So, almost another month since the last update to this. This time, I can’t blame it on life being crazy as much as finally getting to play Breath of the Wild. I’m finding it hard to put down, to say the least.
Anyway, Lum and Argagarg finally have their 1st Edition variants up, which means it’s time for…
Final Thoughts on 1st Edition Characters
I added Arg’s 1st Edition version first because it was simpler, so I’ll start with him. Protective Ward got buffed with the ability to prevent pumping moves (and also tag combos in 2v2) in 2nd Edition, which helps him to stall with it even more effectively. On the other hand, Crash and Flow used to be a normal counter that gave the opponent a free card draw, but in 2nd Edition it puts the card it counters on the bottom of the opponent’s deck if they played the ability from hand. Sirlin himself went into the reasoning behind this change in one of his articles, but it improved the dynamics in Arg’s matchups with Lum, Persephone, and Gloria (in the former’s case, 2nd Edition Roll the Dice lets him get his ability back sometimes and he can power up to shuffle it into the deck, whereas the latter two would prefer their ability cards go to discard because of their innates).
In all, these changes make him a bit better at stalling (but not by much, since Protective Ward still only lasts one turn) and improved his more troublesome matchups in an interesting and flavorful way.
Lum got a lot of small changes! Roll the Dice gained the option to draw the bottom card of the deck instead of healing if you flip 2-3 (which helps in the Arg matchup especially), and flipping A lets you peek at the bottom of your deck (which combos with the other change sometimes). Blackjack used to give you the option of putting the cards you flipped in your hand instead of dealing their damage. I’m not sure what the reasons for that change were, but I’m guessing it was partly so that it actually felt like a gamble instead of “deal damage if you don’t mind losing the cards, otherwise act as if you drew them all along.” The fourth change was to make his 10 throw into a named move that does 4 damage per pump instead of 3, which is another quality of life improvement against Arg (since Poker Flourish is likely to be countered, sometimes you can use your 10s as higher damage throws instead). Finally, the Block Damage on Rolling Panda (Q) was removed to help Rook out (since he needs to block a lot, and every blocked Q used to trigger Roll the Dice “for free,” which is a bit much for such a fast attack).
I think that’s everything! Let me know if I missed something (except formatting changes, since those don’t affect how you play the character).
With that, all the 1st Edition characters have been added! I’m probably going to polish up the formatting here and there for now, though if @vengefulpickle gets time to implement something to make putting in EX exclusive combos easier I could work on them too. No rush; I know you have a tournament to run!