Ahahaha

I still don't know what she was talking about 😅

The Pond Turtle gives 4 appeal which is equivalent to 4 income. Because it's Observation Tower the extra 2 appeal makes it 5 income. Not game-losing but pretty important. Not playing the animal cost me income but also time. I have to start round 2 playing the animal while my Association is still on 2. That means I can't do Cards, which I really really needed looking back.

@@NoWondersTV Got it!

Yep, keeping 3 unplayable cards is just asking to lose. Poor gameplan and poor execution. Maybe against a weaker opponent I would have time to get everything online, but it's never going to happen against anyone 500+. Double uni start would have been much better than the project. Or if I had done the project then I definitely should have gotten a 2nd worker instead of upgrading build.

It was definitely interesting to see and absolutely worth watching

Definitely ;)

Yeah all English natives around the table

Elo reset just before the end of the season. Not sure if they will continue to use the account or not.

bga suspended alphaboo's account. It's kind of tragic because (outside of the cheating) he really is one of the top, elite players. EDIT: as per NoWondersTV, the account wasn't suspended but his Elo was reset. It's weirdly similar to Queen Dong in last season's Azul arena. Good work by Detective Sam in exposing all the shenanigans, although it looks like it was jdansp's forum post that prompted bga to take action.

He is!

🦆

I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing him at WSBG a couple weeks ago (video coming soon!) He was really nice yeah :) We played a casual Ark Nova 4p game, he won of course!

@@MostVictoryPoints he gave me some nice pointers in 🦆Nova. Never had to use those ideas

@@azhao17 Keep them in mind for semi-final next year haha! Ark Nova has been drawn two years in a row, it might just happen again!

Haha, go go go!

I noticed that there are no English subtitles :D

@@matthewmatthew2891 once you get a critical mass of them the odds of finding more become extremely good. It won’t happen every game though 😉

I think he does have a bad reputation as being rude, which is a shame because he's still a very good player. Hopefully the report is resolved quickly

At this point in the game there aren't many turns left. Opponent has Eagle + the Silver Lake determination. There's no chance I'm ever getting 2 partner zoos, so the Asia PZ really just gives me some discount and the possibility of playing Tiger. It doesn't feel like a strong enough use of my Association action. Grabbing 2nd Uni the turn after will at least directly give me some points from CP on the rep track and a valuable x-token.

I needed to put my glasses back on 🤓

@@NoWondersTV This is what I get for commenting immediately before continuing to watch.

Of course, big congrats to Andrew for his arena win. It was well deserved. Just want to clear something up before it gets out of hand (on here and on Discord). alphabooo being Chinese is irrelevant to any discussion around him cheating. It doesn't matter where anyone is from. Cheating should be punished full stop. alphabooo cheated (very blatantly) and got punished, end of story. I really dislike the whole "us vs them" narrative that has developed, when in reality all I want to see is a deserving winner every season. I'm sure there was no ill-intent with the comment, but let's keep race out of the discussion (it is being taken the wrong way by people already).

@@NoWondersTV I get your point, but nationality is not a race though (if races even exist to begin with). I would have called you "australian menace" if you had been the cheater. But internet is full of people who misunderstand things, so good of you to clear things up.

@@jankogo I know you didn't mean anything by it, it's just been a topic of discussion today ❤

The 2nd benefit of Hollywood Hills. When all H's are covered all sponsors get discounted 1 strength!

My last Leviathan game was pretty traumatic tbh. Rolled the dice and lost my only Lord. It's crazy how much I prefer the base game to both the expansions because of little additions like the Loot Deck and Leviathans :)

He sounds very salty. I lost my 5 red crab in our last game of leviathan, could have been 5 easy points if affiliated correctly but I revealed a monster on the last slot of the exploration track and was forced to fight with the only red card I had 🤷‍♀️ Abyss is so much better with Leviathan still imo lol the monster track is just dull after having played with Leviathan.

Anyone with more games played feel free to chip in. I would say variety. I think the first expansion is already pretty balanced and competitive. Obviously you have strong combos, but the top players being able to reach 700+ Elo shows there is enough skill in the game.

Doesn't kill the side entrance, it is still adjacent to four buildings ?

@@etiennechaplais1764 That's fair. I guess I'm overly focused on the prototypical pav/kiosk/X/sideentrace/kiosk/pav/X configuration, but mathematically, the efficiency of any particular kiosk and the effciency of side entrance itself are indepedent.

@@danielmdubois As long as the enclosure is occupied it doesn't matter what is next to Side Entrance. As you can see I never really struggled for money that game :)

Yeah I think that could have worked out pretty well. Like generally you would prefer to have Association higher than Cards, so it's a "bad tempo" move that you won't often find higher rated players make. Being able to play the Panda is a guaranteed way to close out the game which could make the tempo loss worth it. At the same time BDW doesn't have Asia partner zoo... so maybe not.

@@NoWondersTV FWIW, I think "bad tempo" plays would be a good idea for a strategy/educational video. Or, more broadly, a video that covers common mistakes/traps that "Strong" (i.e., not "Expert"/"Master") players will make. Have you ever done subscriber replay reviews?

For sure, any project is a good project. Release big, release small!

10pm my time (GMT+11). We've just had daylight savings today though, so I'll probably start an hour later. I'll always schedule the streams earlier in the day, and you can turn on notifications by clicking the bell/subscribe button and adjusting them

Yeah, I'm starting to think he's pretty good!

It is the most interesting part of the game. Causing the break does guarantee him the 10 money and uni, but it also means he will never be able to release the Alligator because the America release project will fly off the board. Causing the break also slows him down because now he has to build an enclosure in the next round instead of this round. Strong arguments either way

Yes, this is a great point that I forgot to add. It is so obnoxious being "ahead" in the game but still being able to target your opponents with basically all interactive abilities.

Plus you get to play the Max 25 tickets sponsors for longer which are 6 out of the 54 sponsors. And all of them tend to be good if you are further into the game but don't have 25 tickets yet with the exception of free range new world monkeys

Yep! The projects or large animals can be great keeps if you don't have much else.

If your action order lines up, sure, it can be very strong. It's important not to force it. e.g. if your build starts on 2 and you need to build a 5-size then it can probably wait until after the first break. But there is a lot of benefit to doing an early project. Getting snapping reward, upgrading sponsors and breaking for 10 money is incredibly powerful.

stay away from breeding programs if that's how you think they work

Hell yea

I played a game on the new Observation Tower map with Migration Recording. I won building just two enclosures the entire game, a 5- and 2-size, and cycling through the same release projects at different animal sizes, over and over. Maybe "broken" is the right word here.

I collected the stats in August 2024, but not much had changed, so I didn't bother with another video about it. You can see the stats here - thanks to crops for prettying them up docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Dd47yB8R4aNa8M-116Ox1LES5igCD3KC5E-MFzjvW9o/edit?usp=sharing

My reply got deleted because I added a link, oops. I collected the stats in August, but not much had changed, so I didn't bother making a video about it. Sponsors upgrade continued to trend up, snapping up, Assoc down. It felt like the same conclusions as the last video.

Sure! If you release the Badger with the European Release Project (Bavarian Forest) then you put the project above the Association board and place your cube on the slot for small size release (+3 shields). If your opponent has already played a Wolf then next time they look to support a project they would be able to "leech" off your project by placing a cube on the large size release (+5 shields). They will get +5 shields -4 tickets which is ~11 points, while you get +3 shields -3 tickets which is ~6 points. The Wolf is a "better" release, so you're giving them a very nice project to do at a later date!

@@NoWondersTV Nice, thanks for the explanation.

Haha, Archaeologist on some maps can definitely give them a run for their money...

i am still afraid not upgrading build, but winning without upgrading build feels more satisfying 😊

Skipping build upgrade and getting 2 CP from worker track is really powerful.

We are agreeing a lot lately. Either I've gotten better or you've gotten worse 😅

can it be both?