What's new? (October)

Grand Archive, Pokémon Legends Z-A, and a new site design.

Grand Archive

After sinking a pretty penny into my Tristan deck… and losing more than before I upgraded… I decided it was time for a change of pace. I’ve heard far too many people say that Tristan requires a high level of skill to use effectively… and that sure ain’t me lol.

My friend Marina suggested I go for a fire aggro Diao Chan build. So far, I love it! I don’t have every single card I wanted at the number of copies I originally planned, but it’s quite close to where I want it… and it feels fun! I think something more aggressive and exciting was exactly what I needed.

Oh, and she also sold me the Christmas Diao Chan playmat, which looks super cute and gives me an excuse to have green on the table even though I’m playing a fire deck.

Only one month until Phantom Monarchs drops! Weebs of the Shore have been teasing more cards, and I’m particularly excited by the new level 2 Alice featuring Umbra and curses.

I’m kinda tired of Dragon Shields shuffle feel and quality. Particularly the spiky edges they seem to have, especially on their dual mattes. Plus I don’t even like the look of dual mattes. I want to support my local game stores, but I’ve ordered a few types of sleeves online to try. I’m especially interested in some mint green sleeves. I’m thinking about how I can make a pastels setup with sleeves and maybe a new playmat.

I’ve also picked up some casino style dice for play sessions… which are just super fun to look at and touch (besides the sharp corners).

Pokémon Legends Z-A

I just wanted to mention that I’m 40+ hours into this game, and I’ve reached rank B (you start at rank Z, but you skip from W to F in one fight). It is… a mixed bag! But it’s still really fun. I’m a little sad I have to wait until February for my favorite monster Raichu to get his DLC, but I guess that’s ok. Look forward to a full review after I beat the main story. Hopefully by the end of this month.

New Site Design & Updates

I went back to using normal weight italic for my level 3 headings, and I revisited my heading decorations. Third level headings without links now gain a little “//” adornment to match the level 1 and 2 headings.

My portrait felt too dull in black and white, so I used my purple accent to jazz it up a bit.

The teal was the hardest part of this theme for me to nail down. I wanted a deeply saturated color, but I also needed black text to read well against it. The computerized/cartoony borders don’t work in white in this theme, so I needed to keep black text/borders everywhere. Originally I tried using purple everywhere as my accent, but I found it tiresome. And it made links harder to pick out.

The original plain gray background felt a little boring to me, especially on a large monitor, so I came up with this dotted fade out. I was inspired by the subtle halftone gradient used in Nintendo Online retro emulation. Perhaps I’ll go the extra mile and make a proper halftone implementation at some point, but for now a pure CSS “dots + gradient” approach gets the job done.

Not much changed here, but I think my new button and card styles are really popping on this short and sweet page.

I simplified the organization of the “uses” page and removed some items I don’t care as much about. Now there’s two categories: hardware and software.

Sets Grotesk features gorgeous illustrations on a page with a paper white background and searing purple lines. I love this purple and have used it before. And the paper white was exactly what I was looking for after my recent time with peach.

Oh, and I found this fabulous website thanks to my friend Anh, who recently redesigned her fabulous website.

I’ll admit that “warm whites” are a bit AI-coded right now, but I’m trying not to let the AI folks steal paper white and sparkles from us.

I also updated many parts of the site in subtle ways. Hopefully I’m improving spacing and layouts in your eyes as well.

Other

I’ve been getting back into manga (Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End; Delicious in Dungeon; and Prison School), though it’s hard to remember to read when I’m surrounded by and endless supply of video games at home.

I’m enjoying watching Ash play The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-.

The next games on my list are NINJA GAIDEN 4 and Shin Megami Tensei IV.