Quintessential Vladimir guide for season 11

Well hello there wonderful people. My name is Calvin and I stream under the name Elite500, as the title suggests, I’ve been challenger for 4 seasons now and ended it since the last 2.

I’ve played vlad throughout every meta, no matter how rough or how much the playstyle has changed, and I’m finally here, bringing to YOU the absolute ULTIMATE, QUINTESSENTIAL, HOLY guide, everything you will ever need for season 11. At the time of writing this guide I’ve played around 500 preseason games and half of them in high challenger.

Why play Vladimir? Doesn’t he actually suck? Isn’t he noobchamp?

Do you wish to experience the pleasure of entering teamfights and leaving them higher hp?

Do you want to dehumanise yourself to and not even recognise your fellow teammates as sentient meat lumps? Can you handle the responsibility to take every game post 20 minutes as your responsibility?
Of course you do.

Setups: we’ll go over the main 2 setups including items, runes, summoners, and build
How to choose between the two setups and which play-style suits you best
Early laningphase and how to play matchups
Every matchup in the game including recommended setups for matchups
Unleashing unholy wrath upon your foes in mid to lategame
Combos
Skin choice

Setup one, the way of the gigalord:

Back in season 7 the chad vladimir players received an upgrade from thunderlords decree, electrocute, termed GIGALORDS back then, it’s power has been dormant and ever waiting since the nerfs of 2018.

This path is more optimally suited for those who wish to have devastating all in damage, those who wish to win lane as early as level 3, those who want to annihilate and leave them with .no counterplay 100-0s

This setup is best suited and optimally played against melee champions such as Sylas, Pantheon, Yone, Yasuo, Ekko, Akali, Kata, etc.

Summoner spells:

Ignite and flash are a must take with this setup, allowing you to deliver sudden oneshots with flash and having beyond unholy all in damage with ignite. Ignite also helps us with nimbus cloak and with procing electro.

Runes

Keystone:

Of course you’ll be taking electrocute as your keystone, it allows you to win a lot of trades early into the game, it’s easily proccable early with auto Q auto or auto E Q or even auto ignite Q.
The trading is nice although the main reason you take this keystone is for the HEINOUS all in damage it can do, most champions can literally be 100-0 oneshot at level 6 if they’re not innately invulnerable (looking at you galio).

Minor runes, domination:

Taste of blood is absolutely amazing and helps out in every melee matchup, feel free to swap this to sudden impact if you’re deranged and play this setup into ranged opponents. (sudden impact proccable with rocketbelt.

Poro ward is extremely consistent and can be stacked easily to grant you free 4 ap level 3 and 30 ap at around ~ 16 – 18 minutes depending on how actively you ward and where.

Ravenous hunter synergises so well with vlads huge point and click Q damage, easily accumulating 10’000 HP healed in a game. While it doesn’t sound like much, since the rune was changed from spellvamp to omnivamp it now will even heal you slightly on autohits even without stacks helping you outsustain early. Some crazy gamer chinese vlads will take ultimate hunter since their server is perma fighting, it’s also a viable choice but feels worse to me.

Secondary runes, sorcery:

For sure my favourite secondary tree to spec into, although this one is a lot more preference, I think all trees are balanced it’s just more playstyle, you flash like a maniac? Go inspiration cosmic insight with cdr shoes rush and enjoy less than 4 minute flash cooldown etc.
Transcendence holy MOLY this rune got such a nice change in season 11, 5 ability haste at level 5? Sign me the hell up. The ability cd refund is also amazing on vladimirs W since it’s basecooldown is like 30 seconds, allowing you sometimes to pool twice in fights.

Nimbus Cloak to make up for the lack of mobility before rocketbelt nimbus cloak helps out so much allowing you to kite and rundown pesky season 10 dashy champs with ease. Optionally gathering storm is also nice but with this rune setup you mostly play for early mid domination and nimbus is also great lategame. My games have been decided 1000x more by having more mobility in clutch scenarios than having 40 extra ap at 30 minutes.
For the mini runes always Ability haste, AP, and scaling hp

Build:

You best be prepared to build mejais.

Starting item:

Your starting item should be dark seal refillable every game, the dark seal buff now giving hp and 5 extra ap is absurdly good for vlad, random lucky early kills giving 10 ap is also beyond bonkers. Shaving off 350g on your mejais purchase is also essential.

First mythic:

Hextech Rocketbelt is by far the best mythic you can go in every game currently, amazing active, amazing components, amazing mythic passive, it’s just THAT good. The dash and ms is a great engage tool, hextech alternator synergises perfectly with your ridiculous ignite electro damage, the passive giving you 5 flat pen is amazing since you can get 18 from sorc shoes and another 5 from mejais since it counts as a legendary, the more flat pen you stack the more efficient it gets.

Second item:

Mejais Soulstealer allows you to single-handedly decide whether you wish to win the game or lose it, it’s a must buy and goes hand in hand with this playstyle, one two kills with a mejais, over 10 stacks? Literally the game is a done deal at this stage. Rocket belt mythic passive giving you 5 pen for a 1250g purchase makes it even good to buy at 0 stacks. I have completely 1v9’d too many games to count in the highest of elos because enemies make literally one mistake and die once.

Third item:

Void staff third? WTF what if enemies have no mr elite? Well let me tell you about this stupidly broken item that straight up out damages a god damn DEATHCAP even at 30 mr !? ? ? the item is 131% gold efficient, let alone when you pile up your 28 flat pen that you get from completing it. Remember flat pen reduces enemy MR AFTER the percentage, so let’s say someone has 50 magic resistance when you buy your void, magic resistance WH OMEGALUL? 28|40% stats on 50 mr leaves enemies with a whole 2 mr, 2 mr!!!!!

Fourth item:

Rabadons Deathcap while not nearly as good as it was last season still will round up your build, if you have just a few mejais stacks and you get these 4 holy items, the game is literally already over. Few champions can experience the delightful feel of going in 1v5 and returning at higher hp than before.

Shoes:

Unless you’re rocking cosmic insight and want türbo low summoner cd, sorc shoes are the must go 100% of the time. Why would you need damagereduction from tabis if you oneshot enemies, why would you need merctreads tenacity if you can just dodge with your W 4Head. Sorc shoes penetration just perfectly synergises with the rocketbelt mythic passive since the more flat magic pen you stack the more potent it becomes.

What the hell is the last item?

At this stage your power is so strong the final item won’t make a big difference, need dps? Cosmic drive, need a second pool? Zhonyas, need spellshield vs evelyn and zoe? Banshees. The itemshop is your oyster, get whatever you want last, I usually like to top it off with zhonyas.
This concludes the way of the gigalords setup and we’ll now proceed to the other setup.

Setup two, consistency king & lategamegod:

This play style was the meta for the longest of time and still remains viable, farm for 30 mins and then fight once and win the game 4Head. This playstyle relies less on your opponents being bad and more so on the inevitable victory that is 300 cs vladimir at the same time it’s also praying that your team doesn’t just perma fight for no reason which kinda happens a lot as well in soloq because people like fighting for no reason.

Summoner spells:

Ever thought how if everyone does just one thing the same way people would become insecure to try anything else but that specific way? That’s my opinion on using ghost > flash.

With this setup I prefer taking ghost over flash and ignite secondary. Why? Now that ghost’s duration gets refreshed on kills or assists and gives tremendous move-speed while only being on a 182 second cd with cosmic insight (163 with lucidity boots) allows you to have it up at literally every possible random teamfight, the mobility is insane for laningphase as well. If you can kill your opponent with flash in a certain scenario ghost will do the job and more, what do you do vs a vladimir that has kill pressure on your and pressed his nitroboost button? Flash away? Jokes on you this shit lasts 10000 years and he’ll just inevitably catch up.

Ghost in teamfights is also ridiculous, pop it right before someone dies and you have like 15 seconds of speed duration, can catchup to literally anyone even foolish galeforce buyers who think they are cool with their mini dash.(bit pixelated)

Ignite secondary lets you have some decent kill pressure even with this setup
You can of course go whatever you please, struggling with bully mages? Go flash tp, feel like you can’t catchup to that Ezreal in the backline? Flash ghost is the answer, etc, it’s all viable and just needs playing around.

Runes

Keystone:

Phaserush has been Vlad’s most consistent rune since seasons now. It offers a lot of versatility in the sense that it can be used to slide in an extra auto in trades, chase people down, escape ganks easier and of course mainly to slide into the backline like Michael Jackson moonwalking on the rift.
Just like electrocute it’s really easily proccable, just three swift strikes and you’re running like ~~yourprincess runs from apologizing to Tuesday~~
Even your initial ult cast counts as one of the strikes, so you could ignite ult q and boom you’re already zooming.

Minor runes, sorcery:

Nimbus cloak is an insanely good rune for vlad since the main thing you lack is mobility, and the more you have the easier it gets to get even more. If you have a reliable way of proccing phaserush such as nimbus cloak ignite all your mobility issues are fixed.

Transcendence just like with the electro page it helps you lane giving you cdr as early as level 5, and if you stack enough ability haste with zhonyas or even legendary double stopwatch you can always do some funky last fight game winning shit like –> pool –> zhonyas –> get asisst so trans ticks in –> stopwatch –> pool again. It’s like 10 seconds of immunity winning you uber clutch games.

Gathering Storm what better rune suited for the lategame king himself. All other options like waterwalking and scorch are completely outclassed by this free stats rune. I’d say Vlad is the most efficient champion in the game when it comes to flat ap considering you have ap to hp conversion, absolutely massive ap scalings with damage and healing (wtF), and an amplification on all abilites with your ult.

Secondary runes, Inspiration:

Free boots are really good at helping you scale up consistently and the 10ms it gives you on top of regular boots means you just zoom that little bit extra.

Cosmic Insight is also amazing at lowering your summonerspells, combined with haste shoes you can get almost 70 seconds off your flash, how insane is that.

Build

If you’ve been shocked by going ghost ignite you’re going to be quite surprised by this.

Starting item:

Just like with electrocute, dark seal refillable is a beyond bonkers good item to start with, however since we get free boots with this setup going dorans ring is a more affordable purchase as well into a more difficult matchup like Orianna or Syndra. My logic is if you back with ~ 350g you’ll be having to choose either between dark seal or boots, but since boots are out of the equation you don’t even need to think about them so dorans ring is a lot more affordable. At the same time this setup focuses mostly on reaching unholy power as fast as possible.

First mythic:

Mythic? Only insecure players build mythic items first.
We build DOUBLE FIENDISH CODEX that’s right. Become unstoppable. Vlad turns AP into a hyper efficient stat already with his insane scalings, so what about a 114% gold efficient PURE ap and ability haste stat? Fiendish codex’ passive is no longer unique so you can stack them.
From experience I’ve felt that anything more than 2 feels awful and going only 1 is also a viable option, although we want to accelerate ourselves and by this I mean let’s say we just pushed out midlane wave and we have some tempo. Raptor camp is up and your jgler doesn’t need them, you take them in 15 seconds total, because of this, the next time you take them you could afford another item meaning you took them 10 seconds in total, the next time 5 seconds and so on and so fort.
Getting pure ap and cdr allows you to do this faster and ultimately accelerating yourself to a point of having 300 cs at 25 minutes and being able to completely devour anyone in sight.

Second item:

Since I’m addicted to Mejais I like to buy it second, however with this setup you can skip it, if you fall behind even slightly mejais won’t get the free 5 penetration that you would’ve gotten with a regular rocketbelt build and it becomes really hard to get back into the game. Just remember if you need the power of GOD to win this game, don’t hesitate to buy the holy bible.

The real Second item:

Now that you have around ~ 100 ap Rabadons deathcap becomes efficient, even in its pathetic nerfed state it’ll still transform you into an onmipotent being. Deathcap is 92% item efficient with just it’s own AP and gets increased by 20% for every 100 ap so making it at MINIMUM 112% gold efficient of RAW pure AP power which Vladimir makes such enthusiastic work with. Now imagine if you had a mejais with some lucky 10 stacks on it, 136% gold efficient pure ap item combined with this? Oh Lord. Full mejais and dc = 357 ap = 500 hp more for FREE due to crimson pact.

Third item:

Most sane enemies when pressing TAB and seeing there is a 200 cs vlad at 16 minutes with a deathcap completed and double codex eagerly wanting to devour their feeble adc souls will attempt to purchase some magic resistance.
Falter their plans by buying an early Void Staff, just like the logic we applied earlier with electrocute, void staffs 131% gold efficiency combined with sorcerer shoes allows you to deal near true damage to low mr targets and to those with more than room temperature IQ who’ve built MR? Well you have a voidstaff, what good does it do them.

Fourth item:

Woo! It’s mythic time yayyy!

This is the most satisfying thing ever, building a mythic item when you have 3 legendaries all giving you instant mythic passive.
At this stage you can choose pretty much all mythics, need more haste? Go Nightharvester for unrivaled dps, playing against a lot of squishies? Unleash unholy burst with the Rocketbelt, enemies stacked giga nitro mega amounts of mr and you’re having a tough time penetrating through it? Literally buy a Liandry’s, it shreds enemy MR making your voidstaff and sorc shoes deal hyper amounts of damage. Since you have 2 codex Liandry’s is giga cheap at only 2500g and doesn’t eat up another inventory slot.

You can even decide to buy something else if you’re in desperate need for it like a Zhonyas or Morrelo, it’s not essential to have a mythic but I highly recommend it leaving it no later than this.

Last item (if you were a chad mejais buyer)

Just like the other electro setup, you may go whatever your heart desires as final ap item.
Enemies have a lot of ad? Zhonyas, need dps? Cosmic Drive, need magic res? Spirit or Banshees.
That’s pretty much it to the phaserush build, we’ll be covering when to go these setups next.

How to choose between the two setups

I am of the opinion that you can go either setup 100% of the time every game and not need to switch things up to find success, however there are scenarios where one is better than the other.
For beginners I recommend learning just one setup first or your opinion might get clouded by low sample size.
I also have a complete matchup spreadsheet with every matchup midlane in the game

If you’re more of the assassin player, wanting to oneshot specific targets and having ridiculously high kill pressure in lane I recommend going electrocute setup.

If you more feel like playing an actual controlmage and maintaining 10cs/min and unleashing unholy wrath lategame with zero counterplay then go phaserush setup.

In a realistic scenario if you’re laning vs melee champions electrocute is much better for lane and the minor runes will have a lot of effect vs them. You can go both setups in both types of matchups and it’s perfectly viable you just have to be aware of your weaknesses and play around them.

Currently I think the meta favours the electrocute setup a tiny bit more since there is a lot of early fighting and lane prio is important to help your jungler. That being said having ghost ignite phaserush means you can join any fight you want since your sums are super low so try both and see which one you like more.

Early laningphase and how to play matchups

Level 1 – 5

With both play-styles you want to play as safe as humanly possible with Vladimir pre 6, try manage the wave so it’s always near your tower so you can’t get ganked and are easily able to lasthit. It is ESSENTIAL to have on point last hitting skills, if you do not, go practice tool right now and get 100cs in 10 mins with only autohits. These early autohits really dictate the pace of the rest of the game, same theory with raptors, how much money you have dictates how much money you’ll be able to generate.

If your lane opponent doesn’t have teleport (mostly melees) you can play a little aggro and sneak in a quicky succ every now and then onto your lane opponent and eventually either deplete their hp so they have to recall or their mana so they become obsolete.

Don’t use your E early much as it mostly hurts yourself more than it hurts anything else, the self damage is always the same percentage so it really feels bad using it early to sprinkle tiny 60 damage blood bolts at the cost of like 100 hp.

You may spam Q on the minions as long as you don’t end up pushing the wave to the enemy, what makes vlad really hard to play in high elo is players will freeze the wave as soon as it starts to push vs them and it’s impossible to unfreeze unless you call your jungler to help.

If you’re playing vs someone with teleport it’s extremely ballsy to trade with them as if you do they’ll empty their mana on you and hp and just recall and come back leaving you with low hp and unable to buy items and locked in lane, going teleport yourself with phaserush of course halfway counters this awful spot to be in.

Level 1 – 5 early electrocute cheese

This strategy is really really easy to pull off, This video shows exactly how to pull this off, it’s incredibly easy to do with electrocute since you also have taste of blood and ignite if your lane opponent dares to contest this you can just punish them.

Basically you want to create a slowpush early, how do we do this? Try to fish for auto attacks or a Q on your opponent, aggroing the minions onto you, since they will chase you let them be pulled into your wave, while you drag them they will not be attacking your minions meaning the wave will push in opponent direction.

If you pull this off and just gently last hit the next 2 waves and then push in really hard when canon wave comes you’ll have stacked a MASSIVE ally wave under enemy turret while you have tempo to do whatever you like, recall get amp tome / ward for jungler / invade with jungler / anything you desire.

And what about my enemy mid, won’t he follow me and stop me? But how? He’s got 3 waves stacked under his turret trying to last hit them, he can’t just leave that or he’ll instantly lose the game.

This concept is very very important to vladimir players as your all ins are often able to 100-0 opponents, so if we do this strategy of stacking big waves at level 6- 9 and dive the lane opponent and they die they lose like 3 waves worth of cs, this is literally unbearably game losing for them and it’s SO easy to pull off especially in low elo. What on earth do you do vs a vladimir who stacked a wave, has an alternator, electro ult and ignite up and is furiously waiting to oneshot you? Literally no counterplay other than going barrier or buying hp / mr.

How do I get the wave to push into my direction so I can lasthit?

It’s very simple, most people will hit the wave level 1 like the utter troglodytes they are, just match their auto attacks and leave one out every few, once it slowpushes into your direction all you have to do is not kill the minions and let them be near your turret. The wave will ALWAYS freeze if 3 full hp caster minions are left alive and the next wave’s melee minions don’t go under tower.

Like this we can freely scale up to the lategame terror that Vladimir is.

My lane opponent has also read this guide and isn’t hitting the first wave? Wtf? If you can, push push push like your pregnant and try get your minions under enemy tower, if this happens the wave will simply bounce and start pushing towards you.
These 2 concepts are the simplest and most essential thing to know when playing Vladimir.

First recall

You’ve got around 1000g? You should start to look to setup a recall so you can either buy a fiendish codex (phaserush setup) or a hextech alternator (electrocute setup)

How do we do this?

We already know how to stack waves and crash them under enemy tower, so we simply preform just that, we push the wave out and once it’s under tower run away quickly and recall, the bigger the wave the better since it traps your lane opponent in lane while you get to recall and only lose 1-2 melees.

If you don’t want to lock your lane opponent in lane or they have tp or just don’t care didn’t ask, just push the wave out before or during cannon wave since cannon minions can tank like 8 or more turret shots meaning you have tonnes of time to walk back to lane without missing anything.

Not missing any cs during your recalls is really essential as Vladimir especially because you can’t afford to fall behind.

Vs mages who like to buy lost chapter it’s extremely important you figure out a way to force a recall before they get that 1300g because if they do somehow get that you’re in for a fun cock and ball torture session, especially with Orianna. That’s why if you can recall with 1000g you can get a fiendish and they’ll just feel awful buying a god damn mana crystal.

Post recall

You’ve just walked back to lane, you’re level 6 and have your 1000g item and haven’t lost more than 1 minions worth of exp. What do you do now?

Since you have some AP you finally get to have more than cannon minion levels of wave-clear

If you’ve got an easy matchup and are not afraid to push out the wave start pushing and looking for things to do on the map. It’s important to ask yourself these questions WHILE pushing so you don’t waste time making a decision when you already have tempo.

Can you kill your lane opponent? Dive him.

Can you help your jungler invade? Go for it, just remember you’re on a tight time limit if things don’t go well and you’ll lose farm mid with no gain.

Can you gank / dive bot/ top? If there is a guaranteed pay off, (know all summs, ults etc) then go for it! Just don’t risk anything, remember if both teams are equal you are likely to win because of vladimirs inevitable lategame scaling.

If you don’t have any options, simply ward or clear wards, going out of enemy vision forces your lane opponent to shit their pants and ping ? ? ?? ? ? ? ? where he go? Which takes focus from other players and makes them play accordingly.

Midgame

It’s VERY important to go to sidelanes IF

Your botlane’s tower died and now enemy adc and sup go mid and try to take yours, since you have fuckall waveclear you can’t hold them away from the tower and end up losing more and more. It’s very important to also not share exp since the support will probably try defend midlane with you, you want to soak up that juicy sololane exp and start exerting pressure in a sidelane.

If you see lots of champs in one spot be ready to move asap because a teamfight might break out, although as Vlad maintaining 10cs/min is above everything, you can’t have any less if you want to carry games so some teamfights are just lost causes and don’t hurt yourself more by trying to get there in time.

You can generally tell when a fight will happen when either:

Herald is up and no dragon
Dragon is up

If ally mid tower is still up and dragon is down and herald is up what do we do?

Of course sidelane top and tell your teleport toplaner to go bot and your adc supp to go mid, it’s very likely that a herald fight will start and you wanna be there.

If dragon spawns and your team wants to contest that? Sidelane botlane and rotate mid at least ~20 seconds before dragon spawn so your adc can walk up reliably.

The only fights you REALLY need to be a part of are for objectives especially dragon, ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY if you don’t have any dragons at all and enemies are stacking them.

Even the most terrible scaling champions like pantheon will be REALLY obnoxious lategame if they get something like an infernal dragon soul.

Just one or two dragons means enemy team won’t receive the dragon wincondition at like 20 mins which means the game will go on for longer, what happens if the game goes on for super long? Uh oh stinky poo poo lategame vlad arrived and you just take what you please at that stage of the game anyways.

Lategame & Teamfighting

This part of the game is much easier with phaserush and ghost especially with ghost since it also has built in scaling with level, duration and speed.

If you have the potential to reach the backline and kill them then that should be your priority above everything, in 99% of the scenarios this is easily achieved with ghost phaserush, since you literally can’t run away from a ghosted vlad. Not even Ezreal with double flash can run, not even kassadin with 4k mana can blink away in a straight line, and god have mercy if Vlad gets his ghost extended with an asisst or kill.

If you’re playing with electro and your rocketbelt isn’t enough to get you into the backline then try your best to hit as big of an ult as possible and peel for your next strongest member which is usually the adc. A fullbuild vlad demolishes anything that dares approach.

Most fights are extremely obvious when they happen late into the game, they’re either around sieging or around objectives like dragon and baron, you should always be around those when they spawn and farming nearby camps and minions.

Even late into the game you want to be farming farming farming, vlad is a super high resource champion, I’d honestly say the highest resource hog in the entire game, not even kassadin needs this much money, but not even kassadin can just engage 1v5 and demolish everyone.

Ability maxing

You want to max your Q first on both setups, however if you are ahead and are going for the double fiendish codex setup I recommend putting 4 points into Q and then start maxing E out, if you do this your E will oneshot the enemy casterminions extremely early, normally only after lvl 11, with this setup as early as level 9.
So Q → E → W and R of course at 6, 11 and 16..

If you’re playing vs a melee champ in lane going W level 2 is definetly viable and can catch people off guard like a talon jumping on you without expecting you to pool. It does decent damage and slows like crazy unexpected, good for making enemies eat towershots when they think they can just weave in and out.

Combos

There aren’t really many “combos” and it’s mostly just generic efficiency and logical thinking, you make up a lot of things on the fly. Here is a link if you are adamant on learning combos.
Say we want to proc electrocute or phaserush level 1
Auto Q Auto

There is also a multitude of ways you can combo with quick cast, smart cast, input buffer etc.
For the full combo with all sums, what works best for me:

Smartcast all abilities, Q for an empowered Q ready,
Charge E –> Flash –> Release E –> Ult –> Q – Ignite

Some people like to ult first as it releases E automatically upon pressing R however I feel like it’s a tiny bit clunky and if you release E manaully it’s literally impossible to react to unless predicted.
Super late into the game if you have phaserush you could also if you see enemies clumped up and you know they won’t be for long:
Flash –> R –> E W

Since you flash you’ll instantly be able to ult and have nimbus cloak movespeed to make sure your E and W connect with someone, if they do you get phaserush and are able to chase everyone down once you come out of pool, pooling instantly doesn’t matter as much as well since if you hit a fat R it’ll heal you like crazy, this catches enemies off guard a LOT even in high challenger.

Skin Choice

Of course the most important part of the guide.
The tierlist goes like this:

Marquis: 9/10, Extremely small model, feels amazing to play with, cheap asf, regular ult is sometimes invis vs bigger targets like cho’gath.

Bloodlord 8.5/10, A timeless classic with absolutely insane taunting game, instantaneous laugh. Absolute badass voiceline, sounds and animations that make you feel allpowerful but at 1850rp? Idk..

Nightbringer: 8/10 Probably my most played, shortish cape, nice sounds and animations, literally invisible ultimate, beyond pay2win, if you’re looking for the most pay2win its probably this one.

Darkwaters: 7.5/10 basically budget nightbringer with a giga big nasty looking cape. Also has an invisible ult, arguably more invis than nightbringer.

Cosmic Devourer: 7/10 I like the stars aesthetic but imagine making a new skin without pay2win ult, what are you doing right??

Academy: 6/10 Kinda slick, not having a cape and being in a weird suit looks good but his hands look literally cancerbig.

Soulstealer: 5/10 wtf are these sounds, legit sound like it’s windy outside and has the most ugliest cape in the game.

Default: 4/10 bloodlord should be default and this should be removed, legit so beyond ugly.

Count: 1/10 Scuffed ass default vlad chroma so bad it should be against the geneva convention.

Vandal: dugu/10 You have to say no homo before using this skin, never touch another man’s skin.

Nosferatu ?/?? Absolute power.. At a price.

General tips

The minute you forget to farm is the minute you’re out of the game, always farm.

Taking jungle camps is really fast after double codex

Don’t be scared to use ignite generously, if it means your opponent runs out of pots they’re FUCKED since you can just trade 50 hp for 300 of yours and you’ll eventually outsustain.

If you want fast results NEVER blame your team, even if they fucked up, what good does it do you to just move on? Try figure out what YOU could’ve done to prevent x from happening

If you’re extremely strong and baron is already up, just tell your team to start it with you, you don’t have to finish it but it’s a for sure way of starting a teamfight and making enemies fight you when you want it. Worst case scenario you keep hitting baron, they steal it, you end their lives, gg.

The period of where you have crimson rush gets extended by E, Zhonyas, and Pool.

For some reason if you have enough cdr and pool as soon as your E ends and start a new channel in pool that E will have no animation and be invisible, not very usable though.

If you have any questions, ask me anything I’m always happy to spread light on things I didn’t elaborate on. I also stream of course on twitch.tv/elite500, if I didn’t cover something feel free to ask :D, preferably on the post instead of on stream so others can see it too, I'm streaming as i post this guide so i'll reply to comments in queue
streaming right now again so i'll reply to comments in queue

3 Round Mock Draft 1.0

This is just mock draft 1 and we're a long way from the actual draft so I'm open to criticism, position suggestions, player evaluation disagreements, etc. Let me know what you think (third round explanations deleted due to word count restraints).

Jacksonville Jaguars - QB Trevor Lawrence, Clemson. Lawrence is in the discussion for best QB prospect of all time and will be the pick.
New York Jets - QB Justin Fields, Ohio State. I'm working under the assumption that Deshaun Watson will not be traded. After a deep dive into analytics and spending way too much time breaking down game tape, I personally would go with Fields over Wilson. But, they have virtually the same grade and I would not be shocked by either player being picked.
Denver Broncos (from Miami via Houston) - QB Zach Wilson, BYU. With Zach Wilson still on the board at pick 3, John Elway, George Paton and the Broncos go all in to get their franchise QB. If your division rival is lining up Patrick Mahomes under center, you need to do better than Drew Lock to compete. The Broncos have a franchise left tackle to anchor their line, and a very talented young group of weapons. They've build a roster friendly to a franchise QB, so the timing is right to make this move for Denver. As the Rams have proven, you don't need first round picks to build a roster that competes for championships.
Atlanta Falcons - OT Penei Sewell, Oregon. I 'm not sure this move will be popular with Falcons fans, but here goes. With the Broncos trading up and taking the last of the top QBs in this class off the board, the Falcons suddenly have a difficult decision to make. Do you take a raw, inexperienced QB like Trey Lance, or do you take best player available? Here I have the Falcons going best player available because Matt Ryan is still a top QB, and due to his contract situation he's going to be on the roster for at least two more years. That gives them a bigger window to add more talent to the roster before selecting Ryan's replacement. And it would probably be prudent for the Falcons to build a roster then get a QB, rather than get a QB and build the roster after, when the QB prospect in question is a project. Unfortunately, there are no pass rushing prospects who really fit here, although Dean Pees' defense should help to mask that deficiency some and there are good value prospects who should be available on day 2. A.J. Terrell had a promising rookie season, but beyond him they need both depth and talent at CB so one of the top CB prospects is an option here. However, for Arthur Smith's new offense getting a prospect like Sewell is too good of an option. With his contract being easy to move on from, I'm projecting the Falcons cut James Carpenter and select Sewell to move to guard to start his career. This gives them a lot of talent on the offensive line and a lot of flexibility in the future. Should Matthews begin to decline, they can move on and slide Sewell out to left. If McGary doesn't get better in his third year, Sewell could be a long term replacement there. And the main factor that led me to making this pick is that Arthur Smith didn't take the Atlanta job to rebuild. He's got a really good QB in Matt Ryan and Sewell at guard gives the Falcons the best chance at closing out the Ryan era on a high note.
Cincinnati Bengals - OT Rashawn Slater, Northwestern. Thanks to the Broncos trading up for Wilson, the Bengals are guaranteed at least one of the top offensive line prospects in the class being on the board, and although Sewell is gone at 4 Slater is still an excellent prize at 5. As tempting as it may be to reunite Burrow and Chase, the Bengals have to protect their franchise QB. Ideally, Jonah Williams is healthy, but after two years he's had a tough time staying on the field so a guy like Slater who can play any position on the line is perfect here.
Philadelphia Eagles - WR Devonta Smith, Alabama. While I do think it would be smart for the Eagles to draft a CB here, I think Nick Sirianni's odds of surviving in Philly will go way down if he can't fix Wentz. I also think Roseman knows his job is tied to the success of Wentz, given the contract he gave to Wentz. Because of that I've decided to go with a WR here. If I'm being honest, I'm not entirely sure that Smith is the best WR prospect in this class. It's really close between the top 3. However, I think the areas in which Smith excels make him the best fit for Sirianni's offense.
Detroit Lions - WR Ja'Marr Chase, LSU. While QB was expected to be a target, thanks to the acquisition of Jared Goff the Lions do not need to draft a QB here. In fact, I think it's pretty unlikely that the Lions pick a QB here. Jared Goff has had success in the NFL and he's helped lead his team to a Super Bowl, he may not be a top QB but he's a capable starter. Given the influx of draft capital, the Lions cap situation, and the fact that Goff's contract is virtually unmovable for the next two years they are likely going to use this window to build the roster back up. While I think a CB could be a good fit here, they did just draft Okudah last year who should be given a chance to grow in a new defense, especially since the transition from college to the NFL takes longer at that position. Micah Parsons is tempting here too, as linebacker is a need for the Lions. But given the cap situation and the fact that Kenny Golladay, Marvin Jones, Mohamed Sanu, and Danny Amendola are all set to be free agents, I've decided to give the Lions a WR. Not only does this give the Lions a cheap, young, and talented option at WR (allowing them to move on from some of those would-be free agents), he's also arguably the top prospect left on the board.
Carolina Panthers - CB Patrick Surtain II, Alabama. There are a lot of options the Panthers could go with here. I debated between Micah Parsons and Surtain here because while I think the Panthers defense should improve next year, they're still missing consistent ILB play as well as a true #1 CB. Ultimately I chose Surtain over Parsons based on positional value given similar position on my board. I also chose Surtain over Farley because I think he's a better fit in Phil Snow's defense. He's physical and sticky in coverage, and I think he would be a great complement at cornerback to go with safety Chinn. I think OL could be considered here, but I'm not sure reaching for OL when there is better value at other positions of need makes sense. Trey Lance could be an option here, but I (perhaps incorrectly) think Fitterer and Rhule will pass on a QB if they can get a top defensive prospect. This would effectively buy another year for them to build up the roster if they choose to go with a QB in the first round of 2022.
Miami Dolphins (from Denver) - LB Micah Parsons, Penn State. Thanks to a number of trades, real and mocked, the Dolphins have a lot of draft capital and they can use some of that to get weapons for Tua Tagovailoa. But here, they take the best player still on the board. Brian Flores loves to blitz, and Parsons is one of the best blitzing linebacker prospects in years. Jaylen Waddle would be a good pick here too, but the fit is too perfect for me to pass here.
Dallas Cowboys - CB Caleb Farley, Virginia Tech. The Cowboys offense will not be a problem with Prescott back in the lineup. The defense needs a lot of work though, so as tempting as Kyle Pitts may be the Cowboys will almost certainly go defense here. The Cowboys have some cornerbacks set to be free agents but they are not worth re-signing. Farley is the best cornerback on the board and is a great value here for Dallas. The Cowboys could look at a couple other positions on defense, but they won't find the value they'd be getting in Caleb Farley.
Chicago Bears (from New York Giants) - QB Trey Lance, North Dakota State. With the 49ers pick looming, the Bears pull the trigger to move up and get their QB. The Bears have Nick Foles under contract for two more years but he can be cut after next season. Given that situation, the Bears can afford to sit Lance for at least a year and let him develop. He's got all of the tools to be a great QB, but due to the fact that he only played one year at the FCS level, he falls to 11.
San Francisco 49ers - CB Jaycee Horn, South Carolina. Injuries decimated a roster that is talented enough to compete for championships when healthy, so the 49ers can afford to focus on needs. Horn might be seen as a reach here by some, but the drop-off at cornerback is huge and the 49ers need to address the position in the offseason with so many impending free agents. Regardless, Horn is an excellent prospect and be a good pick for first time DC Ryans.
Los Angeles Chargers - OL Alijah Vera-Tucker, USC. Justin Herbert emerged as one of the most promising young QBs in the game despite poor offensive line play. The Chargers need to improve the line, so they can't justify reaching for a tackle because of positional value. They just need to take the best lineman on the board, and that's Vera-Tucker. There's some discussion as to whether he can make it as a tackle at the next level, but most have him projected as a guard. Wherever he plays, he should be an upgrade for the Chargers.
Minnesota Vikings - EDGE Kwity Paye, Michigan. The Vikings would love to improve their interior offensive line, but there's better value on day 2, so the Vikings go with a pass rusher here. The Vikings had one of the best defenses in 2019, and a big part of that was the pass rush. Last year however, the pass rush was ineffective and the defense fell apart. Getting Danielle Hunter back and pairing him with Paye while rotating D.J. Wonnum and Jalyn Holmes in could restore the Vikings pass rush and help get them back to the postseason.
New England Patriots - LB Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, Notre Dame. Although he played in a different scheme at Notre Dame than Bill Belichick uses, Owusu-Koramoah is one of the most versatile defenders in the class. He has shown the ability to rush the passer, drop back in coverage, and his elite sideline to sideline speed for the position that makes him an ideal linebacker against modern offenses. The Patriots need to get younger and faster on defense. As much as I want to add a weapon like Waddle or Pitts to the Patriots, I'm just not convinced that Belichick will actually do that in the first round.
Arizona Cardinals - EDGE Jaelan Phillips, Miami (FL). With Haason Reddick and Markus Golden both set to hit free agency, and Chandler Jones coming off of an injury, heading into his age 31 season, and on the final year of his contract, the Cardinals pass rush is inevitably going to look different in the next couple of years. With a prospect as good as Phillips on the board, drafting him to replace Jones and re-signing Reddick will give the Cardinals a formidable pass rush for the foreseeable future. If the Cardinals want to continue to close the gap with the Rams and Seahawks, they can't let their pass rush decline.
Las Vegas Raiders - WR Jaylen Waddle, Alabama. Every year a couple players drop farther than they should. This year, one of those players is Jaylen Waddle. The Raiders need to improve their defense, and there are some tempting players on the board for the Raiders to take, such as Gregory Rousseau. But the Raiders outside threats could have been better this year, and Jon Gruden will jump at the opportunity to put Waddle with Waller and Ruggs. Waddle is up there with the best weapons in this class, so this is a great value for the Raiders at 17.
Miami Dolphins - WR Kadarius Toney, Florida. Having already landed one of the best defensive players, Miami now turns its attention to surrounding Tagovailoa with the talent to thrive. The Dolphins got good production from DeVante Parker and Mike Gesicki, but could upgrade the rest of their receiving corps. Toney is electric and gives the Dolphins a playmaker over the middle of the field, which is exactly what Miami could use to help Tagovailoa grow.
Washington Football Team - TE Kyle Pitts, Florida. Washington didn't get their QB in this draft, but they get incredible value at 19 in Pitts. Besides Terry McLaurin, Washington doesn't really have a true playmaker at receiver so Pitts would immediately upgrade the offense. Given how good Washington's defense is, if they can't get a QB by trading up their main goal should be to improve their weapons and Pitts would be the ideal scenario.
New York Giants (from Chicago) - EDGE Gregory Rousseau, Miami (FL). The Giants biggest need is probably their wide receiver room, but with the top prospect on the board being a pass rusher, the Giants go with one of the highest upside defensive prospects in the class in Rousseau. The Giants don't have a lot of talent on the edge, so they fill a need here.
Indianapolis Colts - OT Christian Darrisaw, Virginia Tech. The Colts have boasted one of the best offensive lines in the NFL in recent years, and with Anthony Castonzo retiring, the Colts will want to keep their line in top shape by drafting his replacement. His length, athleticism, and intelligence make him the preferred tackle target for the Colts here.
Tennessee Titans - EDGE Joseph Ossai, Texas. The Titans are a very good team, and most improvements that could be made would be to improve depth. But the one area the Titans desperately need to improve if they want to legitimately compete for championships is their pass rush and defensive line. Ossai is the most explosive pass rush prospect left on the board who can fit with their defensive scheme.
San Francisco 49ers (from New York Jets via Seattle) – QB Mac Jones, Alabama. The 49ers move up to get the guy they believe can be their next franchise QB. In this scenario, the 49ers were targeting Trey Lance at 12, but because of the Chicago trade, they opted instead to take Horn, who is higher on the draft board and can help their secondary which will be losing some pieces to free agency. When Mac Jones gets past Washington at 19, they believe they can move up into the mid-20s for a reasonable value and get their QB. The best value in terms of trading draft capital is at 23, and they have to make this move to get ahead of Pittsburgh who could potentially take Jones to replace Ben Roethlisberger. The 49ers are now without a pick until the 5th round, but it's worth it to secure their QB of the future.
Pittsburgh Steelers - OT Jalen Mayfield, Michigan. The Steelers cap space isn't great right now, although Roethlisberger restructuring his contract will help. In any case, the Steelers are going to have to move on from some players, and one that makes sense is Alejandro Villanueva. He's played well, but he's going to be 33 next year, and rather than paying a veteran LT salary with tight cap space, it makes sense to draft his replacement. Mayfield is very technically sound and is nasty, two things that have defined Pittsburgh offensive line play over the years. There may be concern about him playing right tackle at Michigan, but as Jedrick Wills proved for the Browns, a move to left tackle is possible for a top prospect. Running back is also a possibility here, but there's better value in later rounds.
Jacksonville Jaguars (from Los Angeles Rams) - S Trevon Moehrig, TCU. The Jaguars weren't accidentally the number one pick. They were terrible on both offense and defense, and with so much early draft capital they don't have to reach on players in the name of protecting Lawrence at all costs. The Jaguars have some nice weapons on offense, and there will be good offensive line prospects on the board in the second round. They need to improve their secondary badly, and Moehrig is an immediate impact player with good versatility, and would be an instant upgrade over Josh Jones, who should not return to the team in 2021. Moehrig is arguably the highest graded prospect left on the board, he has a high floor, he's ready to play right away, and he fills a need.
Cleveland Browns - LB Zaven Collins, Tulsa. The Browns have a lot of holes on defense, and linebacker in particular is an area that they need to address. Despite being massive for a linebacker, Collins is quick and athletic and can play in coverage. He also has good pass rushing ability, which is an area that Cleveland needs to improve opposite of Myles Garrett. His versatility makes him valuable in multiple packages which should help him get on the field early, something that Cleveland should value at the end of the first round given that their competitive window is open.
Baltimore Ravens - EDGE Azeez Ojulari, Georgia. The Ravens need to give Lamar Jackson better weapons on the outside, but with such a good, deep running attack, the Ravens can afford to wait until the second round. The Ravens have several pass rushers set to become free agents, and they won't be able to bring all of them back. In any case, the Ravens could use an upgrade at the position anyway. Although Ojulari played in 4 man fronts, his size, speed, and athleticism make him a natural fit as an edge rusher in a 3 man front defense. His energy is also a great fit for the Ravens defense.
New Orleans Saints - EDGE Jayson Oweh, Penn State. The Saints have the worst cap situation in the NFL and because of that they're going to lose some key free agents. One guy that they almost certainly will not be able to retain is breakout DE Trey Hendrickson, who registered 13.5 sacks in 2020 and should be in line for a nice raise on the free agent market. Oweh has tremendous upside due to his freakish athleticism, explosiveness, and length. He's a bit raw, and will need some time to develop, but with Cameron Jordan on the opposite side of the line Oweh is the type of player the Saints can afford to target.
Green Bay Packers - WR Tutu Atwell, Louisville. Aaron Rodgers covers the deficiencies of the wide receiver room well, but the Packers do need to improve their weapons. Adams and Tonyan are good pieces, but St. Brown, Lazard, and Valdez-Scantling can't be the secondary options at wide receiver. Adding an electric slot receiver in Atwell makes sense given the profile of the rest of the receivers on the roster.
Buffalo Bills - EDGE Joe Tryon, Washington. The Bills have a very complete roster, but they could definitely improve their pass rush. Getting to the quarterback, namely Patrick Mahomes, will be the Bills best chance of getting over the hump and into the Super Bowl. Tryon is a nice scheme fit, and should be able to see the field instantly, something a contender like Buffalo will be looking for here. I was tempted to mock a running back here, as there's great talent left on the board, but I think the Bills are more likely to ride with their 3rd round picks from 2019 and 2020, Singletary and Moss.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers - DT Levi Onwuzurike, Washington. The Buccaneers have a loaded offense, so the focus should be on the defense, specifically the defensive line. With Gholston having only one more year on his contract, and Suh set to be a free agent, a high upside 3-tech like Onwuzurike makes a lot of sense here. Not to mention, a team that is good enough to make the super bowl can afford to draft BPA, and Onwuzurike is among the best players still on the board here.
Kansas City Chiefs - OL Alex Leatherwood, Alabama. Kansas City needs to start getting younger on the offensive line. Both Eric Fisher and Mitchell Schwartz are under contract for 2021, but after that they're free agents. Leatherwood has shown the versatility to slide in anywhere on the line, and could be a day one starter for the Chiefs wherever they need him. This pick could also be used on another weapon or a defensive player, but the value here is too good for Leatherwood.

Round 2

Jacksonville Jaguars - DL Dayvion Nixon, Iowa. One of the hallmarks of Urban Meyer's Florida and Ohio State teams were deep, talented defensive lines. The Jaguars have a few nice pieces in Josh Allen and Doug Costin, but overall the unit needs to improve. Nixon is one of only a few interior defensive line prospects who offers high upside impact, and getting him here at the start of the second round is good value.
New York Jets - CB Greg Newsome II, Northwestern. The Jets have problems with their cornerbacks. Their best cornerback is set to be a free agent, but even if he returns he's only a slot corner. Bryce Hall has shown a lot of promise, but there's not much on the roster behind him. Newsome is a smart, instinctive corner who will fit into Saleh's scheme nicely, and should be ready to compete for a starting role early.
Atlanta Falcons - RB Najee Harris, Alabama. While it may be unlikely that there are no running backs in the first round (hasn't happened since 2014), I think this draft is so talented that it could happen. As I said earlier, I think the Arthur Smith will try to make win now moves and having a power running game is an important part of Arthur Smith's offensive philosophy. Najee Harris is the top running back on the board and the top prospect left on the board, so everything from fit to value is excellent here for Atlanta.
Miami Dolphins (from Houston) - RB Travis Etienne, Clemson. Another running back off the board, this time it's the electric back from Clemson. Having already added Toney, now the Miami offense gets arguably the top receiving back in the class. This move makes the offense one of the fastest in the league, and the combination of Etienne and Gaskin gives the Dolphins one of the best young running back rooms in the league.
Philadelphia Eagles - CB Eric Stokes, Georgia. I nearly went with a CB in round 1 for the Eagles, but it was too hard to pass up on a receiver. The Eagles have a nice CB1 in Slay, but he's getting older and the rest of the CB group needs to be upgraded. Stokes has the ideal size, speed, and length that teams are looking for on the outside and has the experience to challenge for a starting spot early.
Cincinnati Bengals - EDGE Patrick Jones II, Pittsburgh. The Bengals already added a top offensive lineman for Burrow, but they have to address the defense early on. Even if the Bengals re-sign Lawson, they need to have more talent on the defensive line to get pressure on opposing QBs. Jones is a good scheme fit and his versatility makes him an attractive option here in the 2nd round.
Carolina Panthers - LB Nick Bolton, Missouri. The Panthers add another impact playmaker for Phil Snow's defense, a guy who could fill the void that they were unable to fill after Keuchly's retirement. There are several options here, but Bolton at 39 is incredible value and the Panthers jump all over a guy with first round upside.
Miami Dolphins (from Denver) - C Landon Dickerson, Alabama. Ted Karras is set to be a free agent, but Miami can upgrade the center position here and get the best prospect at the position in the draft. Dickerson has positional versatility and is well respected for his leadership so this is a great value and culture pick for Miami.
Detroit Lions - CB Aaron Robinson, UCF. Robinson has the ideal size and length that NFL teams look for, and he's got a lot of experience both inside and outside. The production from the Lions CB room was abysmal in 2020, so more talent needs to be added, even if Jeff Okudah makes the expected year two leap.
New York Giants - WR Amon-Ra St. Brown, USC. Dave Gettleman is a meat and potatoes guy, and he got his high upside defensive lineman in the first round. But he's going to have to start giving Daniel Jones weapons if they really believe he's the future. Obviously getting Saquon Barkley back will help, but the wide receiver room is aging, and Amon-Ra St. Brown is an outside receiver with WR1 potential who can inject youth and talent into that position group for the Giants.
New York Jets (from San Francisco) - OG Wyatt Davis, Ohio State. The fact that the Jets have a weak offensive line is no secret. Mekhi Becton was a home run draft pick at left tackle last season, but the Jets need to continue adding offensive line talent to avoid their next franchise QB getting killed. Despite another All-American season, Davis' 2020 tape is not as good as his 2019 tape, so he falls to the mid-2nd here. While there are some concerns, he's the best interior offensive line prospect left on the board and he does have upside.
Dallas Cowboys - DT Christian Barmore, Alabama. The Cowboys defense needs to improve, especially in the run game. Neville Gallimore showed promise, but adding Barmore gives the defensive line a lot more depth and talent. Barmore has the experience to step in right away and produce, something that will be important for the Cowboys who should be looking to win a down NFC East with a healthy Prescott.
Jacksonville Jaguars (from Minnesota) - TE Pat Freiermuth, Penn State. Friermuth is an excellent pass catching TE, but he's also one of the better blocking tight ends in this class. This versatility addresses two needs for Jaguars on offense. There's a lot of upside in the Jaguars WR room, so adding a playmaker at TE makes sense, especially because their top tight ends are getting older.
New England Patriots - WR Terrace Marshall Jr., LSU. The Patriots need to address the wide receiver position, and after passing on a WR in the first round they land a falling Marshall with the 46th pick, so the Patriots end up with a great value in the 2nd round.
Los Angeles Chargers - OT Teven Jenkins, Oklahoma State. The Chargers line was so bad, and the value at 47 is so good, that I'm going to mock the Chargers double dipping at offensive line with their first two picks. Sam Tevi's contract is up, and he was not good enough to re-sign. The Chargers have to upgrade this spot, and getting a guy like Jenkins here is an easy decision.
Las Vegas Raiders - DT Marlon Tuipulotu, USC. The Raiders need to upgrade the defensive line, especially on the interior where Maliek Collins and Johnathan Hankins were not high impact players. Tuipulotu has great strength and technique, and has three years of starting experience so he should be ready to start right away for the Raiders.
Arizona Cardinals - CB Asante Samuel Jr., Florida State. Arguably the biggest need for Arizona is cornerback, but with the way the board fell in the first the value was better for other positions of need. Here in the 2nd, they get one of the stickiest corners in the draft. He's a bit undersized, but he's great in man coverage and will be a good scheme fit for Vance Joseph's defense.
Miami Dolphins - EDGE Ronnie Perkins, Oklahoma. The Dolphins pick for the fifth time in this mock already, and have addressed a lot of needs so far. One area where they could get better is pass rush depth. While Perkins doesn't jump out as an ideal fit in Flores' defensive scheme, he's got the size, strength, and athleticism should allow him to transition to a standup edge rusher, or rotate in on pass rush situations with his hand on the dirt. He's got all the tools to create pressure in the NFL, and would give Flores a weapon that would allow him to get creative with his defensive play calls.
Washington Football Team - OT Samuel Cosmi, Texas. Washington has an aging line, so getting some youth in the building would be a good strategy. Cornelius Lucas played well enough to have a chance to win the starting LT job in 2021, but he'll be 30 and in a contract year and Morgan Moses will have two years left on his contract. Financially it would make sense to get a long term solution at tackle early in the draft. Cosmi's strengths are a good fit for Scott Turner's blocking schemes.
New York Giants (from Chicago) - CB Tyson Campbell, Georgia. Using this additional pick acquired from Chicago, the Giants address three of their biggest needs in the first two rounds by taking Campbell to go with Rousseau and St. Brown. There are definitely issues on Campbell's tape, but his assignment's in Graham's defense should minimize those weaknesses while maximizing his strength in man coverage. Campbell has elite size, length, and athleticism, so he has tremendous upside.
Tennessee Titans - WR Rondale Moore, Purdue. The Titans have a very good offense, but are likely going to move on from Corey Davis after the emergence of A.J. Brown. Adding arguably the most electric playmaker in the draft, Rondale Moore, would help keep the Titans offense among the most potent in the NFL.
New York Jets (from Indianapolis) - RB Javonte Williams, UNC. The Jets need to add some weapons, and with Jamison Crowder and Denzel Mims on the roster, and better free agent options such as Allen Robinson, Corey Davis, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and Kenny Golladay potentially hitting the market, the Jets can add the best weapon on the board, Javonte Williams. He's excellent in the passing game and should fit nicely with the new running scheme.
Kansas City Chiefs (from Pittsburgh) - WR Rashod Bateman, Minnesota. With one of the top WR prospects still on the board, and a number of teams ahead of them who could look for a WR, the Chiefs pull the trigger and move up. The Steelers, who have a lot of players headed to free agency, are happy to move down and get more draft picks to try to rebuild the roster with cheaper contracts. Bateman is a good route runner with excellent high point skills, so he's a perfect fit in the offense to replace Watkins.
Seattle Seahawks - OT Dillon Radunz, North Dakota State. The Seahawks need to make a move on the offensive line at some point, and Radunz is a good prospect here. Cedric Ogbuehi is a free agent, but they could upgrade at RT anyway, and Duane Brown is 35 and only has one year left on his contract. The Seahawks could possibly look at a pass rusher or cornerback here, but the best value on the board is at tackle.
Los Angeles Rams - LB Baron Browning, Ohio State. There are rumblings that some teams view Browning as a potential first round talent. The athleticism is off the charts, and he's got the speed, explosiveness, length, and motor that NFL teams covet. The upside is undeniable and he's lauded for his character and leadership. Combine that with his experience and versatility, and he's the kind of guy who can come in right away and upgrade the Rams inside linebacker spot, one of the few positions that needs a major upgrade for a team that's going all in to win a Super Bowl.
Baltimore Ravens - WR Nico Collins, Michigan. The Ravens need to give Lamar Jackson better weapons on the outside, and Nico Collins has elite size and vertical ball skills, something the Ravens are missing at wide receiver. A lot of the best remaining day 2 caliber receivers are better suited for a slot role, so the Ravens pull the trigger on one of the best outside guys left on the board.
Cleveland Browns - EDGE Jordan Smith, UAB. The Browns desperately need to get some pass rushing help opposite of Myles Garrett. There are some red flags with Smith, but the size and athleticism of Smith make him too good to pass up here. With Collins and Smith, the Browns defense gets a lot bigger, faster, and more talented.
New Orleans Saints - LB Chazz Surratt, North Carolina. All of the Saints moves are going to be made with the salary cap in mind. One of the obvious cost saving moves is to cut Kwon Alexander. The Saints would save more than $13 million without taking on any dead money. Surratt is an excellent player who provides the Saints good value here.
Buffalo Bills - DT Jay Tufele, USC. The Bills will want to add a cornerback at some point, but with the way the board has fallen Tufele is too good of a value here to pass up on. The Bills need to get better interior defensive line play, and Tufele fits nicely into Frazier's defensive scheme, so this is a good fit as well.
Green Bay Packers - CB Ifeatu Melifonwu, Syracuse. The Packers could address a number of positions here, but Kevin King played poorly and is set to become a free agent anyway. Melifonwu has elite size, and has been climbing draft boards. He may be a bit of a project, but we're getting into the range where there are very few instant impact guys left on the board.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers - C Creed Humphrey, Oklahoma. With Donovan Smith, Ryan Jensen, and Aaron Stinnie's contracts all set to expire either this year or next year, adding some offensive line help makes sense. Jensen is the weakest of the group, and will likely walk in 2021 if the Buccaneers can acquire a top prospect through the draft. Regardless, the Buccaneers are going to have to add more depth to the center group so the talented Humphrey fills a need.
Pittsburgh Steelers (from Kansas City) - RB Michael Carter, North Carolina. James Conner is set to be a free agent, and it makes financial sense for the Steelers to move on from him. Carter is an excellent value at the bottom of the second round, and he's excellent in the passing game, so he'll be a great fit for the Steelers. Running backs also have the ability to make an impact right away, which is crucial for a team looking to make one last run with QB Ben Roethlisberger.

Third Round

Jacksonville Jaguars - OT Liam Eichenberg, Notre Dame.
New York Jets - WR Elijah Moore, Ole Miss.
Houston Texans - S Jevon Holland, Oregon.
Atlanta Falcons - EDGE, Carlos Basham Jr., Wake Forrest.
Cincinnati Bengals - WR D'Wayne Eskridge, Western Michigan.
Philadelphia Eagles - EDGE Quincy Roche, Miami (FL).
Miami Dolphins (from Denver) - S Richie Grant, UCF.
Detroit Lions - LB Cameron McGrone, Michigan.
Carolina Panthers - QB Kyle Trask, Florida.
Washington Football Team (from San Francisco) - CB Elijah Molden, Washington.
Dallas Cowboys - LB Pete Werner, Ohio State.
New York Giants - OT James Hudson, Cincinnati.

XX. New England Patriots - Forfeited

Los Angeles Chargers - DT Tommy Togiai, Ohio State.
Minnesota Vikings - OG Ben Cleveland, Georgia.
Arizona Cardinals - C Josh Myers, Ohio State.
Las Vegas Raiders - S Ar'Darius Washington, TCU.
Miami Dolphins - CB Shaun Wade, Ohio State.
Washington Football Team - WR Tylan Wallace, Oklahoma State.
Chicago Bears - OT Walker Little, Stanford.
Indianapolis Colts - EDGE Hamilcar Rashed Jr., Oregon State.
Tennessee Titans - DT Marvin Wilson, Florida State.
New York Jets (from Seattle) - LB Charles Snowden, Virginia.
Pittsburgh Steelers - WR Shi Smith, South Carolina.
Detroit Lions (from Los Angeles Rams) - S Hamsah Nasirildeen, Florida State.
Cleveland Browns - DT Jaylen Twyman, Pittsburgh.
Minnesota Vikings (from Baltimore) - WR Amari Rodgers, Clemson.
Cleveland Browns (from New Orleans) - WR Seth Williams, Auburn.
Green Bay Packers - EDGE Payton Turner, Houston.
Buffalo Bills - CB Paulson Adebo, Stanford.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers - EDGE Dayo Odeyingbo, Vanderbilt.
Pittsburgh Steelers (from Kansas City) - TE Brevin Jordan, Miami (FL).

Compensatory Picks

New England Patriots - QB Davis Mills, Stanford.
Los Angeles Chargers - TE Hunter Long, Boston College.
New Orleans Saints - RB Jermar Jefferson, Oregon State.
Dallas Cowboys - S Andre Cisco, Syracuse.
Tennessee Titans - OT Brady Christensen, BYU.
Los Angeles Rams - CB Israel Mukuamu, South Carolina.
San Francisco 49ers - EDGE Victor Dimukeje, Duke.
Los Angeles Rams - OT Spencer Brown, Northern Iowa.
Baltimore Ravens - DT Tyler Shelvin, LSU.
New Orleans Saints - CB Kary Vincent Jr., LSU.

Trades:
Indianapolis Colts receive: QB Sam Darnold New York Jets receive: Indianapolis 2021 2nd, 5th
This trade value is based on internet rumors and a similar trade in 1987, where the San Francisco 49ers sent a 2nd and 4th round pick to Tampa Bay for 2nd year starter Steve Young. Steve Young was 3-16, with 11 TDs, 21 INTs, a 53.3 comp% and a 63.1 QB rating in two seasons with Tampa Bay but his upside netted a nice return. I think for several reasons, such as the fact that neither Douglas nor Saleh drafted Darnold and the potential to reset the cap window by drafting a 1st round QB, the Jets will trade Darnold. The Colts have a good offensive line and much better weapons than the Jets, so Indianapolis could be a good destination for Darnold after they missed out on Stafford.
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Denver receives: Houston 2021 1st (3) via Miami Miami receives: Denver 2021 1st (9), 2nd (40), 3rd (71), 2022 1st, 2nd, 2023 2nd
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Chicago receives: New York Giants 2021 1st (11) New York Giants receive: Chicago 1st (20), 2nd (52), 2022 1st
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San Francisco receives: Seattle 2021 1st (23) via New York Jets New York Jets receive: San Francisco 2021 2nd (43), 4th, 2022 2nd
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Kansas City receives: Pittsburgh 2021 2nd (55) Pittsburgh receives: Kansas City 2021 2nd (64), 3rd (95) ***
QB Notes: New England signs Ryan Fitzpatrick Indianapolis trades for Sam Darnold from New York Jets New Orleans re-signs Jameis Winston Washington re-signs Kyle Allen

“No, no; you ENJOY my railroading.”: DM Worship, Shattered Friendships and Twenty-Four Dead Campaigns [Part 1]

Content Warnings: Emotional abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, suicidal thoughts
Note: I wrote this horror story about three weeks ago. Since then, enough new horror on top has come to light about this DM to write another story of similar length, involving false rape allegations, sexual predation, demanding and controlling behaviour, turning friends against each other, lying about his day-to-day life and age to appear older than us, spreading false rumours about us to each other, pity-farming, exploiting another very vulnerable player to worship him, and much more. This is a story that just seems to get worse and worse the more our group of survivors talk about it. That said, I hope you enjoy this initial dose of horror. Happy reading.
I never imagined I’d be penning up the next story here. I’ve had my fair share of lite horror stories, sure: the nice-enough lad who wanted to play an excessively edgy Prototype-inspired homebrew class for Waterdeep Dragon Heist, the duergar wizard who had an obsession with Prestidigitation and cleaning soiled objects to the point of screaming at the DM about whether or not a bag of holding had a bottom to it, the barbarian altering his Roll20 sheet settings and macros to add hard-to-catch bonuses to his rolls, etc… but never anything bad enough to justify a full vent piece here.
Yet I finally had one: the worst one, involving me realising a former 'serious, abusive problem player' of our group - someone who wrote up a popular story here ('DM ruins Curse of Strahd by adding his Sorcadinlock Self Insert who’s “coincidentally” also Strahd’s brother') - wasn’t actually a problem player at all, and was right in it about many things. They were totally justified to be as pissed off as they were. Unsettlingly, I realised I’d helped enable horror-story behaviour towards that poor player myself and become an accomplice without even realising it. For reference to u/newt__noot's HorrorStory linked above, we're talking about the same DM here (named 'Rob' in Newt's story).
This is a really big story with a lot to unpack, given this has come from years and years of many campaigns with the same problem DM. I’ll try to condense it as much as I can into sections. For context’s sake, know that we’ve often identified these problems with the DM before and tried to diplomatically raise them as his friend and fellow player, and nine times out of ten been shot down hard for it and made to feel guilty or as if we’re irrational for seeing the issue or thinking of it as such.
So. Context time, my friends. I write wordy, with apologies in advance, so snuggle up with some cocoa and a blanket.
I’ve played D&D for many years. The man who helmed most of my groups is, for the sake of exchanged names, called Alex in this story. For the last five years, Alex has been the first man I’ve met who I can genuinely say I’d take a bullet for. He taught me how to write fiction, be a great Dungeon Master, and though we weren’t of blood, called me his brother. I grew up in a not-so-great household, and so did he. When he told me he considered us that close, I cried. I cried like a baby with joy and felt seen and loved for weeks, and finally knew what a life-long friendship as an adult was supposed to feel like. Only a cult leader could hope to compete with his incredible charisma, and he always became crowned by everyone as the ‘Group Dad’ of every D&D and friendship group we formed. He was only two years older than any of us, or so we thought, but had the incredible wisdom, insight and maturity of a man far older. He was creative, intelligent, and the sort of guy who could give you lectures on random topics for hours and have you captivated the entire time.
For the first few years, he was a wonderful friend. He was supportive, caring, loyal, and we loved him. We all got him gifts and made tokens of affection for him, and he did so back. And he was an incredible writer. His worldbuilding, character voices, NPCs and descriptions felt on-par with Matt Mercer, and I don’t say that lightly. We often fawned over how we felt we had our very own Critical Role at points. However, we had problems - for one, games never lasted. We got through twenty-four in the last three years. Most were Alex’s. A good chunk were mine that Alex convinced me to stop running, despite the rest of the group wanting to keep playing them (except one. One was pretty crummy. We were all okay with that one going). I can name every single one and what they were about, if I sit down to list them. Each and every one lasted either only one or two sessions, or never started at all. In almost every case, we had those sessions, loved them and our characters, and Alex turned around afterwards and gave a seemingly-compelling excuse as to why we couldn’t do that one anymore - or, turned to me when I DM’d, and spent hours justifying to me why my game was bad and how despite the others loved it, I needed to shut it down, ‘be a player for a while’, and make a new one ‘in the future’ (read: repeat this all over again one month from now).
Ironically, this cycle is what’s caused us to finally wake up and realise the true issues we’ve had with our group. It’s only with the sheer exhaustion and apathy towards D&D we’ve developed as a result that it’s become apparent there’s problems. Each of us have made enough characters to, for each player individually, populate entire taverns. Every single one of them was lovingly crafted, had full backstories, completed sheets, planned potential development arcs, roleplay plans with fellow players, theme tunes picked out, the full shebang. Every single one of them has not been used for any longer than two sessions, except for one unusually long-lived game where we mercifully got a whopping 25 sessions… and then Alex said he didn’t want to run it anymore, and wouldn’t allow anyone else to take the DM’ing role on it, given that it was his world and it ‘wouldn’t feel right’ given he wanted to use it for a book.
Whenever we asked to reuse these aborted characters, we were firmly told no, with only one exception ever being made. Alex always wanted to try new genres and ideas not everyone was really on board with, but we went along with because he was a good enough narrator to make them interesting, but even if a new game was in the same genre as the last, reusing characters wasn’t allowed. Yes, even if we hadn’t played a single session with them. Alex made new worlds with every campaign, spending entire weeks worldbuilding down to entire personality profiles and written physical descriptions for every NPC (and insisting this was the only way to DM properly for me, showing me incredible disapproval whenever I used a more improv-heavy DM’ing style and telling me I wasn’t going about it right). Whenever he made these worlds, you had to make an entirely new character to fit that world. No redos. Suffice it to say, all of us ran out of character ideas quickly, and eventually simply didn’t want to make characters anymore.
That’s the core issue, so feel free to stop reading there if that’s already a lot. But, if you’re hungry for more, there’s more, all in the delightful flavours of gaslighting, manipulation and general emotional abuse. God knows I have the need to get it all out in writing at this point, so if you do read on, I hope this is both enjoyable and serves as insight into some serious and harder-to-read red flags than your typical stories. I’ll write up the problems we faced and stories in sections from here.

1.) “Your game will fail unless you only run it for 10 sessions, tops. Otherwise, it’s doomed. You might as well cancel if you don’t want to do that, because I know your style, and you’re not the sort of DM who can manage a big game.”
Alex runs his games in a very ‘compact’ way, taking modules of D&D and crunching them down to about ten or so sessions. Whenever we raised concerns about this, he’d always insist that this was the way our group needed to run these games, or we’d ‘lose interest and the campaign would collapse’. The result of this was a heavily railroaded, watered-down version of D&D where our characters were funnelled into situations we didn’t truly get a say in.
Alex always seemed to initially support and enjoy my campaigns. He was incredibly helpful from a mentoring standpoint and gave me no end of advice that, honestly, was very good in the early years. I attribute much of my players’ happiness in my games to his lessons. Though the advice became more questionable in recent years, he always told me he enjoyed my worlds a lot and wanted to play in them.
However, in the last two years, five of the games I’ve run have seen the same cycle occur. Alex joins as a player for session one with a beautifully thought-out character and decked-out character sheet. The characters are almost always a bit edgy and reflect some of his personal flaws, but that’s okay. We all often made characters like that. It doesn’t harm anyone and can actually be quite fun, especially for the player, so I allow it. They usually have a good chunk of reflavouring to bend the rules. Again, totally okay; it’s small things like allowing for STR-modifiers on bows, like Pathfinder’s Composite Longbows, or having a rope wound round their starting spear so they can pull it back after throwing. A lot of the reflavours are really cool, and reflect Alex’s talent for building interesting and compelling characters off the bat.
We play session one. It’s usually well-liked with some small issues that get brought up, oftentimes pacing. Alex had us run this routine for a long time of giving reviews of sessions when they were done, rating them out of ten and giving likes and dislikes. If the session scored an aggregate score of 80% of less between all players, whether it was him or me DM’ing, he considered it a failure and made his views known through his behaviour and how he spoke to you afterwards. If session one of my games were very successful and loved by all, he’d stick around for another. If a single session beyond that was ever simply ‘good’ or ‘great’ rather than ‘outstanding’, he’d be very cold, then lose all his enthusiasm and go very quiet about the game.
Then, he’d make excuses about not being able to attend for the next sessions. I’d often try and postpone to accommodate him (much to the others’ frustration when it became more common to postpone than actually play), and he’d quite fairly insist on having the group run without him - but he was my mentor. He was the one who supported me and taught me to DM. Honestly, I was quite codependent on him in an unhealthy way, much like all of us to a smaller extent. At the time, I felt I needed him to see and approve of my campaigns to be truly happy.
Eventually though, it didn’t matter what I did. After enough weeks or months had passed (and especially quickly if I began running sessions without Alex, as per his suggestion), Alex would pop into my DMs out of nowhere and begin suggesting I kill my own campaigns that he hadn’t played in for any longer than the openings.
Alex stuck around in my games for no longer than two sessions, and that wasn’t even continuous. Each time, he successfully convinced me to kill the campaign afterwards. I always hard a sharp reaction of “What?! Why? No!” to him at first, but then he’d start talking. “It had a weak start”, “You can do better”, “They don’t really like your game. I know what they like, so-and-so does this when they like a game and did you see them do that in yours?”, “The other players will understand. You’re the DM, too! Your fun matters!”. Every time, I was steadily made, usually over private voice calls that lasted multiple hours, to believe that I didn’t enjoy my own games. In truth, I actually enjoyed them plenty and loved them dearly until Alex started working that Natural 20 Persuasion of his.
It wasn’t until the fifth one where two of my players, rightfully so, confronted me. I’d run eight sessions without Alex, and they were having a lot of fun with the game. It was the furthest we’d ever gotten in one of my games with Alex hovering around our server. The two players both adored their characters. They had a LOT of roleplay planned out. They had been fawning over the world. They were sick of me letting Alex cancel their games over, and over, and over again.
They demanded an explanation from me. I began very calm and thought they were acting irrationally, running Alex’s reasonings through my mind. Alex was preparing to run his own game (again) and had spent three months prepping for it. Yes, this game later crashed and died after two sessions solely because Alex refused to run it again despite us asking for more, but at the time, Alex had convinced me this was the One:™: that would survive… again. Alex told me it would be selfish to continue with my game if we ran frequently at all, such as a weekly or biweekly schedule, as it would ‘take the focus away from [his] game’. In his words, “the only way you can do this without quite frankly sacrificing this new game I’ve worked on is to run it once a month, if that, maybe once every three months.” He calmly and gently, in that all-too-rational voice, described to me that it’s only natural that players in two or three games at once would naturally like one more than the other. If they liked my game more, his efforts would be wasted. My game had less work put into it than his given I clearly didn’t work as hard as he did on my worlds, which he’d spend countless hours daily for months on, and so it wasn’t fair to him for me to take the spotlight away from his new campaign. Equally, another player was running an ailing game that we both knew and admitted to each other sadly was not going to last due to their personal circumstances, but Alex insisted that I’d be doing that player a disservice by taking the light off their game, too.
My players questioned me, having a hunch that Alex was the reason I’d cancelled yet another game, and I proved them right by parroting this rhetoric to them. They felt extremely hurt I put Alex’s feelings ahead of theirs and challenged every word, and not without reason. As I had the conversation, I gradually found myself stopping short of sentences, losing my train of thought - everything I was repeating from Alex to placate my players was making less and less sense. I felt myself getting angry and upset mid-conversation as I realised I’d killed a campaign that my players and I loved for no real good reason, and upset them and myself deeply as a result. I logged off shortly after.
Without inserting personal problems too much into this, it’s worth noting I do have moderate depression. It’s thankfully on the mend and I’m managing it well. The reason I mention it is because that night was the last time I experienced a severe suicidal episode, and made plans to end my life. I’m a very sensitive person naturally, but my codependence with him put me in a position where I realised I couldn’t get out of it without upsetting my players or Alex. Alex was still in my head after I sided with him, though, and I found myself feeling heart-wrenched and guilty. I saw myself as the bad guy who was damaging Alex’s beloved new game and being a poor friend to our fellow player who ran their own. I took his reasoning as truth, and it made me believe I was a bad enough, inconsiderate person to not deserve to continue my life. Thankfully, I ended up in hospital and got further support and help for my state, and was home by the following afternoon.
Sadly enough, Alex was already then in a state of barely messaging any of us, or taking literally weeks to reply to us. My best friend, who I felt owed me a serious apology but I couldn’t stand up to, never learned nor to this day knows he put me in hospital overnight with his selfishness. It makes me furious to this day, and I’m no longer convinced he would even care if he learned that. We now believe Alex simply never wanted anyone else to DM; or, at least, DM successfully. He wasn’t exactly supportive of our mutual friend’s campaign, either.

2.) “Considering you clearly can’t take down his challenge alone, like ALL your challenges, my DMPC/the random inconsequential NPC finishes off the BBEG for you.”
Secondly, Alex had a severe issue with deus ex machina. Overpowered supportive NPCs we never asked for help from were used over and over again to make our player characters feel clownish, and destroyed our own hopes for and perceptions of them. He had an intensely-ingrained philosophy of applying JRPG mechanics or design ideas from his favourite recently-played video games into his D&D campaigns, and designed them quite literally as if he was a director on such a project.
Alex introduced various restrictive, arbitrary video-gamey mechanics into his campaigns that destroyed our immersion and punished us for things we had no agency to control. In one recent game, we had a period of time - a week - to resolve a serious incoming invasion of an army upon the capital city of the setting. We were level 3, and this was our first quest as a party, the hook being that we were prophesied heroes who everyone looked upon with great awe and expectations. We were told that for every day we did something to prepare, we would be forced to take an ‘off-day’ where we were physically incapable of doing anything to prepare. No reason was given. Later, we were told a consequence of ‘our actions’ were that the people of the city considered us lazy and were growing restless with the fact we were sitting around and doing nothing, despite the fact Alex had insisted we must spend those days essentially jacking off in a tavern with nothing better on our minds. We weren’t even allowed to roleplay during these off-days or handle downtime tasks. It was a small thing, but each of us felt frustrated. Our characters wouldn’t have sat around doing nothing, or if they did need a rest, they would’ve used that time to talk and get to know each other better, considering they’d only just met and needed to work together on an impossible-seeming suicide mission. As such, we were incredibly unsatisfied. Any attempts at roleplaying were often cut short and we were ushered along very quickly to the ‘next bit of content’ before we could exchange any more than a couple of sentences.
And don’t get me started on feeling useless or clownish. We told Alex out of character that we loved his DMPC’s personality and characterisation, because it was legit really good. Remember, Alex was an truly amazing storyteller and great actor. However, we didn’t want him to one-up us. If he had a DMPC, he was a fellow player and had the same limitations as a player. “I promise,” Alex had told us.
At level 11, Alex hurled a CR 27 custom dragon at us for a chase sequence that we only survived because his DMPC stopped the carriage and cut a mountain in half with his sword. For reference, this is the first time we, as players, had ever faced a dragon in his games, and the fucking thing was more jacked statblock-wise than an Ancient Red Dragon. I saw it. This thing would wipe a level 20 party. It would rival Tiamat. This wasn’t an encounter we were supposed to stumble into, Alex insisted, but beforehand, he had made a hidden roll and made a small awkward laugh as if he’d randomly gotten it on a random encounter table. I’ve co-DM’d with Alex before. Alex does not use random encounter tables. He had the statblock ready to go in our Roll20 while we were level 11, and he doesn’t fill in stats unless he expects to use that creature soon. He often forced us into ridiculously dangerous fights where we’d need outside help to win and could never handle problems for ourselves. This was deliberate, and I firmly believe that, though I have honestly no clue why except to further highlight how weak our party was compared to his DMPC and saviour NPCs.
During the final battle of the first arc of that game, level 10, his same DMPC fought the final boss by himself while half the party were in a basement fighting a much weaker henchman whose CR no longer posed us a threat, then barely escaping a stupidly high escape-DC instant death explosion as a ‘cool set piece’ that felt more like an unnecessary, unfair death trap to ‘up the stakes’. We got up top just in time to see him move into a pocket dimension where he claimed each strike he made against the BBEG was for us. It was absolutely insulting. We had the entire final boss and BBEG stolen from us and relegated to a DMPC’s personal moment. We were cool with DMPCs getting their own arcs and personal moments, but not that, dear fucking god. If it’d been another party member getting to 1v1 the final boss from the get-go until victory then we’d be just as upset. This was supposed to be a group challenge.
Two of our characters never even saw the BBEG’s face during the entire campaign. Before that game died, I’d actually intended to bring it up in roleplay - “huh, what did that guy even look like? I never actually saw him.” Cheeky, I know, but we were all getting upset. That said, Alex proclaimed himself a forever DM (partially now we realise because he never could accept that other DMs don’t tend to run how he does and feels the need to always do it himself), and the guilt of telling him he couldn’t or shouldn’t get to roleplay as a DMPC was too thick for us to deal with at that time. His life was in a shit place. This was one of the few things that made him happy. Nobody wanted to be the one to tell him his precious hero was overpowered and too much. Do that, and you become the asshole of the group. You make things awkward.
Alex’s character was a Paladin-Sorcerer-Warlock multiclass at one point. Roleplay reasoning? None. No, literally none. I can see the Sorcerer side a teeny bit, sure. But he took no Oath or Pact at any point. He just suddenly had the full class switchup after a solo fight scene earlier in the campaign with the BBEG (it lasted twenty minutes. Yes, we sat and watched. Yes, that was more okay to us - again, we approved for him to have some sort of personal moment here and there, but it was frustrating that he was getting the bulk of the interaction with the BBEG even back then). He came to me, knowing I liked my build theorycrafting and number-crunching, and asked me for a powerful nova class build. I suggested it the Paladin-Sorcerer-Warlock and suggested Order Of The Stick if he wanted to know more, but joked that he’d need to be careful given how powerful it was and that it might make us all feel useless. He insisted he’d take it easy, did his research, respecc’d his character from barbarian, and then proceeded to blow everything up whilst acting very stunned and surprised at the table at his own damage output.
He later reclassed to Rogue, but then proceeded to still do similar nova damage by conveniently ignoring the “one Sneak Attack per round” limitation with his self-given magic item that gave multiple strikes, claiming his character ‘had something that let him do that’. This meant his character was frequently dealing about 50 damage per round without crits at level 8 when most of us didn’t have magical weapons yet, and were still using starting gear except for the odd trinket.
He gave himself a Vestige of Divergence (a scaling, personalised unique magic weapon tailored for the character from Critical Role) before any other member of the party. And boy, did he get is EARLY. Very, very early. We’d each been promised one ‘eventually’ at my own suggestion to Alex, and we were all very excited. What wonderful, flavourful and personalised artifacts would we each be getting our hands on? I hoped for a cool cane or walking stick. I was told no, you’re getting a staff. Alright, okay, sure. It’s still going to be personalised and unique and implement my character’s personality and story arcs in its design, right?
Only one other party member ever got one. By the time they did, Alex’s DMPC’s Vestige had already Awakened (hit tier 2 out of 3 in terms of power) and gave him ridiculous abilities and bonuses (+2 CHA, +2 to-hit and damage, additional damage dice on-hit, ranged attacks with 8d6 damage per short rest, other assorted abilities) that elevated him far above the rest of us. Even worse, the one party member who did get one got an axe that was barely better than his non-magical starting one and had an incredibly niché blood-tracking ability that didn’t make much sense for the character’s playstyle, nor would likely ever come up in play more than once. Though thematically suited to the character, by comparison functionally, it was a joke of a weapon.

3.) “Fiction is reality with the boring bits taken out. So, no downtime, money or resting when you want to.”
Thirdly, Alex’s condensed style meant half of D&D 5e went out the window. Resting was bizarre. During a two-week ship journey across an ocean that our characters were forced into when his DMPC became king of a player character’s tribe (which said player character should’ve been king of at that point, by the way - this is also the player who received the borderline-useless Vestige of Divergence axe), we weren’t allowed a long rest. Why? “For the sake of this journey, you need to be somewhere safe to rest.” We were on a caravan of longboats with sheltered bedding quarters and allied warriors! You’re telling us we can’t have 8 hours to sleep once in those two weeks and get our resources back?!
We never saw money, ever. None of us ever had more than 150 gold pieces in our pockets. NPCs didn’t pay us because we didn’t ‘do quests’, we were ferried along a storyline where we weren’t ever employed by NPCs but instead always chasing a BBEG with no promise of pay except for magic items dropped by powerful foes along the way: like a video game. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that in the one game that survived for a time, Alex’s DMPC was given 5,000 gold pieces for free despite having no use for it except getting to say he was richer than the rest of us. Shopping came up exactly once in that campaign and never again, and the party were financially indebted to his character whenever payments came up. This meant many spells, items, downtime activities and such were off the table, and many spells or items were utterly useless. Rest encounters never came up, so Alarm, Leomund’s Tiny Hut and clever trap or camouflage techniques had no use here (but Alex still let you waste spell/item choices on them without a word). We never got to have cushy campfire roleplay as a casual, on-a-whim thing. Considering we never decided where to go or what to do and were told when we needed to seek a tavern for rest, money became an object of ‘how much do you want to have your wallet taxed to stay in this next chapter of Alex’s book overnight?’. Travel was turned into a minigame using yet another arbitrary video-game esque system that, ironically enough, slowed it down to a crawl and made roleplaying with each other during the travel very difficult due to how it split the party and made them go do very different things, very far away from each other.
Many spells didn’t work or had their effects handwaved away. During a travel minigame, we had to hunt for food - our Druid realised they had Create Food and Water prepared specifically because travel was ahead, and happily pitched using it to, as per the spell, create enough food to sustain us. The DM realised this would mean no hunting DC check and no chance of failure because of intelligent planning and expending limited resources, so naturally, he told the Druid that the spell ‘wouldn’t sustain you for the journey’. When the Druid mentioned they could cast it every day, the “you can’t long rest for weeks” bullshit arose again. Oh no, you all slept, you just don’t gain spell slots back or anything until I say so. For clarification, there was no prior discussion or agreement for this random, unexpected switch to what was essentially Gritty Realism long rest rules (or worse than gritty realism, considering the time was often two weeks instead of one for the rest). We were just informed it was the case when we tried to play the game as we expected it.
Many spells were banned at higher levels. I played a Wizard for it, and Alex didn’t like the Wizard. He didn’t like the fact they could bypass his encounters with clever problem solving, despite the fact it’s a core appeal of the class and requires limited resources and creative thinking to do so. Of course, I wasn’t aware of this until we were already too far into the game to make a change, and it wasn’t because Alex said so; it’s because of how he treated the Wizard as a class. It wasn’t until I hit level 13 and was genuinely excited to use spells like Magnificent Mansion for roleplay (my character wanted to give the gift of a custom-designed, comfortable home to our party) that Alex told me such spells were banned. Here’s a few and the reasonings why.
Magnificent Mansion: Our party travelled around in a carriage. I wanted to use this to show off my character’s growing mastery of the arcane and finally prove themselves as USEFUL to the party, giving them the beautiful gift of a comfortable home - something many of them had said in roleplay they wanted someday. It would be wonderful progression and open up great roleply. Alex said no. He wanted the party to be stuck in the dingy, rotten carriage that is owned by his DMPC for ‘thematic reasons’.
Illusory Dragon: One of the few lategame illusion spells. Was told I’d be allowed to use it as a ‘cool final attack’ in combat exactly once, “maybe in a big boss as a combo attack with another player or something, because it’ll become boring if you reuse it”.
Mirage Arcane: Another lategame illusion spell I’d been pumped for for a very long time. Was told no when the time came to choose my 7th-level spells, because shaping the terrain around us would trivialise his travel minigame and make the navigation DC almost impossible to fail - as if it wouldn’t be resource expenditure, a form of problem solving inherent to my chosen class and subclass specialism, and part of the expected adventuring solutions a Tier 3 play party may employ.
In case you can’t tell, being locked out of the most exciting spells in the game sucked a lot of the fun and excitement out of playing what had been becoming my favourite class for me. I had mostly no damage-dealing options and was specc’d to be all about utility, but I was already deliberately avoiding spells like Simulacrum, Clone, Contingency and Magic Jar so as to not be difficult for Alex. These bans were on top of my own self-imposed limitations. Ironically, Alex criticised that my spellbook didn’t have a lot of illusion spells at one point considering I was supposed to be an illusionist. Gee, thanks, Alex. It’s not like my Silent Images, Minor Illusions and Major Images have not worked even once because all your enemies have traits to hard-counter them, and you’ve banned all my interesting options at higher level until I’m stuck taking Chain-fucking-Lightning on my happy-go-lucky pacifist Wizard who doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Even worse, we never saw a single spell scroll or spellbook. I didn’t get to scribe any new spells. I was playing a worse Sorcerer who did nothing of value in combat. I could not have felt less useless or happy in my class choice - it was the first time I’d played a Wizard, and I desperately wanted to play a utility/support caster who helped solve problems without resorting to violence all the time. I realised very quickly that didn’t fit with Alex’s JRPG game design and the railroad forcing us into combat for ‘pacing reasons’. In his words; “No, no. I’ll be real here, think about it - we’ve tried ‘classic’ D&D. You don’t like classic D&D, not really. Our table wants a quicker game with proper pacing, whether or not you realise it now.”
I still vividly recall a pre-established PvP scenario where myself and one other characters (a Wizard and a Druid respectively, Level 10) were placed in an arena with a newly-introduced PC after a character death. This new PC started as a servant of the BBEG and needed to be fought and convinced to fight for us, with Alex and the player working together on an admittedly very cool boss fight sort of deal. We went in with the awareness that the Boss-PC would, in this area, have Lair Actions, Legendary Resistance and the full shebang. We were also clearly informed in advance that the Boss-PC had permission to kill our characters if it made sense.
We beat the Boss-PC by the skin of our teeth, but the debate after was tense. My Druid friend was down and I needed a way to guarantee her safety so I could stabilise her before she died. Afraid my not-so-charismatic Wizard wouldn’t be able to convince the Boss-PC to be nice before she bled out, I realised he had no Legendary Resistances left and pulled what I thought would be the perfect move - Sleep. He had a smattering of hit points left. No Legendary Resistance, no save. It was guaranteed to work, and meant a minute of time to get the Druid up, be safe, and then restrain and wake up the Boss-PC to have a full conversation with them - ask them who they were, have some fun roleplay, make it a memorable moment where they come aboard the team. It’d also mean the Druid’s player would get to be a part of the roleplay of convincing our new party member to join us, and I wanted to include them on this cool moment.
“... and I cast Sleep.”
Instead, Alex immediately guffaws laughing, and so does the Boss-PC player, wheezing and shouting “NO! OOHHHH, NO! NO! NO, YOU IDIOT! YOU JUST KILLED [the Druid]! WHY DID YOU DO THAT? THAT WAS SO STUPID! YOU HAD IT! YOU HAD IT! YOU THREW IT AWAY!”. These two knew my sensitive spot is having my intelligence insulted. I don’t think I’m a very smart person. In fact, I’m very, very self-conscious about it, and they know fully well how much that very-much-not-joking statement would hurt. In the moment, I became furious, horrified that Alex had just twisted the rules to give favouritism to the Boss-PC at the end of the fight to make the Druid’s now all-but-guaranteed death my fault - make me look like a clown who messed up.
I asked to retcon the move if that was the case and said ‘it’s bullshit otherwise’, and Alex immediately dropped the laughter and took on a dark tone. It was a clear-cut ‘you’ve fucked up’ tone. “No. I’m the DM. What I say, goes. If I’m bending the rules, that’s what I’m doing. I’ll let you take it back, but don’t you dare say that’s bullshit. It’s not.”
Alex never apologised for this. The Boss-PC player taunted me after the game and further insulted me by saying it was a stupid thing to do, rubbing it in that it almost got my fellow player’s beloved character killed. Worst of all, I felt like the bad guy afterwards, again. I left a completely heartfelt and self-flagellating apology in Alex’s DMs that was paragraphs long, to which I received a simple, cold ‘Just make sure it doesn’t happen again. It was very disruptive’.
At the time, everyone was on board with Alex, because it was Alex. Of course they were. I would’ve been if it was another player at the table. Now, after we’ve removed ourselves from his influence, the other players have come to see my side of events. I actually posted a story on DnD about it a while back asking for advice on how to better handle DM rulings like that personally, and received no shortage of comments telling me my DM sounded like a bad egg and that they’d be mad too. At the time, of course, I dismissed them and responded with ‘no no, you don’t understand! He’s an AMAZING DM!”.
Later shenanigans involving making our characters feel clownish or useless beyond not being able to ever achieve anything on their own include;

Retconning in a crowd of people to visibly watch me cast Mass Suggestion, who were not implied to be there previously, so as to make my character HATED by the local community and vilified for mind-controlling their friends - something that got rubbed in both in- and out-of-character.
Forcing a character to kill an innocent NPC ‘by accident’ with one ever so slightly failed roll, and then not allowing roleplay time afterwards to have the character express their thoughts or discuss the event with their party.
Usurping the grand reward of a player character’s personal quest arc by instilling his own DMPC as the new leader of that character’s tribe.
Often designing enemies to be immune to our parties’ spellcasters specialisms (elemental damage and illusions, the latter of which enemies ALWAYS saw through or resisted the effects of, no matter what), eventually introducing an entire faction of mecha-suits that had permanent and infallible anti-magic fields around them
Ruling the Wild Magic Surge feat actually cancels the spell you originally intended to cast but still consumes the spell slot, hard-nerfing the character for something that was supposed to be flavourful and fun
Insisting on rolling the Wild Magic Surge table himself, privately, and rerolling whenever he got a boring (read: positive for the playeparty) result - combined with the above point, this made the character an incredible liability to the party and manifested in much of the party not trusting the character to do anything, and treating them like a child, destroying the vision for the character
Having an NPC shittalk a PC for issues Alex had with the IRL player, breaking the fourth wall and making them feel incredibly unwelcome at the table - yes, we all picked up on it
Not giving the party any time to roleplay after deeply impactful or personally traumatic events; party member freshly resurrected from the dead for the first time ever? No, you just focus on travel wordlessly for the next two weeks. They don’t get to talk about the experience until almost a month later when I say “you now have roleplay time”, because that makes sense.
As mentioned previously, not letting some party characters even ever see the BBEG or be personally involved in taking them down. The worst case of this was, as a clue, a BBEG who had the entire module named after him.

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We're not even done yet. Told you this was a long one! I'll post the second half shortly and provide a link to it here.

[Standard] Jeskai Showdown of the Skalds

Welcome to Jeskai Skalds. This is an assertive midrange deck focused on capitalizing on the incredibly powerful saga: Showdown of the Skalds. The deck's primary plan is to apply early pressure and interaction while setting up for devastating combo-like turns with the second and third lore counters.
Performance:
I have currently piloted the deck to mythic #341 with a 74% win rate over 61 matches of BO3. It has felt like it has almost no weak matchups outside of maybe Rakdos yoink and sac decks. It performs well against pretty much every version of Yorion. It is strong against Gruul adventures with the caveat that they tend to run away with the game if you can't interact with their brushfire elementals. Strong against rogues. It is a coin flip in the mirror against other Showdown of the Skald decks like Naya and straight Boros. This is a link to the deck's stats on untapped.
https://mtga.untapped.gg/profile/a2ec539b-105a-41a7-afea-f5273673359a/FVYGQCXSBREEDAMC2GXDT462M4/deck/839a8223-ecc2-4a49-b5b2-673ecc0b55cb?gameType=constructed&constructedType=ranked
The Deck:
https://scryfall.com/@TheOinkinatodecks/964164e5-025a-467f-a760-98b64d210ac5
4 Giant Killer
4 Sprite Dragon
4 Hengegate Pathway
4 Riverglide Pathway
4 Robber of the Rich
2 Mountain
3 Shepherd of the Flock
4 Crash Through
3 Temple of Enlightenment
2 Plains
4 Raugrin Triome
4 Needleverge Pathway
4 Showdown of the Skalds
4 Shock
1 Temple of Epiphany
4 Bonecrusher Giant
3 Skyclave Apparition
2 Fight as One
// Sideboard
3 Glass Casket
2 The Royal Scions
3 Disdainful Stroke
3 Drannith Magistrate
3 Ox of Agonas
1 Skyclave Apparition
Showdown of the Skalds
Showdown is the impetus for the deck. The card is of course incredibly strong by itself with any deck plan. However, there are a couple of ways to take its effects and turn them up to ten. This deck is looking to really capitalize on the second two lore counters through haste creatures & cheap spells.
The Haste Threats
Haste creatures in combination with showdown allow the deck to spend a lot less time on set up turns. It can allow the deck to generate game ending threats from an empty board which is especially important given the high quality of interaction and sweepers present in the format.
Robber of the Rich is the weaker of the two hasters. However, it still applies pressure if left unchecked so it tends to be a strong early play to eat up interaction from the opponent.
Sprite Dragon is where the money is at. It is the reason we are playing blue at all. The combination of its own counter ability and the Skalds trigger to add counters causes it to become an absolutely dominant threat. Sprite Dragons are often in the 5/5 to 10/10 range in this deck and can frequently kill in one to two hits.
Cheap Spells
The deck is playing more "low impact" spells than your average deck in standard. We are playing 4 Shocks, 4 Crash Throughs, and 2 Fight as One. The shocks are very rarely played now due to Bone Crusher Giant. These cheap spells, while not impressive on there, own synergize well with both Sprite Dragon and Showdown they allow us to almost always convert every card exiled with Showdown into actual cards and multiple counters when Sprite Dragon is on the board. Lets look at each choice:
Shock is by far the best instant/sorcery at one mana available in our colors. It actually gain a lot of equity because of Bone Crusher Giant. People are used to stomp replacing it so they rarely play around one red mana left up. In addition when you play 4 Shock and Four stomp you have a potential 16 points of burn in your deck which is no joke when you see so many cards from Showdown
Crash Through is the choice based on its ability to can trip. The deck would play Opt, but it puts too many restrictions on the mana base. There is some minor upside with the trample as creatures can get massive in this deck.
There are also two Fight as Ones in the deck as I have found the effect to be particularly potent at protecting Sprite Dragon. In addition the deck has a good spread of non-human and humans so it often finds both targets.
Adventures
We are still playing with Throne of Eldraine so we of course have access to the busted adventure creatures. They are additionally strong in this deck as they give you two spells to trigger Showdown. It also means that we get to play a creature weighted deck that still has 25 non-creature spells in it for Sprite Dragon.
Bone Crusher Giant I have already mentioned a couple of times but it is of course insane. At this point it doesn't need to be explained but, suffice it to say, this card completely slaps.
Giant Killer plays incredibly well in the deck as its creature half is reasonable and cheap which works with Skalds very well. In addition Chop Down is incredibly strong in the meta right now. Every red deck has at minimum four Bone Crusher Giants, every green deck is full of targets, and thanks to Yorion pretty much every blue and/or white deck has a playset of 4/5 fliers running around.
Shepherd of the Flock is the final adventure creature we play. It is played over Brazen Borrower both due to its superior synergy and the fact that it stresses the mana base less. Shepherd on the front side is an acceptable body that can deal damage and trade up with a few creatures. The real money is the additional spell which triggers Sprite Dragon, protects your threats, and most importantly can re-buy Showdown of the Skalds.
Skyclave Apparition is here as the deck's universal answer to most of the threats in Standard. It is an include on raw power and it of course doesn't hurt that it provides a body for Showdown counters.
The Mana Base & How to Deploy it
We are primarily a Boros deck. The only blue card in the main deck is Sprite Dragon. When deploying mana the deck wants to assemble in order of these priorities: one source of each color, two white for Skyclave Apparition, a weighting of lands toward red for combo/burn turns. This seems contradictory but it is pretty easy to assemble thanks to the Triome present in our colors. The rest of the mana base is composed of all of the available pathways and then a mix of temples that have blue and one of the other two colors. This allows the deck to get the one source of blue online while also progressing to steps two and three of the mana priorities.
Sideboard
Drannith Magistrate primarily hits four things: Adventure, Escape, Foretell, and Showdown of the Scald/Robber of the Rich type effects. If your opponent deck has 8 or more cards in these categories it can be a strong board in as it is a low effort way to pressure their resources. This is a good board in against Gruul Adventures, Izzet Flash, Rakdos Midrange, and Naya Adventures.
Glass Casket answers powerful three drops and creatures with three toughness that our main board shock effects can't hit. This is a good board in against Mono Green Variants, Gruul and Naya Adventures, Rogues, and White based aggro decks with Hallowblades.
Skyclave Apparition answers similar issues as Glass Casket while also being able to interact with certain flavors of Yorion profitably.
Disdainful Stroke is incredibly efficient at protecting you the turn before you are looking to have an insane skald turn. It can also buy an additional turn against a haymakers out of control and Yorion decks. This a good board in against pretty much every build of control and Yorion. It is also good against Izzet flash and strong on the draw against Gruul based decks to snag Questing Beast, Great Henge, and Vivien.
The Royal Scions converts your cheap creatures into scary threats while quickly building to an ultimate that tends to do about 7 damage to the face. Good against decks without many creatures and strong at snowballing while on the play. A good board in against Yorion, Control decks, and ramp decks.
Ox of Agonas is primarily targeted hate for rogues while it is mostly for the one matchup it improves the matchup so dramatically that it is worth the sideboard slots. It also can be boarded in as a one of in matchups against non-white decks that interact enough to fill your graveyard quickly.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to shoot me any thoughts or questions. This deck has been an absolute blast and I am legitimately curious if it will end up seeing more play. If I had to guess the advantage gained by adding blue might not be strong enough. I haven't played a straight Boros build yet to know for sure.

Learn from my mistakes. I got a job, but it took me a year, 1100+ applications, and failing 11 final interviews. Here is what you don't do while job searching.

Sure, there are plenty of posts from people who applied to a job and got an offer 30 seconds later. Good for them. But if you're on this sub, you're probably running into more difficulty. I did. Job hunting these days is inherently pretty hard, but there are plenty of things I did wrong during my job hunt that could have saved me time and trouble. I'm a 35 year old in product marketing in the bay area, so this advice may or may not apply to you.
Most of this advice is not new, you may have seen it elsewhere. Well, HEED MY WORDS! You should take that advice.
Here are my don'ts of job hunting:
e: Here's the real #1 piece of advice because someone brought it up in the comments: Don't Not Have A Network. The main reason I had such a hard time was I moved to a new city where I didn't have a professional relationship with ANYONE. I think if you're applying without a friend on the inside, it reduces your odds by 80-90%, based on random factoids we've all seen that say 80% of jobs are never posted publicly.
I went to networking events and coffee meetups and blah blah blah, but COVID put a stop to that before I could make much progress. The biggest piece of advice (by far) is just to have a friend who can get you a job. But if you're reading this, you would have done that already if you could have.
Don't try to get by without doing the standard "best practice" stuff.
I spent a while thinking I could get away without making a customized resume for different jobs. I also thought I would probably have the right keywords naturally, and that I didn't have to worry about that either. WRONG. I wasted many weeks submitting poorly optimized resumes and getting few interviews.
What you should do is have at least one version of your resume customized for each job title you're applying to. That means if you're applying for Sr. Widget Fiddler and Director of Widget Fiddling, you need 2 versions.
Keyword optimize each resume version by copy-pasting 50+ job descriptions for that job's title into a tool like Voyant Tools, which will spit out all the most common words and phrases. Find the most frequent ones that seem important and relevant, and work them into your resume, even if it seems weird to refer to yourself as a "team player" or "entrepreneurial".
Don't be bad at interviewing, not even a little bit bad.
Being a good interviewee is a skill. Most of us aren't born with that skill, and most of us are rusty when it comes time to look for a job. I knew I wasn't great at interviewing, but I really didn't want to go through awkward practice interviews with friends, so I told myself people would understand why I was all nervous, and realize I was still super talented and experienced despite my 'rough edges'. WRONG. I blew it on a lot of interviews before admitting that I had to practice, a lot. I did a bunch of practice interviews, got feedback, and I even talked to an interview coach. The latter was expensive, but I think the dose of outside perspective really helped. YMMV.
I practiced enough that I started getting to final rounds instead of washing out in the first couple rounds. It made a huge difference. Practice.
Don't wing it during the interview.
For 'behavioral' questions (i.e. "tell me about a time when..." questions) everyone says you need to have multiple answers memorized for every major category of question. Ugh! So much work. Greatest weakness. Success story. Failure story. Conflict story. Collaboration story. YAWN. I thought I could come up with good answers on the spot. It's "supposed to be a conversation", right? WRONG. I blew it on a couple interviews before realizing I was coming across as both unprepared AND inexperienced.
Sit down and work out your bullet points for every answer, BEFORE you land an interview. Pain in the butt? Yes. But not as big a pain as getting an interview, blowing it, then ending up doing the work anyway.
Don't apply to old job listings.
If it's still up, they're still hiring, right? WRONG. I have found that job listings are good for about as long as fresh bread. You mostly want to apply the day they're posted, 2-3 days is OK, 5 days is pushing it, beyond that, it's literal trash. I started out applying to anything relevant that was less than a month old, and my app-to-interview yield was around 1%. Started applying to new listings exclusively, and my yield went to more like 3%. YMMV.
Don't apply to listings that aren't on the employer's own site.
It's become disturbingly common for 3rd-party sites to steal and re-post job listings they have nothing to do with. You click on a link on LinkedIn or Indeed, and you end up on Neuvoo or some random BS. Don't submit any of your info on those sites. Very often the jobs are expired already, but these 3rd-party scammers are still re-posting them to steal your info. Even if they're not expired, there's no reason to think they actually send your application to the employer.
If you land somewhere unexpected, go to the employer's actual careers section on their site and find the listing yourself. Otherwise you're just giving your info to someone to sell, and the employer probably never sees it. Please report these listings as you go.
Don't be too picky with job titles.
Unless your resume precisely "fits the profile" employers are looking for, you're going to have to apply a lot. I had to apply a lot. At first, I was exclusively applying to one title, because although I didn't "fit the profile" I didn't want to compromise. I ended up getting a really solid job with a different title, after I loosened my criteria JUST a tad.
Have a serious talk with yourself about how many months you're willing to apply before broadening your search, and don't talk yourself out of good jobs because they have the "wrong" title.
Don't be too loose with companies you apply to.
At a couple points in the process, I ended up with interviews at companies that I seriously didn't want to work for. I was playing the numbers game and I would apply to anything with the right title, even if I hadn't heard of the company. I figured if I got an interview, I would worry about the company later.
Difficulty: If you are on unemployment, this can lead to a sticky situation - if you turn down an offer, you legally can't collect unemployment anymore in many places. It's also pretty hard to justify to yourself turning down ANY interview if you actually need the money.
Have a loose idea of who the company is before applying, to avoid those awkward moments.
Don't stop applying until the ink is dry on your offer letter.
My advice is to apply to every suitable listing as soon as it's posted, which could be as many as 10-30 per day depending on your field and geography. If things are going well, you'll also have interviews going on during any given week, which also put heavy demands on your mental energy and prep time.
It is tempting to stop applying for jobs if you are doing multiple interviews and they seem to be going well. You need the time, and one of them has to work out, right? WRONG. It happened to me multiple times - I'd get further along in an interview process, I'd be focusing on prep, and I'd let my application routine slip. Bad idea. If your application pipeline runs dry, it can be another 2-6 weeks before the interviews start flowing again. ABA - always be applying.
Don't get your hopes up. (maybe the most important tip.)
Your mental resilience to rejection and your self-regard are finite resources. They are resources you need to conserve to maintain your overall mental health and good job-hunting habits. Job hunting can burn through these resources like Joe Exotic through a bag of meth. Don't be like me and get emotionally invested in any given job before you get an offer. Don't start picking out all the stuff you're going to buy with the new salary. Don't start thinking of what doors are going to open up for you with this step in your career. Don't mentally pick out outfits for your new commute. Just don't.
I consider myself a mentally tough person, so I should be able to handle the repeated rejection, right? WRONG. If you allow yourself to start caring about a job before you GET the job, you WILL be crushed to bits. Maybe not the first time, but after the 5th, or the 10th, it becomes hard to take.
To some of the newer job hunters I've seen on this sub: Caring about a job from the day you APPLY? Sheer lunacy. You shouldn't even remember where you applied by the time you go to bed that day.
Keep in mind: It's a numbers game. It's not personal. You WILL get the right job eventually, if you keep going. You have to maintain faith in yourself, but hold no hope for any particular job.
In emotional terms, treat it less like a poker game, (where any hand can be a big deal) more like a slot machine (where you care zero until you finally win). No matter how tough you think you are, take care to maintain your mental state, especially during COVID where so many aspects of life are also wearing down our mental health.
Don't be afraid to be a try-hard.
The role I finally got was based largely on a "take home project" used to demonstrate my working style. It was paid, also really long, the minimum suggested time was 10 hours. Usually I put 70% effort into trial projects, because I don't want to bust my ass for a throwaway, and I don't want to look desperate. My thinking is "Well, we're all professionals, so as long as I mention a few of the right things, they'll know we're on the same level, right?" WRONG.
On this one, I decided to go HAM on the project. All or nothing. I ended up putting over 20 hours into it, (the max time they suggested was 20) and came up with a total overkill amount of material, it was probably 20 pages worth, if not more. To give some idea, I spent like 4 hours just doing addressable market sizing, which everyone including me acknowledges is fairly pointless.
Part of the project was also to see how we communicate about our work - they put me on their company slack, so I logged onto it pretty much every day to update them on my progress. It was firmly in try-hard weirdo territory. But it worked!
So I guess my lesson from this is, if you're going to bother with these projects, be the one who turns in the blue ribbon material.
NB: Be aware of "free work" scams where they try to get you to do the actual job without hiring you for the job. If it's pertinent to the actual job and it's more than an hour or two of work, it should be paid. Unpaid trial projects that don't relate to the actual business are OK, but you'll have to decide for yourself how much time you're willing to put in for free.
Don't assume ***anything*** until it's final.
In 3 instances, I got much further than I expected in a hiring process, and in one I was blindsided by a rejection where I thought I was a shoo-in. #1, they interviewed me for the role (up to the final round) even though the job called for an actual engineer and I have zero engineering experience.
In #2, I blew an interview and got rejected. I knew exactly how I blew it, I got the yips and did poorly. So I sent an email reply explaining what I SHOULD have said, and that I really believed in the company's mission, and that I realize I was a poor interviewee, but I was working on it - they actually gave me another shot and I made it to the final round.
In the last unexpected twist story, they actually scheduled a final interview, then CANCELLED IT. I have been rejected for about a million jobs, but I've never been cancelled on. They said that instead of an interview, they would just review my trial project. I couldn't imagine cancelling an interview with someone you intend to hire, so I assumed this 'review' was just a consolation prize and the job was going to someone else. On the day the cancelled interview was meant to take place, they offered me the job. Huh???? Later that day I rode to heck on a flying pig and bought a snowcone there. But I also got a job.
On the other side of things, I was told directly I was the top candidate for a role, the only one who was really qualified, but because of COVID they were putting the role on hold. OK cool, I figured I was a shoo-in once they actually hired for it. Well, they re-listed the job about 45 days later. They didn't reach out to me. I messaged them. They told me I wasn't even going to get a phone screen for it. WTF? They lied to my face for no reason whatsoever? Yep. They did.
The lesson: Do not assume anything! ANYTHING!

[God Field] How the Game Works for EN Bros

About God Field

So recently I noticed that 5th gen, Pekora and Matsuri have started streaming/playing the game God Field. Suisei & Shion also joined in to play on Pekora's stream. Pekora also mentioned potentially doing a tournament for the game (not confirmed yet though). It seems like we might continue to see more streams of this game within Hololive.
However, I haven't seen anyone TLing any stream clips, which is a shame since it's a very funny game, made even more entertaining when Hololive members are playing it! I suspect it's because the game isn't well known to the overseas audience, so I decided to make this guide for TLers and EN fans who are interested but don't understand the game. I've provided examples from Hololive streams so that you can practice following along.
If you don't know anything about God Field, in short, it's a party card game. You could say it's like the Mario Kart of card games, and by that I mean it's a mixture of skill and unfair RNG mechanics and lucky card draws. The game also has the weird ability to make players start role playing, somehow due to its weird "God" theming and its unusual card and status names. You'll see players start to say silly things as they attack each other cards like "Goodbye Sword" or inflict weird status effects like "Fog". But these aspects are what creates very hilarious interactions and dialogue between the players, some of which I'll include at the end of this guide as a bonus.
You can also play the game for free here, but there's no tutorial, so I recommend reading this guide as you go.

Basics

The goal is to get your opponent's HP to 0. There are two main card types, attack (攻) cards and defence (守) cards. During your turn, you use attack cards to attack an opponent. The opponent can use defence cards to defend against it. 1ATK is equal to 1DEF.
EX: Suisei attacks Pekora with the 14 ATK "Violent Flail" (a very fitting card for her). Pekora defends with "Iron Armor", a 5DEF card, so she takes 9 damage. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3161)
When defending, you can stack as many defence cards as you want at once. But for attacking, it's a bit different. You can only use 1 attack card normally, but you can combine "combo attack" cards to make a stronger attack. You can tell if it's a combo attack card if it has a "+" in its damage, for example "+3 攻" or "+3 ATK". Note that combo attack cards don't have to be used in a combo, they can also be used as standalone attacks.
EX: Polka attacks Lamy with a monstrous 10+13+10 card combo, a total of 33 damage. Lamy defends with a 1, 3, and 9 DEF combo, a total of 13 DEF, so she takes 20 damage. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3314)

Elements

Some cards are color-coded, meaning they have an element. Elemental attacks can only be blocked with an elemental defence of a certain element. Fire & water (red & blue) counter each other, and stone & wood (grey & orange) counter each other. Elemental attacks are very hard to deal with, because you often won't have the specific elemental defence needed in your hand. Elemental cards themselves are also more uncommon than non-elemental cards. Note that you can use elemental defence cards to defend against non-elemental attacks too.
EX: Lamy attacks Botan with "Fire Crossbow", a +4 ATK fire card. Note that she used a combo card by itself instead of making a combo, which was actually a good play, because it preserved the card's element, making it so that Botan needed water element defence to defend it. Of course, Botan didn't have it, so *she took 4 damage. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2603)
*This is a funny moment during a 3v3 team game of "Botan/Polka/Suisei" vs "Pekora/Nene/Lamy", where Botan says she'll "be a wall" for her teammates, and proceeds to get brutally focus-fired by the opposing team. More on why that happens later.
Actually, there are two more elements that behave quite differently: light (yellow) and dark (purple). Light cannot be blocked, and can substitute as Fire/WateStone/Wood for both attacks and defence. So it's like a wildcard element, as well as being virtually undefendable (a few cards can block it). Dark can be blocked by anything, even by non-elemental defence, but it kills the opponent if even 1 damage goes through. As you can imagine, both of these elements are very scary to deal with.
EX1: Shion attacks Pekora with "Justice Lance", a 5 ATK light card. Note that none of Pekora's defence cards are lit up, showing that they can't be selected, because again, light element attacks are unblockable. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5623)
EX2: Botan attacks Nene with "Killer Fork", a 5 ATK dark card. Nene didn't have any defence cards, so she died despite having 24HP due to the dark element's instant kill effect. Note that Botan likely knew she had no defence cards, because in the early rounds of this 3v3 team game, Team Suisei/Botan/Polka all attacked Nene, causing her to use her up defence cards early on. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2977)
You might be thinking that if you combine something like +10 ATK cards with a 5 ATK dark element card, you have the recipe for an OP combo. But actually, stacking attack cards of different elements will cause the entire attack to become non elemental, so you'll lose the "dark instant-kill" effect. However, there are combo cards which are elemental, so if you're lucky enough to get a +5 ATK dark element, you can combine it with a 5 ATK dark element to create a very lethal dark element attack.

Tip for Following Along as a Viewer

It can be hard to add up all the cards and consider the elements for a given interaction, especially when the players play very fast. Some cards are also both attack and defence cards, meaning they have an ATK and DEF value, making it extra hard to understand if you don't know the kanji. So as a tip, the game itself will show the total ATK, total DEF, and elements of a given interaction. It's shown below each of the two "card columns" of the field.
And as mentioned before, usable cards will light up in your hand, so you can tell if the streamer was forced to take an attack because they had no cards to play, or if they took it in purpose to save their cards for later.
EX1: Polka attacks with a 9ATK card and +10 Light ATK *card. Remember that non elemental and light don't combine, so it's actually just a non elemental attack altogether. Note the "19 攻" near the bottom left, showing the total attack, and the fact that it's black means that it's non elemental. On Nene's side, it shows a black "15 守" , meaning the total defence is 15, and is also non elemental. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2679)
*The light card Polka used is called "Meteor", hence why Polka says Suisei's catchphrase in reference to it.
EX2: Lamy attacks Botan with 3 wood ATK and +1 light ATK. Since light substitutes as wood, you can see in the bottom-left that it becomes an orange "+4 攻", or in other woods, a 4 damage wood attack. Once again, Botan is unable to defend, since elemental defence is very rare. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2926)

AoE Attacks

Some attacks have a "%" in their damage, for example "50% 9ATK". What this means is that they have a % chance of hitting each opponent with that much damage. So with "50% 9ATK", if you're in a 8 player free for all, you can think of it as flipping a coin for each of your 7 opponents, and if it lands on heads, they get hit by 9ATK. Depending on luck, the attack can either hit everyone, miss everyone, or do some mix of hitting/missing. AoE attacks are all elemental by design as well, making them extra annoying.
EX: Polka attacks Pekora/Nene/Lamy with "Rain Deity's Sword", a 50% 9ATK water card. And to her luck, it successfully hits all three of them. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2771)

Spells

Spells work basically like how they do in RPGs; they cost MP, and they can be used infinitely. You'll notice after a player uses them the first time, that the card stays in the bottom right of the player's hand. It's sort of like they "learned" the spell. Most spells are simply elemental attacks that cost MP, but there are some other unique effects they can do as well. In general, spells are much stronger than regular attack cards in this game, since they're essentially infinitely reusable elemental attacks. But they're usually hard to use since MP is a somewhat uncommon resource, and spells themselves are uncommon as well.
EX: Pekora vs Shion. Pekora has a measly 2HP, and Shion uses the spell "Ice", a 4ATK water spell that costs 2MP, to finish her off. Luckily, Pekora draws "Moonlight Shield" just in time, which reflect spells, and manages to survive. But if you recall, spells are reusable, so Shion just uses "Ice" the next turn. Miraculously, Pekora draws "Moonlight Sword", which also can reflect spells, and survives yet another turn. Finally, for a third time, Shion casts "Ice", but this time Pekora is all out of luck. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5637)
Spells actually have an interesting side effect. Because of how card draw works (you replenish the same amount of cards that you use), when using a spell, it counts as if you "used it" even though it remained in your hand. So your hand size will increase by 1 every time you use it, meaning it gives +1 card advantage. So if you have a cheap cost spell, you can cast it many times over the course of a game to continuously increase your hand size - and thus create a massive card advantage over your opponent. If you've played card games before, you'll realize that this is a very powerful effect.
EX: Pekora attacks Shion with a 6 ATK wood spell. Watch Pekora's hand in the bottom-left, and notice that she gains a card slot in her hand when she uses the spell. Also note that her hand is much bigger than the default hand size, as she's already used the spell a bunch before. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5152)

Statuses

There are very non-traditional status effects in this game, so I'll explain each one:
Fog: The background becomes blue, and various things become blocked with a blue fill. You can't see what cards other players play, unless they're attacking you. You also can't see anyone's HP/MP/Money, besides your own, and you cannot select who you target when you attack.
EX: Shion uses the "Fog" spell on Pekora. Pekora actually has a consumable that can cure it called "Heart Shell", which can cure all statuses, so she uses it. But "Heart Shell" is single-use, and if you recall, spells are infinite use, so Shion just casts "Fog" again right after, since the MP cost is low. The interaction itself is funny, with Shion constantly teasing her about "absolutely wanting Pekora to not be able to see~" (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5547)
Dream: All cards you draw have a 50% of being "disguised" - meaning they can actually be a different card then what it visually appears as. It'll reveal what the card really is when you use it. A "disguised" card will have a misty filter on it. Note that cards can't turn into cards of another type - meaning you can't defend with a defence card, but then it turns into an attack/spell/consumable card with 0 DEF. It'll always turn into another defence card. And if it's an elemental defence card, it'll turn into an elemental defence card of the same element. This makes it so that you can't play a "wrong" or "invalid" card as a result of dream.
EX: In a close game of Pekora vs Matsuri, where both players have 7HP left, Matsuri attacks Pekora with a 11ATK combo. Pekora's only defence card is a potentially fake "Flame Boots", a 3DEF card, so she thinks she will lose, especially since elemental cards tend to have low DEF, so even if it's fake, it'll still probably turn into another weak card. However, it's actually revealed to be "Flame Armor", a 12DEF card, so she survives with excitement. (Volume Warning https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=4706)
Flash: You can only use up to 1 defence card when defending.
EX: Polka hits Botan with *"Horror Wheel", a +11 ATK card. Botan counters with "Uranus Ring", which inflicts flash to whoever damaged her, so Polka gets the "Flash" status. Then, Lamy attacks the "Flashed" Polka with the 9 ATK "Power Halberd", which is difficult to defend since she can only play 1 defence card. To top it off, Polka's under "Dream" as well, meaning she doesn't know if her 1 defence card will be good enough, since it may change into another, weaker card. This interaction shows a special yellow text (まぶしい) that translates to "bright". So while getting hit, Polka says "It's bright! What's with this brightness?" (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=1043)
*You might be wondering why Polka used a combo attack on its own, since unlike in the previous similar example with Lamy, it's non-elemental, so it should be better to combine it with another attack. It's because she was new to the game - Nene actually starts explaining it to her about "+" and "combo" cards during that timestamp after she plays it.
Dark Cloud: If you're hit with a % attack, it has a 100% chance of hitting.
EX: Shion hits Pekora with "Flare Axe", a 50% 10ATK fire card. Pekora is already under Dark Cloud, so she gets hit. This interaction shows a special purple text (不可避) which translates to "inevitable", as in it's inevitable the hit will land. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5967)
Cold->Fever->Hell->Heaven: These disease statuses give -1/-2/-5/+5 HP per turn. They're related in that diseases can get "worse" at a 5% chance each turn, or when you catch another disease. When a disease becomes worse, it turns into the "next stage" disease. Meaning cold turns into fever, which turns into hell, which turns into heaven, and after heaven, you'll simply die.
Heaven is quite odd since unlike the other diseases, it gives you HP per turn rather than dealing damage per turn. But instead you have a 5% chance of dying at the end of your turn. So it can create some thrilling situations where a player is nearly unkillable because of the +5HP per turn, but also can die at any moment if their luck turns bad.
EX: Lamy uses "Heaven Herb" on herself, which gives +20 MP, but also puts herself under "heaven". Note the +5HP that appears after as a result of "heaven". Polka questions the play at first, since heaven is very dangerous so you'd rather give it to someone else, but then she realizes you can cure it later. So Lamy used it as a desperate way to heal herself, as her HP was running low. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3144)

Common Keywords

There are some common card effects that are important to know.
Bounce Attack/Spell - Redirects an attack/spell to anyone in the game, even to the person who bounced it! A quirk of this mechanic is that the attack/spell will become unblockable if you bounce it and it redirects to yourself.
EX: During a team battle, Polka uses the light element spell "Meteor" on Lamy. Normally, light is unblockable - but Lamy plays "Sky Helm" which bounces spells. It then bounces to... (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3010) Polka's ally Botan, causing Polka's attack to kill her own teammate, who only had 7HP, and no way to counter light element.
Reflect Attack/Spell - Reflects the attack/spell back to the attackecaster. Fairly self explanatory, but it's good to be aware of, as it's the common cause of funny moments, along with "Bounce".
EX: Pekora vs Shion. Pekora has only 7HP and is on her last legs, while Shion has 22HP. Shion plays "Ice Age", a 75% 30ATK water spell. Shion thinks she just won, as it's nearly impossible to deal with 30 water damage. But... (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5268) Pekora uses "Moonlight Sword", which is an attack card that can also be used as a defence card to reflect spells, and makes a comeback.
Cast Spell w/o Cost: You can combine a card with this effect to cast a spell for free. This is why you'll see players occasionally cast a spell without enough MP, and combine it with a seemingly unrelated armoweapon.
EX: Polka casts the spell "Meteor" which costs 7MP on Lamy, but she only has 1MP. She then combines it with the consumable card "Spiritual Doll", which allows a spell to be casted with no cost. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3074)
Block Attack/Spell - It allows you to fully block certain kinds of attacks, regardless of how high the damage is.
Counterattack - A defensive keyword that activates upon receiving damage. You'll see counterattack on a set of cards known as "Elemental Planet Rings", like the "Uranus Ring" mentioned before. They all have very different effects. Some effects scale based on how much damage you took, meaning you might intentionally take more damage to boost the effect. A common mistake is to use defensive cards with a counterattack card, because it may weaken the special effect.
EX: Pekora vs Shion. Shion counters Pekora's 11ATK "Gravity Mace" with "Saturn Ring", which counterattacks with double the received damage, as stone element. So Pekora was countered with 22 stone ATK. If Shion instead tried to fully block the attack while using Saturn Ring, it would've dealt no damage. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=6025)
Inflict "X Status" on Damage - If the attack deals at least 1 damage, it'll also inflict a status.
EX: During the 5th Gen FFA, Lamy attacks Polka with "Bogus Spear", which has "inflict Dream on hit". Polka gets scared, saying "I have to completely defend this!". Earlier in the stream, nearly everyone had spent a long time under the effects of "Dream", so she was afraid of experiencing it again. It's a very scary status to be afflicted with. (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=4301)

Consumables

These are mostly cards that simply heal HP, MP, or cure statuses. Though there are actually some with much more wild effects, like the "Heaven Herb" mentioned previously. An interesting part about these cards is that you can use them on someone else, so for example you can heal allies in team matches. One more notable feature is that they're in a separate category from attacks or spells, and this game only has blocking cards that work against attacks and spells. As a result, there is no way to block consumable cards.
EX: Continuing from a previous example, Pekora uses "Heart Shell" to cure her teammate Lamy's "Heaven". She was afraid that Lamy would die from heaven, leaving her in a 1v2 situation, so she waited a few turns for it to heal her, then cured her. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3237)

Money

You may have noticed that both players and cards have "￥" on them. "￥", or money, is used for three specific cards: "buy", "sell", and "exchange". These cards are fairly common, have very unique effects, and can be OP when used right, so I'll explain them thoroughly.
Buy: target a player, then the game chooses a random card from their hand. You then have the option of buying that card from them. The real power of this card comes from its glitchy side effect - similar to spells, after buying a card, it actually increases the buyer's hand size by 1. But unlike spells, it also decreases the seller's hand size by 1, meaning this gives a +2 card advantage. You might notice a player's hand size becoming extremely small or big, as a result of multiple uses of this card. Needless to say, this card is extremely powerful.
EX: Pekora gets lucky and manages to buy Shion's "Real Ghost Sword", a 12ATK lifesteal card. This effect is very powerful and essentially means the card has 24ATK in terms of value. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5331)
Sell: choose one of the cards in your hand, and target a player to forcefully sell it to. It has the same side effect as "buy" cards, meaning you lose 1 hand size for using it, and the opponent gains 1 hand size. So at first it seems like a terrible card since it has -2 card advantage, but it actually has its uses. For example, what happens if you sell a $30 card to someone with $0 money? The victim is forced to buy the card no matter what. If they're too poor, they pay in MP instead. If they have insufficient MP, then they pay in HP. So they can actually die from being too poor to buy a card. So when used on a poor player, this card actually becomes an unblockable MP drain, and/or an unblockable attack.
EX: Suisei says "Peko-chan, Peko-chan, looks like you don't have any money right now" and then sells her an expensive Heart Shell. To add insult to injury, she already has two Heart Shells, and because she has no money, she lost 15MP instead, which she crucially needed because she has 3 useful spells in her hand. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3217)
Exchange: allows you to freely exchange your HP, MP, and money at a 1:1:1 ratio. This card is pretty straight forward, and doesn't have any crazy side effects like the others. The thing to note is that there are very few ways to gain HP/MP/money in this game, so this card is one of the most versatile cards in the game and combos well with all HP/MP/money cards.
EX: Shion vs Pekora. Shion has been using the spell "Treasure", which costs 5MP but gives 10$, to reach a total of $60. And as her HP runs low, she uses "exchange" to turn 60$ into 40HP and 20MP. As a result of this, while taking Pekora's attacks, she was able to fully heal herself, and leave herself with 20MP for a strong spell later, all the while increasing her hand size by a lot due to spamming the spell "Treasure". (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5798)
These cards all belong to the "trade" category, so like "consumables", they aren't considered an "attack/spell", so they cannot be blocked.
Note that money is not used to play cards, this value is strictly only for buying and selling. Cards don't have any cost to play them (except MP for spell cards).

Guardians

Certain cards will allow players to summon elemental guardians, which have a 25% chance of casting cards after every opponent's turn. The cards they cast depend on their element, the dark guardian for example will randomly choose between 5 dark element cards. Also, guardians don't need MP to cast spells. Guardians have a 10% of disappearing when the player they belong to gets hit. There's also a money guardian and a healing guardian, which are less deadly since they don't attack, but still are quite annoying if left alone for too long.
In general, guardians are a huge threat, as it's impossible to keep up with the amount of elemental defence cards needed to block their elemental attacks. The value they generate over time is so threatening that players in a team or FFA game will often start focus firing you for having one.
EX1: Pekora uses "Guardian Sealed Jar" on her teammate Lamy, to give her a guardian. She gets the darkness guardian, which has the potential to win the game on its own by constantly sending out dark element attacks. However, its threat causes Lamy to get *brutally targeted by Team Suisei & Polka, and eventually the guardian falls (Summoning https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3042) (Disappears https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3115)
*If you remember, Lamy had to use "Heaven Herb" on herself before due to her HP getting low. This was from the same game and happens right after this. So her HP was getting low because of the guardian her ally Pekora gave her.
EX2: Remember the Botan moment from before, where she says "I'll be a wall for everyone!" in a 3v3 game? The reason she said this was actually because she played "Guardian Sealed Jar" before, and thus you can see she has a guardian icon next to her on the top right. So she was playfully speaking to the fact that she drew the opposing team's aggro. And indeed, she ends up taking the brunt of the opposing team's attacks and dies first for her team. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2603)

Apocalypse

There's an optional setting in the game where when a certain number of turns pass, the apocalypse starts. When this happens, the background changes, and there's a high chance of drawing "devil" cards, which have various effects, most notable of which is just straight up receiving unblockable damage. It's basically a "hurry-up" mode - a way to stop games from being too long. Another fun interaction is that since devils count as cards, you can actually: draw a devil, take damage, devil gets discarded/used so you draw another card, you draw ANOTHER devil, take damage, and repeat. So you can simply die from endless devil damage, all from one card draw!
Pekora/Matsuri/Polka didn't use the setting, so there are no examples of it. But I explained it in case one of them uses it in the future.

Playing The Game

Within the RNG, the game has some interesting mechanics and strategy, which I've tried my best to cover. But if you want to understand the streams fully, I ultimately recommend playing the game yourself, as there's many unique card effects that I haven't covered. In addition to effects, knowing the card names and draw rarity adds much needed context to what the players are saying. There are times when players will play multiple powerful rare cards in a row, which adds to the hilarity.
The game is free and playable on browser and mobile. There's a "bible" on the top-right where you can check card effects and rarities, and modes where you can play vs AI, with friends, or with strangers. This game is very fun with friends, but is boring alone IMO. However, there's no tutorial, and the UI is confusing, so you should familiarize yourself with the game first before introducing it to friends.
It also has a NND style chat, so if you're wondering about the floating text that sometimes appears, it's the hololive members typing it.
The game uses odd "God"-themed terms for things, which I avoided using in the guide to prevent confusion. But you'll need to know them to play the game, and the players themselves make references to it, so here's a chart:

God Field's Terms	Regular Game Terms
Artifact	Card
Curse	Status
Miracle	Spell
Sundry	Consumable
Ascension	Death
Seizure	Death by Heaven
Forgive	Allow (allow an action to happen without playing any cards in response)
Pray	Pass (if you have no attack cards, pass and draw a card)
Bible	Glossary / Card Library
Gift Rate	Draw Chance
Phenomena	Global Effect
Prophet	Player
Hidden Melee	Private Lobby

Again, one of the charms of the game is how it makes the players "role-play" as they attack each other with unethical cards combos and statuses, so I'm hoping that whoever TLs any clips can capture the nuance and wordplay well. Thanks for reading!

Bonus: Stream Highlights

Pekora vs Shion. Pekora gets excited as she draws "Dangerous Pestle", a 30ATK light card, a powerful and unblockable card which has the effect of randomly attacking anyone in the game. Shion's HP is below 30. Pekora gets cocky towards Shion as she uses it. Can you guess what happens next? https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5610 The attack hits herself and ends up losing the game soon after because of it.
Shion vs Pekora. With Pekora at 46HP and Shion at 17HP, Shion's chances look dim. In addition, she takes Pekora's "Gravity Mace", an 11 ATK card, without defending, instead countering with "Saturn Ring", a defence card that counterattacks with double the damage that she just took to the attacker as stone element - so 22 stone damage is dealt to Pekora. But Pekora still has 24HP, so the situation still seems bad. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=6025) Until Shion plays a "Waterfall", a 25ATK water spell, which is just enough to make a nearly perfect sudden comeback against Pekora.
Pekora vs Matsuri. Pekora attacks with an insane 31 attack combo. And the base attack card, "Ghost Sword", has lifesteal, so the whole attack gets lifesteal as well. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=4040) But Matsuri counters with "Reflecting Sword" which reflects non elemental attacks. Now, not only does Pekora have to deal with the attack, but Matsuri gets "ownership" of the attack, meaning she gets the lifesteal as well.
Matsuri vs Pekora, Matsuri has been building up MP all game, making Pekora think that a massively strong spell was coming, which forced her to waste turns playing defensively. But it was just a bluff, and Matsuri exchanges all her MP for HP instead. Pekora says "Eh? Suddenly your HP is at 90... wait a second, weren't you saying you were gonna use that MP for an attack?" (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=4319)
Team Battle: Polka noticed that Pekora did not block an attack in the previous turn and plays the "weakest" card in the game. Botan says "There's no way you'll die, right?" https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3357 Self-explanatory.
Matsuri vs Polka: Polka inflicted Dream onto Matsuri earlier, so Matsuri cures herself with "Heart Shell". Then Polka hits her with "Bogus Spear", which inflicts "Dream" upon damage. Polka then teases her about making her dream forever in a creepy voice. Later, they have a cute convo about waking up when Matsuri finally cures herself again. https://youtu.be/8qhduadHdtM?t=2502
5th Gen FFA: Earlier, Botan used "String of Fate" which causes a random "Phenomena", which is like a global status effect. It caused "Mushroom Outbreak", which causes everyone to lose control of their attack for 3 turns, as the game automatically plays random attacks cards for them. This causes Nene to unwillingly attack Lamy with an overkill combo, consisting of "God Sword", a 30ATK card, and "Angel Bow", a +15 ATK card, making a total of 45ATK. Nene blames Botan for it. And shortly after, Botan is forced to use "Magical Stick", an attack which uses all your MP and deals double your MP's damage. But the Mushroom Outbreak makes her target herself. (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=1911)
5th Gen FFA: Polka and Botan both buy a card from Nene. Then Polka plays "Nocturnal Broom" on Nene, which removes 3 cards from the target's hand, and just like "buy", the hand size permanently gets smaller. Watch as Nene's hand size shrinks, and as Nene laments the loss of her "Diamond Sword". (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=2170)
5th Gen FFA: Nene despairs as she dies to Polka's 10 light damage Meteor spell. But Nene's "Ascension Bow" which she had in her hand, comes into play, which has the effect of activating as a "75% 30 Light ATK" card upon dying. (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=3524) She manages to take out Botan with her death, but misses against Lamy and Polka. This card is able to turn the game into a draw.
Polka online ranked vs Horse. Polka sells "Gold Club" to Horse, a 1ATK card that costs 25$. It's a card that basically only exists for buying/selling. Horse counters by selling it back. But Polka counters by selling it back, thanks to having an extra sell card. (https://youtu.be/UH8eQRXbpUU?t=3575 )Later in the game, Horse actually sells it back once more, but Polka has another sell ready and immediately sells it back.

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Complete Vladimir guide, made by EUW multiseasonal multiaccount challenger Elite500, every matchup, every build, every playstyle. + AMA

Quintessential Vladimir guide for season 11

Table of contents:

Setup one, the way of the gigalord:

Summoner spells:

Runes

Keystone:

Minor runes, domination:

Secondary runes, sorcery:

Build:

Starting item:

First mythic:

Second item:

Third item:

Fourth item:

Shoes:

What the hell is the last item?

Setup two, consistency king & lategamegod:

Summoner spells:

Runes

Keystone:

Minor runes, sorcery:

Secondary runes, Inspiration:

Build

Starting item:

First mythic:

Second item:

The real Second item:

Third item:

Fourth item:

Last item (if you were a chad mejais buyer)

How to choose between the two setups

Early laningphase and how to play matchups

Level 1 – 5

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How do I get the wave to push into my direction so I can lasthit?

First recall

How do we do this?

Post recall

Midgame

Lategame & Teamfighting

Ability maxing

Combos

Skin Choice

General tips

3 Round Mock Draft 1.0

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[Standard] Jeskai Showdown of the Skalds

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[God Field] How the Game Works for EN Bros

About God Field

Basics

Elements

Tip for Following Along as a Viewer

AoE Attacks

Spells

Statuses

Common Keywords

Consumables

Money

Guardians

Apocalypse

Playing The Game

Bonus: Stream Highlights

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