed plenty of times in its history

but the point is that more competitive video games should be afforded the same dignity, to have the tradeoffs of the uncovered friction carefully explored in good faith before sanding them down in a well-meaning effort to reach the masses

mankind can only postulate and dream of a timeline in which Sirlin has even a passable track record of his design revisions being accepted…

playing a dumb gambit that won’t work on any player worth their salt

these things aren’t designed in, they’re just the uncovered downside of a set of rules that also produces elegant, intricate, and dazzling positions that wow you when the masters squeeze water from stone to find the winning line

when you actually make an effort to learn it you will quickly realize there is a ton of friction that you can’t sidestep or subvert: you’ll tunnel vision your way into blunders, miss basic tactics constantly unless you rewire your brain to look for them, and get knowledge checked by some asshole…

2 bisexual girls throuple go!!!

will add that once you play the game enough you recognize the Real resource other than cards is Hard Once Per Turn effects but like

could you tell this is exactly where the fuck i’m coming from. could other card games dream of having Ext Ryzeal. no one can match his aura

allow you to hack the system in ways that are more interesting and nuanced than “Pay 2 mana to get 1 more mana forever (Wow!)” or “Get a bunch of mana this turn only (Wow!!!)”

will make your fighting game survive beyond the next generation of releases, even when most people consider it to be “dead”

as he can to make it that much harder for Omito to chase him, while also building back meter and tension pulse.

that took a lot of knowledge and alertness (at least to the mid-level player, to Machabo it was just a Tuesday) and it wasn’t all flashy, but that’s the kind of decision-making that

i’ll always think of watching Machabo’s Ky FD Omito’s Johnny string precisely to the tip of 2S range, then IB the 2S and GTFO with SJ airdash.
Omito is essentially forced to commit to a risk to restart pressure, so instead of wasting meter to FD 2S, Machabo extracts as much frame advantage…

never let them tell you Araki ain’t BEEN Woke