Dominion Strategy

sillypotter plays hsypsx on Sunday, October 31st at 1700 UTC.  For info on the other quarterfinalists seehttps://dominionstrategy.com/2021/10/28/dominion-online-2021-championship-final-8/ Thanks to SSLY for the interview and translation. Original Japanese text can be found at http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=5058.msg21038#msg21038

SSLY: Hi everyone! Here is a text interview with sillypotter, one of the quarterfinalists of Dominion Online Championship 2021. Congrats, sillypotter! First of all, what is your handle name “sillypotter”?

sillypotter: Just a pun. I don’t have any feelings or meanings at all, it could be anything funny. If I was going to be interviewed like this, I should have chosen a nice name. I have read the Harry Potter series up to the 2nd volume.

SSLY: Could you tell us more about yourself?

sillypotter: I live in the Kyushu region of Japan, with my wife and a lot of bear plushies Rilakkuma, the character I use as my icon. My family gave each of the dolls a unique name. 

SSLY: I remember when your Twitter account was identified. You all of a sudden made a post on Dominion in a timeline with plenty of RTs of Rilakkuma. Why do you love it?

sillypotter: I accomplished the way to the leaderboard for the first time, so I reported with pleasure. While the experience gave me a goal of achieving the top of the game, I was too dull to make a new account to seek tips on Dominion and revived an old one for Rilakkuma. I know you were surprised by me.

I began to love it in times of trouble. When my wife was in the hospital, I gave cute one to comfort her. It was at first no more than a cute plushie, but I love Rilakkuma all the more because my wife got out of the hospital, and nowadays the bear sleeps by our side. My home is bustling with dozens of Rilakkuma I’ve got from a claw crane game and bought in Rilakkuma stores.

SSLY: How did the pandemic hit you?

sillypotter: Very bad. Stuck in my house, I have abandoned membership of the gym I used to go to, and  not dined out for a year. The pandemic has affected my both physical and mental health. While my weight has decreased by 10 kg, I’ve been playing Dominion in an enarvated condition.

SSLY: Oh my god. I hope you got cheers from the championship. Can you review the match of 16? What do you think is a decisive game/choice?

sillypotter: G1 started with buying Flag Bearer, and I kept Flag until the end. I watched a commentary by cha-shu afterwards but couldn’t find any chance for Jean-Michel to get back the Artifact. It was very lucky for me.

SSLY: Any other impressive matches of yours?

sillypotter: R4 against flowlight0, and R5 against cha-shu.

R4 was the wall I had to get over because I was beaten by Mercury444F 2 years ago and by yudai214 last year. Both were Japanese matchups, and flowlight turned out to be another Japanese I hadn’t played with. I got nervous about the jinx. I think he played better than me, though the G7 alert rang and I finally won thanks to a lucky first-player advantage.

The match with cha-shu had preoccupied me since the bracket was out. He won the Grand Market Grand Prix where my grade was 4th. I felt a bit rotten about the too early matchup, but had everything done through the week to perform at my 100% potential. 

SSLY: Among the top 8 players, who do you pay much attention to, and why? If you were not, who would be the champion?

sillypotter: Mercury444F is the first one that comes to mind. As I said, I lost 2 years ago by a substantial margin. I want to see in the final how close I got to him.

Another is nasmith99, the defending champion who earned the honor of lv. 70+. No doubt that odds are for him. I was beaten in GMGP.

RTT is a natural enemy to me. I was overwhelmingly outnumbered by 6-23 in the rated record. By the way, I don’t play Captain very well.

SSLY: Do you have any logical/superstitious moves you always do when you have an important match?

sillypotter: I go out for a walk before matches. Walking for about 15 minutes refreshes and puts me in a very good state for the fight. I have a lot of snacks and drinks for a long match, especially a soda candy, because I hear that glucose helps my brain think better. Among them my talisman is Hachimitsu Kinkan Nodoame — a honey kumquat candy! (note: It is shortened to “Hachi-Kin Nodoame”. The sound “Hachi-Kin” in Japanese means $8.)

SSLY: Can you talk about your Dominion career? What drove you to Dominion, with whom/how have you played? 

sillypotter: I bought a couple of board games to play with my friends. One of them was Dominion. Opening the box, I played with a friend who also knew a little about it. I was always collecting Markets, and didn’t buy Chapel, which I didn’t get the point of. I was terribly beaten by his Bureaucrat BM, Council Room BM, and Workshop Gardens. Later on I googled for basic strategies and played a bunch of games against the bot on Goko. I learned expansions from its campaign mode. We didn’t have Landscapes at that time, so it was easy to learn the theories.

I played a year later with him. I had improved as much as I could manage a King’s Court Minion deck to hit $24 & 3Buys, and I won 10-0 that day. After that he never wanted to play with me. Over the next few years I got busy and left Dominion.

SSLY: Have you played with your wife?

sillypotter: No. Her answer was that she doesn’t understand the fun of neither Dominion nor shogi. My career resumed when Nocturnes was published. When I made no progress before lv. 60, I read nk377’s and sangatsu’s helpful blogs again and again. Finding sangatsu streaming on Twitch, I always watched him and commented on what I couldn’t understand. From his streaming, or spectating Stef, etc, I learned strong steps of engine-building. In 15k games I reached the top of the leaderboard. at which my wife was happy with me. Even after the achievement, I for sure got better through conversations with cah-shu or yudai in the making of books which sangatsu led. From a recipient of information I became a co-author.

SSLY: What has been the most memorable Dominion game you have played?

sillypotter: A match against yudai last year. Despite playing in the Championship, He and I had a comfortable game chat. I vividly remember that I won a board of Pillage lock and that yet I was overwhelmed by his beautiful engine in the last game. He mumbled the phrase “Silver is Curse!” throughout the match.

SSLY: What is your most favorite and least favorite card?

sillypotter: My most favorite is Spice Merchant. Scrap is also beautifully designed. I like support cards smoothing out a deck like them. I also like villages but the recent ones are too strong to be called supporters. Black Market is also fun. It looks swingy but actually requires skill.

I don’t think Donate and Possession should exist. Villa, Cavalry, either. I dislike the cards that feel like breaking the beautiful mechanism and rules of Dominion. Capitalism and innovation are bad, too, but I forgive them for now that they don’t often spoil the game.

SSLY: Of all the cards, which do you think is the most difficult/challenging that you are the best at all over the world?

sillypotter: Procession is the most challenging. you must not miss it with Horse. I don’t like some boards where the player who first Procession a Horse will win. If you are bad at Procession, then try to solo-play “Grim Parade”, a recommended set of Dark Ages, until you gain 8 Provinces within 10 turns! (see games ID: 87545455, 87552884)

However, if there were a card at which nobody is better than me, I would always be on the top of the leaderboard.

SSLY: Any rampant speculations about the next expansion, Allies?

sillypotter: Hmm, no idea. I just don’t want a broken card that would end a game within 9 turns, though.

SSLY: Do you have a favorite game other than Dominion?

sillypotter: I’ve loved Tetris and shogi since I was young. I’ve been playing Tetris 99 recently. I think I’m good enough to get 1st place at least once every two games, which might be compatible with lv. 58 on dominion.games. I often play Shogi Wars too. I have shodan, maybe around lv. 53. I know a lot of people who are good at Shogi/Igo/Mahjong play Dominion very well.

Dominion is the only game I’ve played seriously, though. I’ve spent a fair amount of time playing Tetris or shogi, but I’ve always been an intermediate player because it’s OK as long as I enjoy it.

I play Carcassonne, MTGA, Seasons, Mahjong, etc. I think Carcassonne is the most beautiful board game, in the aspects of appearance, strategy, and balance of skill and luck. I sometimes play 2-player games on BGA, but I can’t remember the tiles.

SSLY: If you take a sightseeing trip, or a grand tour abroad for ultimate mastery of Dominion, where do you want to go?

sillypotter: Dominion is a digital game and even Japan is abroadish for me, unlike for those in Tokyo. I want to join To-Domi, which has a league in the 4p format. When I sometimes play 4p with its members, I never win.

For sightseeing, I want to visit France. Visiting Musée Rodin, I will see Rodin’s The Gates Of Hell and works of Camille Claudel, and walk relaxed in the gardens. Monet’s Water Lilies in Musée de l’Orangerie is also very wonderful. I’ve been to these museums in the past, and I was intensely impressed by each of them. Other museums I’ve been to before didn’t match my senses.

SSLY: Do you have any words for your fans? Whose fan are you?

sillypotter: 

(note: this image is drawn and allowed to be cited by cha-shu. Special thanks to him.)

SSLY: What advice do you have for those looking to improve? In addition, a few players aspiring to the top of the leaderboard ask you for something helpful.

sillypotter: Solo-play engines to draw all your deck. Watching streaming and spectating a League or tournament match are also good, and acquire skills of strong players from the activities. When you have a talk after the game, discuss a lot. Play a number of games!

If you want to be at top, you have to be determined to devote thousands of hours to Dominion. Unless you are blessed with a talent or environment, play at least 10k games or so. Then just aim for the moment when Freaky and nasmith99 are slacking off.

SSLY: Finally, how do you want to dive in the concluding phase of the tournament?

I have to take a rest before the next match. I haven’t slept so well since the match with cha-shu that I see dark bags under my eyes in the mirror right now. Performance is dependent on how focused I am on playing. Otherwise I could practice, but yeah certainly I’ll perform better in the match if I rest now. Winning against hsypsx will mean a prize and 2 more matches. I’ll put all my effort into the very next match, to enjoy this tournament until the last day. Keep your eyes on!

SSLY: Thank you very much for answering the interview!

Note:

Rilakkuma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rilakkuma

To-Domi: To-Domi (The Tokyo Dominion Circle) started as The Dominion Circle of The University of Tokyo a long ago, and was one of the groups in which many top Japanese players in Tokyo gathered every weekend.

Hachimitsu Kinkan Nodoame:

JNails plays Mercury444F on Sunday, October 31st at 1600 UTC. For info on the other quarterfinalists see https://dominionstrategy.com/2021/10/28/dominion-online-2021-championship-final-8/

strumphf: Hello, everyone! I am strumphf, and today I’ll be interviewing JNails, who has once again made it to the top 8 of the Championship! Congratulations, and hi!

JNails: Howdy. Thanks, I’m happy to be here.

strumphf: Once again, JNails is very lucky with very professional interviewers who lose their audio midway through their interview. If we’re counting correctly, this is the fifth interview you’re doing with us?

JNails: I do believe so. Maybe I’m just bad luck. Last year in 2020 we had the same problem of the audio dropping and me redoing the interview.

strumphf: Thank you for your patience. This is our annual check-in with you. You already shared things about yourself in the previous years. Is there anything major you would like to share that happened with you in the past 12 months?

JNails: Nothing major that isn’t captured by the previous interviews. I got a dog. I got a new puppy, she’s 6 or 7 months old now, her name is Bijoux.

strumphf: We heard her in the audio that is now lost. Maybe she’ll pipe up again.

JNails: Yeah, she was barking up a storm, I wouldn’t be surprised if it starts again. She sees a car go by and needs to let it know who’s boss.

strumphf: I’m trying to recall what I asked already. Let’s start with your typical favorite and least favorite card in Dominion. Is it still Necromancer and Swindler?

JNails: I think Swindler is a given. That card is just evil. That answer is never going to change. No surprises there. As far as favorite cards go, it’s harder because there are a lot of cards I really enjoy, honestly, and none of them stand out as the best. I think in the past, I’ve listed Necromancer, Exorcist, Black Market. All of those are still on the short list for sure. I guess to say something different, I really enjoy a lot of the cards that really shake up the kingdom a lot, that really make you fundamentally rethink some of the basic elements of strategy. Things like Gamble, or Capitalism, or Way of the Mouse or Way of the Chameleon often have that effect as well, where you really have to fundamentally rethink a lot of stuff. There are novel interactions that show up in those games that you might otherwise not be familiar with. I enjoy that aspect of a lot of those.

strumphf: All right and then we talked about how Gamble is one of those enigmas to me, that I really don’t know how to play. Then we talked about the other tournaments, right? I was asking you about what other tournaments apart from League and the Championship you enjoyed playing.

JNails: I played in a few of the mixes. I really enjoyed the Hand Mix tournament, the one that was themed around hand size. It had a lot of draw-to-X stuff, which is a lot stronger there than usual, so you had to do a lot more of it. That was fun. Friendly Mix was really nice. Attack cards are generally some of the most unfun cards, so Friendly Mix was the one that didn’t have any attack cards. That was great. No Terminals Mix I enjoyed because I won it. But I think as far as theme, that was number three on my list as far as mixes go. I also really enjoyed WELP. The Way, Event, Landmark, Project tournament. I really enjoy four landscape games, so I’m looking forward to EEEE, I don’t even know how you pronounce it, the one that nasmith [[also in the top 8 for DO2021]] is hosting. There are just a bunch of E’s because it’s all events. I will almost certainly enjoy the kingdoms that have four Events in them.

strumphf: I’m looking forward to that too, because for me, I find it hard to distinguish between Events, and Projects, and Landmarks. I understand that there are thematic differences, but to me, they are all just the same, I guess. Fun or not fun.

JNails: The Landscapes take the longest to learn. At least that was my experience. I think it’s because they show up less often, proportionally speaking, than your average card. I still remember needing to read the text of each individual Landscape long after I had learned all of the Kingdom cards. To anybody who is interested in the Landscapes, definitely do play with them even if you haven’t learned those expansions yet because I think the Project and the Events are probably some of the most fun aspects of Dominion.

strumphf: Definitely. What do you find to be the most challenging card to play with in Dominion?

JNails: I think in the past I’ve said Develop, and that’s still a tricky one. I just missed a Develop pile out in the Round of 64. It’s a toughie. Also, honestly, a lot of those ones I listed as my favorites just a second ago also are really difficult. Part of what I like about them is because they so radically affect the kingdom that it’s hard to just use your normal preconceived ideas on strategies. Gamble, Capitalism, and whatnot. Actually, to bring this up, so I remember. I did just manage to throw League finals this past season in the championship match versus nasmith. I just needed to win the last game to win the Championship. I had a guaranteed win the last turn of the last game. A simple play with Gamble. I totally flubbed it with everyone watching. And despite having played with Gamble a bunch and enjoying the card, clearly I’m still not perfect with it.

strumphf: We all saw it. We were all sad.

JNails: I know, I know, I know. I’ll get my revenge this season.

strumphf: You’ve talked about how you got into Dominion before and your “Dominion career.” In your opinion, what have been the highlights?

JNails: Still one of the big highlights of my career, I think I mentioned it last year – I got to play Dan Brooks in the Tournament Big Money, which was really significant to me because I basically learned Dominion watching his videos on YouTube back when I was still a novice. Actually getting to play him in a tournament environment was great. I kind of had a similar one where I also watched Burning Skull’s How to Play Base Dominion videos when I was learning. I got to play him in the Base only tournament. Playing Burning Skull in a Base only environment was scary. We went 2-2, so apparently his videos taught me something. Maybe too much. He’s un-strategically teaching people how to beat him in Base tournaments. Beyond that, I also enjoy League. I don’t know if any particular moment is significant, but I’ve enjoyed a lot of my experiences playing in the League in the last year or so.

strumphf: Is there anything about League that you would change, if you could?

JNails: Definitely nerf nasmith. I think he’s just a little bit too OP. Create a Supra-A League and just put him in it by himself.

strumphf: C’mon, you almost beat him!

JNails: Give everyone else a fighting chance.

strumphf: You almost beat him in the finals. It was just this Gamble.

JNails: I’m kidding. Playing nasmith is always fun.

strumphf: Oh yeah, another thing I was curious about. (1) how much do you play? And (2) when you don’t ladder, but you have a set match do you have a pre-match routine or anything?

JNails: I play pretty often. I wouldn’t say every day, but probably most of them. Playing random ladder matches is something I like to do in my free time or between things I have to do. I know a lot of people discuss ladderphobia and they’re worried about laddering because they view it as a really competitive thing. For me, I don’t try to focus too much on the games. Usually it’s something to do for fun. For me, it’s a very low-stress environment. I treat those very differently than League. If I’m playing a League or tournament match I’m properly focused and paying attention and stuff. But I get a lot of casual ladder games in between those. As far as routines go, I don’t think I have any particular ritual or anything I do for luck. Usually it involves setting up OBS making sure I have the recording set and ready to go. Grab a glass or two of water so I can stay hydrated without having to take breaks. That’s about the size of it.

strumphf: Specifically for the Championship, do you prep at all? Or is it just another tournament?

JNails: I do remember for the Round of 16, which I just played, I made sure to add March to my ban list versus sangatsu. That seemed strategically important. Beyond that, I don’t think I do too much prep for any specific matches.

strumphf: Was that an insider I didn’t get? I feel like I always have to be on my toes with you because you are so quick.

JNails: Oh no, no. Everything I say is fully in earnest. I’m not wanting to make my little remarks.

strumphf: I know, I know, You keep mentioning that every other day.

JNails: I don’t know why people don’t believe me. 

strumphf: I don’t either. I don’t think you’re a person with a sense of humor.

JNails: Very serious.

strumphf: Going back to the Championship. In your experience, are there notable differences between this year’s Championship and the last one last year?

JNails: This year it’s Castle themed. All the individual sections of the bracket are named after the Castles.

strumphf: What was it last year?

JNails: I don’t remember if they had a theme last year. This year I’m representing the Sprawling Castle, which wouldn’t be my first choice of favorite Castle, but we’ll make do with what we got.

strumphf: What is your favorite Castle?

JNails: Opulent Castle has the best art and I think is nifty as payload sometimes and that can be interesting. I also enjoy Humble Castle because the choice of when to take it is not obvious. Even if you want Castles, you don’t necessarily want to buy Humble Castle very early. That’s an interesting dynamic. I think I would like to rep Opulent or Humble if I had the choice.

strumphf: But no one asked you. Very rude.

JNails: Yeah, I know, right?

strumphf: I saw your quarter final this year is actually a repeat from two years ago. How do you feel about that?

JNails: Well, it can’t go worse! Mercury444F beat me pretty soundly two years ago when we last met in the Round of 8. I got 4-0’d. And then last year I also lost in the Round of 8, but 4-1, versus Freaky. So unfortunately, I think that means I’m likely to lose 4-2 this year if I were to extrapolate from the trend so far.

strumphf: Well, we don’t have to.

JNails: Hopefully right.

strumphf: I feel like there’s so much more I want to ask you, but I feel like I just need to invite you on the pod for a longer interview some time.

JNails: Sounds good.

strumphf: Thank you for now. I don’t know if you have a date for the match yet.

JNails: Mercury literally just messaged me shortly before I got on this interview and I haven’t gotten back to him yet. Very soon we’ll have a date scheduled.

strumphf: We’ll all be there to watch you and cheer you on. Good luck and thank you for taking the time.

JNails: Thanks, and thanks for conducting the interview.

strumphf: Bye!

JNails: Peace.

Transcription and translation of text interview by terracubist. The original audio of the interview can be found here: (podcast link coming soon).  hsypsx plays sillypotter on Sunday, October 31st at 1700 UTC.  For info on the other quarterfinalists see https://dominionstrategy.com/2021/10/28/dominion-online-2021-championship-final-8/

hsypsx’s YouTube channel can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE4esLI0i-jkijEdUL1oEcQ 

terracubist: Hello. Would you like to introduce yourself, and perhaps most importantly, how to pronounce your name?

hsypsx: I actually don’t know how it’s pronounced, it’s whatever you want to pronounce it in your head as. In case people are interested, I just randomly generated usernames until I got one that was pretty unpronounceable, so it’s intended to be that way. So anyways, a bit about myself I guess. I’m a grad student right now on the East Coast, so I don’t have a job. Any other hobbies…like, I used to play a lot of Ultimate Frisbee, actually, before the pandemic, but that kinda shuttered down. I’ve been trying to find some pickup games recently, but I haven’t gotten back into it. That would be my main other hobby, I’d say. 

terracubist: Yeah, I feel like pickup Ultimate is big with grad students. My brother’s in a group with people also doing that. It’s a nice fun activity for people who mostly sit indoors all day.

hsypsx: It’s a nice form of exercise, and you don’t have the super athletic freaks playing, they’re off playing actual sports. Wait, uh, Ultimate Frisbee is a real sport.

terracubist: What is your favorite and least favorite card in Dominion?

hsypsx: Let’s start with least favorite. Let me see my banlist… my least favorite card to play with is Catapult. It’s just these games where both you and your opponent have to open Catapult a lot of times, and you have a lot of $2 hands that you can’t do anything with. I just really don’t enjoy that. As for favorite card, I think I enjoy alternative sources of draw. Cards like Shepherd and Storyteller, I think. There’s a lot of little tweaks you can do to play them right, and I really enjoy that part of it.

terracubist: So I’m familiar with some of the tweaks you can do for Shepherd, like topdecking and stuff, but what are you thinking of for Storyteller?

hsypsx: For Storyteller, it’s a lot of the same ideas. Gear and Storyteller work together pretty well, because you can stash aside a Storyteller. Because one of the main problems with Storyteller decks is that you need a lot of Treasure, so if you don’t have a Storyteller in your starting hand you dud. So it’s just to guarantee you have a Storyteller in your starting hand. It’s a lot of the same things that help Shepherd.

terracubist: That’s an interesting take. I haven’t heard the two compared to each other so hm. Would you say that they’re interesting because they’re different, or that you like the challenge of them, or that you outplay people on boards with those cards?

hsypsx: If I’m on ladder I think I’ll generally outplay people with those cards, but if I’m playing in a tournament where everyone knows what they’re doing I definitely can’t say the same thing. But I just enjoy playing with them. 

terracubist: And what would you say you find the most challenging card or card-shaped object to play with in Dominion?

hsypsx: Well, the first thing that comes to mind is Donate. But generally I think it gets a bad rap. A lot of play with Donate in my mind is Donate down to getting the best five card deck you can as quickly as you can a lot of times. So it’s actually not that bad. Another one I find challenging is Governor. I still don’t think I play Governor properly, but I think I was playing a lot worse before.

terracubist: Before what? Did something happen?

hsypsx: I think I’ve slowly gotten better at playing with Governor. Governor’s been out for a long time. 

terracubist: Do you think that the tradeoffs between giving your opponent a benefit is the difficult part, or picking between the three options, or…?

hsypsx: I think one big thing that helped a lot was aku chi said a lot of Governor games are a race to five Provinces. And I hadn’t really thought about that before. It makes sense because your alt-VP gains are kinda limited. Obviously there are exceptions, but before that I was randomly flailing around and I had no idea how many Provinces I should take in certain positions. That helps simplify the endgame calculations a bit. I think in general I’ve gotten better at endgame positions since I’ve started playing, which is a long time ago.

terracubist: Like in general, non-Governor games?

hsypsx: Yeah, just in general.

terracubist: So I guess that’s a nice transition to our next question, which is: can you talk about your career in Dominion? How have you developed as a player, are there any memorable tournaments or highlights that you’d like to share, like “oh, there was this one time I did well in last year’s Dominion Online tournament” or something.

hsypsx: I don’t think I’ve actually had that much success in tournaments before this year. I actually hadn’t entered that many tournaments before this year. I would always just play ladder and not enter any tournaments. I’ve actually been playing for a long, long time, since 2011. Maybe not as long as some of the other quarterfinalists, but I think longer than most of the others.

terracubist: I mean, game’s been around since what, late aughts, right? So that’s a majority of the game’s lifespan. 

hsypsx: Yeah, exactly. I played on Isotropic, but to indicate where I was, even, I looked at my most recent Isotropic games and there’s one where I’m playing WanderingWinder. My first $5 is Merchant Ship, and this is a Kingdom with Minion and Border Village and stuff. *laughs* WanderingWinder did not get any Merchant Ships that game. 

terracubist: Perhaps an indicator of how good that card is.

hsypsx: Yes, exactly. In terms of most memorable games, though, I remember maybe the most exciting game of Dominion I’ve ever played was the one game where I rolled King’s Court, Goons, and Masquerade in the wild. This was before Masquerade got changed. I was so excited, I played this game out, my opponent wouldn’t resign until they had literally zero cards in their deck. And I was actually supposed to meet someone for dinner and since this game took so long I was kinda late to meet them. I didn’t tell them why I was late.

terracubist: Playing games on the Internet, bullying strangers. 

hsypsx: *laughs* Yeah, exactly. I was bullying this poor opponent, who wouldn’t resign. They could’ve resigned. 

terracubist: That’s interesting, I’ve never heard anyone talk about actually pulling it off. 

hsypsx: My understanding is that it was killed after Royal Carriage came out, because Royal Carriage + Masquerade was a lot easier to pull off. But I’ve actually been on and off for 2011. I wasn’t playing around the time Adventures and Empires came out.

terracubist: So you took a break for school or something and then you came back.

hsypsx: Yeah, I’ve taken a lot of breaks throughout the years. I’ll play for a few months at a time, and then not play for a few months at a time. Or years, in the case of Adventures and Empires. It was really jarring, because the last expansion I had played with was Guilds, and I come back and there’s these sideways objects. They were really cool to play with; they did really neat stuff. 

terracubist: Very different though. The first time I opened Empires I was like “what is this?” Do you think that this current stretch that you’re on is your peak, or do you think you played better in the past, or where do you think this matches up to your past.

hsypsx: I mean if you look in terms of rating, I’m playing at a higher level than I was in terms of that. I’d say this might be my current peak. I’ll try to get some more peaks but I don’t really see how that would happen to be honest.

terracubist: Well, this is a good spot to be in, top 8 at Worlds.

hsypsx: Yeah, with a fair bit of luck along the way. I don’t know if you saw any of my matches.

terracubist: I might’ve seen one, I don’t remember which one.

hsypsx: There was one match against jakkdl where it came down to game 7 and I basically had to have a miracle draw on the last turn, and I got it. Otherwise I would’ve been out of the tournament.

terracubist: That’s the way the game works. What cards were involved?

hsypsx: Basically my Patrician had to find my Market at the bottom of the deck, and then my Market had to draw several other Markets for me to afford the stuff I needed to afford, and that’s exactly how it played out. 

terracubist: So everything just lined up perfectly.

hsypsx: Yeah, exactly. 

terracubist: Sometimes those hot stretches of luck are all you need.

hsypsx: Yeah, and I hope it continues.

terracubist: Only three more matches left?

hsypsx: Theoretically. It could just be one. It’s probably likely one. 

terracubist: Who’s your next opponent?

hsypsx: sillypotter, who’s probably the top Japanese player I’d say.

terracubist: Which I don’t believe is scheduled, but hopefully by the time we finish transcription we will have something to point to. This question wasn’t on the list but it’s a nice thing to close out with that truffles did a few years ago, which was to let people have a catchphrase. I think we’re going to try and expand that and say is there any statistical project or card that you would want to shill for, anything you want to say while you have your thirty second soapbox.

hsypsx: Hmm, let me see. This is very open-ended, huh?

terracubist: Yeah, it’s a chance for you to say “Gold is a good card, actually”, or whatever your crazy take is. Or if you just want to use this time—you’re a mod of this tournament, you could comment on how it’s been, running the tournament.

hsypsx: Yeah that’s probably an easier question for me to answer. It’s hard for me to come up with a good catchphrase, don’t want to let people down. It’s been a lot of fun to mod this tournament. There were a lot fewer hiccups than I anticipated. A lot of it was due to the prior work that truffles has done, so I gotta give a lot of credit to her and all the other mods who have helped out along the way. I’d just like to thank everyone for playing in the tournament. 

terracubist: That’s a good thing to close on. You have what, a team of 10 people managing 500?

hsypsx: This year there were only like 300. So technically there’s 8 mods, one per region or “castle”. That’s the idea we came up with this year. It’s basically a team of 8 mods, and truffles still helped out a little bit. 

terracubist: Still impressive.

hsypsx: As I said, standing on the shoulders of giants.

terracubist: Yes, every year we get better. Alright, well thank you for taking your time to interview.

hsypsx: Thanks, and thanks for conducting these interviews.

For info on the other quarterfinalists see https://dominionstrategy.com/2021/10/28/dominion-online-2021-championship-final-8/ The podcast of this interview is available at https://dlw.podigee.io/28-do2021-nasmith99. Nasmith99 plays hakha3 on Friday, October 29th at 1930 UTC

strumphf: Hello everyone, I am strumphf and today I’ll be interviewing nasmith99 who has once again made it to the top 8 of the championship and is also the defending champion. Congratulations and hi!

nasmith99: Thank you, and hi.

strumphf: We already had a wonderful interview with you last year where you told us a little bit about yourself. Is there anything you’d like to add now, a year later? Is everything still the same or has anything changed that you might wanna share? 

nasmith99: No, I mean things are mostly the same. I’m gonna graduate in the spring so that’ll be exciting. I’ve done obviously more Dominion stuff although I think I’m probably not as fixated on it now as I was a year ago.

strumphf: Why is that if I may ask? Is it because you already claimed so many wins?

nasmith99: Yeah some of it is that, I guess some of it is just not feeling maybe quite as interested in the game as I used to although I do still feel like it’s a really fun game at times.

strumphf: What other hobbies do you have besides Dominion?

nasmith99: I was getting a little bit into chess. Although that can be a bit frustrating because I feel like it’s something that I can sink a bunch of time into and not really get very good at. Other than that I just like doing classwork and reading. 

strumphf: I’d be curious to know if during the past 12 months you’ve come to love Tournament a lot? Is it still your least favourite card? And what’s your favourite card?

nasmith99: Well, Tournament – I guess it’s kind of hard for your opinion of a card to really improve when you don’t play with it. I think I actually did play maybe one or two Tournament games in, I think it was draft mix where we didn’t have banlists for that tournament. But yeah I would still say that’s my least favourite card. Favourite card is probably Cavalry. I think last year I was kind of waffling but I think Cavalry gives you so many decisions and there’s really a lot of room for optimization there. I mean really the only kinds of boards where Cavalry makes the kingdom less enjoyable would be ones with procession on them for the most part. But yeah I would say that that’s probably my favourite card.

strumphf: No change. What do you find to be the most challenging card to play with in Dominion?

nasmith99: That’s a good question. I think a lot of gainers are actually pretty challenging because you have to make choices of how heavily you want to invest in them versus in other cards, like how much you wanna invest in economy versus those gainers and that can be pretty tricky. I think Cavalry, for some of the same reasons I layed out is also pretty tricky. I mean also with a lot of boards you have to decide how much you wanna focus on economy versus trashing, that’s obviously something that comes up in a lot of kingdoms and that can be difficult. Dominion overall has a lot of nuance and difficult decisions.

strumphf: Yeah, I always find it hard, all this thinking and counting. I really love the game but it’s just so hard sometimes. I don’t know if you’ve talked about this before but how did you get into Dominion?

nasmith99: So, I think it was maybe Freshman year of college – we had played maybe just a few games with the base set and somebody had mentioned that they had played on the online client. Then I made an account and got really into the game from there. I think the number of irl Dominion games I’ve played is probably less than five total.

strumphf: Wow!

nasmith99: *laughs* Yeah, I just really got into the online version and went from there. I don’t fully remember how I went about learning all of the cards. I think I spent a certain amount of time just reading wiki pages. You know now there’s the wiki improvement project but back then the wiki pages had so much bad strategy advice so fortunately reading that kind of stuff didn’t permanently damage me. At least I hope it didn’t.

strumphf: It doesn’t seem so! What would you say in your opinion, what have been the highlights in your “Dominion career”?

nasmith99: Definitely winning the championship last year was a big win, I felt really good about that. Also just the League. I do really like League just because you have kind of a constant stream of matches that you can play that are always gonna be at least fairly competitive. That’s definitely a good way to practice. I’ve done quite well there and that’s something else I’ve felt some accomplishment about. 

strumphf: For those of our listeners who don’t know, just a reminder, you are the defending League champion as well and have been winning two League seasons in a row now. So congrats on that as well! So successful! Do you have any – I have a sneaking suspicion about this – what have been memorable games you’ve played?

nasmith99: The last game of last year’s championship was definitely very memorable although probably more for the significance, you know, because it went down to a game seven rather than anything about the game itself. I know – so this was the WELP tournament where you always play with one way, one event, one landmark and one project – the finals for that against Mic Qsenoch – and I think a lot of people have taken note of this but this one endgame – I think the board had Sleigh, City Quarter, Way of the Pig, a bunch of stuff. I think if people see the board they would remember it. There was this really difficult endgame and I spent a lot of time thinking but I eventually found a way to thread the needle there. There was kind of exactly one way to win from my position and I was able to find it. So that ended up being a really cool game. I did end up losing that match but I was still really happy with being able to find that.

strumphf: Yeah that was the one I was thinking about just because both of you have mentioned it in the past as being one of the most memorable games where you both were of the opinion that you were playing at your best. Do you have any rampant speculations about the new expansion, the next one: Allies?

nasmith99: I’m actually one of the playtesters for Allies, so…

strumphf: Ok *laughs* Let me retract this question! I did not know.

nasmith99: Anything I say would not be speculative so I’ll refrain from saying anything.

strumphf: Ok, you’re not allowed to.

nasmith99: No.

strumphf: Ha, on that note – are you a masqued player?

nasmith99: Am I a what player?

strumphf: Are you a masqued player? Are you playing in the masqued player tournament?

nasmith99: Oh! Ok.

strumphf: We are talking now about things you’re not allowed to talk about.

nasmith99: That’s true. Well, I guess there’s a masqued player match going on in a little while so maybe you’ll know by how quickly I hop off here…

strumphf: Haha, “I have to leave now!” No, I’m trying to trick people into telling me if they are playing or not. It hasn’t been successful so far.

nasmith99: I have a little bit of speculation about who some of the players are.

strumphf: I have no idea but I love it!

nasmith99: I think I have a vague guess about who JNails and xyrix are but I’m not gonna reveal that.

strumphf: I’m taking notes. Going back to the championship, in your experience, are there notable differences between this year’s tournament and last year’s?

nasmith99: I don’t think so. I think the only real format change was the partially randomized seeding this year. Although I don’t think that really qualitatively changed the tournament much. Overall I would say it’s been very similar. I mean of course since it’s single elimination there’s a lot of randomness and once you get into those higher rounds anybody really could beat anybody so you never really know who’s gonna make it towards the end.

strumphf: There’s another thing that I always wonder about – I don’t know if that’s a weird question at all – in your bracket, if a strong player is eliminated do you feel relief or regret that you’re not gonna meet them potentially?

nasmith99: Maybe a little bit of relief although a lot of times it’s gonna be like you’re playing one difficult opponent versus another. Those later rounds, you’re really not gonna get any particularly easy opponents.

strumphf: That makes sense. Well, I won’t keep you any longer. You will meet either hakha3 or rsilverstein12 in the next round, and I think that’s gonna be determined now-ish or tonight at least.

nasmith99: I think it started fifteen minutes ago.

strumphf: Good luck…

nasmith99: Thank you.

strumphf: … and thank you!

nasmith99: Yeah, you’re welcome.

strumphf: Bye.

nasmith99: Bye.

This interview of recycle_garbage was conducted by strumphf for the Dominion League Weekly Podcast. You can find the podcast here: https://dlw.podigee.io/

recycle_garbage’s music can be found on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf2XvgHDmR3brNC02EUF7TQ or https://elliottharrison.com/

recycle_garbage: Hello!

strumphf: Hi, good morning.

recycle_garbage: Morning. How are you?

strumphf: I’m good. How are you?

recycle_garbage: Good, yeah. I just couldn’t sleep cause of the heat. It’s so hot here. So I just woke up anyways at like 7 o’clock.

strumphf: Oh, I’m sorry. 

recycle_garbage: No, it’s fine, it’s fine. Cause I’m in Spain right now, it’s between 30 and 35 everyday. Super hot.

strumphf: I’m a little nervous because I want to ask you so much and we only have one hour.

recycle_garbage: It’s fine, I’m ready.

strumphf: As you may be aware, I have ten little warm up questions which are either/or and the first one is: waffles or crêpes?

recycle_garbage: Crêpes.

strumphf: Eurovision Song Contest or European Football Championship?

recycle_garbage: Ummm… football? I don’t know what the first one was at all, so the second one I guess? I don’t watch football either, so — sorry, so neither, I guess.

strumphf: The next one may be a little political, I don’t know. The Flemish region, or the Walloon region?

recycle_garbage: Both I guess? I like both. Do I have to pick one or the other? I don’t speak Dutch, so probably Walloon for now, because that’s where I’d be working.

strumphf: Dragons or unicorns?

recycle_garbage: Dragons.

strumphf: Orange juice or apple juice?

recycle_garbage: Orange.

strumphf: Would you rather be tired or hungry?

recycle_garbage: Tired.

strumphf: Would you rather watch a movie or a series?

recycle_garbage: Series.

strumphf: Butterflies or tigers?

recycle_garbage: Butterflies?

strumphf: Boons or Hexes?

recycle_garbage: Boons?

strumphf: Dominion Online, or in person?

recycle_garbage: Online.

strumphf: Cool cool cool. So what is the meaning behind your username? Or why did you choose it?

recycle_garbage: I actually prepared something…one second…Ah yes, so when I was like ten years old I just made a Steam account to buy the Orange Box (my friend told me I should buy it) and it had like Portal, Half-Life, and Team Fortress and I just made a kind of random username. Kind of like gamesou I guess, I just keep the same name as I had when I was like ten years old. So I don’t know why, but I find it funny to kind of recycle the same name. So yeah, it’s the same one I’ve had since I was ten years old, so for like seventeen years, the same username.

strumphf: What about the garbage part?

recycle_garbage: I don’t know, you can go back in time and ask me when I was a kid, because I have no idea. It’s just “recycle_garbage”, whatever my kid mind came up with at that moment.

strumphf: I can relate, for me it’s the same. I maybe wasn’t ten, more like fourteen but I can relate.

recycle_garbage: Yeah, my friends are like “make a username, quickly” and you just think of something and it just sticks.

strumphf: Yeah, it does. Well I mean as long as you’re happy with it, that’s all that matters I guess. Why don’t you have an avatar on Discord?

recycle_garbage: I just don’t really use Discord well, I guess? I’m not an avid user. Actually I only signed up for Discord because the pandemic started — actually, I  made a Discord account because I wanted to report this one person on Dominion Online. I was like “ah, I really don’t like this person so I’m going to report them” and that’s really why I downloaded Discord in the first place. I didn’t use it before then and then I only use it for Dominion. I don’t really know how to use it well, honestly. That’s all, I never use it for anything else. Oh, recently, I used it to play Jackbox games with my friends. Do you know Jackbox? It’s like these board games that you can play online. My friends are in Canada, so we used it to chat and apparently it has better video chat than other programs like Skype or something? I have no idea.

strumphf: Hm. I just find it curious that — I guess it’s not so curious that a lot of people have Dominion avatars. So two things: one, I like to imagine what my avatar would be if it was Dominion-related, and secondly if someone joined right now I wonder how many people with Dominion avatars have theirs because they couldn’t have another, because it was already taken by someone.

recycle_garbage: I see. You have to have a unique one, is that why?

strumphf: Well mine is just not Dominion-related.

recycle_garbage: Yours is from a Disney movie.

strumphf: Yeah, it’s Disney. Since you haven’t been with the League as long I couldn’t find any info on you as I could with the previous interviewees so if you’d like to share a little about yourself, as much or as little as you’d like, that’d be nice.

recycle_garbage: I’m 27 years old, male, classic demographic of Dominion I guess. I’m from Canada and I live in Belgium now. Before I was in Switzerland so I do speak some German if that ever becomes a thing. I’m a Musician, I do contemporary music. I was trying to find some relatable composers that people would know, but I’m percussion, like I play drums and percussion and stuff. I can link my YouTube if people are curious what I do. Some composers people would know are John Cage or Steve Reich or Philip Glass, Morton Feldman, John Adams, these people are more the kind of music I play. Also a lot of German composers. Everything is on Google of course, but I’m doing more contemporary music. I do classical also in orchestra, but the contemporary is more strange things. Also sound poetry. So I moved to Switzerland to study, I did my Masters degree in Basel and then I’ve moved now to Belgium. And I was also working a bit in Germany as well; I was teaching drums in Baden-Württemberg so I had my little Schlagzeug class there and that was really fun.

strumphf: I have to ask, why did you study in Switzerland? Was it a very good school?

recycle_garbage: Yeah, exactly, a very good school. They have the money to hire teachers from other countries. So all the really good German teachers and all the really good French teachers, they all teach in Switzerland, which is kinda funny. So if you want all the best German teachers you wouldn’t necessarily go to Germany. Maybe some of them are there, but they have a much higher salary in Switzerland. So my teacher actually was living in Freiburg and then he was commuting every day to Basel.

strumphf: Yeah, that’s how they do it. Live in Germany or go shopping in Germany. 

recycle_garbage: I don’t know if you know this place that is called Dreiländereck. I was living in France and studying in Switzerland and kind of buying my food and working in Germany so I was living in all three countries. And it was just a five minute bike ride for all the three countries. I would buy a baguette and then go to Germany and buy a bratwurst or go to Alnatura and then go to Switzerland and study.

strumphf: Getting the best of three worlds. Nice. The last question out of the general section is the most important to me personally: What is your favorite color? If you have one.

recycle_garbage: Blue!

strumphf: Okay! Reaction cards.

recycle_garbage: It used to be pink, but I think it’s just blue because it’s more calm. But yeah.

strumphf: That’s true. So you haven’t played as many people in League, but do you know who you’ve played most games against? Do you have a guess?

recycle_garbage: jonts?

strumphf: Yes!

recycle_garbage: I think I’ve played him twice or three times, I think it was him.

strumphf: No, that’s correct, it was him. When and how did you start playing Dominion? 

recycle_garbage: When I was in Canada for Christmas in 2016, 2017 I think, my friend bought the base game plus Intrigue. I really remember it well because I had a flight the next morning at 10am, and we played till 5am. It was just an addictive game. “One more game, one more game” and then I had to get up super early to just catch my flight. But it was just so much fun we were like “one more game, one more game”, basically. And after I got back to Switzerland I was looking for a way to play online. There was not a way to play online, I think, yet, but I read somewhere that it was going to be soon. So I guess it was just in-between, they were starting a new one online. And then I just waited until it started, until I could play online. It was super fun.

strumphf: It’s interesting. I think I read that before and heard that before, people playing the first game and not being able to stop. 

recycle_garbage: I don’t know if you’ve ever played Civilization, it’s like the “one more turn” syndrome. It’s just like “it’s one more turn, it’s fine, it’s just five minutes” and then you fast forward to five hours later and you’re like “ah crap what happened!?”.

strumphf: I feel like I have that now, where I can just hit the “Ready” button whenever a game is over. 

recycle_garbage: Yeah, exactly.

strumphf: So, two questions that are kind of similar: Fireonice wanted to know what your journey was like to becoming the top-level player you are today. And kind of linked to that, a little different, but linked, seanahan wanted to know how you managed to move so far up on the leaderboard without playing League.

recycle_garbage: I don’t know. *pauses, laughs*

strumphf: Sorry guys! *laughs*

recycle_garbage: I don’t really think I’m a top-level player, but I guess I could maybe say something about learning. So at the beginning — hold on, I wrote something, let me think of it.

strumphf: You’re so prepared!

recycle_garbage: I was thinking about learning plateaus. Like in the very, very beginning you just miss all the known strategies, like Workshop/Gardens, and you just lose to that repeatedly so you learn the basic strategies and later the second plateau is learning how to build an engine, reading some guides and of course losing a lot and stuff like that. And I was thinking eventually — I felt like I was getting pretty good at building and learning how the game works, and then you sign up for maybe a tournament or League or something against really good players. So again a big learning plateau. Like for me there’s definite periods of stagnation where I’m not getting better at all, and others where I’m getting challenged so I’m getting a lot better quickly. So I had this feeling when I played the game that I’d be losing every game, and I would kind of learn something and then move on into the next place, so I would get better quickly. So I feel like for me it’s these kind of learning plateaus. When I joined League I thought I was pretty okay, and then I realized like half the really good players are chilling in League and not at all playing in ladder, so that was pretty shocking to me. But I thought it was super cool, I didn’t realize there were so many good players in the community who were just not active in the online game. Because for the longest time I thought there was only the online platform, I didn’t even realize there was this whole other thing that was happening on the Discord and stuff. And I guess the only reason I signed up in the first place was just to report one player that I thought was super abusive. I was like “I’m going to sign up and report them and stuff” and so I made a Discord account. That was like a year later, I never used it, and then only when the pandemic started I was like “Ah, there’s this thing, I’ll check it out, what’s going on here.” Thanks to COVID I spent more time at home, and more time playing Dominion I guess. That’s what happened.

strumphf: I see. 

recycle_garbage: As far as moving up the leaderboard without playing in League, I don’t know. I have no idea. I can say that I did play a lot of Magic when I was young, so maybe that helped? Some of the skills are kind of transferable from other games, so that would be a quicker learning curve. Of course you can’t make a board game in a bubble, so any game is coming from other games and kind of — it’s a new idea, but some things are transferable. Like if you play any amount of card games — like what, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Magic, I don’t know all the card games — but I feel like some skills are transferable, like counting and memory and basic stuff.

strumphf: Yeah, that makes sense. I just think it’s hilarious that you’re talking about plateaus and stuff, but you entered League in C tier, but fine. *laughs*

recycle_garbage: Well yeah, I don’t know, but I had played a lot before. I already had played a bit.

strumphf: You must have.

recycle_garbage: I have no idea. But I had periods of course where I played a lot, and then periods where I didn’t play at all, like a year or something. So it wasn’t a consistent learning growth, I can’t really say exactly how it works. 

strumphf: How much do you play now? How often?

recycle_garbage: Not that much. I stopped playing League now, because I think it’s just too much of a time commitment, because it’s hard for me to schedule stuff now. Now that curfews lifted and things are opening up again, I have my friends and stuff and also cause a lot of the players are American, which means European evenings, which is a bit inconvenient for me, so I would rather not block out a whole evening to play Dominion. I’d rather play in the morning, when I’m drinking coffee. So I don’t know how much I play. Maybe five games maximum a day? Not more than that. But also not that often, maybe two or three times a week? Not so much, yeah. Usually I honestly have breakfast and coffee, and in between teaching I’ll play a few games.

strumphf: If you had to choose a favorite card, what would it be? Or do you even have a favorite card?

recycle_garbage: I wrote something down for this. Some things I like are the Events Delay, Gamble, and Save. Just to make some kind of more complex strategies which are more fun. And I don’t know if this is a thing, but also Baker which gives you the coin token so you can afford $5. I just like that it’s balanced. Some boards you look at it and someone has 5/2 and you have 4/3 and it feels just like you’re so far behind, and it’s only turn 1. So I kind of like the Baker for that, just to balance it a little bit.

strumphf: You just like the Baker for the Coffer, and then you wouldn’t buy the Baker?

recycle_garbage: Nah, not really, I don’t like the card that much. I just like the little coin token at the beginning, that just feels nice I guess. You just have way more options. Like I think a broader choice — I get stuck in this thing where you have — in most games it seems like there’s just one, maybe a second correct thing. So most of the time you and your opponent open the same two cards, so with the coin token it’s a different variable, so you have more options. More choice, more complexity. 

strumphf: Do you have a least favorite card? Or multiple?

recycle_garbage: Yeah, I have my banlist. I have a lot of cards I don’t like. If I could expand my banlist I would probably. Probably a lot of Attack cards, I guess. Probably anything that makes it feel unbalanced. Like, something I wouldn’t want to win with or lose to, if that makes sense. Like, you win with it and you feel like — I don’t know if there any specific card, like maybe Possession — but you win and you feel like “ah, oh well”. It isn’t like “yeah, we did it!” it’s more like “oh… great”. I don’t know.

strumphf: Can you give any examples?

recycle_garbage: I can give you my banlist, I wrote it down somewhere. Ah, here it is. Possession, Tournament, Cultist, Rebuild, Familiar. The Events Tax, Keep, Palace. If I could add more, also Torturer, Swindler. So basically a lot of Attack cards. Tournament made me a bit annoyed. It just seems like too obvious of a goal. You have to quickly buy Tournament, then Province so it’s just too straightforward, and I don’t like that. It’s not like it’s too difficult to do, but I like to have more choice with whatever. Anything that encourages a lot of a money thing, like Palace or Keep, can be fun sometimes. The thing for me is, if it’s only fun 20% of the time, I put it on my banlist.

strumphf: So do you have cards on your dislike list as well? And when do cards migrate?

recycle_garbage: For a long time I had Sauna and Governor on my banlist, and then at some point I realized there are cards I didn’t like more like Cultist and Swindler. Like, getting Cultist is so annoying sometimes. So yeah, I took it off, and then I saw it again, and I didn’t know how to use the cards any more because it’s been on my banlist for like two years. It was like “ah, these are cards you can play with. nice”. When I originally banned them was a long time ago, so kind of I guess I matured or whatever. I realized that Sauna is actually not very good, like in most games it’s completely unviable, so fine, I can play with it. Governor is really good, but I’ve been finding some ways around it. I feel like sometimes I was putting the blinders on, and going in one direction with that. Also not a good thing to do, I guess. 

strumphf: You are going to a lonely island and you can only bring the base set and one expansion. What would the expansion be?

recycle_garbage: I also looked this up, because if I have to be honest I don’t know the names of all the expansions. Because I went directly from Base plus Intrigue to online, and everything was just mixed together.

strumphf: Same! Same.

recycle_garbage: It’s like when you listen to music on shuffle, you wouldn’t necessarily know what album belongs to what. So I looked it up. Menagerie is my favorite one, I guess, like the animals are super fun. It adds a lot of variety, like with Cavalry and stuff. And also least favorite, I wrote Alchemy. Just this whole Potion setup is, I don’t know.

strumphf: So Base + Menagerie. You’re in good company. That’s what Mic chose as well. And gamesou as well. Huh. [I misremembered, Mic’s choice was actually Adventures!]

recycle_garbage: I like the theme also. The animals and such. It’s super cute.

strumphf: Yeah, it really is. So you mentioned you were playing tournaments. Do you mean before you started League? Do you play other Dominion tournaments?

recycle_garbage: No, I only played that one last year, the one that nasmith99 won. I played that tournament, and lost pretty quickly. It was the main one, just, uh, the Dominion tournament? I don’t know if there’s a name for it.

strumphf: Oh, like the Championship?

recycle_garbage: Yeah, exactly. It was the first one I ever signed up for. Yeah, that was kind of the moment I was like “wow, so many good players, so cool” because before I didn’t know about any of that stuff. So I played in that, and didn’t do very well, and then was like “oh, there’s a lot of options here in the Discord and stuff” because I had never used it before then.

strumphf: And now it’s just another question of time commitment — or are you in general just not interested in playing any of the other tournaments?

recycle_garbage: I like playing if there’s kind of a cash prize. It’s not like I need the money or something. I just feels like it brings a higher level of competition, and more pressure, and more concentration. For me if it’s not like a big prize for people in general, myself extremely included, you’re like “if I win or lose it’s kinda the same”. It’s nice, it’s fun. But I like to have a competition sometimes too. It also brings more people around, if you have a cash prize, is what I noticed at least. I played in the Grand Market Grand Prix, and there were a lot of Japanese players, which I never got a chance to play before, so I thought “oh cool, look at all these people”. So yeah, I never saw any of that stuff before and it’s just opened my eyes up, it’s cool. I expect they have their own thing going, of course with the kinda big language barrier, they have their own thing, which is interesting. 

strumphf: Yeah, that was definitely cool to see.

recycle_garbage: So yeah, just having a kind of prize brings more people in and makes them more motivated, is the qualities I like. If it was without the money I would also do fine, but it’s a bit harder to say without knowing everyone’s psychology, but I can speak for myself. I just know I’m not as motivated if there’s not a prize. I’m like “oh, why would I do that, I’ll just play ladder or something”.

strumphf: Alright, so for future organizers, if they want you onboard they need to give at least a Euro. 

recycle_garbage: Twenty Dollars, yeah. I also do other competitions too. Like music competitions and it’s just sort of the same. You have the kind of open competitions, which are just kind of for fun, and then you have the competitive ones where they give you a prize, twenty thousand Euros or whatever, where people really bring their A game. If you watch the Queen Elizabeth Competition for piano it’s a completely different level. Or the Chopin Competition, it’s like they have different levels of competitiveness. I don’t know, it’s really interesting, not going to get into the psychology or something like that. For athletes it’s the same as well. 

strumphf: Definitely. So why did you start playing League? Because there’s no prize money in League.

recycle_garbage: Because of the thing where I played in the tournament, I realized I was really actually not that good and “wow there’s so many good players, I should go play League and go play with these guys who are really good and learn from them”, basically, yeah. I think it’s cool. Now I’m getting more into the community and stuff and meeting people and making online friends and stuff, but it’s cool. I like that. I was just initially drawn to like, I don’t know, the level and stuff. Just this whole league of people who are playing really well and I didn’t even know about it.

strumphf: And then you managed to just win League in four seasons, too. Is that part of the reason you’re stepping away a little from it now? Kind of like “okay, done that”.

recycle_garbage: Somewhat. I’m very goal-oriented I guess, so that was like my goal. But yeah, also with everything opening up again, so…I feel like I have other commitments now. I said before I was a musician, so before there’s nothing to do, but now there’s concerts and stuff. And when I play concerts I’m busy for, I don’t know. Like I just have a really hard program or something, and I’ll be busy for a month, so I can’t really commit. My schedule is not 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. It’s like this week I’m super busy, the next week I’m not super busy. That obviously doesn’t work well if you’re trying to organize some stuff. Maybe I’ll come back, but mostly I just like playing online and in tournaments. Mainly the thing is the commitment I have to say, it’s the time.

strumphf: Since you’ve only been around like 5 seasons you only played around 20 people. Is there anybody you would actually like to play against that you haven’t played against yet? 

recycle_garbage: This question reminds of in like boxing or something when you beat the person, they’re like “who do you want to fight next?” I don’t know exactly, there’s so many good players, so really anyone’s who’s nice. I don’t know. I guess maybe Freaky? I don’t think I’ve played him before. I don’t know exactly, but I watched one game that they played and it was like clicking really fast, playing really fast. And I thought that was super interesting, I hadn’t seen that before. Especially in a tournament. Because I don’t play all that fast myself, I have to think. I was super impressed by that. Just the speed and also the thought — it was both extremely precise and also extremely fast and well thought-out, it was cool.

strumphf: Yeah I guess they don’t play League, so you’d have to enter the Championship again.

recycle_garbage: Yeah. I liked playing crabcat also. We had funny games. We both played non-conventionally, or something? Not sure if that makes sense, but we had just super weird strategies, and I thought it was just really funny. But I have to say also in League that it was my experience that I never had such weird games. Just things that I never thought could happen. Just things that are really weird. It’s hard to say specifically, but we had situations where I would be like “how did we get here, what’s going on right now” or when each person has like — I don’t know, there was some Knight thing, you know, the Knights, the trashing ones? I had one where I had a bunch of Captains and I had to get them in play to not get them trashed by Knights and just really weird stuff like that. And I think your deck is just 5 cards for the whole game, and you just have a bunch of Captains and the other person is just trying to trash your deck, but you have no deck at all so you make sure you don’t get hit by Attacks, like for Knights or whatever. But it’s just like, really weird I think. But it really works sometimes, which is interesting. There’s always more levels to the game than I expect, which is what I keep coming back for I guess.

strumphf: I’m not sure if I saw as many games between you and crabcat, but I always find them very pleasant to watch, because you have nice communication. I really enjoy that. 

recycle_garbage: Yeah, I like that as well. Of course everyone is there for that, but I like to talk a lot. And yeah, whether you win or lose, being able to say “ah, this is funny” or this happened, just I like to speak about what’s happening in the game a lot. I don’t know, not everyone likes that, but I really like to speak out or type during my games on my thoughts at least. I find it really fun.

strumphf: Speaking of losing, how do you deal with losing matches? Or games?

recycle_garbage: I wrote something for this — you have to not dwell on it too much. For me myself, everything I say is especially applicable to myself, I think to not dwell on it too much, and always think about what you could have done better. If you’re always thinking about your opponent or whatever, like thinking about what they did right, so in a positive light rather always, like “ah, they did that really well or they did this really well, that was cool and yeah, I could’ve done this on turn 4” or whatever. Think of it objectively, I guess, rather than subjectively, if it’s possible. But not to react too emotionally, that’s not going to help anything. So if you have a losing streak, “what have I been doing wrong these games”. I mean, each game has something that can be improved. Some games you just get unlucky, but that’s just part of it. If your conclusion is just “yeah, I was just unlucky” you can’t do anything, so whatever.

strumphf: Apart from the Captains/Knights game, do you have some memorable moments from League or Dominion in general?

recycle_garbage: I wrote something down for this, I have something for this… I wrote playing crabcat obviously. Oh, when I played jonts and nasmith I feel like I didn’t know how to use Storyteller properly, so both of them showed me in very dominant fashion how to use that card. Like, “ah cool, that’s how you use Storyteller”. For kinda money games to build really quickly and just get deck control super fast I never really — I mean, it’s like a card that I’ve used, but I think not properly after seeing them use it. Oh yeah, the two times in League that I played Noble Brigand against Sicomatic and nasmith. I just kind of went for that card. It’s not like a card I’ve went for before, or really bought too much. And it just ended up being this insanely good card. Just everytime I played it I’d trash a Gold. Or like at a critical moment taking the exact amount of money, it was just super lucky. It was like in the League I had this god-mode Noble Brigand, which I had never seen before. Then I had this one game against terracubist. I was first player and I had a lead on Stables, it was like a 6-4 split or something like that, and they had a Cutpurse, and I kept getting these draws — we had both trashed, obviously — and I kept getting these draws that were 3 or 4 Stables and 1 Copper, and they’d play Cutpurse, and that was my whole turn, I was just done. It was a single buy game, so I had the lead also on Provinces, so I was like “I should win, I’ll be fine” but their Cutpurse had superpowers and it was just obliterating every one of my turns. Every time I had one Copper and like 3 or 4 Stables — it was extremely dramatic. It was just funny to me. 

strumphf: Ah yes, the mythical Stables dud. 

recycle_garbage: Yeah, like having too many Stables duds the Stables and you’re like “ah mean, I should’ve thought about that”. The critical amount of Stables is like 4? I don’t know. 

strumphf: If you had to give advice to newer players, what would you say is the best way to improve?

recycle_garbage: Yeah, just watch the videos, I guess? The YouTube channels? Obviously the Discord is super helpful, I wish I knew about it before. There’s like the coaching thing, that looks really nice. I looked over the slides, really well organized, really well done. All the YouTubers, all the ones that speak as they play, I think it’s all super helpful. I didn’t know that there’s so much either, until I joined the Discord, and then I found the video tab and people post there a lot. I guess like WanderingWinder and aku chi. Oh yeah, also Mic Qsenoch, Lemonspawn. I don’t know so many Youtubers, I didn’t watch all of them, but those are some that I’ve watched some videos. I think it’s really nice, just to kind of self-narrate is pretty cool. I find it kinda difficult, but I find it cool that other people can do it. I’ve been a bit distracted sometimes.

strumphf: Yeah, I wanted to ask about that. You’re not self-commentating ever, are you?

recycle_garbage: I think I prefer just to concentrate. Also I was never thinking of myself as having an advantage in any of my League matches. I always thought I was like the underdog for everything. So I would try to bring my A game and really concentrate. So I was just listening to white noise stuff. Like I was basically as focused as I could be, though I was still making mistakes and stuff. I would prefer, at least for that moment when I was trying to play well, not to self-commentate, but I think now I would be happy to commentate other people’s matches. That seems like a fun thing to do, which I discovered recently also. 

strumphf: Yeah totally. I find that interesting. I feel like there’s two types of players, actually. Like the ones like you who say “I can’t concentrate if I have to self-commentate, this gets distracting” and then there’s the others. Or maybe I’m just extrapolating. I feel for myself I play much better if I self-commentate because I force myself to play slow. But I guess the former category just plays slow from the beginning, so I guess that’s the difference.

recycle_garbage: Yeah, I self-commentate in my brain. That might be a false dichotomy, there are some players who self-commentate a bit and some who never — I don’t know, I have no idea. Sometimes I find myself talking a bit out loud. So I could imagine myself doing it. I can see myself doing it if I had to. Just at that moment I wasn’t thinking in that way. And also I didn’t know anyone and I was a little bit shy, so I would not be like a person who’s like “woah cool, talking to a bunch of strangers about what I’m thinking about”. It is really too self-conscious for me. Unless I know everyone, “ah they’re all my friends, it’s fine”.

strumphf: Yeah, no, I get that. I get that feeling but also I feel like everyone who’s playing in the top level tiers is just interesting for other people to witness their thought processes and everything.

recycle_garbage: In any domain, the top people, it’s interesting to study how their brains work. 

strumphf: For sure. Okay, let me see… we’ve already covered so much. I’m very happy with us. We’re doing great.

recycle_garbage: Yeah, I was really organized. I tried to channel my inner German, just “I’ll be super organized”. 

strumphf: *laughs* I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you have thoughts on the structure of League, like the division size, the season length, etcetera? If you could have anything improved, or anything changed, would you make amendments?

recycle_garbage: Yeah, one match per week seems comfortable. That’s my only thought, sorry. I’m too new to have any opinion about this kind of stuff. I know some people have been around forever, and they have well-formulated thoughts. I came for a bit, popped my head in, and popped out, so I don’t have any — it all seems fine to me. And people communicate well, that’s the most important thing. I never had a problem. For me it went pretty well, no problems at all, nothing to complain about.

strumphf: I feel like people who’ve been around for a while have a chance to kind of build up some very specific grievances. 

recycle_garbage: It’s kinda like anywhere. Like those guys at your job who have been around for too long.

strumphf: So you already talked about this a little bit, but do you have any favorite games besides Dominion?

recycle_garbage: Seven Wonders, Agricola, Settlers of Catan, Twilight Struggle (the Cold War game), Pandemic, Troyes (the city in France, as a game). I also just go on BoardGameGeek or whatever and look at games. I just wish I had more friends and more money, you know. 

strumphf: And more time!

recycle_garbage: Yeah, and more time. I was looking at this game Arctic Scavengers, but I haven’t played it yet, so I can’t say anything about it yet. When I was younger, I made some friends and they were really into board games, and I was playing Magic basically at that point, and one friend showed me how to play Dungeons and Dragons, and he got really really into that, and we spent summers reading rulebooks. And then we got into the Wizards of the Coast stuff, where you can join the league, and it was super funny. Because we were just two kids, like 12 years old, and everyone there was an adult, like 30 years old plus, between 25 and 30 and we were just playing D&D with those kinds of people. And one of the guys we played D&D with, he owns a board game store now. My friend is doing more board game playtesting. I switched things and now I only play Dominion and not anything else, but I’m busy with studying a lot and playing and doing gigs and stuff. But yeah, I really like playing the board games stuff. Wish I had more time for that. Or being like a board game playtester, that’s super cool.

strumphf: So I like Seven Wonders as well. Do you play the multiplayer or the 2-player?

recycle_garbage: Both. 

strumphf: Which one do you like better?

recycle_garbage: Multiplayer, I think. 

strumphf: I should check it out.

recycle_garbage: I think the multiplayer one seems to have — I don’t know. I like sometimes when you have more people, there’s someone on the other end of the table and you’re like “ah, they’re about to win, guys we should do something!” and you can’t do anything, I think that’s a really funny situation. “Guys, do something, that guy is building all the science stuff” and no one’s doing anything about it. I think that’s super funny.

strumphf: Sometimes I feel like the 2-player version is a little unbalanced in that way. But I like the concept a lot. There’s so much going on in this game.

recycle_garbage: Yeah, it’s cool. They did something nice there.

strumphf: What are your other hobbies? I’m a little hesitant because I feel like with music and other stuff maybe there’s not a lot of time for other hobbies?

recycle_garbage: There totally is, especially recently. I do a lot of sports. I do like weightlifting, recently weightlifting, but more calisthenics before, like stuff on the bar like in the parks. You can do pull-ups and stuff. I used to do a lot of calisthenics, and now I do more weightlifting and then recently again more running because the gym’s closed cause of the pandemic. One of the reasons I was also really excited to move away from Switzerland is it was impossible for me to have a gym membership because it’s so expensive there. Like I had the university one for a while, which was okay. The gyms are pristine, which is amazing, but yeah. In Belgium I have the cheap one, and I can just go whenever, which is super nice. I can do that more. Then that closed, so I was doing just running. And now it’s open again, so I can go back. But yeah, I really like that kind of stuff. I don’t play any organized sports or anything.

strumphf: It’s interesting that you were in Switzerland for so long but didn’t pick up rock climbing or anything.

recycle_garbage: Yeah, I’m a percussionist, so I did rock climbing when I was young, but it messes up your forearms, makes them super tense, and I need that flexibility to play. My first year of university, when I was like 18, I would go to the rock climbing gym with my friend and then like “let’s go practice” and I couldn’t play. My wrist — I felt like I couldn’t bend my wrist anymore. 

strumphf: Aaaah, that makes sense. 

recycle_garbage: I just did a quick pivot. I actually had the rock climbing shoes and everything. But it’s just too much stress on my forearms and wrists, so I couldn’t do that anymore. I do other stuff, but I’m careful. Even when I’m lifting weights I’m careful to lift correctly so that it doesn’t hurt my wrist. If I ever have any wrist pain I just stop. Because there’s a bunch of fine muscles in my wrist that I need to protect. They say a lot of musicians shouldn’t do that. As a percussionist it’s a little more chill, because I’m not using the fine muscles in my fingers, but if you’re a violinist you probably shouldn’t be doing that kind of stuff. So yeah that’s a bit career specific. If you’re a pianist or a violinist you’re not going to be lifting weights. Running or swimming. 

strumphf: Or cycling.

recycle_garbage: Cycling, yeah. Anything that’s more cardio, less muscle stress.

strumphf: Or ultimate frisbee. 

recycle_garbage: I’ve never seen ultimate frisbee before.

strumphf: Oh, you just run a lot.

recycle_garbage: Yeah, I know what it is. I’ve just never seen it before. But I’ve heard about it.

strumphf: It’s horrible. For me personally. Oh, I forgot to ask this. Do you watch other players’ matches? I assume not often.

recycle_garbage: Sometimes, yeah. I think one of the first ones I ever watched was last year’s Championship match. When I first got into the community a little bit, I watched that match with nasmith. And I’ve watched some League matches, a little bit. But I feel like I don’t have the attention span, maybe. Can’t focus for that long. It’s too easy on my computer to just tab out. I kind of feel like if I’m watching I want to be actively involved, either speaking in the chat or talking, and at the beginning I didn’t know anyone, and no one knew me obviously, so that’s just normal. So just taking my baby steps to be comfortable. I’m not one to be just going and talking to people I don’t know. I prefer to be comfortable first and then I’ll speak a bit. And I like to be actively involved. So just passively watching is not my thing. Maybe commentating would be really fun.

strumphf: Please do! That would be so helpful.

recycle_garbage: I can commentate your match.

strumphf: That would be so cool. Go get that role.

recycle_garbage: Yeah, that sounds fun. And I know you, so it’s fine. That’s totally fun.

strumphf: Well I mean maybe not my matches. 

recycle_garbage: One of the most helpful things was when SamE commentated my match. He gave me some really good comments and calculated all the moments I could have piled out and missed it and stuff like that. I was really impressed by that so I think having someone commentate is really good for learning. Of course everyone wants to learn, I think. So that’s really helpful.

strumphf: Probably. You can only commentate in emoji. 

recycle_garbage: Alright. Maybe using Egyptian font on Microsoft Word and emojis. Just ancient hieroglyphs like a cat or something. “Oh cool, I really could’ve done that better, Black Cat”.

strumphf: So you said you’re not as active on the Discord? Is that —

recycle_garbage: It’s not intentional.

strumphf: I mean, I guess it’s intentional, but is it intentional, now that you’re bringing it up?

recycle_garbage: I don’t hate people, I’m just getting comfortable. That’s it.

strumphf: *laughs* What are your three favorite Discord channels, if you have favorites.

recycle_garbage: I don’t browse enough. I’m not a big forum browser person. I looked at the #videos one, I check that one for cool videos. #results, maybe? There’s also the Canadian Discord server, that’s pretty fun. There’s one where you can complain. That I thought was pretty funny. 

strumphf: Who else is there? I think I have a good grasp of the US players, but who else is Canadian? 

recycle_garbage: Lemonspawn, kaplane, xyrix, truffles? I can’t name everyone off the top of my head, but there’s a lot of them. fireonice maybe? I think a lot of them are expatriated like me, but yeah. Also interesting to me. Lot of Canadian ex-pats that are in the same age demographic. I don’t know if Dominion attracts a certain audience, but we have a lot of similarities for sure. 

strumphf: Yeah, well that’s definitely one thing I like about it. That it’s mostly people around my age, maybe five years younger or older and like people who have kids and stuff. I feel like that contributes a lot to the community being very nice and kind of civil. 

recycle_garbage: Totally, yeah. I was really impressed by how diverse it is. People are really nice. Also just there’s some things I was gonna say I just don’t understand on the server, to be honest. And taking the time to learn it, that’s on me. So there’s like a music thing, and like a thunderdominion, I just don’t know what that is, so I never even bothered to like …

strumphf: And there’s six music channels!

recycle_garbage: Yeah, I saw that. It’s like voting and stuff? 

strumphf: Yeah, I don’t get that either. 

recycle_garbage: It’s cool, it’s really cool. I just don’t know how to do it. Maybe someday when I take the time. Like I said, I’m not that big into using forums. And like Discord I’ve never really used.

strumphf: Yeah, same, it’s pretty overwhelming, I have to say. But I have my axe to grind that there’s six music channels but not one books channel. I’m trying to manifest that.

recycle_garbage: That’s actually a really good idea.

strumphf: I think we need to wrap up now, because you have your schedule to keep. But if you…

recycle_garbage: I have ten more minutes, if you want.

strumphf: Oh, nice. I wanted to know if you have anyone you would be interested in hearing an interview with. 

recycle_garbage: Ah yeah. I think anyone who makes the videos — really anyone obviously. That you’re doing the podcast is I think really cool. I’m really happy with it. It’s super nice. 

strumphf: Awww, thank you.

recycle_garbage: For me it adds a lot to the community, not that I know much about that. But I think it’s super nice to have different facets of something. To have the videos and the podcast, and the forums. I think anyone, anyone who wants to talk obviously. I wrote down some people who make content, like the videos, that could be interesting. WanderingWinder, aku chi, seanahan… or in general, crabcat maybe. Someone who speaks and self-commentates and is happy to talk a lot. I’m just curious to learn about the people in the community so you’re not just a random Discord user, with or without a profile picture.

strumphf: Yeah, I’m trying to give it a little variety. Obviously I’m only starting the whole interview thing. But I’m also just very very curious about everyone, basically. And that’s why I love the commentary so much because I feel like getting to listen to people helps me getting to know them a little. Which makes it of course kind of nervous with people like you, who I haven’t heard before. Of course, I saw you communicating during your matches, so I had the feeling that you were very nice. And I have the feeling that so many people are so nice and so friendly and so generous. I very much enjoy the community and the banter. So, adding to the list.

recycle_garbage: Yeah, anyone in the community is a good choice. You pretty much can’t go wrong. So if someone wants to talk and they want to come on, that’s nice I guess. I’m sure you have a thousand people you could interview. You have a pretty big resource pool. 

strumphf: I do.

recycle_garbage: I also played against gamesou once, I was going to say, too. So it was nice to hear him speak a bit. Like, he was super friendly too when I talked to him in French. I’m not going to ask questions if they don’t want to answer or don’t want to talk, if they want to be focused. But yeah, if someone wants to talk, I always like to ask “oh, where are you from?” and “what language do you want to speak”, just to be nice. It’s just nice to know there’s a human being behind the computer, that you’re not playing a program. So yeah, there’s a human aspect to it that I really like. You’re not playing a robot. And of course if you’re going to get mad, it’s a human being, so there’s not really any reason to … Like I mean in ladder people get mad sometimes. It’s just … it’s a human being you’re talking to, not a robot. Sometimes the anonymity, it can be a good thing, and also it can… yeah. There’s good and bad sides to both, but I like to have the human aspect a lot.

strumphf: Yeah, totally. How many languages do you speak?

recycle_garbage: Just three.

strumphf: Psh, “just three” *laughs*

recycle_garbage: My German is super rusty now, so that’s why I said “just” maybe. I was teaching and working in Germany, and my Masterarbeit [thesis] was in German as well. I felt really good about that. 

strumphf: Wow!

recycle_garbage: Yep. When I did pedagogy. But now I’m in Brussels and just speaking French all the time and I feel like I’m maybe losing it a bit. Hearing a lot of Flemish, too. Getting distorted a bit. But it comes back quickly, there’s some German speakers in Belgium. There’s also a small German community as well.

strumphf: Yeah, I saw that German is actually one of the national languages of Belgium, because of course you have 3.

recycle_garbage: Yeah, next to Aachen there’s a part that’s German-speaking. Like, native German-speaking Belgians. I’m guessing it’s very small. But it is interesting. I was thinking about going on Facebook for Deutsche in Brüssel and maybe there find some people and maybe I can do some teaching again. Yeah, some drum teaching in German, just to get back in practice.

strumphf: Well, if you ever get to commentate one of my matches, I ask you to do it in German.

recycle_garbage: Okay, fine. *both laugh* It’s gonna be awful, but I can try. I used to play the game… for two years I used to have Dominion in German too, I switched it back to English, but yeah. I had the platform in German for me, and didn’t know the English names for any of this stuff. I was like “what, what is this”. I also find it funny sometimes becauses some of the cards are different languages and it’s funny to see how each person pronounces them. Not to make fun of them, just to figure out how each person interprets the name. 

strumphf: Totally, yeah. I only recently made the switch to the English names, just for the self-commentary. It is similar for most cards, but then some cards are just strange. 

recycle_garbage: Yeah, that’s what translation is; it’s half art, also, so… It’s like “ah, I know the picture, but I don’t know what the card is called”, just staring at it. And then when you don’t know what a card does, you’ve used it for a year, but don’t know what it does, you’re like “ah, I have to read the text” and then “ah crap, it’s in English”. 

strumphf: Yeah, definitely. That’s one thing I learned: reading is very essential. It happens so often, like “what does that card actually do, why is it doing this” and then “okay, it says it on the card itself, it says it in the text”.

recycle_garbage: Like, normally, it doesn’t matter. And then once you’re like “ah, it really matters now”. And also some terms, I don’t know how deep you want to go, but some get oddly specific and you’re like, like for a reason too, so you don’t take advantage. Like there’s one card that would make it completely broken, so you have an oddly specific wording sometimes. That’s an interesting linguistic thing. Like “discard”… there’s different ways of discarding, or like “reveal”, “discard”, whatever, “peek”. 

strumphf: Yeah, “gain” and “buy”.

recycle_garbage: Yeah, just to avoid these terrible interactions. “Just peek at the card, oh cool”. Just flip the corner, so it’s not a reveal.

strumphf: Yeah, no, that’s right. I was just thinking, because I didn’t know you were actually from Canada, I would’ve adjusted my warm-up questions accordingly. Now you had to answer all those Belgium-related questions.

recycle_garbage: No, only one, it’s fine. I’m getting to know them. I think it’s good to know the country. But I kinda want to stay there for a while. There was one question you sent, your favorite card-shaped object. And I think I was gonna say if in 3 years, in 4 years, if I get my citizenship, it would be my ID card. That would be my favorite card-shaped object. But now I just have my temporary ID. Because I’ve been ex-patriated for six or seven years now, so I would be happy to have another citizenship one day. 

strumphf: So that’s the plan, to stay in Belgium?

recycle_garbage: Yeah, at least until I can get my citizenship. Because in Switzerland, I don’t know if you know, but it’s just impossible. It’s not part of Europe, and they just make the rules really difficult. Especially for musicians. You have to have a single income source, and musicians have many many different gigs. And it takes ten years, as opposed to most places in Europe it’s five years, to naturalize. It’s cool, I’d just be happy to have access to Europe more.

strumphf: Thank you so much, that was really fun! Thank you for being so candid with me. I’ll see if I can get the edit done today.

recycle_garbage: I did some interviews before and I was doing some work and I also did transcription and it takes such a long time. Lots of respect to terracubist.

strumphf: Yeah, totally. Especially with the first interview with Mic, which went on for so long. I had planned thirty minutes, and it went for over an hour. Much respect!

recycle_garbage: Thank you terracubist.

strumphf: Yes. Yeah, thank you again, and I hope you have a nice day at the beach now? Or no, you get to teach now, but after that I hope you have a nice afternoon/evening at the beach. 

recycle_garbage: Vamos a la playa!

strumphf: Yeah! 

recycle_garbage: Una cerveza por favor. Cool, thanks for having me. It was nice to meet you, and also maybe I can get to know everyone else in the community that’s listening! I’m happy to talk.

strumphf: Yeah, have a nice one! Bye!

recycle_garbage: Bye-bye!