As is tradition, I have used the opportunity of April Fools’ to invest more effort than is reasonable in something that isn’t really part of the project. Usually this comes with a nice little haha funny release, but this year … well, making an actual implementation of what I felt like doing would have required an amount of effort more unreasonable than what the date can justify, so instead you’re getting PowerPoint presentations. Yay!
To make the occasion extra special, I even bothered narrating this one myself. But don’t worry, all the information and more can also be found in the usual textual form at the links below.
If looking at all the card game stuff usually posted here makes you think “man I wish this had more than just cards”, then boy have you come to the right article. In this one we’re covering a full board game that, yes, involves cards, but also a physical board, colorful little marbles, movable game pieces, and a headache-inducing amount of math.
Rahi Overlord is an idea that was sparked during the in-depth Rahi study I’ve been doing for the past year or so. In this game, players take the role of two or more Makuta engaging in what one might call a “Rahi-off”: A showdown where they aim to have Rahi of their creation become dominant in the ecosystem of a certain area.
Now I will say in advance there’s not all that much depth to this yet – I’m obviously less immersed in the board game space than in the card game one, and also ran out of time before I could really start doing the research I’d need to do this properly. But I believe there are still some interesting things to show off, and maybe I’ll come back to build on them one day.
Game Elements
The Board
The field on which the game is played represents the setting of the Makuta’s showdown, perhaps some part of the Southern Continent or a remote island. In any case, it is divided up into multiple individual Zones, each of which has the following properties.
Biome: Dictates which Rahi will thrive in this Zone, as well as what resources players can obtain from it. A wide variety of Biomes is possible, but they all belong to one of the three categories Land, Sea, or Mixed.
Capacity: A fixed number of slots that can be filled with different Rahi species. Different population levels within each slot are represented by printed markers that also provide information on population growth.
Point of Interest (PoI): Randomly distributed across the Zones at the start of the game. Different PoIs (Makuta Lab, Protodermis Pool, Matoran Village, …) have different effects that may positively or negatively affect Rahi and players.
A player is said to control a Zone if the total population of their Rahi within that Zone is strictly greater than every other player’s. In all other cases, the Zone is considered unassigned.
The Points of Interest, represented by something like small tokens at the center of the respective Zone, start the game face-down (with the exception of the Makuta Labs, of which there is one per player) and are flipped face-up once a player takes control of the Zone. It remains that way even if control of the Zone changes or it becomes unassigned later.
Resources
In a game of Rahi-making, the relevant resources are obviously going to be the ones used to make Rahi: Viruses and Liquid Protodermis. I imagine the latter would generally be a static reserve that is not meaningfully depleted with use, so it is only subtly represented as a limit on how many Rahi you can create in a round – a limit that may increase while holding Protodermis Pool PoIs.
That leaves Viruses as the main resource you gather and spend over the course of the game. Physically, they’d be represented by little orbs or cubes or whatever-hedrons in different colors. Mechanically, their main purpose is being mixed and matched into different recipes of Rahi creation, so a color is really the only property they need. Each Rahi lists a combination of Virus colors required to create it, and players periodically gain Viruses whose colors are determined by factors like their controlled Biomes, their Rahi, and a bit of randomness to keep things fresh.
Rahi
Now here lies the main focus and complexity of the game. A Rahi, or rather a Rahi species, is represented by a card that lists several pieces of information.
Recipe: The combination of Virus colors needed to create this Rahi.
Habitat: The Biome in which the Rahi lives. The mechanics of this follow four simple rules:
Rahi whose Habitat is a Land Biome cannot be played into a Sea Biome.
Rahi whose Habitat is a Sea Biome cannot be played into a Land Biome.
Rahi whose Habitat is a Mixed Biome can only be played into Mixed Biomes – they need both Land and Water to survive, basically.
Being in a Biome that exactly matches the Habitat, not just its category, grants some additional bonus.
Diet: Provides the baseline of how the Rahi’s population in a Zone develops over the rounds. Herbivores experience a fixed amount of growth depending only on their location and population level, Carnivores grow by “stealing” population from other Rahi in their Zone, and Omnivores can mix these two sources, but gain less from each alone than the pure Diet types.
Size: A number that mainly plays into carnivorous population growth – wouldn’t make sense to have giant beasts be the prey of tiny critters, after all.
Traits: An assortment of standard keywords that describe in more detail how a Rahi lives, feeds, and grows. Stuff like Flying, Poison, Ambush Predator, and so on would go here. I’d like to keep this to a level of complexity where you just need a reference page in the rulebook to figure it all out.
The Rahi card can basically be considered the blueprint of the species and always remains with the player. The actual physical Rahi populations only come into being once the blueprint is realized by investing Viruses according to its Recipe, and are separately represented by a little plastic stand (colored depending on the player) in which you place a token identifying the Rahi species.
Such an assembled playing piece is then placed into a free slot on the chosen zone, in the lowest so-called population level. Round by round, the combination of Biome matchups, feeding, and traits is used to calculate a population change in each species, and the piece moves up and down the levels on the board accordingly. If a population hits zero, it’s considered extinct and removed from the Zone entirely.
Now the details of all this involve, ugh, numbers, and so haven’t been worked out at all. I do get the impression it may just end up ludicrously complicated no matter how we slice it, but hey, nothing wrong with a game that appeals only to Ecologists and Mathematicians.
Sample Rahi cards:
Makuta
Finally, each player takes the role of a different Makuta, also represented in the form of a card. In this case, though, there are only two key properties to consider.
Affinities: Some combination of Biomes, Diets, Size ranges, and/or trait keywords. When creating a Rahi featuring any of those listed, the Makuta is allowed to substitute one Virus listed on the Recipe with one of any other color.
Ability: A unique effect that the Makuta can apply when certain conditions are fulfilled. Unlike the fixed ability keywords of Rahi, this can be just about anything and is described as text on the card.
Each Makuta also comes with a unique Makuta Lab PoI, which is placed face-up in a Zone by that Makuta’s player at the start of the game and gives only that player a certain bonus to any population calculations happening in that Zone.
Sample Makuta cards:
How to Play
Or, well, as much of an outline of it as I’ve figured out at this point. It’s not exactly an instruction manual.
Setup
Each player selects a Makuta and takes the respective card, as well as the PoI token for that Makuta’s Lab. Place the board on the table, and have each player (in turn order) pick a Zone where they put their Lab, along with a plastic stand in their chosen color (so you can easily tell who has which). It might even make sense to have the Zones be individual board segments that you connect together, so the greater number of Labs with more players can be accounted for using a greater number of Zones.
In any case, once the Labs are placed, add random face-down PoI tokens to the remaining Zones. Shuffle the Rahi cards and form a deck that is also placed on the table. Admittedly, with almost 200 Rahi species, this could end up physically difficult if you’re playing with the full set, but maybe it makes sense to have multiple decks anyway – to ensure more demanding Recipes only appear late in the game, for example.
Finally, each player gets a starting stock of Viruses – something like one of each color, I guess.
Research Phase
This is where blueprints are acquired from the shared deck, one way or another. A lot of fun options like drafting and trading come to mind here, but for this loose description let’s just keep it simple and do the following: Players take turns picking up 3 cards from the top of the deck. They choose one to take, one to place back on the top, and one to place on the bottom. Once every player has done so and thus taken a card, the research phase is complete.
Creation Phase
Players again take turns to create Rahi from a blueprint they have, using Viruses as per the Recipe. They select one of the Zones where they have either their Lab or a population of Rahi, and place a piece (plastic stand + cardboard token) representing the new population into the lowest population level of an empty slot in that Zone. A player may also pass, either voluntarily or for lack of Viruses matching their blueprints.
The creation phase ends once all players have exhausted their maximum creation count – one by default – or passed.
Calculation Phase
This is where you all put your heads together, grab pen and paper, and figure out the population change for every Rahi in every Zone. Most likely some kind of helper sheet should be provided for this purpose.
After all calculations are done and the positions of the Rahi pieces have been updated to reflect the new populations, the calculation phase ends.
Migration Phase
Optionally, players now have the opportunity to split off part of the population of any Rahi species past a certain threshold into an adjacent Zone, putting together and placing a new Rahi piece in the process. This is crucial because it’s how you spread your reach and ultimately approach victory, but since it requires a fair amount of population gain first, activity in the migration phase only really starts a couple of rounds into the game.
Additionally, it could be useful to also have the option to entirely migrate a species, taking its whole population (no matter its size) and shifting it over to an adjacent Zone. This could be used to escape predators, for example. However, we don’t want Rahi zipping all over the map in an endless migration phase, so if we have this mechanic, it should only be once per player and round.
It’s worth nothing that, as it currently stands, this is the only part of the game where a player can actually gain control of an unassigned Zone. Do remember to flip up the appropriate PoI when that happens – its effects will begin applying immediately!
Once no further movements are possible or all players have passed, the migration phase ends.
Extraction Phase
Players obtain fresh Viruses, their colors distributed as per the latest board state. The details are left as an exercise to the reader, but I imagine you could assign colors to Biomes and then distribute Viruses based on the players’ controlled zones, or something with Rahi properties, or have them blindly pick out of a mixed bag. Maybe some combination of those.
Once everyone is stocked up and ready, return to the Research Phase for the next round.
Now you might say it doesn’t look like I have any idea when this game would end, and you would be totally correct. Let’s just say that at some point, perhaps simply after X rounds, the terrible cycle above will have to be broken, and the player who controls the most Zones at that point is crowned the victor of the Rahi-off – the Rahi Overlord, if you will.
The Bionicle YGOPro Expansion, unsurprisingly, is all about designing cards for specifically the game of Yugioh. Which is fun and has been going well, but between the scope of the topic that is Bionicle lore and the project’s rather slow and steady progress, I have sometimes worried about the risk that the actual game may meet its demise and fall out of relevance before I’m done over here. Not looking like that’s happening anytime soon, but with strange aeons …
So what do we do in that case? One option is to just keep going and enjoy not having new product releases continuously changing the landscape I’m trying to design for, but I feel like it might be hard to maintain my or anyone else’s interest in the long term when working on a static corpse. Another is moving the project to any of the countless other similar card games that exist, but honestly there’s a reason I picked this one, and anything else would just feel like a downgrade in terms of how well it accommodates the source material.
The third, my favourite, and the one that means the most work, is the following: I make my own card game, with blackjack and hookers. And so, presenting “Virtues”, an original CCG made from and for the legend of the Bionicle.
What’s a CCG?
The acronym stands for “collectible card game”, a type of game that can be traced back to 1993’s Magic the Gathering. Since then, the concept has inspired a wide variety of titles that add their own twists to it, but broadly speaking they all can be described as follows:
Players pick from a large pool of cards with different properties and abilities to construct a deck that they then use to face off against another player. Over the course of the game, cards are played according to some basic ruleset to interact with each other and the players. The winner is the first player to achieve some fixed goal, which often means reducing a specific resource on their opponent’s end to zero.
And then things get complicated because cards have text on them.
Great. With all that established, let’s see how our own cards look.
Card Properties
Card Type
In most CCGs, and especially in this one, cards represent the building blocks of a story that is told as the game unfolds. So if we want to begin by figuring out what types of cards there are, the question we have to ask is “what types of building blocks does our story need?”. In that regard, I think the storylines of Bionicle – and really most other stories – can be reasonably generalized to the following form:
Someone uses something somewhere to do stuff.
From that, we can derive four different types of cards:
Beings – Represent the characters in the story (“someone”). These cards have a white frame, are played onto the field, remain until removed by some means, and actively engage in battles.
Items – Represent inanimate, mostly physical objects in the story (“something”). These cards have a gray frame and stay on the field permanently just like Beings, but do not themselves play an active role in battles.
Locations – Represent the setting of the story (“somewhere”). These cards have a green frame and are played into a dedicated zone from where they influence the game.
Actions – Represent things that happen in the story (“do stuff”). These cards with a blue frame are played onto the field only briefly, resolve their listed action(s), and then immediately proceed to the Grave.
In Yugioh terms, this is roughly equivalent to a division into Monsters, Continuous Spells/Traps plus Equip Spells, Field Spells, and then all other Spells/Traps. Important disclaimer: The interpretations of what each card type represents are only a guideline, and exceptions based on gameplay considerations are always possible.
Generic Properties
Most of the information that can be found on a card is actually universal to all card types. Some – the name, the image, and the card text – are obvious, so let’s proceed right to the more interesting ones.
In the top right corner, you have an icon and number denoting the cost of the card. Which tells us that, like most CCGs and unlike Yugioh in particular, this game comes with a general system of costs that must be paid in order to use cards. While such a fundamental difference is naturally going to make recycling existing designs a little harder, I wanted to include a cost system just because coming up with one is a lot of fun, and I must say I’m quite satisfied with the result. More on that later, as it’s not something that can be explained while looking only at the cards. For now, just remember this kind of icon labeled with “Duty” and the number 1 indicates a Duty Cost of 1.
Below the name, we can find two different types of descriptive properties. Leftmost, highlighted with an icon and colored background, stands the card’s Element – this can be Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Light, or Dark, but also Stone, Ice, and all other manner of nonsense – in some cases it may even be blank. The remaining space with the gray background lists any number of groups, which can also include subgroups (denoted as e.g. Toa > Toa Mata). These two properties are frequently used to identify cards in card text, with one special piece of terminology being that two cards sharing either the same element or at least one group are said to match each other.
Combat Stats
Specific to Beings and Items is the block of stats at the bottom of the text box. For Beings, who can both attack and be the target of attacks, it consists of both Attack and Defense values. For Items, who can be targeted for attacks but not attack by themselves, there is only Defense.
At this point we should probably talk about how battling works a bit. In yet another break from Yugioh, I have decided to handle the stats in a way more similar to MtG: Defense acts like a little health bar for each card, and a battle involves the two combatants dealing their Attack worth of damage to each other’s Defense. It’s just a nice storytelling device that allows depicting various scenarios – teamwork, damage resistance, poison, and regeneration are just some examples of concepts that can be neatly implemented through battle-related effects this way.
As far as battles in general are concerned, instead of also copying Magic’s system of attackers and blockers, I’d prefer to go with something less involved. A good candidate is the system of Shadowverse, where Attack/Defense stats work as previously described, but also target selection is simply left to the attacking player much like in Yugioh.
There are, of course, many more aspects to consider with this central design element. Do we have summoning sickness? Is there a dedicated Battle Phase? Under which conditions can you directly attack the opponent’s life points? But such things are best figured out in the process of actual testing, of which I did none. So yeah.
Location Level
The number underneath the textbox of a Location is unrelated to combat, as Locations go into their own separate zone where they can neither attack nor be attacked. Instead, this value represents the Location’s “zoom level”, and to explain this I have to elaborate a bit on how Locations work. Take a look at the Mata Nui Field Spell on the Yugioh side of things:
The Island of Mata Nui
Field Spell
All Normal Summoned “Toa Mata” monsters gain 600 ATK/DEF. During your Main Phase: You can reveal 1 monster in your hand and add 1 “-Koro” Field Spell that mentions that monster’s Attribute from your Deck to your hand. If you revealed a “Toa Mata” monster, you can add 1 “The Great Temple, Kini-Nui” instead. If a card in your Field Zone, except “The Island of Mata Nui”, is destroyed while this card is in your GY: You can activate this card, but banish it when it leaves the field. You can only use each effect of “The Island of Mata Nui” once per turn.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.21.6)
One of its effects searches you the Field Spell of a particular village on the island (“zoom in”), while another is able to bring the island back to the Field Zone later (“zoom out”). This kind of dynamic with locations that exist within other relevant locations is something that occurs all the time in Bionicle’s story, so I’d like to have it implemented on the level of game mechanics rather than card effects.
Which is where the Location Level comes in: If you have an active Location, and you play another Location with a higher Level, it is simply stacked on top of that active Location. Only the topmost layer of the stack actually applies its effects and interacts with the field, but if it’s ever removed, you simply fall back to the layer below it. On the other hand, if a new Location you’re trying to play does not have a higher Location Level than the active one, you will be required to remove cards from the stack until you reach a Location for which that is the case – essentially zooming out and then back in.
Card Text
We previously brushed this one aside as “obvious”, but that of course meant only as far as its inclusion on every type of card is concerned. After all, card text is what truly makes the game go round and the source of most of the things that actually occur when you’re playing. So a fair amount of consideration is needed when it comes to layout, format, and structure of these texts. To summarize my stance on a few relevant points:
Structure: Please yes. There’s no good reason to make it just one big paragraph.
Keywords: Sparingly, but don’t shy away from them either.
Icons: Please no. At least not as a way to replace words in the big main text box.
Basically, the goal is to maintain the very useful property of “reading the card explains the card”, while still doing what we can to simplify said reading.
Let’s start with some simple ways to add structure to a card text. What Yugioh does in the OCG, and for some reason not in the TCG, is numbered effects – so you can clearly see where each of them starts and ends. We’re definitely copying that, as well as the practice of listing meta-restrictions like once-per-turn clauses in a leading sentence using those numbers. Additionally, if space allows, putting a line break and some kind of visible separator between effects further helps everything look clean and orderly.
In the effects themselves, I would like to extract two particular pieces of generic information so they can be found at a glance: The type of the effect, and the location(s) where it can be used. Maybe things like costs and conditions could also receive some special highlighting.
For instance, a Yugioh effect of:
If you control no monsters: You can discard 1 card; Special Summon this card from your hand or GY.
might all in all take on this form:
[Active | Hand, Grave] (If you control no Beings) Discard 1 => Place this card in your Destiny Area.
With this format, a quick scan of the [bold bracketed] parts on the left edge of the text box already tells you which parts are actually relevant in a given game state. The activation condition for this “Active” effect is in (parentheses) because it has no bearing on the actions you need to perform when using the effect, and the cost (paid at activation) is split from the effect (performed at resolution) by a nice bulky “=>”, acting much like the “;” in PSCT.
We’ll see various effect types and tentative standard wordings while looking at sample cards, so I won’t bore you with a dictionary at this point. The idea of how card texts are built should be clear from this brief introduction, at least.
The Field
Now that we know the cards, it’s time to look at where they’re played, and how. Virtues gives each player a field that looks like this:
We’ll go into some detail about the marked locations and the mechanics that involve them, but for starters here’s a quick overview:
(Duty) Deck: The standard main deck from which you draw.
Unity Deck: The Extra Deck equivalent, containing an always available pool of cards you can form by “combining” other cards.
Destiny Area: The main “battlefield” where you play cards in order to beat your opponent.
Duty Area: Used to pay the Duty Costs of the cards played into the Destiny Area.
Unity Area: Used when playing cards from the Unity Deck – the materials go here.
Location: The special zone where Location cards are played and stacked on top of each other.
Grave: Where spent cards go; the GY (duh).
Seal: Alternative place cards can be removed to, usually by effects; the banishment.
The Deck (and drawing cards)
There’s a lot that could theoretically be said about the Deck, or “Duty Deck” as its full name would be. How small or large can it be? How many copies of each card are you allowed to play? How many cards do you draw at the start of the game? How many each turn?
All valid questions, and all questions I have not studied enough to make any kind of statement that’s not a random guess. So, leaving out specific numbers, we can just say your opening hand of X cards comes from here, and then presumably you draw an additional one at the start of each of your turns.
Destiny
Now this is really getting into the meat of things. The Destiny Area, located right in the middle of the combined board formed by both players’ fields, hosts the core of the gameplay. In the story you carve out as you play, the cards placed here are the heroes fighting to fulfill their destiny.
The main way to get a card – specifically a Being, Item, or Action – into the Destiny Area from your hand is to pay its Duty Cost (more on that in a moment). Once you have done so, you can put the card into any part of your Destiny Area; there are no zone divisions or limits planned here at the moment (though I can’t say I’m not slightly tempted to open up the super fun design space that is columns). If the card is a Being or Item, it stays there until otherwise removed. If it’s an Action, you apply its effect and then put it straight into the Grave. As a side note, the act of putting a card into the Destiny Area by paying its cost (basically our Normal Summon) is called “Assembling” it, in reference to the constructable nature of the material.
What Beings, and to a lesser extent Items, can do while in the Destiny Area is, of course, battle. During its controller’s turn, a Being gets to attack one opponent’s Being or Item and each combatant with an Attack stat subtracts it from the other’s Defense stat. A card whose Defense hits 0 goes to the Grave, and presumably some manner of damage to the player is involved at some point. As I said before, the details of all this would only really take shape during actual testing.
Duty
To the right of the Destiny Area lies the Duty Area. Its purpose is, quite simply put, to hold the resource used to pay Duty Costs. And that resource is none other than cards.
Duty is a cost system that, out of the ones I looked at, most closely resembles the mana system of Duel Masters: By placing arbitrary cards into a special location, they each act as 1 of the resource that drives your plays, and you indicate payment of a certain cost amount by changing the position of that many such cards until your next turn. This achieves a gradual ramp into being able to pay for more and more expensive cards, allowing cost to act as a design handle which determines in which part of the game a card is meant to be played.
Another thing I was considering getting out of this cost system was a “soft” deckbuilding restriction, comparable to those that result from MtG’s different mana colors. But rather than requiring payment in different types of Duty, the idea would simply be that you can only Assemble cards that match (= share the Element or a Group with) at least one card in your Duty Area. However, while putting together some example cards, I already realized cards don’t quite end up being playable together the way I’d want them to be, so that idea has been shelved for now.
Flavor-wise, the cards in the Duty Area represent the ones working in the background to keep the world running while the heroes of Destiny engage in their epic tale. Therefore, I would refer to an upright card here as being “on duty”, and when it gets turned sideways, it becomes “idle” until the next turn.
Finally, for balancing it’s important to consider how quickly the Duty Area can grow. My initial idea was to let you just place cards in it as much as you want, paying in card advantage for a quicker progression to more powerful cards. However, it’s not hard to imagine how to abuse this – stuff your deck full of cards with Duty Cost 4 or so, immediately put almost everything into the Duty Area and use it to turbo out a boss, and then another one on each subsequent turn as your opponent either does the same or fails to catch up.
To work around this issue, three approaches come to mind.
Card design: If everything is consistently set up so that a combination of a few low-cost cards has an advantage over a single high-cost card, one could keep boss turbo from being the optimal playstyle. But that seems hard to keep up in the long run.
Delay: We could amend the Duty Area’s mechanics so that paying a cost flips the card face-down (“resting”), and then it returns to idle on the next turn and finally goes back to being on duty two turns after the inital use. That would change the dynamic insofar as it would give decks with a lower rate of growth a faster rate of play, since they can still replenish their resources from the hand while waiting for their initial supply to recover. But for that extra turn to make a meaningful difference, we again need appropriate card design.
Growth limit: Pretty much all card games with a cost system actually put a hard limit on how quickly you can amass your resource, following in the footsteps of the limit MtG puts on Lands. Often, the limit is you just get to add 1 resource at a specific point early in the turn, providing a stable cap on how fast one can really go. Adopting this rule would be the most reliable fix, but I’m not sure I really want to, since I do very much enjoy the concept of a tradeoff between resource availability and card advantage. Surely the latter can be considered a solid limitation of its own, I mean just look at the shit Purrely gets away with in Yugioh.
Finding out which, if any, of these approaches is the right solution would once again require a fair amount of testing. So, moving on.
Unity
The final of the three virtues that give the game its name is associated with both a secondary deck and an area on the left-hand side of the field. These are both in service of a mechanic that works a lot like the Extra Deck of Yugioh, but more specifically meant for cards that represent multiple entities combining or working together – consider the examples below.
Unity Cards look mostly like regular cards and cover the same card types as well, with the exception of Locations (I imagine Spherus Magna might be an exception to that exception as the one and only Unity Location). They can be recognized as Unity Cards by two special features: A symbol labeled “Unity” without a number where you’d expect to find the duty cost, and a section at the start of the text box marked with the same symbol.
As this should ideally suggest at a glance, playing a Unity Card does not require paying a Duty Cost, but instead you have to use the listed materials. To do so, move them from the Destiny Area to the Unity Area in the sideways “idle” position. The Unity Card now enters the Destiny Area and remains there – or not, if it’s an Action. The basic card types continue to function as usual.
The instant a Unity Card exits the Destiny Area, no matter by what means (unless it goes to the Unity Area itself, maybe?), you take as many of the idle materials in the Unity Area as possible and flip them into the upright position … which I guess can’t be called “on duty” here (“ready” works, but suggestions welcome). At the start of your next turn, presumably in the same phase where the Duty cards are restored from their resting or idle state, all upright cards in the Unity Area return to the Destiny Area, as if the combination has come apart.
What this slightly involved process achieves in particular is that, in addition to Kaita-like boss monsters smoothly floating back into their components, Unity Actions functionally “blink out” the used material until the next turn – since the Action will leave the Destiny Area by itself right after resolving, causing the cards in the Unity Area to be primed for coming back at the next opportunity.
LoCation
Really, we’ve said everything that there is to say already when describing the Location Cards that go here. You can stack them in order of increasing zoom level, but only the topmost Location is active at a time. If you want to play a Location with lower zoom level than the active one, you have to remove layers from the stack until you find one with even lower zoom (or all cards are gone).
Probably should also be noted that just like when playing a card into the Destiny Area, you have to pay the Duty Cost of a Location you add to this zone.
Grave and Seal
The Grave just fills the basic role of a place where cards go after they have been used and/or removed from the field. CCGs like to have some unique name for this thing, but none of the options I’ve considered have really convinced me – “Archives”, “Chronicle”, or “Wall of History” all don’t sound right one way or another. Maybe there’s a good one I’ve missed?
The Seal is a brazen copy of Yugioh’s banishment, because I had some pretty neat design associations with that mechanic already. Namely, abilities that could non-lethally seal away someone or something, be it simple freezing or a mighty Toa Seal, were generally associated with banishing. Therefore, I have decided to already highlight this piece of flavor in the name of the location itself.
Further Mechanics
Below are some mechanics that I also figured would be nice to have, but might introduce too much additional complexity to be really worth it.
Destiny Cards
Besides combining through Unity, there is another way by which individuals in Bionicle often attain more powerful forms: Evolving under certain conditions as ordained by their Destiny. Consider as examples the transformation from Matoran into Toa, the changes brought about by Energized Protodermis, or even the Makuta turning into energy beings at some point in history.
These evolutions, I was thinking, could be represented by a type of card similar to, yet distinct from, Unity Cards. Such “Destiny Cards” would also be marked with a special cost symbol and label, as well as a dedicated materials section in their text box. However, their cost still comes with a number, and the materials tend to require a more specific setup.
How this works is that you can play a Destiny Card in either your Duty Deck or your Unity Deck. In the former case, you would be able to play it from your hand through the regular assembly process of paying the listed cost in Duty. But in the latter case, you can Assemble it from the Unity Deck for free using a material that meets its condition. Doing so will send any used materials to the Grave instead of storing them away in the Unity Area, as an evolution through Destiny is generally neither temporary nor reversible.
This gives you the opportunity to tell either a story of the evolution itself by playing a deck aiming to set up the right conditions, or a story that simply features the evolved form by playing it in your deck like any other card – no materials required. Think about it like the difference between the Toa Nuva in the Bohrok Saga and in Mask of Light.
Equipping
If you are familiar with the Bionicle YGOPro Expansion, you know it has its fair share of Equip Spells in the form of all the different Kanohi. And on each of those cards, you can find one shared clause:
If another “Kanohi” card becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card.
every Kanohi ever
This is meant to represent the simple fact that only one Kanohi can be worn and used at a time, and in order to avoid writing that over and over again, I wanted to give Virtues an equipment mechanic that inherently handles that kind of stuff.
My idea was as follows: An Item, and perhaps a Being in some cases, can have one or more of its listed Groups marked with a special symbol. This would, while in the Destiny Area, give it the non-effect ability to equip to a Being in the Destiny Area by attaching much like an Xyz Material (in particular, it also goes to the Grave if the Being leaves the Destiny Area). In this state, its effects labeled with the Equip location apply, and we say it is equipped “as” the Group that had the equip symbol (player’s choice, if multiple available). And to accomplish the single-Kanohi rule from this position, we just make it so that whenever a Being has two Items equipped as the same Group, its controller must pick one of them to send to the Grave. Of course, an equipped card can also be voluntarily removed and return to being standalone in the Destiny Area.
Beyond this, I was thinking about further extending the design space of this “equipment slot” mechanic by also allowing the equip symbol on a group name to be listed either multiple times or in combination with a number. The meaning would be that this specific item “tolerates” sharing its equip slot with up to that many others, so if you for example equip two Kanohi with an equip value of 2 (the halves of the Vahi?) to a Being, they would both be able to stay. But if only one of the pair has the value 2 and the other is a regular 1-equip, one of them needs to go. Basically, you’d need to find any legal state in which no currently equipped Item exceeds its equip value. As you can imagine, this could end up really complicated for the player to handle and isn’t really needed for all that many cases, so probably better to not go there.
More Gameplay Details
Phases
Considering all the elements introduced so far, it seems like a turn needs to be divided into at least:
Draw Phase: Where you draw for turn.
Ready Phase: Where time-based adjustments to cards in Unity and Duty Areas happen (rested to idle, idle to on duty/ready).
Main Phase: Where the turn player Assembles cards, uses effects, and battles.
End Phase: Where stuff expires.
Arguably some kind of distinct Battle Phase could be beneficial to have, but like most details of the battle system, that’s a question for a later stage of development.
Activated Effects: Order and Responses
With trigger effects and probably also quick effects in the game, there’s no getting around having some mechanism to order simultaneous activations and to dictate when and how effects can be activated in response to something.
The two well-documented examples of such a thing are Yugioh’s Chain and Magic’s Stack, both of which basically amount to resolving in reverse activation order. However, there are two main differences to be pointed out:
Once a Chain starts resolving, it does so in one go with no room for further activations until it’s done, while the Stack allows activating more stuff between two individual resolutions.
Chains only allow responses to the most recent Chain Link, but anything on the Stack can be responded to even if other objects have been stacked on top of it already.
The former gives long Chains that nice feeling of building tension that finally culminates in a massive, unstoppable sequence of resolutions – whatever happens, happens. The latter is what enables Chain Blocking to protect crucial trigger effects from negation, which is just a super nice part of the learning curve. So even beyond the fact that we’re operating under the conceit of repurposing effects designed for Yugioh’s system, I’m inclined to go with something like Chains just because Chains rule.
On the other hand, when it comes to ordering simultaneous trigger effects, it’s probably better not to copy Yugioh and its pedantic distinction of mandatory and optional effects. We can just keep it simple and use the same rules as more or less any game out there: Each player freely decides the order of their triggers, turn player first.
Example Card Conversions
With all that established, thank you very much for reading! Enjoy some additional cards from the Expansion that I’ve attempted to translate to the system of Virtues, but do always keep in mind a lot of the details are guesswork that is far from being suitable for a functional game.
To Tribute Summon this card face-up, you can Tribute an EARTH or “Toa Mata” monster in your hand, except “Toa Mata Onua”, instead of a monster you control. Once per turn, if a monster(s) is sent from the hand or Deck to the GY: You can target 1 card in either GY; place it on the top or bottom of the Deck, and if it was a monster whose original ATK in the GY was lower than this card’s current ATK, gain LP equal to the difference.
2 monsters, including a WIND Warrior monster During your Main Phase: You can Special Summon 1 Level 4 or lower WIND monster from your hand in Attack Position, but its ATK becomes 0. If this card is sent from the field to the GY: You can activate this effect; during the Standby Phase of your next turn, add 1 WIND monster from your GY to your hand, then, if your opponent controls more monsters than you do, you can make all monsters they currently control lose 700 ATK/DEF until the end of that turn. You can only use each effect of “Turaga Matau” once per turn.
While all face-up monsters you control are FIRE (min. 2), face-up monsters you control cannot be destroyed by your opponent’s card effects. If your FIRE monster battles an opponent’s monster with higher original ATK, before damage calculation: You can discard 1 card; your monster gains ATK equal to the highest original ATK on the field, until the end of this turn. You can only use this effect of “Ta-Koro, Village of Fire” once per turn.
You can Ritual Summon this card with “I am Nothing”. Must be Ritual Summoned, and cannot be Special Summoned by other ways. If this card is Ritual Summoned: Return all Special Summoned Level/Rank 5 or higher monsters on the field to the hand. You can Tribute this card; Special Summon 1 “Rahi” monster from your hand, Deck, or GY whose Level is less than or equal to the number of monsters in your GY. You can only use this effect of “The Makuta” once per turn.
To Tribute Summon this card face-up, you can Tribute an EARTH or “Toa Mata” monster in your hand, except “Toa Mata Pohatu”, instead of a monster you control. Once per turn, if a monster(s) is Special Summoned from the Extra Deck, or a monster Special Summoned from the Extra Deck activates its effect: You can target 1 Spell/Trap on the field; destroy it, also, if you control a Rock monster, you can destroy 1 additional Spell/Trap on the field.
You can only control 1 “The Chronicler’s Company”. This card gains these effects based on the number of “C.C. Matoran” monsters you control. ●1+: Once per turn: You can Special Summon 1 “C.C. Matoran” monster from your hand or GY with a different name than the cards you control. ●3+: Once per turn: You can target 2 “C.C. Matoran” monsters you control and 1 card your opponent controls; return them to the hand. ●6: You can send this face-up card to the GY; shuffle all cards on the field into the Deck, except “C.C. Matoran” cards. Neither player can activate cards or effects in response to this effect’s activation.
All Normal Summoned “Toa Mata” monsters gain 600 ATK/DEF. During your Main Phase: You can reveal 1 monster in your hand and add 1 “-Koro” Field Spell that mentions that monster’s Attribute from your Deck to your hand. If you revealed a “Toa Mata” monster, you can add 1 “The Great Temple, Kini-Nui” instead. If a card in your Field Zone, except “The Island of Mata Nui”, is destroyed while this card is in your GY: You can activate this card, but banish it when it leaves the field. You can only use each effect of “The Island of Mata Nui” once per turn.
Pendulum Scale = 5 [ Pendulum Effect ] During your End Phase: You can add 1 “Rahi” Pendulum Monster from your Deck to your Extra Deck face-up. If you control no monsters: You can Special Summon this card from your Pendulum Zone. —————————————- [ Monster Effect ] A Synchro Monster that was Summoned using this card as Synchro Material gains this effect. ● When a Spell Card is activated (Quick Effect): You can shuffle 1 face-up “Rahi” Pendulum Monster from your Extra Deck into the Deck; negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card.
FLIP: Special Summon 1 Level 4 “Bohrok” monster from your Deck in face-down Defense Position, except “Bohrok Nuhvok”. Once per turn: You can target 1 Spell/Trap Card on the field; destroy that target, and if you do, its Spell & Trap Zone cannot be used until your next Standby Phase. During the End Phase of the turn you activated this effect, shuffle this face-up card into the Deck.
2 Level 4 “Bohrok” monsters Place materials detached from this card on the bottom of the Deck, instead of sending them to the GY. (Quick Effect): You can target 1 other card you control or in either GY; attach it to this card as material. If this card has 5 or more materials: You can detach all of this card’s materials, and if you do, destroy up to that many cards your opponent controls, then you can attach 1 of those destroyed cards to this card as material. You can only use each effect of “Bohrok Lehvak-Kal” once per turn.
If another “Kanohi” card becomes equipped to the equipped monster, destroy this card. If the equipped monster is a “Toa Kaita” monster, it is unaffected by your opponent’s card effects, also your opponent must keep their hand revealed. Once per turn, while this card is equipped to a “Toa Mata” monster you control: You can Special Summon 1 “Toa Mata” monster with the same Level from your hand, then, immediately after this effect resolves, Xyz Summon 1 “Toa” Xyz Monster using monsters you control, including that Special Summoned monster.
Target 6 “Toa” monsters with different names you control, in your hand, and/or in your GY, including at least 1 on the field; banish the targets in your hand and GY (if any), and if you do, banish up to 6 cards from your opponent’s hand (at random), field, and/or GY, but the number of cards banished from the hand must be less than or equal to the number of Normal Summoned monsters you control among the targets. You can only activate 1 “Toa Seal” per turn.
Now also available in fancy video form, with visual previews and editing and stuff!
Quick textual summary: The 4 month intervals worked out even with a lot of other stuff going on, so we’re sticking with that. That means the following schedule:
April 2024: “Unity Evolved” (Nuva/Kal Kaita)
August? 2024: “The Rahi Update” – may be multiple releases in the second half of the year, we’ll see how long it takes
After that (maybe still 2024?): “Time of Trouble” (final BPEV lore batch)
As tantalizing as it is to maybe have the BPEV expansion done with the next year, I really can’t allow myself to put the Rahi stuff off any longer. So if that isn’t done within one gigantic release (which I wouldn’t expect unless things go really, really well), that sweet taste of completion will have to wait for a bit.
Also, if you watched the video, you may have seen some “optional side quests” at the end. Those are things that might be happening in the background along the way to improve my and/or the users’ experience. To repeat them here and elaborate a bit:
EDOPro repositiories – Apparently those can be used to have custom expansions that automatically update after installing them once, so that would tremendously simplify the releases for everyone.
YGO Omega – There’s another popular client flying around, maybe I can get my scripts set up so they work in both (without having to maintain them separately).
mse2cdb Windows build – I’m currently running my beautiful tool in the Linux subsystem because I haven’t been able to make a Windows executable for years now. Should probably fix that, but all attempts so far have been foiled by CMake being CMake.
Master Duel modding – The holy grail of custom card creation at this time. I’ve seen exactly one video claiming to have pulled this off in any capacity and it was never followed up on, so if it’s possible at all, it might only be in a very limited fashion. But no way to know until I’ve at least given it a try myself.
No guarantee any of these will actually happen, it’s just a general outline of what might come up. And outside of that, there’s also the usual stuff like deck ideas and April Fools’.
Anyway, “ban list reaction” is a new genre of post here, but I thought I’d make one just this once since that card has been a key component of most of our Warrior-centric, Kanohi-equipping decks through BCOT and BPEV. Long story short, Kanohi builds are dead until further notice because Equip Spells suck too much to be worth using in significant quantities without that bandaid. I was hoping it’d continue dodging the list, considering it wasn’t really dominating the meta because – again – Equip Spells suck, but I guess the amount of combo nonsense it technically enables finally got on people’s nerves enough. I get it.
One side task for 2024 is now going to be re-updating the Koro, Toa, etc decks to work in a different way without Isolde, and I’m honestly kind of looking forward to that. Having to build everything around that one card was getting a bit annoying, especially since it being a LIGHT Warrior screwed up the entire Koro Attribute theming. Now that it’s officially gone, the combo crafters’ cabal of the TCG might come up with some new ideas to make Warriors work smoothly, and maybe those can be integrated. We’ll see.
For what it’s worth, the currently in-development Toa Nuva are probably not that impacted by this change, as they can still trigger their Kanohi GY effects with the discards of their own searches (the way it’s actually meant to happen). I even have a build on the back burner that’s meant to run without any Warrior combos, will be showing that one off at some point.
The good news: Regular updates will continue in this coming year. The bad news: I’m extending the standard interval from 2 months to 4. While last year’s schedule mostly worked out, it also kept me pretty damn busy, so between IRL commitments and the desire for some general technical updates on stuff like the site or my development tools, I feel a need to dial it back a bit and leave more time for other things.
With that, here’s the plan:
April 2023: Bohrok-Kal (1st Wave)
August 2023: Toa Nuva (2nd Wave)
December 2023: Bohrok-Kal (2nd Wave)
In other words, by the time the year is over, the cast of the Nuva vs Kal conflict should be fully gathered, and all that will be left for 2024 is the fabled Rahi update and the obligatory lore cards.
The finalized release of the BCOT overhaul, with nicely cleaned up scripts and card texts, was meant for release this month, but unfortunately it’s not gonna work out. I seem to have underestimated how much time it would take to apply all the refactoring steps I had lined up to a grand total of 66 cards, and when I was finally through with all of them, I found it was already the last week of June. Making the posts and showcase video I’d like to have as part of this release that quickly just isn’t realistic between other, more urgent obligations, and so I’ve decided to make use of the privilege that separates a true hobby from work: I simply gave up on finishing it within schedule.
Now if you read between the lines, you’ll notice I do have the expansion itself done, and indeed the finalized version 3.21.6 can be found at the top of the Downloads page already. It’s just the promotional material, release notes, etc that will take a bit more time. Might be as soon as next week, might take until the end of July, who knows. I’m hoping the delay at least won’t be any longer than that so I can still stick to the roadmap overall.
Did you know that it’s possible to plan development work ahead of time and then proceed along a fixed schedule, thus spotting potential problems well in advance? Sounds like witchcraft, but let’s try it. Just keep in mind that anything “planned” here is still subject to change for literally any reason whatsoever.
Pushing out an update every two months has proven to be a functional and sustainable pace, so using that as the basis:
February 2022: The Matoran Update – Polishing and extending the Koro strategies a bit more by taking another look at the Matoran cards in BCOT, BCOR, and BBTS … plus maybe also adding some new ones?
April 2022: Tale of the Toa – Final wave of Toa Mata support, and also final wave of reworked BCOT cards.
June 2022: Big refactoring run for BCOT scripts (and maybe the other expansions while I’m at it), first look at the Protodermic Evolution archetypes (Version 4.0 !).
August 2022:Energized Protodermis (1st Wave) First look at the Protodermic Evolution archetypes (Version 4.0 !)
October 2022:Toa Nuva (1st Wave) Energized Protodermis (1st Wave)
December 2022:Bohrok-Kal (1st Wave) Toa Nuva (1st Wave)
June August is an important milestone to watch out for, because the results of testing the first cards of BPEV will influence what their further support is like, which may change how much of it I have to make and in what order. So the plan for the second half of the year is more of an educated guess at this point, and the “(1st Wave)” notes don’t necessarily mean all of these things will get another wave next year.
(Updated 2022-04-28: Version 4.0 pushed back to August, following releases shifted accordingly)
The main reason I decided to make my own site for the Bionicle YGOPro Expansion was that imgur, which I had previously been using for release posts, just felt way too limited. All I could make there was a long, long scroll of card images with a textual description below each, where both the transcribed card text (for readability) and any design notes lived. Anything that didn’t belong to one particular card, like an introduction of an archetype, had to be finagled in in some unfitting way or another. And then their anti-spam features eventually started making it even harder by just destroying any links in the text, which made it impossible to download the actual expansion pack with a single click coming from the imgur album. I think that was about the point I realized I would eventually need to find a different solution, and after looking around a bit it became clear the only way to really improve things would be a dedicated website. And so I made one, consolidating the project description, expansion list, download links, release posts and more into one nice package, and everyone lived happily ever after.
But wait, is this really all that much of an improvement? Sure, the format of the releases and theme guides is now much more free than it ever was on imgur and I can ramble about high-level details all I want in addition to introducing individual cards, but at the end of the day it’s still just some boring text and images I put together manually. You can click on the pics to get a little overlay that includes a transcription of the card text, which is nice, but surely we can do better on a site that can be customized down to the source code level, right?
Right! The potential of displaying cards in some fancy manner of my own crafting was actually a major reason I opted to make a WordPress site from scratch instead of just quickly putting something up on wordpress.com or Blogger. And I’m proud to now announce the first steps towards that have successfully been taken.
Behold: The fruit of this site’s very own plugin, the BYE Cardviewer Block!
To Tribute Summon this card face-up, you can Tribute 1 WATER or “Toa Mata” monster in your hand, except “Toa Mata Kopaka”. If this card attacks, it is changed to Defense Position at the end of the Battle Phase. If this card is in face-up Defense Position, your opponent’s monsters cannot target monsters for attacks, except “Toa Mata Kopaka”. Once per turn, if another card(s) you control leaves the field because of an opponent’s card effect: You can banish 1 card your opponent controls.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.16.6)
Yes, yes, I know, it’s still just text and images. But all I have to do to get it into the post is specifying which card and version I want, and everything else gets fetched straight from the database and formatted in a standardized manner. It’s pretty, it’s cohesive, it’s reusable, and if you click on the card image it still opens the sweet little overlay just as before. Even comes with a separate layout for mobile (or otherwise horizontally challenged) devices!
As any good way of displaying Yu-Gi-Oh cards should, the block accounts for the different types of stats found across different types of monsters:
Turaga Nuju
Link Effect MonsterLink-2 [◀ ▶] | WATER Spellcaster | ATK 1100
2 monsters, including a WATER Warrior monster If this card is Special Summoned: You can target 1 face-up Spell/Trap you control; until the end of the next turn, while you control a WATER monster, that target cannot be destroyed by card effects (even if this card leaves the field). Once per turn: You can target 1 card your opponent controls; change 1 monster you control to face-down Defense Position, and if you do, return that target to the hand.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.16.6)
And for the simpler Spells/Traps that are free of such cumbersome details, it just leaves out that line entirely:
Ko-Koro, Village of Ice
Field Spell
While all face-up monsters you control (min. 1) are WATER, apply these effects. ●If you did not declare an attack during your last turn, monsters your opponent controls cannot attack the turn they are Summoned. ●If none of your opponent’s cards where destroyed or banished by your card effects since your last Standby Phase, monsters you control cannot be destroyed by your opponent’s card effects, also your opponent cannot target them with card effects. ●If you did not activate any monster effects this turn, negate the effects of face-up monsters that were Special Summoned this turn while your opponent controls them.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.16.6)
If you’re browsing on mobile, you’ll see these blocks as a single-column layout with all the info listed beneath the card image, but on desktop it just shows image and info next to each other. However, we also have the option to force the mobile layout on wider screens which can be used to do things like comparing two versions of the same card side-by-side:
(Quick Effect): You can send this card from your hand to the GY, then target 1 face-up card you control; for the rest of this Chain after this effect resolves, or until the end of this turn if it is a “Matoran” monster, it is unaffected by other card effects, except its own. When your opponent activates a card or effect on the field (Quick Effect): You can Special Summon this card from the GY to your Main Monster Zone in the same column as that card, and if you do, change 1 face-up monster on the field to Defense Position. You can only use each effect of “C.C. Matoran Maku” once per turn.
When your opponent activates a card or effect on the field (Quick Effect): You can Special Summon this card from your hand or GY to your Main Monster Zone in the same column as that card, and if you do, change 1 face-up monster on the field to Defense Position. (Quick Effect): You can target 1 other face-up card you control; for the rest of this Chain after this effect resolves, or until the end of this turn if it is a “Matoran” monster, it is unaffected by other card effects, except its own. You can only use each effect of “C.C. Matoran Maku” once per turn.
Bionicle: Coming of the Toa (v3.16.6)
For readers cursed with particularly narrow screens, these two might still look like they’re just underneath each other, but I swear they line up if there’s enough space available. Most importantly, either version is perfectly readable, and all the information you could want about a card is right there.
For the time being, this post here will be the only part of the site using the new layout, because to be quite honest it’s still very much a prototype. The frontend looks fairly presentable already, but hidden in the backend is a plain HTML form where I have to manually enter every single card’s information to get it into the database. Similarly, configuring the blocks is done by typing the identifiers of the desired card into haphazardly placed text fields. So before I really start using it, I still need to put some work into improving those portions, ideally with an option to directly upload a .cdb file and proper configuration UI featuring some idiot-proof dropdowns. Frontend may receive some updates along the way, too, but the nice thing about custom blocks is that the copies I’ve already used here will udpate without any extra work needed!
As a last note, if you happen to be seeing this and thinking “Hey, I could use that too!”, good news: The source code is all available on GitHub. It’s obviously tuned and tested for my specific needs, so make adjustments as needed.
EDIT 2021-10-12: Upon further consideration, maybe tabs would be the better way to do comparisons? Then nothing has to get squished.
(Quick Effect): You can send this card from your hand to the GY, then target 1 face-up card you control; for the rest of this Chain after this effect resolves, or until the end of this turn if it is a “Matoran” monster, it is unaffected by other card effects, except its own. When your opponent activates a card or effect on the field (Quick Effect): You can Special Summon this card from the GY to your Main Monster Zone in the same column as that card, and if you do, change 1 face-up monster on the field to Defense Position. You can only use each effect of “C.C. Matoran Maku” once per turn.
When your opponent activates a card or effect on the field (Quick Effect): You can Special Summon this card from your hand or GY to your Main Monster Zone in the same column as that card, and if you do, change 1 face-up monster on the field to Defense Position. (Quick Effect): You can target 1 other face-up card you control; for the rest of this Chain after this effect resolves, or until the end of this turn if it is a “Matoran” monster, it is unaffected by other card effects, except its own. You can only use each effect of “C.C. Matoran Maku” once per turn.
It is always nice to see the content I upload getting some comments. It’s not so nice to see that literally 100% of them (at least on this site) have been obvious spam, now clocking in at another nice round mark of 30. Maybe I should do something about that after all. Anyway, for now, let’s take another fun trip into The Spam Zone.
(General Disclaimer: Don’t go to any links you see in the following images, they’re probably evil scam pages that will mine Bitcoins in your browser and eat your cat)
First up we have a very subtle advertisement of a certain type of content (with wrong tags, once again), and an equally subtle call for help.
If these short and to-the-point comments aren’t enough entertainment for you, then no need to worry, for two members of the Scato collective have once more shown themselves to ramble about …something.
Somehow only Vanessa can into URLs.
Other highlights include this person(?) who just went “hey, oil” without any fanfare:
This one who knows how to get rich (obviously legit):
And this one who thinks I already am rich enough to be interested in renting a private jet:
Finally, we have a special feature of this particular spam gallery, and that is that there’s actual a common source to a large part of it. All comments from there are compiled in the gallery below, so we don’t have to make this post even more longer than it deserves to be.
And that’s all for Vol II of the spam gallery! I honestly don’t really want to make another one of these, so for now I’ve enabled the Friendly Captcha plugin, because it’s the one Captcha I could find that doesn’t need cookies (and thus I don’t even technically need to bother with a cookie notice). If it works as intended, you shouldn’t notice it’s there unless you’re a spambot (lmao nevermind I just forgot to turn it on), so please do consider leaving a legitimate comment somewhere! One of the reasons I even bother publishing my stuff is so I can get feedback and criticism from the public, but somehow the public seems hesitant to provide that. Odd.
