osmosisch

The percentage they get on stuff like hats is apparently even higher.

CLGeeeeee hahaha They really are the absolute chokelords. I feel bad for Aphro. At least they're actually improving as a team though, if they get a better jungler especially they might turn into a force to reckon with.

This Worlds is the most interesting since Season 2. I'm loving it, though sad to see my boys Fnatic struggling so. SKT T1 may just run away with the whole thing just on the strength of not acting loopy or sandbagging.

You will be missed a lot, Danielle. Thank you for your wonderful contributions to the cast.

I do regret phrasing it that way, looks kind of humble-braggy now that I look back at it. Anyway, with my current decks (midrange hunter, aggro paladin, zoo warlock) and set of skills rank 10 does not take many games; I win like 80% below rank 12 and after that it's still high enough that rank 10 is not a lot of trouble to get to. I play maybe 30 ranked games per month on average I'd say. I played more in the previous month and made it to 8; this season I stalled out at 9, but played a lot less. The reason I feel I could do better without super much effort is that I am still seeing a lot of mistakes in my play once I've made them, and this means I have a lot of obvious ways to improve still. It's kind of a nice feeling, I think, though obviously frustrating to make the mistake in the first place. I played face hunter for a bit as well before switching to midrange, and I have to say that hitting face every time is not a good representation of playing the deck optimally. There are definitely often situations where clearing a minion is the long-term winning play. It's that tension that makes it an interesting deck. I also very much approve of aggro decks being a thing as I said - if top decks do not need to include anti-aggro cards the meta will move to a much less interesting (to me) place. I'm more of a control player at heart, but they tend to be so much more expensive in dust (a problem that was touched on earlier in the thread) that I'm learning to appreciate the 'honesty' of aggro. I did base my decks on internet ones. You only run into netdecks at rank 10 anyway so I didn't see much point in messing around. Maybe if I acquire a card or mechanic that I want to build around. I don't need much more to try mill warrior...

This week's brawl is frickin' awesome by the way. Annoy-o-tron vs. Boombot (including custom hero power)

I've only read The Quarry of his non-Culture books, but I found that one to be excellent. I'm slowly working my way through all his stuff because it has yet to disappoint.

I absolutely adored those games. Ticks 4 lyfe, yo. I think an interesting matchmaking system would be one that takes collection into account. But yeah, if you don't know what you want, it's going to be tough. I mean, there's videos of people taking a free account and playing it to Legendary rank. There's videos of people buying and opening hundreds of packs. There's space for many different people, but the question is always going to be which space you want to use.

That Polygon article is really good. I think Blizzard is definitely interested in staying on the "friendly to new players" end of the curve, at least from their recent efforts to accelerate new players' collections (brawl, pack quest) and improve their experience (pre-generated deck brawls). Hearthstone is infinitely more generous than their other current free-to-play offering, Heroes of the Storm, and even in that game they've added more income recently. I think they are just being really, really careful about being more generous because that sort of thing is really hard to take back - once a player has all cards, they're 'done.'

I think the only stuff you absolutely need to make at least somewhat competitive constructed decks at the moment is Naxxramas. You'll need at least a bit of a collection to really get going but that's teh nature of collectible games in the first place. This game has so far cost me 30 euros which is not even a drop in the bucket of what my Magic habit used to cost me. I can understand being put off if you're just starting out and want to be competitive right away, but I have a hard time thinking of ways to do that and still preserve the collectible aspect (which is why it's making so much money, besides the good design). The main question is what you want to get out of it really, I guess. For me it's infinite limited play, which is well within reach as it turns out, for free no less. e: the Brawl is a lovely gesture towards casual/starting players with their pregenerated decks, especially since they reward you with cards,

I've been back on the wagon for the past couple of months. I've managed to limit my spending to only buying Blackrock Spire (I ground out Naxx; never again). I mainly play arena because my collection isn't robust enough to build all the decks I'd like to try. Including quest rewards I can just do that indefinitely which is nice. I prefer limited anyway. I have been fudging my way up to at least rank 10 since they introduced rank rewards, seems a shame to let those gold cards lie. Midrange hunter is my favourite deck anyway, and it's strong and fast enough to get there easily. I'm quite happy that face hunter is a deck; you need good aggro to keep the meta honest (and I tend to beat them as midrange). Patron is the thing I'd like to see toned down a little.

I believe that was demonstrated conclusively during the eighties by Mr. Nelson.

Cordeos, your perspective is so alien to me I don't even know how to engage with it. The idea that a story that has been crafted by another human being to tell something to others is worthless boggles my mind. Conversely, nonfiction tends to me to be intensely irritating because, as Gormongous says, I'm much too aware of its inherent fictionality through omission and interpretation while pretending to be otherwise. Especially most popsci stuff reads more false to me than a lot of fiction (say Munro) which can be so honest and insightful that I definitely feel it has expanded my appreciation for others' points of view. Oh, I'm an engineer for what it's worth.

My favourite mouse pad (windows 10 compatible (32 bits only) )

I may be missing something, but in Bedlam I got to the second node, ran out of fuel and soldiers and basically was dead in the water. There are always more enemies than I have soldiers, their soldiers manage to have some sort of overwatch that mine don't and in general it felt rather unmanageable. My soldiers are so fragile that they die before getting veterancy (or are just stuck in the hospital forever). Also, like 90% of the encounters were just things like "Hey, something interesting and mysterious. You have no tools to do anything with it. Oh well." Whatever trick there is to it, it's not immediately apparent to me.

I don't feel that this really is the case worldwide lately, unfortunately. Most of Eastern Europe and the Middle East is doing this bullshit again. Even Poland, where there's not actually any jews left, pretty much.

Glad to hear it Mangela. Do take care of yourself though. A little stress can be good but it will damage you if you overdo it.

A miserable pile of secrets.

How about Crusoeade then? I like the mish-mash of vowels all blobbed together in the centre there.

Wow, I didn't know the huffington post was so nasty and dishonest.

Looks cool! If you want it to look really like bird flocks instead of fish schools, you also need fixed-wing aerodynamics plus gravity at the least - my PhD supervisors published on this: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0022479

How old is that? My almost-five quite liked Journey for this type of "story" exploration thing.

I have to say all that plot shows me is that we apparently have a ~400 historical memory for atrocities below a certain size.

I've marked all the things that I find to be aggressive and dismissive of others' points of view.

I'll say it. Contribution doesn't have to be big.