Got’em
Mikey down!
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It doesn’t matter WHAT you choose to do in your downtime. Sports, tabletop games, video games, anything. If there is ANY lose condition, sooner or later, you’re going to have a moment of “$#!+, I’ve lost” as you run through your options and all your tools fail you. Those first three panels capture that feeling PERFECTLY.
Yes the conversation about western and eastern dragons and maybe the answer to which ones they are I’ve been asking about since ages ago.
Yeah, I actually addressed that in one of my future fanfics. I can’t publish them as fast as I would like, though.
Kai and Kaya are Chinese dragons, (called lóng 龙) not the western style. That’s one of the reasons they don’t have wings. The mane of hair going down their tail is one of the callouts as is the shape of their heads.
Honestly, minus the wings, they look very like a lot of Western Dragon depictions I’ve seen, and not… “ornate” enough for most Eastern Dragon depictions I’ve seen. I always read them as Western that just don’t have wings. Fur or “scales” sticking from the spine is something I’ve often seen depicted in “Western Dragons” over the years.
The reason you don’t see un’ornated eastern dragons is becouse the ornated ones are old. Take it from the point of vies of the ancient people, what is scarier and comands more respect? A young teenage dragon, or a old dragon who lived for centuries.
I’m using “ornate” in a very loose fashion. “Decorated” might’ve been better. I mean no horns/antlers, no “whiskers”/”antenna”, no frills, decorative fins, patterns. There are depiction that are equally clean, but more often that’s something I see on Western than Eastern dragons.(And the age thing doesn’t really work, because hybrids are “If you don’t have them as a kid, you won’t get them as an adult” rules)
Personally, I see the Twins as a mix of both Eastern and Western Dragons. I don’t believe that Western Dragon’s ever had the fur-ridge before being associated with Eastern Dragons, while Eastern Dragon’s are typically associated with Rivers, and thus don’t have the fire-breath.
As for Dee’s comments on the “additions”, I’m not certain that I agree with the “Have them as a kid, or not at all” rule. I don’t think that we’ve seen any male deer pre-teens running around with Antlers and as such I feel like some of that can still be attributed to youth. Horns/Antlers are things that only adult animals grow, admittedly with Antlers mostly being for mating fights. The Twins are anthropomorphic Dragons, so Kai could probably grow the “moustache”/”whiskers”/”antenna” in mid-to-late puberty, around the time human males grow beards, while the Twins are currently only in early puberty. Kaya, I expect, wouldn’t grow them at all.
There are also long (eastern dragons) that serve Zhurong, breathe fire and fear water and Sun Wokong got help from ice dragons.
I was planning on Kai growing his whiskers (whidh will be prehensile, to some extent) while he’s in college (culinary school.)
Mmm, I suppose this must be a relatively small time and/or new(though it’s been around long enough to have cards be obsolete. Maybe a game that gained a foothold in HC specifically. I know if this was MTG, there’d be several people with drone decks, based on what we’ve seen, which’d see use at clubs aand game shops(if there’s on thing I’ve learned, it’s that lots of big club players have like 20 gimmick decks xD) even if they were running something else for the tourney. It also sounds like Mikeys deck must’ve been pretty unbalanced if he gave up that quick, and/or a lot of the basic cards you’d see in Yu-Gi-Oh or MTG don’t exist in this game. I wonder how he places in tournaments normally(I don’t imagine well, nowl.
I really enjoyed the most of the chapter! I do feel these last two pages were weaker than the others though.
Hopefully what comes next will be interesting. I look forward to finding if she can carry through without depending on an opponent to build half her strategy(both the theft and the defences).
(Also, I’m surprised that in 15 years Kaya has not heard of Eastern Dragons. I swear it was said before that the twins especially looks for dragon media in a drawing that was done. I guess they must not read a lot/use the internet a lot, and must missed games like Dragon Quest.)
Agh. Multiple close parentheses went missing/typoed -_-
Huh.. I really liked these last two pages after Mikey’s big build-up. 🙂
I just find them very out of line with any of my experiences with card games like this. I was pretty sure Nora was going to win, which I don’t mind(I was actually rooting for her at the start). I feel that the concept of cards that “no one else even considers running” fell very short, and that Nora’s final strat both: Seems dependent on knowing her enemy(she depended both on Mikey stealing a specific card of hers, at a specific time, and on him defending the bench she so depends on); And weak to common cards in other similar card games.
I know that not everyone reading this is going to have a ton of TCG/CCG experience, but, though I’m out of practice, I’ve played approximately ten different types, with most of my focus on the big three(Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic the Gathering, Pokémon), and in my experience, Nora’s build is… commonplace, and Mikey’s is bad, if he had all that setup and zero response to people countering it. Mikey’s build actually felt more novel to me than Nora’s.
I think it is more that he had nothing on hand to get out of the situation and the amount of damage from each creature on the board he would take that round would turn his life points into a smoldering crater. Remember that the effects placed on them remove their defense and doubles attack stats.
And he had everything very protected, so I doubt even a board wipe (that most decks don’t even have room for) would save him at that point.
Based on the damage numbers being shown over the previous turns/the stats we know of, even with double damage, Mikey has 8000 HP.
600 ATK worth of creatures were shown on the field. If the turret is affected by Beserk, but not Mirror World(if it was hit by Mirror World too, Nora would have lost first, at two turns worth of life) somehow, that’s 1200 a turn, for seven turns to break her strat. If the drone isn’t affected by Beserk or Mirror World, then 1000 damage per turn for 8 turns(unless Nora adds more attack drones to the bench).
Even if we go by last page’s 1800hp to 600hp, thats 1200 damage which would either become 2400 or 2200 depending on the drone, which is four turns to survive.
That’s a lot of time to turn things around.
“And he had everything very protected” He had his Bench protected, and no indication that his creatures were on it(based on chatter elsewhere, drones are a unique type of creature that uses the bench), and if he wiped his own creatures, that’s at least 800 less damage a turn, which gives more time to recover. “that most decks don’t even have room for” really? they don’t seem that uncommon to me. But even if they are, usually decks have *some* cards to counter spells and/or problematic permanents.
Also, apparently Mikey does theft often enough that Nora was depending on it, *and* he does deck searching, so considering Nora uses board wipes, he could’ve at least tried to steal one from her. Unless the “bad luck” bunny is so lucky that she drew her single board wipe exactly when she needed it, and her opponent drew his single card theft exactly when she needed it.
That’s all assuming Mike’s deck has a card that could’ve gotten him out of the situation. Given his, “I’ve got nothing,” reaction, it’s safe to say he didn’t.
Hey can I get a link to those?
Link to what?
Mikey could have won that game if he had an answer to [Mirror World]. His combo was based around “Winning Coin Flips”, and a card that let him decide what he wanted out of a coin flip. It would entirely depend on what the card precisely said, and what the ruling on what “winning a coin flip” precisely means, but it isn’t unreasonable to assume that he could have broken his own board if he had cards able to do that.
Oh, and Mikey’s Monsters would have all been Ghost & Digital, making them Intangible as a side effect of being Ghost. With Intangible making it so that they can’t be Targeted in Combat or by Card Effects. That’s how they’re protected.
As for Drones, this game seems to me to be a mash-up of MTG and Yu-Gi-Oh. Specifically, we know it uses the Mana System of MTG (as that was discussed earlier), and the Life Point System of Yu-Gi-Oh. While the term “Bench” comes from Pokemon, I’m of the opinion that the term has been repurposed for the Yu-Gi-Oh “Spell And Trap” Zone, meaning that Mikey was protecting his continuous effects cards. Given that we’ve only seen a few cards on the field at a time, even in Benji’s Game (even if a one of Benji’s presumably-monster’s did have another card underneath it), it isn’t unreasonable to assume that this game has Yu-Gi-Oh’s limited field slots. Oh, and, don’t forget that the Gattling Drone being on the Bench instead of the Field isn’t a standard thing for Drones, as Mikey saw fit to comment on that.
All of that previous paragraph combined suggests that Drones could be a support type that may not have enough support to make a decent full deck, and not the “I make a stack through recursion” that MTG Drones relies on. Especially with cards like Spy Drone, which doesn’t seem to have any real use most of the time. That’s the type of card that is a brick over 90% of the time, to the point where it should be a sideboard card at best.
Oh, and, Nora had a minimum of 5 turns, possibly only requiring 4 of them (for the Yuppi-Oh comment), to build up her counterplay. We don’t know how many of those turns was spent building up Mana, and how many was spent waiting on cards, but I’m of the opinion that she could have easily had the full combo and just needed the Mana to actually play it, getting the last mana last turn in a tap-land.
That said, I’m saying all of this from an entirely outside perspective, as I don’t have the willingness to learn the expected throughlines of decks that are required knowledge to play TCG’s, let alone all the meta-understanding of how the different decks interact.
Wait, wait, wait. You’re saying that in all your years of being a dragon, you have never encountered the fact that there are eastern and western dragons? You mean to tell me that; with your parents being of western origins (Dad is Italian, Mom is unstated but looks European) and you more closely resembling an eastern dragon, and the numerous plushies you have acquired over the years, the topic has never come up?
Very good point! They’ve been drawn receiving Eastern Dragon plushies before, and have played (western dragon) Spyro. It is rather weird it never came up.
They have certainly been exposed to art depicting both eastern dragons and western dragons. That doesn’t mean they’ve been educated on *why* some dragons are long and wingless, and other dragons are bulkier and have wings. I probably knew of eastern dragons for over a year before I knew they were eastern dragons, and Marco seems to be the sort of parent who leaves out details like that.
So, Kaya is learning that there are different kinds of dragons. The more you know.
Also taniwha, or south-pacific dragons from Aoteoroa. Everywhere has their own legends…
“Congrats, you got me again…”
“Again?” After all that before the match? Mikey glossing over old losses to Nora? 😉 and _Nora’s_ fussing too? The things people stress about before a big match. 🙂
I suspect they’ve both traded losses. Based on the wording at the start of the match though, Nora won last time too, but it was an awful experience for both players.
Niche tactics work against opponents who aren’t savants at remembering every possible tactic.
Nora’s first win and she’s feeling proud, using tactics no one else even considers.
And what’s this? A new found interest for Kaya as she discovers other types of dragons? Nice set up for next week.
Nora wants all the niche cards? How much more before they all become too impractical for her to use? And when will we see Mikey without his sunglasses?
Mikey can only hang his head in defeat, as the crazy bunny won. I guess Nora’s deck was so niche, it’s a huge unknown for most players, letting her beat the pants off her opponents without giving them a chance to counter. Though it does seem like there were points where she could’ve lost the match if she wasn’t careful… I do wonder what that card she placed face down was… And will her niche cards help her in the next matches? Stay tuned for the next episode of Yuppi-Oh!
Kaya finally makes her appearance in this chapter, given that she’s one of the titular dragons, she and Kai are contractually obligated to appear in every chapter. She doesn’t know about the different types of dragons?! Has she been under a rock for the past 15 years? How could she not come across the two main categories of dragon in this day and age beforehand? I hope Kai isn’t this ignorant about dragon classification… And who is Kaya talking to? A new friend or a member of her existing friends?
Kaya already appeared in 6 panels of this chapter starting here – Kai appeared in 4.
Kaya has already been in 6 panels of this chapter. Kai has been in four (on the same pages)
And the game is done. Well played on the bunny’s part. Niche counters, so fun.
Kaya didn’t know? I’m surprised she never learned, plenty of chances.
There’s an episode of Pocket Dragon Adventures that features an eastern dragon. There are also episodes of What’s New, Scooby-Doo? that each feature a western and eastern dragon (I don’t recommend the latter, it blows it at the finish line).
Criticising a niche deck, Mike?
I thought yours was one too?
Was it your plan first or Noras
and it was ‘Doggy see, Doggy do’?
You fought someone you know
has to mostly fight herself.
You really think her best moves
aren’t going to be off the fence?
The match was tense and fraught;
catching the attention of all.
Well, nearly all as it’s clear to see
a new question has Kaya in thrall…
Diolch yn fawr iawn.
Damn Nora is hot when she does that.
So it’s a toolbox deck. It tries to have answers to everything, plus stuff to find the right one. It’s a natural reaction to seeing the same tricks again and again, but it’s hard to make a good deck out of it. You will first have to find your answer, which is especially a problem against rush decks. And they generally have trouble pressuring the opponent.
Why do I get the feeling that Mikey is trying to learn Nora’s playing style knowing that he won’t win?
If that is his strategy, he will eventually beat Nora.
He said, “You got me again.”
It’s nice to know that she’s defeated him in the past!
oh now that’s just plain wholesome. Game’s over and the two just nerd out over how jank some of the mechanics are.
How could she not know about European and Asian dragons being different? There’s even Central American dragons, they’re called feathered serpents. Not to mention the North American Pomala, he’s basically a bird-mammal convergent version of a European dragon.
I prefer to use different words for different mythical creatures, rather than lumping them all together as “dragons”.
Wait if that is the case then … O M G THARE CHINESE DRAGONS they don’t need wings to fly there tails are powerful enough to lift them up off the ground that is one Nelly twist I didn’t see