Auto-pilot ENGAGE

A few of my friends on Facebook were talking about Yugioh. One of them had recently gotten out of the game and was beginning to miss playing. A summation of the conversation is as followed:
Yugi: "Man, I wish I could play Yugioh right now but I don't have any cards."
Kaiba: "What happened to all your good stuff?"
Yugi: "I sold it. So I'll have to get on some of these new decks."
Kaiba: "Don't bother. The game is so autopilot right now; you can't win."
Kaiba: "All these tcg exclusives broke the game."
Yugi: "I thought that Tour Guide was the last broken card."
Kaiba: "There's more. It's all 'herpderp' do the same move all the time and win"
Yugi: "Lol."

I'm sure you guys have heard this a lot. The internet is full of forums and blogs where people are upset about the game-state. One of the biggest trends, which started up way back at Storm of Ragnarok release, is that any simpleton can play a tier 1 deck and win. As long as you follow the step-by-step procedure of your theme, you should win. This is becoming more and more true with new themes such as Dino Rabbits, Wind-ups, Inzector, New-Chaos Dragons, and Hidden Arsenal sets like Lavals and Gishki. According to many users, these decks auto-pilot you to success, and so long as you don't "misplay" then you are golden.

So what makes these decks auto-pilot decks and why is this so bad? Well let's look at the one deck that PROBABLY is not an auto-pilot deck.

Tengu Plants, in my opinion is not auto-pilot at all. Sure there are optimum plays, but the fact that it uses single copies of so many cards, and that 15 monster Extra Deck, gives it incredible options. For example, a hand of Reborn Tengu and One-for-one will probably result in a Librarian and Catastor to draw 1 card. However, depending on your hand, it could be so much more. Dandylion, Doppelwarrior, BLS, Debris Dragon, Caius, Monster Reborn, and so many more cards can influence the direction that 1 Tengu and One-for-one goes. That Extra deck toolbox is a key component to making this deck "skill-driven"(even if you have a 50% chance of choosing the correct synchro monster). Tengu Plants also suffer from relatively weak first-turn plays. Especially if they get the first turn, all you may see if a set Sangan or normal summoned Reborn Tengu. On rare occasions, the player may spend 2-3 cards to drop Trishula on the first turn and -1 the opponent. It can be said that "Always setting Sangan on the first turn is an auto-pilot move", but in most cases, that Tengu Plant player had other cards they could have played.

Auto-pilot usually goes as follows:
Start with your best opening monster - Laggia, Hamster, Darksoul, Tomato, Stratos, Laquari, Armageddon Knight(Inzector), Stardust(Dragunity), Shi En, Swap Frog, etc.
Set the desired backrow - Solemn Warning, Starlight Road, Forbidden Lance, Solemn Judgment, Dimensional Prison, etc.
Pass and attempt to control the game from there.

A big part of these "auto-pilot" decks is that they all have very powerful field presence on turn 1 or turn 2. This is usually because their deck has a fairly consistent win condition, and the sooner you can pull it off, the better. Decks that do not have powerful, first-turn field presence usually have 1-2 card combos that can create field presence from generally nothing. These combos aren't seen as "auto-pilot" for whatever reason.
Auto-pilot: Mystical Space Typhoon on the set Solemn Warning. Summon Rescue Rabbit. Summon 2 Sabersaurus. Overlay for Laggia. Attack the face-down Sangan. Set 1.
Skillful: Space Typhoon their set Warning, baiting Laggia. RotA for Junk Synchron or Doppelwarrior(whichever is applicable), baiting Laggia. Normal Junk synchron, losing it or your synchro to Laggia. Activate Spore for Doppel, BLS, One-for-one, Chaos Sorc, Monster Reborn, etc.

I think we can all agree that a deck with strong, easy to summon monsters is less likely to "misplay" than a deck that relies on synergy between its cards to win. Does this make the simpler deck worse? Of course not. Does it ruin the game? No, that's what the side deck is for. Perhaps calling a deck auto-pilot is the wrong term, as its pretty subjective. Combo-centric decks and simple decks may be more accurate. A simple deck can still "misplay."

My opinion on the matter of auto-pilot decks and skilled decks? If you can make your deck consistent enough to perform the same, powerful plays each game, then good for you. Skill and luck will always come into play. Don't believe me? Run sets of 5 with a hardcore player or a more-casual player, using the same deck, and see if auto-pilot is the only deciding factor of the duel.

Sea Lancer Froggies

Blur Mode

DN Decklists seem to be the popular thing to do. I do have to admit, it is a nice layout.

I have never ran frogs in any deck ever before. I was a fan of Formula Monarchs, back with Fishborg, Formula, and Pot of Avarice were all at 3, but I have never actually played the deck. With some internet exploration I discovered Sea Lancer frogs, and I decided to build it. The core components of the deck are very easy to get and most of them are commons. The extra deck consists of starter deck Xyz monsters and you can add on to that with Synchros of your choice. This makes Lancer Frogs a super easy deck to make with great payoff.

So how do Sea Lancer Frogs work?
1) Swap Frog and Ronintoadin easily outshine Treeborn Frog for tribute fodder. By removing copies of Poison Draw Frog and Dupe Frog, you are fueling Sea Lancer's effect. Poison Draw and Dupe are notorious for missing the timing, however in the case of destruction effects, you are most likely sending the cards equipped to Lancer after everything has resolved. With Poison Draw, you will draw a card(obviously); with Dupe, you can add a Frog from your deck or grave to your hand. Even though Lancer will only be 2300 with any amount of frogs equipped to him, being able to out-sustain your opponent is key to this deck.

2) The existence of Gachi is a very important part of this deck. And guess what? Ronin can make Gachi Gachi Gantetsu with ease. In fact, it is so easy to make Gachi, it is almost scary that it is legal. (It is legal because the only rank 2 Xyz monsters are Gachi and No.96 Dark Mist. Dark Mist costs 3 level 2 monsters, but will destroy 3 monsters by battle.). Instant Gachi turns Lancer into a 2700, Caius into 2800, and Gorz into a 3100. Many of the most popular cards have a maximum of 2800 ATK, so Gachi enables you to match that power. The only way to recycle used Gachi is with Pot of Avarice; Swap Frog can't return monsters to the extra deck for its 3rd effect.

3) Gaining an extra Tragoedia has helped a lot of decks out that don't want to commit more monsters to the field than they need to. Decks like this can run hand-traps galore. Especially with the amount of OTKs from synchro decks, having bonus turns against huge fields is always a plus. Tragoedia is also Xyz material in disguise, as his 4th effect can change him into a frog or a lancer. Hilarious plays will ensue when you overlay Trag onto a used Sea Lancer to make Tiras. Be careful though as your equips still miss the timing if you use Sea Lancer for anything.

After the basic skeleton of the deck, there is a lot of room for more cards. Since the deck doesn't rely on Treeborn, you can run as many trap cards that don't interfere with Salvage and Enemy Controller. Right now, I am running 1 copy of Oh F!sh! and 1 Spiritual Water Art - Aoi. These could actually be anything, I just used them because it seemed like a lot of fun and fits the theme. After the mandatory 9-spell lineup, any number of cards can fill in the remaining 3-9 slots. Solemn Warning may be a bit dangerous with Gorz and Trag awaiting a hit, but other traps so really easy to throw in since Ronintoadin is the main star amongst the frogs.
-Mind Crush
-Treacherous Trap Hole
-Dimensional Prison
-Torrential Tribute
-Trap Dustshoot
-Solemn Judgment

I ran the deck at locals yesterday with an incomplete side deck and extra deck. After letting a karakuri deck gain a full field of machine synchros, I realized that the extra deck for Lancer Frogs is just as important as any other deck. So far, I have the basics:
-Maxx C
-Lava Golem
-Chaos Hunter
-Gemini Imps
-Leeching the Light
-Creature Swap
Other people who play similar decks like to side in cool tribute monsters that shut down opposing decks. Extra copies of LaDD, Vanity's Fiend, even things like Delg just to disrupt your opponent. You also have room for more Spell/trap destruction in Dust Tornado or even Twister if Necrovalley is screwing you up. Lancer Froggies don't make up a very fast deck, but any deck that tries to run at its speed will have a tough match.

Defossilizing My PC

So, my PC sucked for gaming. I bought it back in 2007 from Best Buy, paying the extra $40 for a memory upgrade(2gb woot), and a bigger LCD monitor(17 inches woot). Back then, all I played was Final Fantasy XI and Ragnarok Online; any crappy PC could run these low-tech games. It wasn't until I tried to install FFXIV upon release that I realized:
"Hey, I don't think my computer can handle these new games."
I have grown accustomed to playing PC games on the lowest settings. I really do not mind the jaggies and blurred textures on my screen. Dragon Nest and Vindictus really told me that I had some work to do. Even on the lowest settings; even with in-game modifications removing lag-inducing visuals, I still couldn't run the games any higher than 13FPS. For the longest time, I thought that FPS only affected visuals. Thanks to League of Legends and dozens of missed kills with Leblanc, I discorved that my severely low FPS also gave me input lag in games. In Dragon Nest, I couldn't time my dodges to avoid huge attacks and fire effects would absolutely kill my computer. In FFXI, scrolling through menus took milliseconds longer than other players, so my White Mage felt slow.

What was I working with? According to Speccy:
Vista 32 bit
AMD Athlon 64 x2 4200+
2.0GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @301MHz
Gateway MCP61SM2MA (socket AM2)
128MB GeForce 6100 nForce 205

That is
- 2 1GB sticks of RAM, well below today's standards.
- An AMD dual-core processor that is from 2006.
- Integrated graphics with only 128MB of virtual memory? I don't even think games go that low anymore.
- A stock power supply with 300 maximum Watts.
- A stock cooling fan that has my CPU at 67ºC with League of Legends running on max settings.

As you can see, there was a lot of work to do. With the holidays behind us, I was about to make a few upgrades to improve my gameplay. Money was a little tight, and I didn't need anything extravagant. I am used to playing on minimal settings, and I often still do, even with my upgrades:

What a mess. The stock case had random metal tabs everywhere that required pliers to move. I'd imagine they are there to keep the factory pieces in line and keep out larger, better hardware. A little bit of hammering was done to break some pins from the case. I also had to move my HDD to the secondary slot in order to fit in that ultra-long graphics card. I was afraid that I would need to drill holes for my PSU, but ATX models all have the same screw layout. With these 2 items alone, I have double the Watt capacity and a three generation jump in graphics processing. As I said before, I don't care to run things at their highest settings; I just want an FPS increase.

 

Before

After

However, it does look dang nice on those high settings. Who knew there were flowers on the Spring map!?

Dragon Nest is just as good, though I will only play that game on low settings with lag-reducing mods. Since I am a tanking Paladin, being able to block on command has improved my survivability tenfold. The new nests, Manticore and Apocalypse, can't kill me now that I can actually respond to their attacks! It was a $230( I could have spent less than this) investment, but it is already proving to be well worth it. The real proof will come from FFXIV v2.0 and Tera. If I can run those reliably, I will be one happy man.

For the rest of the upgrades to my PC, I will probably go in this order:
1) Cooling Unit
2) Tower Case
3) x2 2GB RAM (of 4GB depending on the deals I find)
4) CPU+Motherboard
5) HDD (My PS3 has a larger hard drive than my PC)

The Solo Queue Mentality

Hi everyone and welcome to the first post of the New Year. I hope you all had an enjoyable set of holidays; filled with all the things you enjoy doing while on vacation. For me (and for this blog), that is gaming. Sadly, I have to say that the majority of my game-time is given to League of Legends. This is sad because I have so many other things on the shelf to play, and the "beast" of LoL is becoming more and more apparent. This may be because I only play 5v5 Normal Pick - Solo Queue matches. You would imagine that Ranked matches would have more serious players, but in the lower ranks, it isn't too different from Solo Queue. The way I play Solo Queue is pretty simple with my roster of champs:
1) Don't die.
2) Be confident in your own abilities, not in other's.
3) Force interactions between the team that you feel are advantageous.

Looking from the outside in, anyone would say that ALL players should be thinking this way. The hair-pulling part about it is that they don't, and this is why Solo Queue Mentality exists.

When I say Solo Queue Mentality, I don't mean being a lone ranger. 80% of the people who play in Solo Queue, play the same way. As if, upon selecting a Solo Queue match, they decided to throw away their brains and play the Solo Queue way! Before becoming level 30 in LoL, I had a decent win::loss ratio. I seem to be lacking pictures, so let's just say it was something like 160::130, 1 loss for every 2 wins. It isn't the best ratio in the world, but I felt like I was finally getting good at the game. In a lot of ways, its true, I know more about builds and I make better decisions than I would in the past. Today, my record is:

That is a 1::1 win::loss ratio. Every time I win, I lose, and that is not fun at all. Yes some of it is my fault for various reasons:
1) Not being able to super-carry the team when I'm playing a top-tier character.
2) Crashing upon loading and missing the first 5-8 minutes of the game.
3) All of my losses before level 20.
4) Having a bad computer.
5) Etc.
But I will say that a huge percentage of my losses are from bad players. Not every bad player suffers from Solo Queue Mentality, but many of them do, and it causes you to lose that much faster. There are maaaaaany things that people do in Solo Queue that they really, really, REALLY shouldn't, but we can list the worst things that make up Solo Queue Mentality:

The Chase
Chasing players with no instant kill and/or escape is terrible. Chasing characters into the jungle is almost always bad. Even if it is not a trap, you are spending time running around for nothing when you could have spent that 20 seconds killing minions for gold. Whoever you are chasing probably needed a recall to their base, regardless of you chasing them. This means THEY are wasting YOUR time. Even worse is if they are kiting you. Kiting anything in any game is when you purposely allow something to chase you, usually in an attempt to kill them. Getting kited in LoL can be even worse because of Ultimates and CC. If you don't get kited into an ambush, you may be kited while someone's R-button attack cools down. Any example would be chasing a Leblanc with a melee character with no escape or natural movement advantage like Garen. Depending on Leb's hp, she can kite Garen for as long as she wants. Her low cooldown on the ultimate can mean instant death to any bad player. Since Garen has relatively high HP (which makes it seem safe to chase with), you can still eat an Ethereal Chain->Mimic that sticks you in one spot, awaiting enemy ambush. Some characters can chase, even ones like Wukong and Vayne. If they get caught, they will probably die, but they have tools to escape an ambush. Players with solo queue mentality don't care about being kited. If they think they can get the kill, they will chase the enemy. Even if they can't kill them, they will chase just to show dominance. Scare the other champ off their turret, push a ganker back into the jungle, etc. People who chase usually end up with x-5/x/x-5 records, with half the amount of kills and assists than deaths because they are never in the team fight.

The One-for-one
Solo Queue Mentality cause people to want as many kills as possible, no matter the cost. Every kill you get is a "+1" in your(and your team's) advantage. Every death you get is a "-1", giving your opponents gold for killing you. In League of Legends, gold dictates how powerful your character will be in the middle and end of the game. Because of this, SQer's will want as many kills as possible; to make their character better, sooner. The best exchange would obviously be a free kill with no deaths. In many situations, if you are going to die, you may as well take down another character with you. At least, this way, the gold exchange is even. The problem is when you go in for a kill, with no plan to escape. Unlike chasing, you're pretty confident you can kill at least 1 guy on their team, and that is all you need. It may be 300gold you needed for a specific item, or that character may have a winning streak that you wanted to end, SQer's have to get that kill. What they don't know is that because you died, you and your opponent were both awarded money. If the bottom lane is 3/3 between all 4 characters and the top lane is less than that, then those top lane characters will be at a small disadvantage to the 3/3. It doesn't usually happen, but if one of those 3/3's helps the top push, they will probably succeed. With a possible 1200gold advantage, their main competition is whoever else is +1200g. This happens to me all the time: one of my teammates will be so aggressive that they one-for-one all game. The worst is when they complain to you about not helping. Most of the time, a battle between 2 evenly matched champions is down to the initiate. Example: if a TF face-checks a bush with a Garen in it, the Garen has an advantage in damage because of how he initiates the fight. However, if the Garen simply ran(or spun) toward TF, TF is now at an advantage. If the fight is 2v2, Garen could PROBABLY kill a character, and may die in the process because the fight was on equal footing. Seven times out of ten, Garen will blame you for his death. Which leads us to the next point:

Knowing when to attack
If I didn't help Garen in a 2v2 fight, it is usually for one reason:
The initiate provided us with no advatage.
Against ranged characters, Garen's initiate has probably cause him to take hits. If the enemies used no skills on Garen, then I will walk into those skills. Since Garen has no stun or root, ranged characters can kite him. Once you run in to help, they can run backwards, tagging you if you are close enough and staying away from Garen. The end result, without the use of summoner spells, is probably a skirmish with no deaths. If you decide not to assist your teammate, they should notice and pull out of the fight. Of course, SQer's don't know when to pull out of a fight as well as start one. The risk of fighting an even(though increasingly uphill) match is often too great, and your only hope is that your teammate never does that again. In the "new jungle" small monsters give less gold than ever before. This means that unsuccessful ganks drags the jungle champ behind. In SQ, the more ganks the jungler misses, the more reckless he may become. You may see Lee Sin at level 6 trying to jump on a level 8+ Malzahar, or a level 7 Warwick use his ultimate when the enemy has a Volibear in lane. They are attacking at terrible moments because they don't know what else to do. Team fights are no better, as SQer's love to fight with less characters. If you are the odd man out of the fight, you will be the one to blame for the lost battle. In some ways, you should be, as any team fight needs all the players. What sucks is that if the team is missing a key player, such as a tank or the carry, then they have no business starting team fights. If the fight is 4v5 with no escape, the best they can do is hope to one-for-one their team, leaving you and the only survivor left on the map.

Poor team composition
Most teams are the same: Ability Power champs, AD champs, a Tank or Support, and possibly a jungler. You mix it up because if your team is focused on 1 damage type, then your opponents can build defensive items to counter your entire team. Many SQer's don't care what the team composition is, if they have a champ they want to play, then you can't stop them. This is especially true when a new champ is released. You can usually expect every team to have that champ and take up an AP or AD slot. The day Ahri was released was terrible, as you can expect an AP on every team. Some games will have you with no big damage dealers on your team, some games will consist of an all-squishy champ team, all of which are difficult to win against typical builds. This can extend to bad character builds too. As much fun as playing with unconventional builds may be, it may cause your team to lose. The most recent game I had was with a jungle Janna. In my head, I imagined it to be similar to Maoki. You can build great support items on your support character, then jump into lanes, turning it from a 3v2 into a 3.5v2. Instead, this Janna only wanted to play as a ganker, building attack damage and banking on Janna's slow spell to ensure kills. Obviously, their team lost.

As much fun as LoL can be, there are equal moments of not-fun. Why I continue to play is because I love the way that -I- play the game. One day, I may be able to carry my team, regardless of how bad they may be. Until then, I will continue to blame others for my losses!