Squad Bustin' Makes Me Feel Good!

A couple days ago I shared my Brawl Stars post about Berry on Twitter and my old acquaintance, Officer McGruff, let me know that he too was a Brawl Stars player, but ended up switching to Squad Busters, the new Supercell game that launched a little over a month ago. I remember the cross-promotion that was done in Brawl Stars, but at the time I ignored it . . . how could anything be as awesome as Brawl Stars!

Bustin' makes me feel good!

On the other hand, who could argue with Officer McGruff?  It was something I needed to try out.  It's new. It has a fantastic rating, and if Officer McGruff likes it, I'm in!  I immediately downloaded the game and tried it out.  

My initial reaction was, MAN, I am DOMINATING the 10-year-olds today, and then I realized that it was probably bots I was going up against there. In my eyes, they did a really good job at making you feel amazing for those first few games. That's a thing we used to try to do at KingsIsle and WIMO back in the day. If you can improve a player's win-loss ratio in the first moments of gameplay, they'll be more apt to keep returning to play more. It's an art.

I DESTROYED them! What?!

This game will also feel like a fun fit for both Brawl Star players and Clash players as well since it merges the two characters from the games as playable heroes that join your squad.  One of the first characters that joins your squad is a cute little baby version of El Primo.

Everyone's favorite baby wrestler!

Basic gameplay goes a bit like this: You enter a match that takes four minutes and thirty seconds to complete. When you start the game you get to choose one of three characters as your starter hero. you then run them around a slightly isometric, retro Zelda-like looking map full of monsters, trees, chests, and other players.  In fact, there are 10 other players, and if you kill another player you "bust" them, and they're out of the game. 

From small beginnings come great squads!

After killing a few monsters, you're able to invest in a new hero at a chest. If you keep purchasing the same type of hero, they will evolve and merge into a tougher version of that hero. So, basically, you're building a party, or squad, if you will. Eventually over the four-and-a-half-minute game, you draw closer to the center where other players have brought their squads as the center is where all the good gems and super tough enemies are, which also drop gems. The remaining squads at the end of the match have their gems tallied up and a ranking is determined. The goal is to be in the top 5 to keep your win streak going.

Squad fight!

If you're one of the teams in the top 5, the opportunities to increase your rewards from the chest you get to open after the match keep escalating. Much like cracking open Brawl Stars' "stars" at the end of a match, you unlock chests, and with each tap to unlock it, the opportunity to increase its rarity and size happens.

Cracking open a super big chest!

It's super addicting and fun to play. I also really like the familiarity of the Supercell characters. Squad Busters is definitely going to have a new place on my phone thanks to Officer McGruff's excellent suggestion.

Happy Dueling! 

Baulder's Gate 3 -- doing wrong things the right way

When last we left our heroes, they were doing things completely out of order and not following the main quest line ... because why would we ever do things the right way?!

Maybe book burnings ain't such a bad thing after all...

Basically we had jumped all the way to the Underdark just out of random exploration rather than being overly concerned with having parasites in our brains. In fact, we wandered around a mage tower in the underdark for an hour or so before Moonstar (Dylan in real life) turned to his real life son and asked what we had missed here in this tower, and he noted that there was a little jumping puzzle down through some mushrooms on the far side of the tower where we hadn't even looked. Whoops. 

But really I don't think much of that mattered anyway since, after exploring the whole gosh darn tower we virtually turned to each other and said . . . maybe we should just follow the main quest first and figure out why we're supposed to be here?

Druid magic is always so chloro-filled

So back we went to the overworld and started trying to pull out parasites from our heads even though we already had some advance knowledge that we really didn't want to pull out the parasites from our heads yet. In other words, the story got a bit wonky for us, and we just played along.

The hat is everything.

And then I found the most glorious cowboy hat and thus began my Sheriff Avantador story arc, which was much more enjoyable simply because every time my dragonborn came on screen, we couldn't help ourselves but laugh at the ridiculousness of a cowboy dragonborn. 

After a couple restarts, we had freed our druid friend from the underdark and had a better direction, which was, let's explore this whole world before we move on to the next chapter. We found Asterion, who we had completely missed.  We even destroyed a bunch of gnolls and found ye' old rolling ball trap from Indiana Jones. Let's just say, it wasn't a proud moment where we broke out our best ability checks. *cough*

The whole crew and our hats too

Eventually we all gained ridiculous headwear and moved on to the next act, where we promptly ran into a town being protected by a cleric's spell.  Then she got attacked and died. Then the whole town turned undead and jumped us. Then we hid on the second floor of the inn and cheesed a fight with ranged attacks and killed the whole said town.

Um, sorry this all happened to you all. Whoops

So much for being heroes, but MAN, that was stellar loot . . . now if we just had an NPC left to sell it to . . .

Seriously though, that battle was incredibly epic. I was ready to restart, but Moonstar wanted to see it through. Avantador spent most of the fight on his back with one foot in the grave, but he was happy to be revived and level up to sixth level ... bring on the fireball spell!

So there you have it. We're level 6 in Act 2 and 24 hours in. It's a great game and we're still having fun with it!

Happy Dueling!

Brawl Stars Berry, the grumpy unicorn

I've often had a thing for rainbows and unicorns . . . as evidenced by this blog:

• Unfeigned love of the rainbow-tailed unicorn in free realms
• The Magical Tales of Angus Unicornpants
• Happily playing the game No More Rainbows

Well, here we are. It's 2024 and you now can add one more rainbow unicorn love to the list!

Cute and grumpy, just like me!

Just two weeks ago, Brawl Stars dropped a brand new character named Berry, and he is a very grumpy and somewhat psychotic rainbow unicorn. The game allowed me to swap out my Brawler Claim Credits to Berry from Bonnie. (side note for those that don't know what I'm talking about -- There's a currency in Brawl Stars called Claim Credits. You can use these to unlock epic and legendary Brawlers. You get the credits by hitting milestones in Trophy Road and the Battle Pass.)

Below is a video of me, um, horsing around with him.

They also made a fun YouTube marketing video to showcase his personality.

At a base level, Berry plays a bit like a mix between Barley's regular attack and Carl's ultimate attack.

Berry lobs ice cream on the ground that damages enemies and heals teammates -- Right off the bat, this splash attack is clearly better than Barley's because of the healing component of the splashes he leaves behind. Once his ultimate is built up, Berry spins forward in one direction, damaging enemies he contacts and leaving a long trail of ice cream behind him in his wake. 

When comparing this to Carl's ultimate, you'll find that it's both better and worse than Carl's ultimate. For one, it's faster and leaves behind an effect. Secondly, you can't control the direction of the spin once it's set (unlike Carl's ultimate, which is pretty flexible). On the other hand, you can still use his ultimate for attack, positioning, and escape like Carl, but just not with as much control, and of course, you get the added benefit of healing on top of damage from the trail of ice cream left behind.

I'd love to pair Berry and a melee character like Frank. Adding a healing buff where the melee character is fighting seems like an awesome synergy. I haven't yet leveled Berry to a point where I can really mess around with star powers and the like, but my inherent love for unicorns will probably cause me to take him all the way to the top.

Happy Dueling!

Of Gods and Monsters -- Season 28 of Brawl Stars

The Gods Versus Monsters update dropped in Brawl Stars, and it features a slew of new skins that have ye' olde Olympian flair. EMZ as Medusa is a pretty great skin, and that alone makes it a tempting battle pass to purchase.

Medusa EMZ! So much awesomeness!

For me, the only thing I've felt immediately compelled to purchase was the Goblin Carl skin. Carl has a special place in my heart,  mostly because my oldest child is studying to be a geologist, and that's carl's whole backstory. I don't' know if this was marked down in price because of the Gods Versus Monsters sale, but it was pretty cheap and a great improvement over your standard looking Carl skin, which is pretty bland.

Digging the diggy skin!

Also of note, a new season of ranked play happened at the same time as this update, and that means you can get some great unlocks for ranking up. For me that meant I got a lucky unlock of the Cobra Lola skin! To be honest, I really don't know if the cobra skin is more likely to manifest itself because of the Gods Versus Monsters update, but it does seem pretty in line with the theme of the event.

Having a hissy fit as Cobra Lola

I wish there was a mode of play that came with this event. Probably one of the best seasons I've seen was two seasons ago where everything was Godzilla themed. Not only was the theme fun, but they also threw in a new game mode for you to play where you could BE Godzilla, destroying the other players' town. Although, it was debatable if people actually liked this mode.

My finger keeps hovering over the buy button on this one, but I haven't quite committed to the seven dollar price tag . . . mainly because I just bought Baulder's Gate and a whole slew of VR games with a Humble Bundle deal.  I have an invisible gaming budget that I might have already overspent on during the month. Wish my wallet the best of luck!

Happy Dueling!

Finally . . . a Baulder's Gate 3 post . . .

Look. I get it. Y'all were playing Baulder's Gate 3 like 11 months ago, but this thing just went on sale on Steam for 20% off and my buddy, Dylan (heretofore known as Moonstar), was like . . . Tom, let's freaking play Baulder's Gate 3! 

Ahh, Avantador!  It's good to finally see you in 3D!

The first thing I needed to do was recreate my Dragonborn Bard, Avantador . . . to this day he's one of my favorite characters I've ever made in D&D. I used to write about him a lot on my little D&D side blog. It's super wholesome . . . unlike the next thing you're about to see.

I feel dirty . . . make the images go away

Because the second thing I needed to do, was a Gith Skanky. Yes, BG3 is a mature-rated game. You've been warned.

I'll never fully recover from this . . .

Now that I've got those two things out of the way, I can play some D&D!

Moonstar and Avantador have been tearing things up and making a lot of bad choices over the past 14 hours of playtime. We almost TPK'd in a goblin village by trying to free a gnome tied to a windmill, but through the magic of zoning, free rez scrolls, and some kiting, we managed to pull through. Whew. We must have wasted 2 to 3 hours just figuring out how we were going to survive that.

After figuring out the magic of "saving often," we then somehow stumbled our way into the Underdark, and after a scary encounter with a Bullete, we jogged into a group of myconids that were ready to bestow upon us all the honorary titles we wanted as long as we were murdering all their enemies along the way.

Dance Myconids, Dance!

Yesterday we struggled and barely pulled out from an encounter with a particularly nefarious Drow named Nere. Some gnomes had to be sacrificed, we had to feign allying with him for a time, and then ultimately we just let the poor sap be the tank for us and die at the hands of the Druegar. Pretty much everyone died but us, and we were limping along with all our resources expended.  It took us 4 maybe 5 tries to get it to play out correctly. We probably should have come back later when we were at the appropriate level? It was super intense.

Handing over the head to the king

Anyway, one of the great things about waiting 11 months to write about a popular game is that I feel guilt-free about writing spoilers. Everyone who's played it knows the main plot by now. It's a campaign world adventure.  You probably won't run it exactly the same every time you play through it, but the fact remains that you have a mind flayer worm in your head and you need to get it out no matter how many times you're going to play it. I'm ok with that, it's just not an epic MMO adventure with several starting points that differ. 

On the other hand, everyone's journey will differ. It's a huge sprawling campaign setting that so far has been a lot of fun journeying through. It's basically D&D 5e with small twists here and there. Moonstar and I are certainly having fun with it!

Happy Dueling!