Monthly Archives: May 2021
Elizabeth’s vet appointment
This is going to be a short post. My usual readers may be confused why this is on the blog. I like to do life post so I can always go back and read these later, like virtual journals.
I’m not going into detail on this post because a lot is unknown still. Our cat is staying over night at the vet because she refuses to pee. They need her pee to know for sure what’s wrong with her. Long story short, she hasn’t used the bathroom in 48 hours (only little spots of pee here and there.). Jessica and I have spent the last 5 hours in a town 30 minutes away just fo be told they’re keeping her over night. It’s not their fault so were not mad. But were finally going home where we have to be back at the vet at 7am.
It’s just a little awkward with our schedule, but that’s our baby.
Anywho, I had a different post planned for today but that can wait for the weekend. Thank you guys for reading and have a great day.
A Trip Down Memory Lane: Yugioh TCG
I work as an online inventory specialist at a card shop. This is just a fancy way of saying I put cards online. As a result, I am surround by TCGs everyday. I handle Pokemon, Yugioh, Magic, Digimon, Dragon Ball Super and plenty of others on a less frequent basis.
Because of this, I’ve been on a giant Yugioh kick. Thus, I’ve been making more post about it lately. Today I want to talk about Yugioh and how I fell in love with it.
I dont exactly know the complete history of Yugioh and the timeline. I know it was a manga created by a man who loved horror but wanted or needed to make a more traditional Shounen. So he made a manga about a card game with very grotesque and disturbed creatures. Sadly, a tradition that does not seem to be nearly as prevalent anymore.
I also think the anime predates the cards, or at least the official rules. That’s my understanding of it anyway. The anime, along with Pokemon, made up my childhood. I’m pretty confident I loved Pokemon more as kid. Yet, I never really did more than collect the cards. However, I was obsessed with the Yugioh card game. It was by far the card game of choice at school. We played it so often, it got banned in my 3rd grade class. We played it so much in 2nd grade. I think everyone from this time period remembers schoolyard Yugioh fondly. It is kind of like school yard basketball or football where you just played to have fun and it was wild. The creatures were iconic and the duels were a blast. The game has changed so much, I think that only adds to the nostalgic factor. People see all the new XYZ, Synchro and Link monsters and it is so far removed from setting your creature face down and setting 2 cards in the back row and passing your turn.
I’m learning so much about hand traps and creatures that negate effects and spells. It really is a different time, but it has been for a while. Honestly, I loved all of Yugi’s creatures and pretty much any creature in the anime, but Yugioh GX gave the Elemental Heroes and those are probably my favorite archetype in the whole series. My Brother’s name is Jayden and he was born in 03, so it was really something to see the main character have the same name as him. I also loved superheroes. So this was a great match. I feel like they gave the monsters a lot of charm and that made it all the more awesome.
I remember going to my local K-Mart and buying the Yugi Starter Deck and Kaiba Starter Deck for me and my other brother to play and duel countless hours away with. Going to Walmart or K-mart was a real treat back than as we could pick out booster packs to add cards to our collection. I still have a ton of the cards I opened as a kid. My brother and I would fight so much over cards we had to write our initials on them. I still remember when my mom enforced this rule. As an adult, it might be the cringiest thing I did in my youth. But that was the rule. Every time I see those cards I laugh a little and die inside a lot.
When I finished 5th grade and the summer wrapped up, my mom sat me down and told me I had to grow up. She said I would get bullied if I kept playing Yugioh. She wanted me to throw away all my cards. Well, I told her she raised me better than to care about other people’s opinion. I think it gave her a heart attack as I’m sure her co-workers told her this small minded crap. She got her wish, sort of. I did not throw away my cards. But as I drifted away from my brother and lost my elementary school friends. I had no one to play with anymore. So I put all my cards in a tacklebox and stuck them in my closest.
Boy, am I glad I kept them. I know play Yugioh as well as a handful of other games like Pokemon with my now wife. We love it. And my job is literally handling Yugioh cards. haha So, I stopped playing Yugioh for about 10 years and again for another 5, but I’ve found my way back to it for the 3rd time in my life.
Who knows how long this ride will last but I am here for it.
Thanks for reading and have a great day!
Manga Monday: Manga Haul
The Manga hauls at this point have gotten completely out of order. So, again, this is one of my newer hauls (It might be the newest haul in fact.)
As you can see we scored 4 new mangas! 3 ongoing ones in Boruto, Dragon Ball Z, and Eden Zero. These are some of our favorite mangas to read. We also have 1 new comer to the collection, Black Torch.
Here’s the description straight from Amazon “Ninja and animal lover Jiro Azuma’s life is changed forever when he finds himself in the middle of a war of ninjas vs. demons. Jiro Azuma is descended from of a long line of shinobi, and he also can talk to animals. One day, he rescues a very unique black cat named Rago, a supernatural being, and is dragged into a secret supernatural war. Although he may appear rough-and-tumble, Jiro Azuma’s compassionate side emerges when it comes to the furry critters he can communicate with. But Jiro’s soft spot for animals gets him in major trouble when a suspicious stray cat fuses with him, granting him exceptional power but also dragging him into humanity’s hidden battle against powerful Japanese spirits, mononok“.
The cover and description honestly kind of leave a little to be desired, but as I was flipping through it I thought the art looked very solid. Sometimes I feel like I’m taking on more #1’s than I can handle. In recent memories I’ve taken on Jujutsu Kaisen, My Hero Academia and Eden Zero. I’ve enjoyed them all a lot and wanted to keep reading them. If I like Black Torch enough to justify getting more, I’ll probably have to cut something. Oh, well. Let’s wait and see how the book is before we make any rash decisions.
Thank you guys for reading and let me know what mangas you’ve picked up recently!
My TCG Endeavors: Building Classic Yugioh Decks!
Today, we’re starting a new series, My TCG Endeavors. Now, I’ve already made some post talking about TCG games like Digimon, Pokemon, Magic and now Yugioh. These are going to be all encompassing from collecting, building, and playing these card games.
Today I’m talking about early Yugioh decks loosely based on the anime. For my purposes I don’t care about the ban list so my list will often include Pot of Greed and other banned and restricted cards. Also, I say loosely because most of the characters only used 1 of’s which players don’t do in real life (Commander Players: Am I a joke to you? <.<). Also, I’m trying to improve strategies, consistency, and just the overall playability and fun factor of these decks. So the two decks I’m focusing on right now are Yugi’s deck and Kaiba’s deck.
Yugi’s deck is an evolution of the Summoned Skull beat down deck of the early days. It’s goal is to hide behind Kuriboh, Waboku and Swords of Revealing Light in order to amass the needed tributes. It will play 3 Dark Magicians, 3 Dark Magician Girl, 2 Summoned Skulls, 2 Gaia the Fierce Knight and 1 Cursed Dragon. I’m swapping all the effect creatures of Beatdown like Wall of Illusion, Hane-Hane and Man Eater Bug for more of Yugi’s iconic critters. I’ve got 3x Beaver Warrior, 3x Feral Imp, 2x Celtic Guardian, 3x Giant Soldier of Stone, 3x Silver Fang, 3x Kuriboh and some of other cards I have lying around like Gazella the King of Mythical Beasts. It will have a small search package with cards like Witch of the Black Forest that can get Summoned Skull later in game. This deck isn’t meant to be great or anything. It is mostly meant to be nostalgic because nothing beats drawing those classic creatures like Beaver Warrior and Celtic Guardian.
In the same manner, Kaiba’s deck is basically a worse version of Dragon Rush. It plays the Blue Eye’s package of 3x Blue Eyes, 3x Lord of D. 3x Flute of Summoning and some aggressive creatures like La Jinn, Battle Ox and Vorse Raider. I’m kinda stuck with where to go from here. Kaiba’s deck clearly out powers Yugi’s deck pretty easily unless Yugi sticks an early Summoned Skull. With that in mind, I’m giving Kaiba less removal and protection for just sheer power. I’m thinking of just pulling up the anime wiki and filling out the empty spots with cards from his deck list like Hitotsu-Me Giant, Rude Kaiser, Ryu-Kishin, Judge Man, and Saggi the Dark Clown.
So I’m very close to completing these list. I just need to finalize spots and see what cards I still need left to get. I’ll post the deck list on here when I’m done. It is worth nothing I am trying to keep these as “in time” as possible. I might use some updated cards, but for the most part, I’m looking for cards that pre-date the GX anime.
So thank you guys for reading. Let me know if you have any recommendations for improving the decks. Yugi’s will use Dark Magician matters tactics and Kaiba will use Blue-Eyes matters tactics. So any recommendations from before Duel Academy and that are budget are appreciated. Alright. That’s it for me. I’ll see you guys in the next one!
New Pokemon Music Mix on our 2nd Channel!
For those of you unaware, I have a second channel where I throw together music mixes for your listening pleasure. This time around I threw together some Pokemon battle themes ranging from the original rival theme to Steven’s theme and plenty more including Kanto Gym leader Theme, Pokemon Sun and Mon Battle Royal, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Champion Theme and many more! It is over 30 minutes of Pokemon Battle Music to get you hyped! If any of that sounds good to you click the link below!
Top Five Best Designed Pokemons from Gen 3 (Top 5 Friday)
When analyzing Generation 3’s Pokemons, one thing became clear. This Gen is top loaded and well balanced. This is kind of problematic for this list. Let’s break it down. First, the top loaded. This list, like all my others of this type, exclude legendaries and starters. As a result, Hoenn loses what it did so well. Blaziken, Sceptile, Swampert, Deoxy, Rayquaza I could go on and on about how well designed this subset of Pokemons are. They are some of the best in the entire series of starters and legendaries, and none of them will be on this list. I like to spotlight some of the lesser known Pokemons. However that gets us to the second issue.
It’s well balanced. In most other Pokemon games, if you remove legendaries and starters, the top 5 are obvious. However, very little separates these Pokemons. I think the top 3 are obvious, I think theres about 10 Pokemons that could be battling for the 4th and 5th spot. I wouldn’t blame anyone for moving Pokemons on this list or having ones I didnt even mention. In fact, my list might change next week if you ask me. Anyway, let’s get on with the list.
#5 Aggron- When you see what misses the list, you’ll see what I mean. I actually never got to use Aggron. Aron is so bad, I haven’t been able to evolve it. I’m trying to fix that with my current playthrough of Emerald, but he is still my weakest mon. All that aside, Aggro is ferocious, well designed, on the champions team and represents a new type. All things that give him a lot of street cred.
#4 Altaria- I was going to give Altaria the 3 spot, but on second thought, I feel like my new #3 is more iconic. Something Altaria has in common with the top 2 Pokemons on this list is that they got a Mega form when ORAS came out. Altaria loses a little bit of its charm when you realize this Generation gave us, I think 4 Dragon types. Generation 1 just had Dragonite’s line. I dont believe Johto gave us a single Dragon. Hoenn gave us at least 4 dragon lines. She is awesome, a gym leader used her and she got a Mega. Again, it was tough separating these early entry Pokemons but I think Altaria did enough to crack the list.
#3 Breloom- I actually think solely from a design perspective struggles to make into the top 5. However, I think it was the first grass fighting Pokemon to exist and in the competitive scene it was a beast. It was able to set up substitute and barrage its enemies with focus punch. I can completely see someone wanting a different Pokemon in this spot but I feel he was an iconic strong gen 3 Pokemon with a unique typing that is awesome and hasn’t happened a lot, and it had a clear defined role in the meta. I think all these characteristics are enough to find a spot on this list.
#2 Salamence- I could see some people wanting this at #1, but I’ll explain. When Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire came out, he was undoubtedly one of the coolest Pokemons ever, including legendaries and starters. However, as time gas moved on, I think he has lost a lot of his luster. I think design wise he is one of the coolest dragons in the game, but he wasn’t the original (that honor goes to Dragonite) and he has to compete with all the other dragons in just this generation, namely Rayquaza. Still there is no denying how epic he was in his debut. He was featured on Drake’s Elite Four team, is a dragon type, was a clear OU in the metagame, and his design is just so hard to beat.
#1 Metagross- Metagross is a very interesting Pokemon. He takes the top spot in my list for several reasons. Steel was still (hehe) a new type. Prior to this generation, only the magnemite line, Skarmory and Steexlix had the distinction of the type. Gen 3 did add a handful of new steels including Registeel, Mawile and the aforementioned Aggron, but unlike Salamance, Metagross is the coolest steel type this generation. He also was a nondragon pseudo legendary. Something only himself and Tyrantiar can say. As the series would go exclusively Dragons for the pseudos as the series progressed into newer regions. He was the iconic Pokemon on Champion Steven’s team. He was powerful and had a clear role in the competitive scene. He checks off every box needed to be #1. I could see people rooting for the giant flying dragon, but I’m giving the nod to Metagross today.
So there’s my list. I think generation 3 was summed up by Metagross and Salamence (excluding starters and legends) and my list reflects that. However there were so many great Pokemons that just did not separate from the pack like Gardevoir and Miltoic. I think Gen 3 might have the best roster top to bottom because it does not have many dud Pokemons. Theres still the arbitrary early bugs, but every gen has that. Some Pokemons like Linoone and Kecleon can get lost in the shuffle but they’re never really bad. So this was a tough top 5.
Let me know what 5 Pokemon would have made your list. Thank you guys for reading and have a great day!
Digimon 1.5 Deck Profile #1 Blue Green Imperialdramon Dragon Mode
Before we get started, which do you guys like better? Deck Techs or Deck Profiles? Either way, today we are doing our first deck breakdown of the season. In 1.0 I built a mono blue aggro deck that looked to eliminate digi evolution cards underneath the opponent’s digimon and gain bonuses that way. I loved that deck. I still do. However, I said it needed an early jammer. Well, 1.5 heard me.
This is the card that got me started. Veemon was my favorite Digimon from the anime when I was younger. I wanted to build a strict Veemon deck featuring his linage.
I wanted to build around his whole line but ditched that idea when I saw another card.
The early Veemon build thought me something. Attacking twice and with jamming is super busted. It is one of the best things to be doing in early Digimon. However, I found too many of the cards I was playing either made you jump through hoops for the jamming or the second attack. I switched gears once I realized I had most of the cards I needed for the Imperialdramon Dragon Mode deck.
Let’s start with the eggs:
4x DemiVeemon (BT3-002) 1x Demiveemon (BT2-002)
Both of these eggs are pretty great for the deck. I run the 4x BT3-002 version because the jamming is more reliable than the unsuspend. However, card draw, while very powerful, is not what this deck is lacking. I could see running the BT2-002 version if you wanted the extra 1,000 DP. As a sidenote, about 80% or more of our LV4 and up Digimons have jamming, so the DP when attacking is a moot point. I could see it being beneficial if you wanted to go hyper offensive by first doing a security check, unsuspending, and then attacking their Digimon. I find that 9 times out of 10, I go for the security stack, so the 1,000 DP is really pointless to me.
LV 3 Digimons
3x Gabumon (BT1-029) 4x Veemon (BT3-021) 3x Elecmon (BT1-028) 3x Gomamon (ST2-02)
Veemon is probably the best 3 drop in the deck. The jamming lets us apply pressure early without losing our dude. It can be punishing against slow decks that cannot attack back into him the following turn. Gabumon is probably my second favorite as he draws a card on play. He allows you to set up another Digimon on an egg, play him in the arena and still get the card draw. I could see cutting him if you want sheer power over the drawing he provies. There are plenty of blue LV 3.s to play if starter deck cards are banned where you play in Gomamon’s case (they are not where I play, but I have read about that online.) Everybody loved Elecmon in 1.0 because of his 2 memory cost and 3,000 DP. He is a solid aggro creature.
LV 4 Digimons
3x Frigimon 2x Grizzlymon 4x ExVeemon 4x Ogremon
Frigimonmon is a solid creature with jamming. Grizzlymon does not have jamming nor is he aggro, but his ability to block on turns when we need to build our board or avoid dying has made me want to play more. ExVeemon is here with his synergy with Frigimon, Veemon and Ogremon. Unsuspending them can help give you real momentum. He can unsuspend a Veemon he digivolves onto, but he loses jamming that way. Ogremon is here to help make Davis Motomiya a real card advantage machine. Plus he has jamming.
LV 5 Digimons
4x Dinobeemon 4x Paildramon
These guys being Green Blue hybrids helps a lot. Dinobeemon provides jamming which can help in a pinch while Paildramon gives himself the ability to unsuspend with no troubles when he digivolves. Both are hits for Davis and both cleanly evolve into our 6 drops.
LV. 6 Digimons
4 Imperialdramon Dragon Mode Blue 2x Imperialdramon Dragon Mode Green 2x Puppetmon
Imperialdramon Blue is a great beast to have in this deck. He has jamming and when he digivolves, he unsuspenses all your other jamming Digimons which can let you just swing over for the win in some games. Imperialdramon Green lacks that same instant unsuspend mechanic but his piercing allows you to take out enemies and then unsuspend to check a security card. It requires more work, but can be used to play offense and defense to great effect. The 2 Puppetmons are kind of like utility. He can tap down a threat so they cannot swing in for the kill or he can suspend a Digimon we might want to attack. He can also tap down blockers who might get in our way.
LV 7 Digimons
1x Omnimon (BT1-084)
This Omnimon is here to mass kill Argomons (because its all Digimons that share a name!) and to kill other Omnimons. Our dudes can be small so to have a creature that can kill our opponent’s biggest threat is handy. If you don’t have Omnimon, I might just run another Puppetmon, Digimon with Jamming, a removal option, or a pump spell to help our piercers attacking into their Digimons.
Options and Tamers
3x Boring Storm 2x Cocytus Breath 2x Davis Motomiya
These are by far my 2 favorite options in blue. Cocytus Breath can be very effective against decks relying on establishing inheritable effects. Boring Storm helps draw out of slow starts and is a good top deck. Davis is great for getting out of memory locks by your opponent. He also has the added bonus of potentially drawing 2 cards! If you cut Davis, cut Ogremon. Ogremon can never be digivolved from your LV 3s thus he is not great for memory control.
So, that is my list. I’ve been cleaning house most of the day and fell behind on getting everything finished. I want to update this in a few days with what I consider are the decks biggest weaknesses, BT4 updates, budget options or money upgrades. It will probably be its own post. Either way, thanks for reading and have a great day everyone.
Virtual Game Night!
Tonight, as in here in a few minutes, Jessica and myself will attempt a virtual game with her uncle and aunt. Were going to be playing Letters from Whitechapel where 1 person plays as Jack the Ripper and 3 players play as detectives. We each own a copy so we will both have the board available to us. Outside of that, there’s always exploding kittens on our phone or even Jackbox games.
Let me know some fun family games that can be played over zoom/messenger. In June most of our game nights will be virtual like this so were open to some idea.
Anyway, thanks for reading and any suggestions. Have a great night everybody!
Digimon 1.5 Decks
I’m totally late to the party but I’m going to be showcasing some of my Digimon decks over the course of this week. Ones I’ll do for sure are : Imperialdramon Dragon Mode Blue/Greem, Piedmon Purple, Ceresmon Green, and a blue aggro deck. I may try my hand at a Rookie Rush, Diaboromon Black and maybe a red, a yellow and maybe another purple deck.
I’m short on 1.0 cards but I have almost a whole set of 1.5 cards (curse you Omnimon). So feel free to recommend some decks for me to build. Jessica and I will run them through a gambit and see how they do. Hopefully that’s something you guys want to see! Anywho, thanks for reading and have a great day!
Streams Are Coming Back!
Hey guys. Thursday Night streams are making a come back! If you arent following our YouTube channel you’re missing out. Normally on Thursday nights we stream A Hat in Time content. We are planning on streaming random stuff over on Twitch so make sure you follow both the Dahubbz YouTube channel and Twich channel. Feel free to recommend solo games or Co-OP games. I dont usually play online multiplayer games though.
Anyway, if you ever make it to a stream, be sure to be apart of the chat.
Thank you guys and have a great night!
Da_Hubbz 