I posted yesterday evening about a record I found. It’s a sealed The Blues and the Abstract. However, under the seal someone sharpied out any indication of stereo or mono, meaning it’s difficult to know if it’s an original or a later 60s pressing (based on the text on the back cover being identical between the original and stereo repress).

It might be a sealed first mono, but I can’t prove it without sacrificing the seal.

Has anyone ever come to this impasse? Did you break the seal? With a potentially original jazz record like this, its history if it turned out to be an original mono.

Dear Supercell,

I would like to provide you with this detailed guide to fix the botch job that is season 9 of Merge Tactics. Much of the community disagrees with many of these changes, with your daily "Sage is broken" post being replaced with "this season is broken." I mean come on Supercell, you don't really have to try so hard to get a good season, just look at Reddit and all of the concepts and discussions, people are literally giving away ideas for free. Here's a collection of many of those grievances.

(and yes I know Supercell won't read this, it's a joke)

(1) One Trait Ain't Great

To quote the anonymous Supercell employee who was mentioned in ReTaik's video about the single trait (and I'm paraphrasing): A single trait makes the game easier for new players. The game was already pretty damn simple. This isn't TFT, it was TFT for kindergarteners... and now it's like TFT for preschoolers. The problem with this game has never been its simplicity (or maybe it has, because one dominating comp is a pretty simple thing to wrap your head around... *cough* superstars). To sound like a broken record, building comps with certain traits is what made this game competitive and genuinely fun. The trait dummy made that even more difficult (and fun), allowing players to search for and come up with brand new comps on the spot every game. Now, if you go on Mergetactics.gg and go to Compositions, the page is just "full traits" instead of detailed comp combinations (compinations, if you will).

(2) Bugs

In a game where obtaining elixir is the key to winning, when there is a bug that takes away all of your elixir in said game, this should be fixed relatively quickly, right? Nah, in fact this has been a bug that has been in the game for awhile, it's just now become far more prevalent for some reason. And instead of an emergency bug fix, we got an unnecessary balance change that really just helped Builder and Warden (who nobody uses anyways).

It's been a week, and the fact that an Orb can just change into something completely different is another HUGE issue that needs changing. (supposedly this was fixed). 2 seasons ago, it took the team like 3 weeks to change the absolutely broken Witch glitch, so I don't have faith that these issues will be fixed.

(3) Merge Tactics = A three-legged table trying to host Thanksgiving... IT IS UNBALANCED!!!

(a) Quests and Rulers: Supercell, in an effort to prevent Empress from running away with the unlimited elixir you ignorantly gave her all of those seasons ago, you add Quests. And I'm not here to discount quests, I like quests, I think it's a good idea to keep things on an even keel. But some rulers' quests, even in the hands of the most skilled players with that ruler, are incredibly tough to get. Builder's, even with the new buff, is still at the mercy of RNG, with an elixir pump in round 1 making it impossible for him to get an orb until round 3 (while Empress and Duchess have 2 orbs already). Speaking of, Empress and Duchess need to have a huge nerf in their Quests.

Empress: 5 Merges for the first Quest / 20 Merges for the second Quest

Duchess: Win in 6s, or maybe even 5s, but probably 6.

King: Bring back his 12 HP, I can't even think of a decent rationale for this change.

And also, rewards from Orbs are not even close to being good on average. It's purely RNG whether in round you'll get Fisherman's Hook or Skeleton Dragon. Idk Supercell, make it more strategic! For instance, when you get a trait in your 3rd Orb, you already have a comp set in stone, and even for empress, it's hard to shift from it. The first orb should do this, or the second, allowing players to build around their additional trait.

Proposal: 1st Orb: Guaranteed Troop + 5 Elixir + one of the meh items. 2nd Orb: Guaranteed Trait + 10 elixir + Boss/decent item. 3rd Orb: Guaranteed Boss + 20 elixir.

Allowing guaranteed troops will create the potentiality for blocking, while more elixir will allow non-elixir generating rulers to catch up with Empress.

Another proposal: Make the tomb Tomb Queen a much better troop (INCREASE HER HP AND HER DAMAGE!) and increase the speed of which skeletons spawn from the tomb (by like 10%).

(b) Troops and Traits: TheBuilderMain made a fantastic post about this and comparing the pool of good troops from this season to last season, with last season having a much larger base of viable troops. I won't lie, I do not hate the idea of locked troops; it makes going for certain comps uncontested, that is if maybe the first Orb guaranteed a troop instead of a f----- item!!

(i): Forest: The trait itself could be way better. For instance, it should scale to where 2/6 makes one troop get invisibility, then 4/6, two troops, and 6/6 three troops. Also, Boss Bandit needs a significant HP boost. Also also, Firecracker needs a range boost and hit speed boost. Also also also, Magic Archer needs a hit speed boost, and maybe even piercing shots.

(ii): Boss: A 3rd Quest Orb should guarantee a Boss.

(iii): Undead: I mean, who's idea was this? Undead growing both damage and HP ad infinitum??? Okay, well if that's what we're doing, at least make 6/6 grow 3%, or 4%, not 6%!!! And maybe decrease how many Witch skeletons are produced. And maybe also maybe change the Skeleton Dragon from having splash. Leave that for the Baby Dragon.

(iv) Goblin: A board full of 3 star goblins isn't good, and it's really not supposed to be. A board full of 4 star goblins should be possible, but take as long as, say, full clan or full noble. A simple change could be to allow 4/6 goblins to provide both a guaranteed 2 cost and 3/4 cost goblin.

Overall, this season is a mismatch of solid ideas and failed conceptions. The modifiers are mostly GREAT. The Quest's add a layer of competition that truly equalizes many of the rulers. The Tomb Queen (with a few aforementioned buffs) has proven to be a not-so-bad ruler. Also, I’m glad superstars if finally gone… kinda. But that's really it. I can't think of many other positives with this season.

I hope you haven't killed a game I and many others love. Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

The Community who keeps your money-grubbing paws filled with cash.