Puzzle & Dragons: Japan version's new Sengoku Gods Pantheon useful links and impression (Updated with GameWith's Sengoku Gods team templates)

- Sengoku God Info by PAD Skoyozora in Chinese

- Sengoku God Card Ratings by Game8 | GameWith respectively below

Sanada Yukimura (R/R)
Leader Score: B | 5/10
Sub Score: A | 8/10
Overall Score: 9/10 | 8/10

Mori Motonari (B/R)
Leader Score: B | 6.5/10
Sub Score: A | 7.5/10
Overall Score: 9/10 | 7.5/10

Ishida Mitsunari (G/D)
Leader Score: B | 7.5/10
Sub Score: A | 8/10
Overall Score: 9.5/10 | 8/10

Maeda Keiji (L/R)
Leader Score: B | 7/10
Sub Score: C | 6/10
Overall Score: 8.5/10 | 7/10

Akechi Mitsuhide (D/D God/Devil)
Leader Score: B | 5.5/10
Sub Score: A | 8.5/10
Overall Score: 9.5/10 | 8.5/10

- Game8 with sample team templates for Sengoku Gods

- GameWith with sample team templates for Sengoku Gods

This pantheon is essentially going to be mainly used for subs, except the Light Sengoku God, going by the ratings. I think it is hard to argue with that as cards with orb changing AS and good awakenings like row enhance generally are going to be good subs.

As leaders, I find the leader skill of Red and Dark Sengoku Gods to be a little peculiar. Red and Dark probably should get orb enhance awakenings instead of row enhance to synergise better with their leader skill even though their active skill gets orbs enhanced. It is going to be hard to fit in subs with enough orb enhance and row awakenings to their teams. Then there is the issue of activating their leader skill along with rows; you'll need to match 5 with an enhanced orb, a row or more and combos to spike. One thing worth noting regarding their active skills is that they combo perfectly with Gadius and Typhon's board change to create a two colour board of their main orb and hearts. Edit: Only the Dark Sengoku God combos with Typhon's board change for a board of dark orbs and hearts.

The Blue and Green Sengoku Gods seem to be better leaders and they are reflected in the GameWith ratings. They obvious do not have the issues like the Red and Dark ones as I stated in the previous paragraph as they have different leader skills. They also have potential to form "system" teams like Cloud although those will be quite "expensive".

The Light Sengoku God's leader skill is interesting. I find it easier to visualise the leader skill as the 3 Kingdom God, Da Qiao & Xiao Qiao's leader skill with a 6 combo additional damage component. I think the active skill is a little weak so his going to mainly be used as a leader. Edit: As pointed out by Puzzle and Dragons Blog, orb refresh active skill is good against the locked orb mechanic.

Puzzle & Dragons: Japan's Hunter x Hunter Battle Allstars Collaboration REM: Juggler, meet your new clown friend (Updated with Ging Redemption instruction and Gon, Killua buff link)

I had a Killua account from the first time PAD had the Collab but have since discontinued it as I find the play-style a little boring. It's nice for it to return as my current account that I'm playing had not roll the Collab REM or clear its dungeon yet.

This time round there were some nice updates to the the REM gold eggs, especially Gon's ultimate evolution who seems more viable with the Leader Skill change. Gon's ultimate evolution Active Skill is also Vegito which can be useful against Extreme King Metal Dragon invades and along with Gon's good awakenings, he makes for a pretty solid green row team sub.

The silver eggs were buffed as well but I don't think anyone stand out other than Kurapika for the 4 turn delay Active Skill. Leorio is the silver egg that got an ultimate evolution and while he is suppose to be used to clear binds, his Active Skill only offers bind recovery for 1 turn which is not very useful. Check out astalotte's translation on the card updates from the PAD subreddit and her other post about the new cards. 

The new Gold egg, Crazy Clown, Kite looks close to the power level of Juggler at first sight. The other one, Ging Freeccs is a card you can get if you also play the Hunter x Hunter Battle Allstars mobile game and more information on how to redeem should be released later. It will probably be something similar to the Fat Chocobo promotion for the FF Collab.

Card Ratings

- GameWith's card ratings for the Collab REM in Japanese

- Game8's card ratings for the Collab REM in Japanese

I thought Kite was going to get S rank like Juggler for Game8's tier list but the tier list has not been updated while his individual page listed him as A+. Maybe it might change again once players get to try him out and I still think he is a very powerful leader.

Overall, I don't think the Collab REM is worth rolling. The best cards are gold and they are all mainly leaders with Gon and Kite being the best IMO. As always, gold eggs are probably very hard to get so if you are not lacking in leaders, I think you can probably skip it. Do still check Game8's tier list before the Collab ends if Kite ends up in S rank and see if you will to try rolling for him. With the new Monster Points(MP) system, the silver eggs can always be sold for 3K MP if you have no use for them.

Update: How to redeem Ging post by kyot from Puzzle Dragons Forum. Gon and Killua leader skill got buffed and their attack multiplier should be about 5 now with additional HP and RCV base multiplier added respectively. Information at PAD subreddit by astolette.

A F2P-player-who-bought-the-2-Adventure-modes's current Hearthstone Decks as of July 2015 (Added an update on Paladin, Shaman and Hunter)

I've gone back to playing more Hearthstone since the release of Blackrock Mountain Adventure. I have only spent money on the 2 Adventure packs so far and used gold mainly for packs. After trying arena for a while, I decided that I am not doing well enough to justify the time spent there when I could have just bought packs and be done with it.

I probably played for at least a year now and did manage to amass quite a number of cards from occasional playing to earn coins for packs. I also got lucky and had about 5-6 legendaries opened from pack so far but most of them were used in competitive decks anymore or only appeared in a deck list once in a blue moon. Thus, I dusted most of them for useful epics instead. Most of the "budget" decks from the past, like old school Zoo, are no longer viable and you'll probably need some epics for each class now in deck building as the game has already progressed quite a bit.

I enjoy playing a variety of decks and was able to build a competitive deck each for all the classes with the cards I have, using only legendaries from Adventure Modes. Here are the decks I am able to netdeck:

Magic Duels: Origins iPhone 6 Plus Impressions, useful links and a tip (Update post with comments on Story Mode, Duels Subreddit link and a link to decks)

I've played for quite a bit and unlocked all the game modes but I don't know if I want to continue more, especially on the iPhone 6 Plus. The game seem designed for a bigger screen like perhaps should be played on at least a tablet screen because even with the bigger iPhone, the 6 plus, the cards are just way too small on the screen. It is a very bad experience while playing, viewing the collection   and creating decks. My phone also got pretty warm while playing and the battery level also drop quickly. These are all common points raised in forums when talking about the game.

I've also read some complaints on forums about having to play skill quests which are like tutorials to earn more gold when the players probably already know the game rules and mechanics. However, I didn't mind them as I treat them like simple puzzles to solve and free gold is always very welcomed in a freemium game. The only issue for me is that they seem to pop up out of nowhere so you don't know how to go about "triggering" them, making you think you've somehow still missed out on some free gold.

With all the issues on iPhone aside, I think it is the best digital version of Magic that I've played so far. (Disclaimer: I never tried Magic Online) It is a good implementation of the free-to-play model with no cards gated behind a paywall that I know of so far. The game can probably last for a long time as long as more card expansions gets added and that definitely won't be a shortage of them because the CCG has tons of them. If you are a Magic fan, I definitely recommend trying out the game... but just don't try it out on iPhones.

App Store link
(Compatible for iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus, iPad mini 2 and above, iPad Air and above. Check out the App Store page for compatibility information.)

Update#1:
Useful Links
- Here's the Magic subreddit thread where people are discussing about the game.
5eNintendan brought up 3 interesting points about the game:
"Just so people know what they are getting into.

• There will be no Cross play/buy from IOS, Xbox, or PC. If you spend money on one and want to play on another, get ready to start from square one.
• There's still card limits, you want more than two of the same rare, welp sorry can't happen.
• The game doesn't have the full Origin set and might never have it. If you had plans to look at or test every new Origin card, well that won't be possiable. I remember reading only 80% of Origins cards made it into the game. Many of the other cards added are just fillers for more deck options."

- Full list of information by Honze7 from the Magic DotP subreddit.

- Full album of Duels: Origins cards from Lexx20 from the Magic DotP subreddit. A comment by Lexxx20 in the opening post:"I'm pretty sad we don't get Demonic Pact, Dark Dabbling or Dark Petition. No Eyeblight Massacre, Nightsnare, Touch of Moonglove and Tormented Thoughts. Was looking forward to try them." I googled them all and they are quite interesting cards but also all black... I wonder if other colors also have interesting cards that are not included in the game...

Tip

- I don't have much tips to provide but I think it is a good idea to play through the entire story mode first to build up gold and buy as many packs as possible to expand your card pool before attempting the daily quests/other modes with logically better decks because of increase card choices. The story mode decks are provided so you are basically limited only by your skills and luck with card draw. Of course if you are IAP-ing to buy packs, your experience might differ...

Update#2:
I initial thought I will stop playing after completing the story mode but I'm now at Lilliana's second part of the story but will stop there. Starting from Jace's story, I've began to get reminded of the frustration of Hearthstone Adventure Mode Heroic Mode matches and that is definitely not a good sign. There are complaints over at the new Magic Duels: Origins subreddit:
- "Stuck on Lilliana's story pt3"
- "Is it just me or are the campaign battles basically a game of..."

I also started noticing that the pop-up choice for spell targeting has very bad unintuitive color choices. While waiting for the player to choose a target, the "confirm" button is dark grey while the "finish" button is white which makes the "confirm" button look disabled and "finish" button looking like the button to tap. When the player taps a target, the "confirm" button remains dark grey with only a highlighted border around it. I missed some initial targeting on the phone screen and wasted some spells because of tapping wrongly, adding to the overall frustration when playing Story Mode.

- petercal with sample decks you can build using the starter pack cards you get initially from the No Goblins Allowed forum thread. Other posters shared are a few more other deck lists there too.

Puzzle & Dragons: Japan's Bikkuriman Collab's 3rd Revival (Update with link to card ratings by GameWith and Game8)

Here's the a link to my previous post on this Collab.

PAD Skyozora with the information on the evolution to some of the cards in Chinese. astalotte with the translations in a PAD subreddit post.

The best card in the Collab REM is still Echidna Rococo as a sub but overall, I don't think there is much incentive to roll if you're non-IAP, except perhaps to get a REM card for collection, even with the addition of 4 skill-up cards available in the collab dungeon: Echidna Rococo, Black Zeus, Heraclodin and Shaman Ra.

I've never used the silver egg rolls I got previously: Hera Maria and Shaman Ra. I have, on the other hand, used the yamaP card to cover dark on a Hathor or Light Kali team and even managed to max skilled him with king gold dragons. His ultimate evolution leader skill is hilarious and I will probably farm an extra copy for that.

Update: GameWith and Game8's card ratings for the Collab REM cards in Japanese.

Magic Duels: Origins out now for iPads AND iPhones!

App Store link
(Compatible for iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus, iPad mini 2 and above, iPad Air and above. Check out the App Store page for compatibility information.)

I was pleasantly surprised that the game is playable on iPhones as the earlier information only talked about iPads. I'll post my impressions on iPhone 6 Plus soon! Magic Duels is the card game, Magic: The Gathering, made into a free-to-play version where you can earn gold to buy packs in the game or spend money to buy the coins and get the packs faster.