Catalogue for Previous Weeks - F.A.Q
Song of the Week
This article is far too long to fit within the thread word limit, so it's going to be continued in a child comment which I'll link when it gets there. Furthermore, I've elected to name a few pokemons who technically have niches but too fringe to expand more on. Some of them can be found in previous weeks if appropriate.
RBY
Rhydon and Golem are the most prominent Ground types in the tier, the former with significant more usage stats in the modern metagame. Their shared Rock Ground typing hardwalls Zapdos and, to a much less prominent degree, Jolteon and Moltres. They’re also both countered by Exeggutor, as well as weak to the very popular Blizzard slamming them on their pitiful special bulk.
Rhydon is the significantly more popular of the two. It boasts better bulk, though not to a significant degree. More crucially, it has a 130 base Atk that allows its Earthquake to 2HKO Chansey, 3HKO Slowbro (sometimes), and 3HKO Snorlax. As it threatens these slower bulky mons, it can use many opportunities to set up a Substitute. Rhydon is the only viable user of the move this generation, seeing as it doesn’t block status in gen 1, but Rhydon was already immune to Thunder Wave. It needs to watch out for Sleep Powder & Stun Spore from Exeggutor, however. STAB Rock Slide helps it chase out the fliers which it walls, and the last move slot is reserved for Body Slam, whose only real use is to threaten Paralysis on Starmie or Exeggutor’s switching in. Rhydon can be an incredibly dangerous threat given some Paralysis support, and being immune to Thunder Wave itself is a great characteristic to have.
Golem’s advantages over Rhydon are: speed (which outspeeds nothing more than opposing Rhydons) and Explosion. Its Earthquake misses on very important benchmarks, and therefore it leverages its Explosion, the 2nd strongest move in the game behind Snorlax’s Self-Destruct, to wallbreak for its teammates. While Rhydon can be a late-game sweeper, Golem instead darts in and out of battle to scout for the perfect Explosion timing. OHKO-ing an opposing Tauros can be game-breaking, but it has to be very careful of Gengar or opposing Rock Grounds absorbing it.
Not mentioned: Sandslash
GSC
The ground typing becomes even more prominent in this generation. As Blizzard has been largely phased out, along with the legendary Electrics being on every single team spamming Thunder, every notable Ground types can act as a switch to them.
Nidoking is an excellent offensive threat in the GSC metagame. Aside from STAB EQ, it also learns the famed Ice Beam Thunder(bolt) coverage that allows it to punish many EQ switchins like Zapdos, Skarmory, or Cloyster. While its power without super effective coverage isn’t amazing, only boasting 92/85/85 offensive stats, the move that truly pushes it into great territory is Lovely Kiss. GSC Sleep isn’t as terrible as RBY Sleep, but it’s nevertheless a huge momentum swing. Nidoking therefore can take advantage of this to fire off strong attacks to eventually break through its usual checks given the right opportunity, something no other mixed sweepers can do. If desired, it can also run Thief to steal enemy checks’ Leftovers at the cost of a moveslot.
Steelix is the new evolution of the worthless Onyx, with excellent physical bulk and an auspicious Steel Ground typing. This makes it not weak against the common Hidden Power Ice which the legendary Electrics run, and acts as a near surefire counter to them unless they carry the rarer HP Water. Its base Atk is a pitiful 85, however, and therefore it relies more on Explosion like RBY’s Golem to break walls, but also carry Roar to act as a phaser against things like Mono-lax, Raikou, or Perish Trap Misdreavus. This shuffling also allows its team to rack up more Spikes damage. The last move is often Curse, which allows it to create some offensive pressure with a boost or two, and then abuse Roar even further.
Golem returns with renewed vigor. Having learnt Rapid Spin in a Spike-ridden metagame, Golem found itself as one of the better role compression mons that acts as an Electric check, Rapid Spinner, phaser, and Snorlax check all in one. It still never enters a battle without Explosion, and its poor special bulk means that it must scout enemy Hidden Power lest it becomes a free kill. Nevertheless, Rapid Spin is such an important utility that it sees consistent usage on many teams, so much so that the rare Hidden Power Water from Zapdos or Raikou are mostly aimed to remove it. Unlike other Spinners, Golem matches up poorly against the spiking Cloyster and Forretress, and requires offensive support elsewhere to make sure the hazards stay off.
Marowak boasts the strongest Earthquake in the game. While somewhat gimmicky, its Swords Dance set can give it the maximum 999, and with Spikes support can OHKO nearly the entire metagame at +2. However, this requires serious backup, as Marowak is otherwise painfully slow, frail, and cannot hold Leftovers. Furthermore, help against Skarmory is highly appreciated, as even with 999 Atk, a Rock Slide only 3HKOs the metal bird, who is immune to Spikes and can proceed to phaze Wak out. The 4th moveslot is usually either HP Bug to slam Exeggutor on the switch, or Rest to give it a second chance at sweeping. To get Marowak to work, some support with Agility Baton Pass from Jolteon, or Screens from Blissey is recommended, especially since the latter can Heal Bell off the sleep from Rest.
Rhydon has taken quite a fall in viability since the last generation. With weaknesses to many special attacks, Machamp, and Earthquakes, Rhydon finds itself hard-pressed to accomplish much. Unlike Golem, it provides no utility for the team aside from Roar, and the Snorlax-checking Steelix isn’t weak to Grass, ice, nor 4x weak to Water. Rhydon runs a Curse set to take advantage of its strong 130 Atk and natural physical bulk, as being slower in this generation means your Roar will go first. It cannot get past Skarmory, but can still provide some strong hits to break walls with.
Quagsire’s sole niche is a near fool-proof counter for the legendary Electrics, being immune to their Thunders and not weak to either HP Ice or Water. Its typing makes it a decent mixed wall, as not a lot of pokemons run Grass moves this generation, and can use the free turns its ok bulk generates to set up Belly Drum. EQ and HP Rock makes an ok attacking combo, and Rest can be used for longevity. If unable to set up, however, it’s defensively outclassed by the likes of Miltank or Raikou, and offensively outclassed by Marowak or Snorlax. One must build their team capable of taking advantage of this offensive defensive combination to justify using Quagsire.
Not mentioned: Piloswine, Sandslash, Donphan, Gligar, Nidoqueen
ADV
Zapdos continues to be a prominent threat, and the rise of Tyranitar, Aerodactyl, and general Rock Slide coverage gives Grounds even more viability. Lastly, an immunity to Sand in a tier where Tyranitar is king effectively boosts the longevity of all Ground pokemons, allowing them to actually gain health in Sand with Leftovers.
Swampert is the face of bulky waters in gen 3. It’s one of the most sturdy DD Tyranitar counters there are, resisting Rock unlike its Water-type brethren, and can also act as a catch-all check to many more prominent physical sweepers in the tier like Metagross, Aerodactyl, and DD Salamence. It’s so prominent that it basically forced many, many pokemon to run HP Grass just to have a chance to get past it. As a pokemon itself, however, Swampert can be as defensive or as offensive as one likes, possessing decent mixed offensive stats to complement its STAB EQ and Hydro Pump / Surf, while carrying Ice Beam for many Flying types, especially Salamence, and Grasses, like Celebi. It also has access to the great Focus Punch, which allows it to threaten Snorlax and Blissey while OHKO-ing max HP Tyranitar, something its Hydro Pump cannot do. Toxic, Roar, Protect, Refresh are all excellent moves for a more defensive variant. No matter what set it’s running, Swampert’s role in ADV OU cannot be understated, and is therefore one of the most common offensive / defensive threats of the metagame.
Dugtrio has gained Arena Trap this generation, and becomes one of the best revenge killers of the metagame. While it’s not very strong, the introduction of Choice Band gives it the power to achieve crucial KOs, and its amazing base 120 Spe means it can outrun basically any threat it encounters. The list of its victims is vast: Tyranitar, Metagross, Jirachi, Blissey, Celebi, opposing Dugtrio, Breloom, and many, many more. It’s undoubtedly a metagame defining threat, as something like Jolteon is considered superior to the legendary Raikou by many simply due to its Dugtrio-beating speed and access to Baton Pass to escape trapping. It’s also a very important team member of special offence, an almost required piece that exists solely to reliably remove Blissey, sometimes by the otherwise unseen Beat Up.
Claydol is the Rapid Spinning Ground type of ADV. Its unique Ground Psychic typing along with Levitate means it resists all of Ground, Fighting, Electric, and Rock, and is immune to Spikes and Dugtrio’s Arena Trap. All of this means that Claydol finds many opportunities to switch in and get off a spin against many common attacks like Rock Slide, EQ, Thunderbolt etc. It also possesses a STAB Psychic to threaten out the most common spinblocker of the tier: Gengar. Finally, Explosion gives it utility as a wallbreaker, especially if running Adamant to threaten out most of the Explosion-resistant pokemon with Earthquake. However, its support requires teammates’ help against Skarmory, as it can’t meaningfully threaten the metal bird, who often forces the issue with Drill Peck.
Flygon is last. Its Ground Dragon typing and Levitate means it’s also resistant to QuakeSlide and Spikes, while also not being weak to HP Bug from DD TTar or HP Grass aimed at a teammate’s Swampert. While its 100/80/100 offensive stats won’t be winning awards, STAB EQ and a myriad of offensive options almost guarantees it’ll find a target to hit, and its defensive profile is excellent for finding chances to enter the field. It can even run a more defensive Protect Toxic set that abuses its defensive capabilities to spread status and break down many teams late-game.
Not mentioned: Gligar, Steelix, Donphan, Marowak, Camerupt, Rhydon
DPP
Stealth Rocks (SR) was introduced in this generation and became the most influential move in the metagame. Coincidentally, Ground types get them.
Swampert returns once again as the premier bulky water. With Tyranitar as popular as ever with physical Pursuit, Superpower, and STAB Stone Edge, Swampert’s defensive capabilities are called into need once again. That said, the physical special split also gave it access to physical water STAB in Waterfall and special Ground STAB in Earth Power, along with extra Ice Punch and Superpower coverage for the physical side. The most popular sets feature SR in some way, to guarantee Pert value as either a lead or a role player, either with max Atk for more damage, or mixed defence to be more of a tank. In this capacity, physical coverage is far more popular. If even more offence is desired, a bulky Choice Band set that runs Stone Edge for Zapdos and Gyarados can do a bit of wallbreaking, or even Modest special set with Hydro Pump spamming. However, these more offensive options remain unpopular compared to the utility set.
Gliscor features an excellent Ground Flying typing that gives it only 2 weaknesses, a SR neutrality but a Spikes immunity, and resistant to the new Close Combat and Superpower. 75/125/75 defences make for an excellent physical defensive profile, and 95/95 offensive stats are surprisingly decent for a mon with such great bulk. Its Stallbreaker set is its most popular, running Taunt to shut down recovery attempts on walls while also preventing offensive mons from setting up on it, and Roost for reliable recovery. If some offensive power is needed, it can run a Swords Dance set to abuse its natural bulk to gain multiple boosts due to its incredible staying power. Its attacks usually consisted of the mandatory STAB EQ, Ice Fang for Flyings, Dragons, and the occasional grasses, and perhaps Thunder Fang for bulky waters or Wing Attack for Breloom. Taunt and SR also make Gliscor a decent lead, as it can U-Turn out to keep momentum.
Flygon appreciated the generational shift very much. It gained an excellent physical dragon STAB in Outrage, and U-Turn allows it to run a very effective Choice Scarf set to utilise its good speed and great neutral coverage in just Outrage and Earthquake. Its last slot on a Scarf set can therefore be very flexible, either Thunder Punch for Gyarados, Dragon Claw for more stable STAB, or Toxic to cripple a wall. The new Life Orb also synergises well with its mixed move pool, allowing it to drop powerful Draco Meteor while still running Earthquake and Fire Blast to crush the Steels that resist its Dragon STAB. Roost can be used on this set to offset Life Orb recoil and give Flygon more general longevity, but if Expert Belt is run instead, U-Turn is always an excellent option.
Nidoqueen, despite its NU placement, is an excellent OU Stall machine. Its claim to fame is the new Toxic Spikes, and on stall teams the Poison Ground typing provide resistant to Fighting and Rock, which couples with 90/87/85 mixed bulk to check the likes of Breloom, Lucario, and Tyranitar, especially since EQ as a coverage move is rarely ran, and Poison Point can punish a lot of the U-Turn spammers in the tier. A lack of recovery does hurt, and thus Nidoqueen prefers Protect to get as much recovery out of Black Sludge as possible. While Nidoqueen’s offences aren’t anything special, its vast movepool means that its moveset can be specifically tailored to cover the threats which the rest of its team does not.
Hippowdon is the alternate Sand setter of the tier. While most prefer Tyranitar’s offensive prowess, Hippo itself is a near sure-fire Tyranitar counter, boasting a titanic physical bulk of 108/118 that can sit on most of the physical threats of the metagame. It complements this by excellent recovery in Slack Off, and SR which allows Hippo to always get pressure out of the switch. Roar synergises with this even more, racking up damage on the pesky flying types or Levitate-rs that otherwise walls it. If a more direct option is preferred, Ice Fang can slam the Gliscor and Dragons. Still, since it relies on pure bulk more than resistances to wall physical threats, it’s usually very specially frail, and has a weakness against some physical threats in Gyarados and Breloom.
Mamoswine boasts a meaty 130 Atk stat, and a unique STAB combination of Ground and Ice. Its Ice Shard is an excellent priority move which knocks the life out of dangerous threats like Latias, Flygon, and Gliscor, its STAB EQ crushes most neutral targets, and for everything else, there’s Stone Edge. Life Orb is the most popular item, allowing it to switch moves and especially abuse Ice Shard to finish off faster threats should the opportunity arise. While Superpower is a fine 4th move to slam Steels not weak to EQ like Bronzong or Skarmory, and OHKO Blissey without a second thought, Stealth Rocks can be used here to exert some pressure as the opponent switches out. Choice Band is an alternative, but locking into any of those four moves can be exploited heavily. Focus Sash makes Mamo a decent SR lead as well. Despite all this, its typing gives it a lot of common weaknesses, and 80 speed isn’t nearly as good as it used to be.
Quagsire lived under Swampert’s shadow in gen 3, but access to reliable recovery in Recover as well as Encore to counter setup sweepers gave it a niche this generation. As Swampert’s more often than not opt for offence this generation, Quagsire is a fine defensive Water Ground type that walls Starmie (with Water Absorb), Metagross, or Tyranitar. Its moveset is very predictable, however, as after the prerequisite Earthquake, the last move is either Toxic for more residual damage or Ice Punch for Flygon or Dragonite. Quagsire is extremely predictable, and must be used with consideration.
Gastrodon is yet another Water Ground type. While it isn’t immune to Water, and therefore doesn’t counter Starmie or Gyarados, it has Sticky Hold which makes it immune to Trick from a lot of choice-d pokemons. Its sole unique role is therefore as a Curse sweeper that’s immune to Trick, who sports good mixed bulk and Recover for longevity. Waterfall + Earthquake a.l.a Swampert is good enough coverage, but it’ll struggle to beat the likes of Gyarados or Latias with such limited coverage.
Rhyperior is a fierce wallbreaker, as 140 base Atk is nothing to scoff at, and its attacking options ranging from STAB EQ + Stone Edge to coverage in Aqua Tail, Megahorn, or Fire Punch are all excellent options. However, it’s really, really slow, and therefore easily forced out with its double 4x weaknesses and poor special bulk, even with Solid Rock or Sandstorm SpD boost to soften them. Choice Band is by far the most powerful option, boasting the ability to 2HKOs everything in the metagame with the right coverage. However, it doesn’t have a lot of opportunities to fire off this power due to its speed and poor matchup against the bulky waters of DPP like Swampert or Milotic.
Donphan gained SR and Ice Shard this generation. It’s now a fairly respectable Rapid Spinner in the metagame with excellent physical bulk and priority. For the most part, it’s a fine support pokemon that aims to set up SR, takes a few physical hits, and threatens revenge kills against Dragons with Ice Shard. It’s a very one dimensional pokemon in this aspect, but its effectiveness as a Rapid Spinner is appreciated.
Not mentioned: Dugtrio (R.I.P), Steelix, Nidoking, Camerupt, Gastrodon
BW
Landorus-Therian is a name one should not fail to keep in mind. It has Gliscor’s auspicious typing, combined with an excellent ability in Intimidate, fearsome 145/105/91 mixed offensive stats, and a respectable 89/90/80 bulk if kept in mind its typing and ability. Lando-T is is one of the best pokemon of gen 5 OU, and is one of the best glues for any good non-rain team. Its Choice Scarf set is an excellent scout and revenge-killer, with a strong U-Turn to punish the like of Latios. Lando-T is in fact so common that it also runs HP Ice for the mirror matchup, despite it not hitting too many other relevant targets. Earthquake is its STAB move of choice, but any other move can be slotted in and out depending on sets. Stone Edge is a natural pairing on the Scarf set, but Superpower is a fine option to drop Skarmory, Ferrothorn, or Air Balloon Heatran. If an offensive pivot is desired, just drop the Scarf and speed for a bulky spread and either Leftovers or Rocky Helmet, and you have one of the best physical checks of the metagame against the dangerous Terrakion. Lastly, access to either Swords Dance, Rock Polish, or even both on the same set can turn Lando-T into a fearsome sweeper at the drop of a hat.
Excadrill is another gen 5 addition, and after a tumultuous history of ban and unban, it settles into the metagame as the best non-rain Rapid Spinner, a.l.a old Donphan. However, it instead boasts Steelix’s typing and a 135 base Atk, making sure that Jellicient cannot simply switch into its Spin with impunity in fear of eating a STAB Earthquake. Its most common set is an offensive spread but with Leftovers and Protect for longevity, befitting of a Rapid Spinner. Unlike most other Grounds, it prefers STAB Iron Head to Rock coverage, as the former hit Latios harder, and can help it beat Breloom. As a Spinner, it can either lean into an offensive spread with STABs, or a more defensive SpD spread that prioritises its laundry list of resistances, especially to Dragon, for better longevity. Though Sand Rush is banned, a Scarf set works perfectly fine to revenge kill, or get up a desperate fast Rapid Spin before falling. Sand Force comes in nicely here, as Exca runs all 3 types of moves that get the boost in its STABs + Rock Slide.
Garchomp dropped to OU this generation, but perhaps that was the chance it needed to flex its power on the metagame. While it’s never seen without its trusty Earthquake, the sheer breadth of sets this pokemon can and does run boggles the mind. The most popular is a very straightforward Choice Scarf set to elevate a great 102 base Spe, and would be great even with just 2 moves in Outrage and Earthquake. It can afford to run Dual Chop for Sash Zam or Multiscale Dragonite, or just straight up Dragon Claw as a more reliable 3rd move. The last move on a scarf set is usually a fire coverage, either Fire Fang or Fire Blast, to roast the likes of Skarmory, Bronzong, or Ferrothorn. As a sweeper, Garchomp leverages its forced switches well with a Substitute Swords Dance set that uses Salac Berry to boost its Spe past most opposing Scarf revenge killers, as its sheer STAB combination is so good on its own. If desired, one can run just an offensive Stealth Rocks set like other Ground types, but Garchomp’s Rough Skin means it has extra synergy with Rocky Helmet that really punishes U-Turn while being simultaneously immune to Volt Switch.
Gliscor gains the excellent Poison Heal this generation, giving it amazing passive recovery and immunity to statuses. For the most part, it uses its typing and access to reliable recovery to spread Toxic with Substitute, while having STAB Earthquake to slam the Steels and Poisons immune to the status. Being always poisoned means that it now has access to Facade as a really strong neutral move to complement its EQ, and thus the Swords Dance Roost set yet see a healthy amount of usage. While Gliscor can’t get past Skarmory at all, its general positioning against the rest of the physical metagame means it will probably always have value in a team, especially if running Taunt. As with all Ground types this generation, it can run a support Stealth Rocks set as well that spread statuses in the meantime.
Mamoswine is once again an excellent offensive threat. Having learnt Icicle Crash as a strong STAB Ice attack this generation, its general offensive coverage with just its STABs is very notable. As DragMag becomes a legitimate offensive force in the metagame, Mamoswine can be found with or against them, leverage Ice Shard to shut down the Salamence, Dragonite, or Garchomps one can find on those teams. Superpower is a great general coverage move to slam Ferrothorn and Kyurem-B with, and Stealth Rocks is always an option that goes well with priority and a Focus Sash.
Gastrodon gained a water immunity this generation, and has propelled into stardom as an anti-rain wall. Its distinction comes from being a Keldeo check that isn’t weak to Pursuit, unlike Jellicient and Latios, and instead spreads status of its own with Toxic and the ridiculous Scald. It also stops Thundurus-T cold, something many other Keldeo checks cannot claim. Physically defensive is the most common spread to fulfil this niche, and with proper support from the rest of its teammates to cover its vulnerability to Toxic and Grass types, Gastrodon is a stalwart defensive answer to many of the metagame’s biggest threats.
Seismitoad is Gastrodon but with Stealth Rocks, in essence. It does everything else Gastrodon does a little worse due to its poorer bulk and no access to Recover, but the role compression can be highly desirable on more offensive teams who prioritise the momentum that hazards give, rather than a long-term wall like Gastro is.
Hippowdon once again plays second fiddle to Tyranitar as a physically defensive Sand setter. Reliable recovery means it can act as a check to many strong physical threats and prevent their setting up with Whirlwind, while setting up Stealth Rocks of its own. Its poor special bulk and weakness to Rain spam means that it might not always put it as much work as it wants to against opposing Rain, but if you want your Sand setter to also be a physical wall, Hippo’s the one for the job.
Not mentioned: Dugtrio (R.I.P), Golurk, Nidoking, Nidoqueen
Continued here in a comment

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young teen growing up in far North Austin, it was a popular custom for many boys in the neighborhood to assemble at the local Stop-N-Go after school on a regular basis for some Grand Champion level tournaments in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The collective insistence of our mothers and fathers to get out of the house, get some exercise, and refrain from playing NES or Sega on the television only led us to seek out more video games at the convenience store down the road. Much allowance and lunch money was spent as well as hours that should have been devoted to homework among the 8 or 9 regular boys in attendance, often challenging each other to 'Best of 5' matches. I myself played Dhalsim and SubZero, and not very well, so I rarely ever made it to the 5th match. The store workers frequently kicked us out for the day only to have us return when they weren't working the counter anymore if not the next day.
There is something about that which has been lost in the present day. While people can today download the latest games on Steam or PSN or in the app store on your smartphone, you can't just find arcade games in stores and restaurants like you used to be able to. And so the fun of a spontaneous 8 or 10 person multiplayer video game tournament has been confined to places like bars, pool halls, Pinballz or Dave&Busters.
But in truth it was that ubiquity of arcade video games, how you could find them in any old 7-11 or Laundromat, which is what killed the original arcades of the early 1980s before the Great Crash of 1983 when home video game consoles started to catch up to what you saw in the arcade.
I was born in the mid 1970s so I missed out on Pong. I was kindergarten age when the Golden Age of Arcade Games took place in the early 1980s. There used to be a place called Skateworld on Anderson Mill Road that was primarily for roller skating but had a respectable arcade in its own right. It was there that I honed my skills on the original Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Defender, and so many others. In the 1980s I remember visiting all the same mall arcades as others in my age group. There was Aladdin's Castle in Barton Creek Mall, The Gold Mine in Highland, and another Gold Mine in Northcross which was eventually renamed Tilt. Westgate Mall also had an arcade but being a north austin kid I never went there until later in the mid 1990s. There were also places like Malibu Grand Prix and Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheeze, all of which had fairly large arcades for kids which were the secondary attraction.
If you're of a certain age you will remember Einsteins and LeFun on the Drag. They were there for a few decades going back way before the Slacker era. Lesser known is that the UT Student Union basement used to have an arcade that was comparable to either or both of those places. Back in the pre-9/11 days it was much easier to sneak in if you even vaguely looked like you could be a UT student.
But there was another place I was too young to have experienced called Smitty's up further north on 183 at Lake Creek in the early 1980s. I never got to go there but I always heard about it from older kids at the time. It was supposed to have been two stories of wall to wall games with a small snack bar. I guess at the time it served a mostly older teen crowd from Westwood High School and for that reason younger kids my age weren't having birthday parties there. It wasn't around very long, just a few years during the Golden Age of Arcades.
It is with almost-forgotten early arcades like that in mind that I wanted to share with y'all some examples of places from The Golden Age of the Video Arcade in Austin using some old Statesman articles I've found. Maybe someone of a certain age on here will remember them. I was curious what they were like, having missed out by being slightly too young to have experienced most of them first hand. I also wanted to see the original reaction to them in the press. I had a feeling there was some pushback from school/parent/civic groups on these facilities showing up in neighborhood strip malls or next to schools, and I was right to suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's list off some places of interest. Be sure to speak up if you remember going to any of these, even if it was just for some other kid's birthday party. Unfortunately some of the only mentions about a place are reports of a crime being committed there, such as our first few examples.
Forgotten Arcade #1
Fun House/Play Time Arcade - 2820 Guadalupe
June 15, 1975

ARCADE ENTHUSIASM
A gang fight involving 20 30 people erupted early Saturday morning in front of an arcade on Guadalupe Street. The owner of the Fun House Arcade at 282J Guadalupe told police pool cues, lug wrenches, fists and a shotgun were displayed during the flurry. Police are unsure what started the fisticuffs, but one witness at the scene said it pitted Chicanos against Anglos. During the fight the owner of the arcade said a green car stopped at the side of the arcade and witnesses reported the barrel of a shotgun sticking out. The crowd wisely scattered and only a 23-year-old man was left lying on the ground. He told police he doesn't know what happened.

March 3, 1976

ARCADE ROBBED
A former employee of Play Time Arcade, 2820 Guadalupe, was charged Tuesday in connection with the Tuesday afternoon robbery of his former business. Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Ronnie Magee, 22, of 1009 Aggie Lane, Apt. 306. Arcade attendant Sam Garner said he had played pool with the suspect an hour before the robbery. He told police the man had been fired from the business two weeks earlier. Police said a man walked in the arcade about 2:45 p m. with a blue steel pistol and took $180. Magee is charged with first degree aggravated robbery. Bond was set on the charge at $15,000.

First it was called Fun House and then renamed Play Time a year later. I'm not sure what kind of arcade games beyond Pong and maybe Asteroids they could have had at this place. The peak of the Pinball craze was supposed to be around 1979, so they might have had a few pinball machines as well. A quick search of youtube will show you a few examples of 1976 video games like Death Race. The location is next to Ken's Donuts where PokeBowl is today where the old Baskin Robbins location was for many years.
Forgotten Arcade #2
Green Goth - 1121 Springdale Road
May 15, 1984

A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a January 1983 murder in East Austin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jim Crowell Jr. of Austin admitted shooting 17-year-old Anthony Rodriguez in the chest with a shotgun after the two argued outside the Green Goth, a games arcade at 1121 Springdale Road, on Jan. 23, 1983. Crowell had argued with Rodriguez and a friend of Rodriguez at the arcade, police said. Crowell then went to his house, got a shotgun and returned to the arcade, witnesses said. When the two friends left the arcade, Rodriguez was shot Several weeks ago Crowell had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors for an eight-year prison term, but District Judge Bob Perkins would not accept the sentence, saying it was shorter than sentences in similar cases. After further plea bargaining, Crowell accepted the 15-year prison sentence.

I can't find anything else on Green Goth except reports about this incident with a murder there. There is at least one other report from 1983 around the time of Crowell's arrest that also refer to it as an arcade but reports the manager said the argument started over a game of pool. It's possible this place might have been more known for pool.
Forgotten Arcades #3 & #4
Games, Etc. - 1302 S. First St
Muther's Arcade - 2532 Guadalupe St
August 23, 1983

Losing the magic touch - Video Arcades have trouble winning the money game
It was going to be so easy for Lawrence Villegas, a video game junkie who thought he could make a fast buck by opening up an arcade where kids could plunk down an endless supply of quarters to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids. Villegas got together with a few friends, purchased about 30 video games and opened Games, Etc. at 1302 S. First St in 1980. .,--.... For a while, things, went great Kids waited in line to spend their money to drive race cars, slay dragons and save the universe.
AT THE BEGINNING of 1982, however, the bottom fell out, and Villegas' revenues fell from $400 a week to $25. Today, Games, Etc. is vacant Villegas, 30, who is now working for his parents at Tony's Tortilla Factory, hasn't decided what he'll do with the building. "I was hooked on Asteroids, and I opened the business to get other people hooked, too," Villegas said. "But people started getting bored, and it wasn't worth keeping the place open. In the end, I sold some machines for so little it made me sick."
VILLEGAS ISNT the only video game operator to experience hard times, video game manufacturers and distributors 'It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100 .
Pac-Man's a lost cause. Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Ronnie Roark says. In the past year, business has dropped 25 percent to 65 percent throughout the country, they say. Most predict business will get even worse before the market stabilizes. Video game manufacturers and operators say there are several reasons for the sharp and rapid decline: Many video games can now be played at home on television, so there's no reason to go to an arcade. The novelty of video games has worn off. It has been more than a decade since the first ones hit the market The decline can be traced directly to oversaturation or the market arcade owners say. The number of games in Austin has quadrupled since 1981, and it's not uncommon to see them in coin-operated laundries, convenience stores and restaurants.
WITH SO MANY games to choose from, local operators say, Austinites be came bored. Arcades still take in thousands of dollars each week, but managers and owners say most of the money is going to a select group of newer games, while dozens of others sit idle.
"After awhile, they all seem the same," said Dan Moyed, 22, as he relaxed at Muther's Arcade at 2532 Guadalupe St "You get to know what the game is going to do before it does. You can play without even thinking about it" Arcade owners say that that, in a nutshell, is why the market is stagnating.
IN THE PAST 18 months, Ronnie Roark, owner of the Back Room at 2015 E. Riverside Drive, said his video business has dropped 65 to 75 percent Roark, . who supplied about 160 video games to several Austin bars and arcades, said the instant success of the games is what led to their demise. "The technology is not keeping up with people's demand for change," said Roark, who bought his first video game in 1972. "The average game is popular for two or three months. We're sending back games that are less than five months old."
Roark said the market began dropping in March 1982 and has been declining steadily ever since. "The drop started before University of Texas students left for the summer in 1982," Roark said. "We expected a 25 percent drop in business, and we got that, and more. It's never really picked up since then. - "It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100. 1 was shocked when I looked over my books and saw how much things had dropped."
TO COMBAT THE slump, Roark said, he and some arcade owners last year cut the price of playing. Even that didn't help, he said. Old favorites, such as Pac-Man, which once took in hundreds of dollars each week, he said, now make less than $3 each. "Pac-Man's a lost cause," he said. "Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Hardest hit by the slump are the owners of the machines, who pay $3,500 to $5,000 for new products and split the proceeds with the businesses that house them.
SALEM JOSEPH, owner of Austin Amusement and Vending Co., said his business is off 40 percent in the past year. Worse yet, some of his customers began returning their machines, and he's having a hard time putting them back in service. "Two years ago, a machine would generate enough money to pay for itself in six months,' said Joseph, who supplies about 250 games to arcades. "Now that same machine takes 18 months to pay for itself." As a result, Joseph said, he'll buy fewer than 15 new machines this year, down from the 30 to 50 he used to buy. And about 50 machines are sitting idle in his warehouse.
"I get calls every day from people who want to sell me their machines," Joseph said. "But I can't buy them. The manufacturers won't buy them from me." ARCADE OWNERS and game manufacturers hope the advent of laser disc video games will buoy the market Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, one of the largest manufacturers of video games, said he expects laser disc games to bring a 25 percent increase in revenues next year. The new games are programmed to give players choices that may affect the outcome of the game, Os borne said. "Like the record and movie industries, the video game industry is dependent on products that stimulate the imagination," Osborne said "One of the reasons we're in a valley is that we weren't coming up with those kinds of products."
THE FIRST of the laser dis games, Dragonslayer and Star Wan hit the market about two months ago. Noel Kerns, assistant manager of The Gold Mine Arcade in Northcross Mall, says the new games are responsible for a $l,000-a-week increase in revenues. Still, Kerns said, the Gold Mine' total sales are down 20 percent iron last summer. However, he remain optimistic about the future of the video game industry. "Where else can you come out of the rain and drive a Formula One race car or save the universe?" hi asked.
Others aren't so optimistic. Roark predicted the slump will force half of all operators out of business and will last two more years. "Right now, we've got a great sup ply and almost no demand," Roark said. "That's going to have to change before things get- significantly better."

Well there is a lot to take from that long article, among other things, that the author confused "Dragonslayer" with "Dragon's Lair". I lol'd.
Anyone who has been to Emo's East, formerly known as The Back Room, knows they have arcade games and pool, but it's mostly closed when there isn't a show. That shouldn't count as an arcade, even though the former owner Ronnie Roark was apparently one of the top suppliers of cabinet games to the area during the Golden Era. Any pool hall probably had a few arcade games at the time, too, but that's not the same as being an arcade.
We also learn from the same article of two forgotten arcades: Muthers at 2522 Guadalupe where today there is a Mediterranean food restaurant, and another called Games, Etc. at 1302 S.First that today is the site of an El Mercado restaurant. But the article is mostly about showing us how bad the effects were from the crash at the end of the Golden Era. It was very hard for the early arcades to survive with increasing competition from home game consoles and personal computers, and the proliferation of the games into stores and restaurants.
Forgotten Arcades #5 #6 & #7
Computer Madness - 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Electronic Encounters - 1701 W Ben White Blvd (Southwood Mall)
The Outer Limits Amusements Center - 1409 W. Oltorf
March 4, 1982

'Quartermania' stalks South Austin
School officials, parents worried about effects of video games
A fear Is haunting the video game business. "We call it 'quartermania.' That's fear of running out of quarters," said Steve Stackable, co-owner of Computer Madness, a video game and foosball arcade at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. The "quartermania" fear extends to South Austin households and schools, as well. There it's a fear of students running out of lunch money and classes to play the games. Local school officials and Austin police are monitoring the craze. They're concerned that computer hotspots could become undesirable "hangouts" for students, or that truancy could increase because students (high-school age and younger) will skip school to defend their galaxies against The Tempest.
So far police fears have not been substantiated. Department spokesmen say that although more than half the burglaries in the city are committed by juveniles during the daytime, they know of no connection between the break-ins and kids trying to feed their video habit But school and parental worries about misspent time and money continue. The public outcry in September 1980 against proposals to put electronic game arcades near two South Austin schools helped persuade city officials to reject the applications. One proposed location was near Barton Hills Elementary School. The other was South Ridge Plaza at William Cannon Drive and South First Street across from Bedlchek Junior High School.
Bedichek principal B.G. Henry said he spoke against the arcade because "of the potential attraction it had for our kids. I personally feel kids are so drawn to these things, that It might encourage them to leave the school building and play hookey. Those things have so much compulsion, kids are drawn to them like a magnet Kids can get addicted to them and throw away money, maybe their lunch money. I'm not against the video games. They may be beneficial with eye-hand coordination or even with mathematics, but when you mix the video games during school hours and near school buildings, you might be asking for problems you don't need."
A contingent from nearby Pleasant Hill Elementary School joined Bedichek in the fight back in 1980, although principal Kay Beyer said she received her first formal call about the games last Week from a mother complaining that her child was spending lunch money on them. Beyer added that no truancy problems have been related to video game-playing at a nearby 7-11 store. Allen Poehl, amusement game coordinator for Austin's 7-11 stores, said company policy rules out any game-playing by school-age youth during school hours. Fulmore Junior High principal Bill Armentrout said he is working closely with operators of a nearby 7-1 1 store to make sure their policy is enforced.
The convenience store itself, and not necessarily the video games, is a drawing card for older students and drop-outs, Armentrout said. Porter Junior High principal Marjorie Ball said that while video games aren't a big cause of truancy, "the money (spent on the games) is a big factor." Ball said she has made arrangements with nearby businesses to call the school it students are playing the games during school hours. "My concern is that kids are basically unsupervised, especially at the 24-hour grocery stores. That's a late hour for kids to be out. I would like to see them (games) unplugged at 10 p.m.," adds Joslin Elementary principal Wayne Rider.
Several proprietors of video game hot-spots say they sympathize with the concerns of parents and school officials. No one under 18 is admitted without a parent to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre at 4211 S. Lamar. That rule, says night manager David Dunagan, "keeps it from being a high school hangout. This is a family place." Jerry Zollar, owner of J.J. Subs in West Wood Shopping Center on Bee Cave Road, rewards the A's on the report cards of Eanes school district students with free video games. "It's kind of a community thing we do in a different way. I've heard from both teachers and parents . . . they thought this was a good idea," said Zollar.
Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall last year was renovated into a brightly lit arcade. "We're trying to get away from the dark, barroom-type place. We want this to be a place for family entertainment We won't let kids stay here during school hours without a written note from their parents, and we're pretty strict about that," said manager Kelly Roberts. Joyce Houston, who manages The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf St. along with her husband, said, "I wouldn't let my children go into some of the arcades I've visited. I'm a concerned parent, too. We wanted a place where the whole family could come and enjoy themselves."

Well you can see which way the tone of all these articles is going. There were some crimes committed at some arcades but all of them tended to have a negative reputation for various reasons. Parents and teachers were very skeptical of the arcades being in the neighborhoods to the point of petitioning the City Government to restrict them. Three arcades are mentioned besides Chuck-E-Cheese. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall, The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf, and Computer Madness, a "video game and foosball arcade" at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Forgotten Arcade #8
Smitty's Galaxy of Games - Lake Creek Parkway
February 25, 1982

Arcades fighting negative image
Video games have swept across America, and Williamson and Travis counties have not been immune. In a two-part series, Neighbor examines the effects the coin-operated machines have had on suburban and small-town life.
Cities have outlawed them, religious leaders have denounced them and distraught mothers have lost countless children to their voracious appetites. And still they march on, stronger and more numerous than before. A new disease? Maybe. A wave of invading aliens from outer space? On occasion. A new type of addiction? Certainly. The culprit? Video games. Although the electronic game explosion has been mushrooming throughout the nation's urban areas for the past few years, its rippling effects have just recently been felt in the suburban fringes of North Austin and Williamson County.
In the past year, at least seven arcades armed with dozens of neon quarter-snatchers have sprung up to lure teens with thundering noises and thousands of flashing seek-and-destroy commands. Critics say arcades are dens of iniquity where children fall prey to the evils of gambling. But arcade owners say something entirely different. "Everybody fights them (arcades), they think they are a haven for drug addicts. It's just not true," said Larry Grant of Austin, who opened Eagle's Nest Fun and Games on North Austin Avenue in Georgetown last September. "These kids are great" Grant said the gameroom "gives teenagers a place to come. Some only play the games and some only talk.
In Georgetown, if you're from the high school, this is it." He said he's had very few disturbances, and asks "undesirables" to leave. "We've had a couple of rowdies. That's why I don't have any pool tables they tend to attract that type of crowd," Grant said.
Providing a place for teens to congregate was also the reason behind Ron and Carol Smith's decision to open Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway at the entrance to Anderson Mill. "We have three teenage sons, and as soon as the oldest could drive, it became immediately apparent that there was no place to go around here," said Ron, an IBM employee who lives in Spicewood at Balcones. "This prompted us to want to open something." The business, which opened in August, has been a huge success with both parents and youngsters. "Hundreds of parents have come to check out our establishment before allowing their children to come, and what they see is a clean, safe environment managed by adults and parents," Ron said. "We've developed an outstanding rapport with the community." Video arcades "have a reputation that we have to fight," said Carol.
Kathy McCoy of Georgetown, who last October opened Krazy Korner on Willis Street in Leander, agrees. "We've got a real good group of kids," she said. "There's no violence, no nothing. Parents can always find their kids at Krazy Korner."
While all the arcade owners contacted reported that business is healthy, if not necessarily lucrative, it's not as easy for video entrepreneurs to turn a profit as one might imagine. A sizeable investment is required. Ron Smith paid between $2,800 and $5,000 for each of the 30 electronic diversions at his gameroom.
Grant said his average video game grosses about $50 a week, and his "absolute worst" game, Armor Attack, only $20 a week. The top machines (Defender and Pac-Man) can suck in an easy $125 a week. That's a lot of quarters, 500 to be exact but the Eagle's Nest and Krazy Korner pass half of them on to Neelley Vending Company of Austin which rents them their machines. "At 25 cents a shot, it takes an awful lot of people to pay the bills," said Tom Hatfield, district manager for Neelley.
He added that an owner's personality and the arcade's location can make or break the venture. The game parlor must be run "by an understanding person, someone with patience," Hatfield said. "They cannot be too demanding on the kids, yet they can't let them run all over them." And they must be located in a spot "with lots of foot traffic," such as a shopping center or near a good restaurant, he said. "And being close to a school really helps." "Video games are going to be here permanently, but we're going to see some operations not going because of the competition," which includes machines in virtually every convenience store and supermarket, Hatfield said.

This article talks about three arcades. One in Georgetown called Eagles Nest, another in Leander called Krazy Korner, and a third called Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway "on the fringes of North Austin". This is the one I remember the older kids talking about when I was a little kid. There was once a movie theater across the street from the Westwood High School football stadium and behind that was Smitty's. Today I think the building was bulldozed long ago and the space is part of the expanded onramp to 183 today. Eventually another unrelated arcade was built next to the theater that became Alamo Lakeline. It was another site of some unrecorded epic Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments in the 90s.
But the article written before the end of the Golden Era tell us much about the pushback I was talking about earlier. Early arcades were seen as "dirty" places in some circles, and the owners of the arcades in Williamson County had to stress how "clean" their establishments were. This other article from a couple of weeks later tells of how area school officials weren't worried about video games and tells us more arcades in Round Rock and Cedar Park. Apparently the end of the golden age lasted a bit longer than usual in this area.
At some point in the next few years the bubble burst, and places like Smitty's were gone by the late 80s. But the distributors quoted earlier were right that arcade games weren't going completely away. In the mid 1980s LeFun opened up next in the Scientology building at 2200 Guadalupe on the drag. Down a few doors past what used be a coffee shop and a CVS was Einsteins Arcade. Both of those survived into the 21st century. I remember the last time I was at Einsteins I got my ass beat in Tekken by a kid half my age. heheh
That's all for today. There were no Bonus Pics in the UT archive of arcades (other than the classical architectural definition). I wanted to pass on some Bonus newspaper articles (remember to click and zoom in with the buttons on the right to read) about Austin arcades anyway but first a small story.
I mentioned earlier the secret of the UT Student Union. I have no idea what it looks like now but in the 90s there was a sizable arcade in with the bowling alley in the basement. Back in 1994 when I used to sneak in, they featured this bizarre early attempt at virtual reality games. I found an old Michael Barnes Statesman article about it dated February 11, 1994. Some highlights:

Hundreds of students and curiosity-seekers lined up at the University of Texas Union to play three to five minutes of Dactyl Nightmare, Flying Aces or V-Tol, three-dimensional games from Kramer Entertainment. Nasty weather delayed the unloading of four huge trunks containing the machines, which resemble low pulpits. Still, players waited intently for a chance to shoot down a fighter jet, operate a tilt-wing Harrier or tangle with a pterodactyl. Today, tickets will go on sale in the Texas Union lobby at 11:30 a.m. for playing slots between noon and 6 p.m.
Players, fitted with full helmets, throttles and power packs, stood on shiny gray and yellow platforms surrounded by a circular guard rail. Seen behind the helmet's goggles were computer simulated landscapes, not unlike the most sophisticated video games, with controls and enemies viewed in deep space. "You're on a platform waiting to fight a human figure," said Jeff Vaughn, 19, of Dactyl Nightmare. "A pterodactyl swoops down and tries to pick you up. You have to fight it off. You are in the space and can see your own body and all around you. But if you try to walk, you have to use that joy stick to get around."
"I let the pterodactyl carry me away so I could look down and scan the board," said Tom Bowen of the same game. "That was the way I found out where the other player was." "Yeah, it's cool just to stand there and not do anything," Vaughn said. The mostly young, mostly male crowd included the usual gaming fanatics, looking haggard and tense behind glasses and beards. A smattering of women and children also pressed forward in a line that snaked past the lobby and into the Union's retail shops.
"I don't know why more women don't play. Maybe because the games are so violent," said Jennifer Webb, 24, a psychology major whose poor eyesight kept her from becoming a fighter pilot in real life. "If the Air Force won't take me, virtual reality will." "They use stereo optics moving at something like 60 frames a second," said computer science major Alex Aquila, 19. "The images are still pretty blocky. But once you play it, you'll want to play it again and again." With such demand for virtual reality, some gamesters wondered why an Austin video arcade has not invested in at least one machine.

The gameplay looked like this.
Bonus Article #1 - "Video fans play for own reasons" (Malibu Grand Prix) - March 11, 1982
Bonus Article #2 - "Pac-Man Cartridge Piques Interest" - April 13, 1982
Bonus Article #3 - "Video Games Fail Consumer" - January 29, 1984
Bonus Article #4 - "Nintendoholics/Modems Unite" - January 25, 1989
Bonus Article #5 and pt 2 "Two girls missing for a night found at arcade" (truly dedicated young gamers) - August 7, 2003

EDIT: Since I already wrote about it in the comments, I added a section about thieving skills point distribution.
EDIT2: added some more thoughts about how much more damage we can do with a Time Trap vs a Spike Trap due to how probability works with the Spike Trap's 20d6 vs our maxed damage strategy for benefitting from Time Trap.
First things first, this is the Enhanced Edition. It's what most people are playing and for good reason, so feel free to stop reading if that bothers you.
Second, aside from convenience stuff (like tweaks anthology's bottomless bag of holding mod), the only mod I use is SCS with pretty much everything maxed except without the "Tactical Challenges" (cause I just find them tactics-narrowing and, consequently, boring. I like the original SCS philosophy which is to just enhance the game's AI with few actual statistical/ability changes). If you like that option, ok, good for you. I did a few playthroughs with them back in the day, but didn't care for it too much.
Third, I just finished a playthrough of Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal (didn't feel like playing BG1/SoD this time around) with a Half-Orc Assassin, so that's what I'm gonna be focusing on, especially cause most people's complaints of single class thieves pertain to Throne of Bhaal.
With that said, let's get to it (feel free to skip certain sections, of course, it's a huge post):
THIEVING SKILLS POINT DISTRIBUTION (just copy and pasted it from my comment below, I didn't talk about it before cause it's too basic, but maybe some newbies might be reading this)
-There are several potions/equipment that increase your thieving skills, so you don't need to max out pickpocket, open locks or find traps. Plus, every point in dexterity increases every thieving skill except detect illusions by 5 points and you can increase dex permanently (eg tome) and temporarily (eg draw upon holy might).
-95 is enough to open every lock and find every trap in the trilogy. But if you can reach 25 str temporarily that gets you the equivalent of 85 open lock through bashing.
-You don't need much pickpocket unless you wanna steal from shops often, cause otherwise you can just buff it temporarily whenever you need it.
-Hide and move silently max out at 200 each, but 100 on one of them is reasonable enough to just hide outside of combat (remember you can use quick load to speed up your hide attempts outside of combat). 100 in both is enough to max out in dark areas (lighter areas and being outside during the day give you penalties). If you wanna run+hide constantly put more into it earlier. Or, if you're playing a shadowdancer you need as much of this as possible right away.
-Detect illusions can't be buffed so get it to 100, but you don't need it too much in bg1 cause there aren't many invisible/hidden enemies.
-Set traps should be at 100 for convenience, but you can live with a lower number if you only trap outside of combat and don't mind reloading. It's absolutely essential to max out if you wanna trap during combat (by running away first ofc otherwise you can't use it).
All in all, I just get some good hide/set traps/detect illusion early in soa and then start to minmax. Bg1 is really kit/strategy dependent but I ignore open lock/find traps for most of it (unlocking/disabling doesn't even get you much xp in bg1, why bother? Just take traps and bash locks unless doing no reload).
KITS
-Assassin: fantastic kit. Poison is a great buff (especially vs spellcasters, but not just that) with decent duration (5 rounds) that you can reapply a ton of times. That +1 to hit comes in super handy for thieves (who get worse thac0 progression than a cleric) and the +1 to damage actually makes a substantial difference when you consider it factors into backstabs. Every +1 damage (that factors into the backstab formula, so no Strength bonuses) means 7 extra damage on a single backstab or 63 extra damage in a single round of Assassination with 9 Attacks per Round (APR). And, of course, we get that sweet sweet x7 backstab, meaning Assassination can do MONSTROUS damage (easily over ~1000+ in a single round with 9APR).
-Bounty Hunter: also great, though it's been a while since I've played a solo one to judge it properly. Being able to throw the special traps and have them explode in a fireball-sized area is great and the Maze traps are underrated (they ignore magic resistance and there's no save!), cause anything with under 18 Intelligence (most enemies, pretty much) and not immune to maze (again, the vast majority of enemies, even dragons/demons are vulnerable) gets caught up for at least 2d4 (probably more) leaving you with a great opportunity to place traps for when they come back. Plus, the smarter folks come back sooner, meaning spellcasters will probably be left alone and take the brunt of the traps (whose damage can pretty much only be stopped by the exact physical/elemental-damage resistance).
-Swashbuckler: unnecessarily fighter-like IMO. As we'll see later, thieves can be quite the fighters if geared properly and it's rare that they're lacking either thac0 or AC. But since Swashbucklers get ridiculous amounts of thac0/AC by the end of the game it means you can get a little bit more creative with your gearing and access to Whirlwind is nice, I suppose. Not getting backstabs/access to Assassination is a huge bummer though.
Shadowdancer: super fun kit, but they miss out on some of the best parts of thieves: high level abilities (HLAs). Shadow Form (essentially a stronger, but short-lasting Hardiness+Improved Invisibility) is great, Shadow Twin is simply unnecessary (it's a Simulacrum, cool, but there are already two other sources of Simulacrum...) and their Shadow Maze is crappy compared to the Bounty Hunter's maze trap cause it doesn't ignore magic resistance, there's a save (at -4, admittedly) AND it only affects a single opponent, not an area. But the worst part is that they don't get the amazing thief traps and their Assassination is super nerfed with that x4 multiplier. So why are they still good? Because they still get Use Any Item (UAI), shadowstep lets you dispel illusions comfortably in the chaos of battle and give you time for your hide cooldown to reset, but, most importantly, hide-in-plain-sight allows for a cheeky combo:
Invisibility (not hiding) -> Backstab -> Insta-cast ability (eg use a wand if you're a single class SD or use a 0 casting time spell if you're a dual SD/Mage or Cleric) -> Hide (that's not on cooldown cause we weren't hidden to begin with, we were invisible before).
That means you can constantly do a backstab + use a wand or cast a spell (or a triggesequencer!) and hide before the enemy can do anything. So the more sources of invisibility you have, the more you can do in combat without ever being engaged! If the enemy doesn't just straight up ignore invisibility you can pretty much play without armor if you want (if your hide/move silently are good, ofc).
RACES
Human: good for dualing, of course. Swashbucklers and Shadowdancers are the best duals IMO, unless you're willing to dual crazy late for the x7 Assassin backstab (you can do it if you're playing solo, but I wouldn't recommend it in a full party with six-way shared XP).
Elf: -1 con makes no difference, but the +1 to dex is nice, cause we can easily get to 21 DEX (with 2 out of the 3 sources of +1 dex: BG1 Tome, the Machine of Lum and the Deck of Many Things) for that extra -1 AC and each point in dex gives us +5 to thieving skills (except Detect Illusions), but none of that is necessary cause we can still reach 21 DEX starting with 18 DEX and by the end of the game we'll have all the skills pretty much maxed out anyway. 90% charm immunity is nice though, I guess.
Half-Orc: my preferred choice. Why? Thieves need more thac0, especially against late-late game bosses that are immune to Time Traps/Time Stop (meaning we can't just auto-hit them) and having more thac0 when you're a class with poor thac0 progression is always nice. Plus, you get more damage. In BG1 alone it's a huge difference cause jumping from 18 to 19 STR means -2 bonus to thac0 and +7 to damage. By the end of the game we can have natural 23 Strength, which is more than any girdle can give us.
Other races: shorties are cool for saving throws, but thieves already get enough with all the saving throw-enhancing gear that UAI lets them use and with Greater Evasion that lowers them by a further 3 points. And we miss out on, again, what we need the most: thac0! The difference between maxing out at 22 and 23 is another extra point!
GEAR
Use Any Item is one of the main strengths of thieves, so, yes, talking about items is also talking about thieves. You can't ignore this.
-Weapons: "easy, you're an assassin, just get the Celestial Fury or the Staff of the Ram for great backstab damage!" Sure, if all you want to do a single powerful backstab to one-shot a single powerful enemy that's fine, go for those. But after getting HLAs what you want is Assassination potential and those weapons, surprisingly, aren't the best for that. Plus, you probably want a thief that can actually fight well in battles even after backstabbing and without needing to go away to hide again or whatever (though that's an option, of course).
So what's the big bad weapon combo? How do we turn out non-Fighter Thief into a fighting Thief? We need more APR. Belm+Kundane then? That'll get 1 base attack, 1 offhand attack, plus 2 main hand attacks. Double that if you're Improved Hasted, so 8 APR. Cool, but we can do a lot better than that.
Both Belm and Kundane are +2 weapons, meaning a bunch of powerful enemies will be immune to them. +3 is the real deal (only Demiliches, the Lesser Demon Lord from the eggs main quest, the Ravager, the Fallen Solar at the final battle and Watcher's Keep's Aurumach Rilmani are immune to +3 weapons). Besides, Kundane only has 1d6 base damage, meaning it weakens our Assassination potential.
The answer? Throwing daggers, motherf****! That's right! Throwing daggers ain't just for throwing!! Both the Boomerang Dagger +2 (which you can easily pickpocket right at the start of SoA) and the Firetooth +3 (available in Ust Nasha) give you an extra attack! It's just that you can't use them in the offhand, but that doesn't matter cause they're both great! Both do a respectable 2d4 damage (better than a long sword's 1d8!) and the Firetooh is a +3, plus it does 1d2 extra fire damage for some convenient troll killing and stoneskin harassing! So you use either of those in the main hand and Belm in the offhand, but if the enemy is immune to backstabs or immune to +2 weapons you switch Belm out to the Scarlet Ninja-to +3 (available in Joluv's shop at the Copper Coronet and useable by thieves with UAI!). Dope! 8 APR with a great +3 main hand weapon! As for the 9 APR... Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, which you can use after getting UAI. That's an extra 1/2 APR normally, but a full 1 extra APR with Improved Haste.
Other great weapons you should keep in mind are the usual (Mace of Disruption/Daystar against undead, that one staff that instakills golems you get in Ust Nasha... But there's more that people don't often talk about, like:
-The Blackmist Halberd you get from giving the eggs to the Lesser Demon Lord in Ust Nasha, which is great in a secondary weapon slot cause it lets us cast area blindness (blindness is one of the best spells in the game) once per day.
-The Sling of Arvoreen that stuns in an area for 3 rounds (auto-hits for our 9APR thief!).
-The Darkfire Bow available in ToB for its long-lasting (23 rounds) improved haste cast.
-The Answerer in ToB if you really want to worse the enemy's AC (I didn't need to resort to it once in my playthrough, but you can use it if you want).
EDIT: as mentioned by semiticgod, "The Staff of the Magi can royally screw with Sendai in ToB. Unlike some other ToB enemies, the drow cannot see through invisibility, though SCS Sendai and company will use divination spells (the Cloak of Non Detection can preserve the staff's invisibility despite those spells)". I totally forgot to fight the Twisted Rune before going to ToB, so I screwed myself there.
-+4 weapons for the few +3 immune enemies (which I only used to finish off the Aurumach Rilmani in Watcher's Keep and kill Demiliches, I'll talk about how to handle the Ravager later).
ArmoAccessories:
-Wands, you know them, you love them, you can backstab (or just attack) and then immediately cast them. I barely used them in my playthrough, but they're excellent, of course, especially the wands of paralyzation and spell striking.
-Invisibility stuff. Obvious use.
-Like I said before, Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization (SoA) to get to 9APR.
-Headband of the Devout (ToB): blesses you (-1 thac0 and +1 backstab-effective damage!) and lets you cast Righteous Magic (+3 Strength and MAXED OUT DAMAGE) once per day lasting 1 turn aka 10 rounds!!! GET THIS!! Normally only monks can use it and it's available in Rasaad's quest, along with two other nice items (a cloak that gets you -2 stackable AC and Protection from Magical Energy and Boots with 3x/day Shadow Door).
-Improved Haste (IH) gear:
a) (SoA) Early on you can use the Ring of Gaxx to get 1 round of undispellable (hardly necessary, but I just thought I'd let people know about this if they didn't) IH 3x/day, it technically amounts to 5 rounds, not 3, cause each of the 3 casts lasts for 10 secs (a round is 6 secs), so you might end up doing more than 1 round's worth of attacks (it's hard to tell).
b) (SoA) Bracers of Blinding Strike in the Underdark for 20 secs (a little over 3 rounds) of IH. You can equip it, cast it and equip something else.
c) (SoA) Scrolls of Improved Haste, if you really want to have a longer lasting IH in SoA. There are quite a few and you won't need them in ToB, so use them freely. If you want, you can even waste a scroll of wish for it...
d) (modded SoA or ToB) If you're using the mod (was it Tweaks Anthology?) that lets Cromwell forge the ToB recipes that you can already get in SoA then you can get the Improved Cloak of Protection +2 for those sweet 23 rounds of IH.
e) (ToB) Amulet of Cheetah Speed, also 23 rounds of IH.
-Cloak of Unerring Strikes (SoA) and later Montolio's Cloak (ToB) for extra offhand thac0 and, in Montolio's case also -1 save and AC bonus.
-White Dragon Scale (SoA): best base AC out of any armor in game, available early in SoA, doesn't interfere with thieving skills, lets you cast Cone of Cold, protects from Cold (great for Melissan battle along with the Boots of the North)... The only problem is that it won't let you use the Improved Cloak of Protection +2, so when you get it switch to the Robe of the Apprenti (AC3) until you get another source of long-lasting IH. Or switch it out to cast IH with the cloak before battle and then put it back on.
-Thieves' Hood (SoA): you're a thief, backstabs can hurt a lot in ToB, this makes you immune. Poison immunity is great too, but you got the Ring of Gaxx (which I'll cover with other regen gear) for that.
-Paws of the Cheetah (SoA): along with (improved) haste this lets you run and hide or, better yet, run and place a Time Trap or Spike Trap! Essential!!
-Helm of Balduran: we need that thac0 early on, boys and girls. Some HP and AC is nice too.
-The Visage (SoA, from Dorn's quest): -1 bonus to saves and thac0, protects against crits (I just noticed this lol), can dominate once and has an acid breath attack and a big ol' list of immunities (fear, charm, feeblemind, confusion). What's not to love? It just takes a while to get cause you gotta finish Dorn's quest. It's dope, but after your saves get really low (naturally protecting you against those status as well) you get better stuff.
-Book of Infinite Spells (SoA): Spell Turning! Underrated item and spell. You don't get a lot of spell protections as a non-spellcaster, especially the rechargeable kind, so this is one of the best.
-Vhailor's Helm: more traps! More Assassinations! I actually forgot about using this until the literal final battle lol, but it's great.
-Heart of the Mountain (SoA): available in Spellhold and normally only useable by Shamans, this gets you -2 AC and stacks with enchanted armorings! Excellent before ToB.
-Amulet of the Master Harper (ToB): -3 bonus to AC, even better! Silence immunity and thieving skill bonuses aren't bad either.
-Blessed Bracers (modded SoA Cromwell or ToB): resurrection heals you completely (at least until 2.6 comes! Though the text says it fully heals, so maybe it'll still after 2.6?) and there's some Cure Wounds too if you want. You're better off using a Rod of Resurrection cause it casts faster, but sometimes you just don't feel like using non-rechargeable item charges. Put it on, use it and switch out.
-Nymph Cloak: cheesyyyyy, so cheeeeesy, but it's the kind of cheese I love. I tried not using it too much though, I just used it against a few Rakshasa early on and against Aesgareth's party.
-Regen gear (I'll explain why this is great for thieves next): Ring of Regeneration, Ring of Gaxx (-2 AC and poison/disease immunity is great too ofc), Wong Fei's Ioun Stone (which also nets you some HP and -1 AC).
REGENERATION
"What? Why are you talking about regeneration? What does that have to do with thieves?"
Alchemy = unlimited Potions of Regeneration that stack with all of the regen geaspells (all sources of regen stack INCLUDING DRINKING MULTIPLE POTIONS OF REGENERATION and I just discovered this last part after finishing the game). And Potions of Regeneration heal 2HP/round and last for 3 turns aka 30 rounds!
Although Potions of Regen aren't super rare, they're also not available in ample supply, especially if you don't know where to find them all to begin with. But high level thieves can spam them freely cause they can always get more with Alchemy.
So, if you're not a believe in regeneration like I am, let's explain how good it can be (this is the calculation without abusing potion of regen stacking, so only using one):
-Ring of Regen 1HP/round (aka 1HP/6 seconds)
-Ring of Gaxx 2/round
-Wong Fei's Ioun Stone 1HP/Round
-Potion of Regeneration 2HP/round
=
6HP/round (aka 1HP/sec)
x2 (cause Haste doubles it)
12HP/round (aka 2HP/sec)
That's already pretty damn nice and it "reduces damage" a lot better than AC in ToB where some enemies still tear through -20 AC (plus, you can easily get to the AC cap and still wear all of those items and you've still got a cloak slot to spare and it doesn't force you into using regen weapons)
But if you want some more quick regen as you run around you can use the Cloak of the Sewers' troll form to get you an extra 1HP/sec or 2 with haste, netting you 4HP/sec or 24HP/round which is almost a free Potion of Extra Healing (heals 27HP) every round.
Hexxat makes this even better cause she's got "natural" (it's actually from her amulet) 1HP/round regen.
And, of course, that's all without abusing the Potion of Regeneration stacking that can up as much as you can (though, again, you don't need it and I didn't use it cause I only discovered it now, after finishing the game), as long as you can be bothered to produce a ton of potions with Alchemy and resting (though they're temporary, so as you're drinking more you're wasting the duration of the previous ones, but it CAN get pretty ridiculous quickly and, hey, mages get crazy 8HP/sec WITHOUT HASTE regen from Shapechange -> Greater Wolfwere, so it's fair!).
TRAPS
Regular Traps: they eventually do 3d8+5 missile damage and 20 Poison damage with no save, Slays target if a Save vs. Death with a +4 bonus is failed. Pretty neat, especially if you stack a bunch, but not world-shattering.
Spike Traps: everybody knows how good Spike Traps are, so I won't waste much time on them. They do 20d6 magic damage, so 20-120 (average 70). Magic damage is rarely (and I mean rarely) resisted, which makes them top tier and they can crush even Demogorgon and the final boss easily. I generally get 7 of them so I have the max stackable (was this a thing in vanilla or is this limit SCS-only? I don't remember) whenever I want without simulacrums etc..
Time Traps: bonkers. Amazing. Insanely underrated. Let's do some ToB-stage calculations (this is just the damage I was doing at some point in ToB with IH+Righteous Magic, it's not 100% minmax'd):
Righteous Magic (max damage and 25 STR)+Improved Haste (9APR)+Time Trap (auto-hit) without backstabs/Assassination:
Firetooth +3 -> 29 * 7 attacks (main hand) = 203 damage
Belm +2 -> 28 * 2 attacks (offhand) = 56 damage
=
1 trap spent, 1 round = 259 non-variable (without taking into account potential resistances to pierce/slash) damage. Plus, this is damage you can divide among multiple enemies.
Same thing, but with Assassination:
Firetooth +3 -> 147 * 7 attacks (main hand) = 1029 damage
Belm +2 -> 112 * 2 attacks (offhand) = 224 damage
=
1 trap spent, 1 round = 1253 non-variable (without taking into account potential resistances to pierce/slash) damage. Plus, this is damage you can divide among multiple enemies (eg backstabs for everyone aaaaand fall) and you can still do a lot of damage without Time Traps, it's just that auto-hit is great to make sure every attack hits.
All in all, Time Traps often (not always, ofc) provide more value per use than Spike Traps, especially cause you can divide the damage among several enemies. With a properly geared Assassin, in most fights even without Righteous Magic IH+Assasination+Time Trap = 9 dead enemies in 1 round, so you can start doing this in SoA easily. EDIT: also, when you think about probabilities, even though Spike Trap does 20d6 and technically that's 20-120 damage, in reality there's a ~83% chance to roll in the 60-80 range or ~53% to roll in the 65-75 range, so their damage is largely inferior to what it may seem at first, meanwhile, out Time Trap strategy rolls max damage always due to Righteous Magic!
And, supposedly, another trap exists... Hmmm... Don't bother, folks.
OTHER HIGH-LEVEL ABILITIES
Greater Evasion: dope! -6 bonus to AC, -3 bonus to saving throws, movement rate +2 and immunity to normal missiles. Lasts 5 rounds. I get 2 just in case, but it's rarely needed tbh. You got access to a lot of AC reducing gear with a thief (this is without Greater Evasion or any buffs and I could still get -2 if I used the Ring of Earth Control and the Cloak of the Dark Moon, but I'd rather keep my regen and thac0 stuff).
Scribe Scrolls: unfortunately pointless. The only half-decent spells you can easily get from other items (wands, White Dragon Scale etc.). Do not invest!
Avoid Death: -5 bonus to Save vs. Death, immunity to instant death effects, and +20 Hit Points. Lasts 5 rounds. It's aight. I get 2 later in the game just in case, but I rarely use it (good against Planetars so you don't get vorpal'd, would be good against Balors' vorpal effect too, but you can just Assassinate them).
THE GREAT LIST OF BACKSTAB-IMMUNE ENEMIES! OH, THE DESPAIR!
"Thieves are useless, there are too many backstab immune enemies!". Is that really the case? I mean, I know it's subjective (what you think are "too many", I mean), but too me the list is pretty short. The only thing that bothers me is ToB bosses being immune to it, but you can still handily deal with them as I'll show later. I think people think a lot of enemies are immune to backstab just cause they see past invisibility (like Demons do), but Assassination still works on them. So... Here's the list:
SoA/ToB backstab-immune enemies:
General enemy types:
-Barbarians (fun fact: there are almost no Barbarians in SoA/ToB and the majority of them are specific measly Orcs/Orogs/Minotaurs)
-Beholders (all types) <- Trap, even regular traps do it most of the time.
-Demiliches (NOT Liches in general) <- Use Spell Immunity from a scroll or Protection from Undead if you're low level.
-Devas/Planetars <-You should kill mage/clerics before they can summon them, but if you can't just Time Trap or Spike Trap.
-Dragons <- Time Trap handles them easily or just use a scroll of disintegration.
-Golems
-Slimes/Oozes
-A lot of mists/wraiths (I can't tell whether it's all of them or not, so I listed them below)
Specific enemies:
-3 out of the 6 enemies in the Heart Key fight in Watcher's Keep Final Seal level (The Huntress, the Hive Mother and Ameralis are immune, so Nalmissra, Xei Win Toh and even Y'Tossi are vulnerable)
-Aesgareth and his party
-Bone fiends (Bone Golem-looking demons)
-Specific demons in fight 2-5 of the Black Pits II (for some reason... Even the Lesser Demon Lord in the Underdark is vulnerable, so why make these ones invulnerable?)
-Garock/Rock (the two minotaurs at the Machine of Lum level of Watcher's Keep)
-Guardian spirit (don't even remember who this is)
-Kiser (dude causing some mischief in Saradush)
-Liches, only two of them (Azamantes, the Spike Trap-able, along with his flaming skulls and Vongoethe in Amkethran)
-Mists/Wraiths: Mist/Swamp/Wandering Horrors, Vampiric Wraiths/Mists, Spellhaunts, Slave Wraiths and Demon Wraith (Watcher's Keep maze level)
-Velithuu (the ice salamander-looking demons in the Watcher's Keep Maze level)
Bosses (ie enemies you have to fight finish the game, plus Demogorgon cause he's the "boss" of Watcher's Keep):
-The Bhaalspawns (Balthazar, Gromnir, Illasera, Sendai, Yaga-Shura and his Lieutenants)
-Demogorgon
-Melissan
-Nyalee (technically a boss lol)
-Ravager and its Bone Blades
Everything else can be backstabbed! Including:
-Bodhi
-Irenicus
-The Slayer
-Pretty much every Demon (even the Lesser Demon Lord in the Underdark)
-Almost every Lich (even Kangaxx and Shangalar)
-Greater Werewolves/Wolfweres
-Mind Flayers (even their Master Brain)
-The Watcher's Keep statues
-Rakshasa
-Fire Giants
-Drow and so on (what else worries people?)
If they see past invisibility, just pop that assassination, brother!
And for those that can't be backstabbed we always have Time Traps! 9APR of auto-hit max damage is no joke. And takes us to...
ENEMIES IMMUNE TO TIME TRAP/STOP
They are just a few:
-Demogorgon
-Melissan
-Ravager
-Abazigal
-Aurumach/Ferrumach Rilmani
-Balthazar (only while in Lunar Stance)
-Guardian Spirit (who???)
Not that many and, really, the only ones who are a big deal in the non-tactical challenge SCS Insane game are Melissan and Ravager (which I'll cover later). Aurumach is also immune to +3 weapons and under, but he's too squishy to be a bother and can partially be hurt by normal traps (he's immune to magical damage, so Spike Traps don't work and the poison part of normal traps also doesn't work).
ENEMIES THAT REQUIRE +4 WEAPONS
Also not too many:
Ravager
Aurumach Rilmani <- mentioned it before, too squishy to be a bother.
Fallen Solar (NOT Fallen Planetar, it's the one from the Melissan battle) <- lure and 2-3 spike traps handles it
Demiliches <- usual cheese
Lesser Demon Lord <- vulnerable to Time Trap and backstabs
SO HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THEM TOB BOSSES?
Demogorgon: Spike Traps. Bye.
Yaga-Shura: Time Trap, hit him. Then deal with Lieutenants until you find him and then Time Trap him again.
Sendai: actually one of the most annoying fights in the game for single class solo thieves, because there are sooooo many enemies to handle it's a big bother. The important part is to Spike Trap her clones that cast magic before they spawn and to put a Time Trap at the left of the arena before killing that last clone (who's pretty weak, thankfully, so you can take your time to set things up), that way the reinforcements will trigger the Time Trap along with the real Sendai spawning and you can just hit her until she dies and she can't do anything. Remember that you have a million different sources of Improved Haste at this point, so you can re-buff. EDIT: Read about the Staff of the Magi on the weapons section. I fucked up and didn't have it cause I forgot to get it before moving on to ToB.
Abazigal: pre-fight 1 Time Trap to kill his human form in 1 round, 6 Spike Traps somewhere else -> Dragon (Time Trap immune), get him to trigger the 6 Spike Traps, then run and Spike Trap one or two times more. Dead. In vanilla it would be way easier cause dragons don't get the x3 SCS buff to HP.
Balthazar: one Time Trap. Done. Yeaaaah, he's too easy for pretty much every party, I should re-install the improved version of his fight at least.
Ravager: Time Trap AND backstab immunity! What a meanie! Besides the usual buffs (improved haste+righteous magic) and prioritizing thac0 boosting equipment, I used Black Blade of Disaster + 3 scrolls of Protection from Magical Weapons + 1 of Absolute Immunity. Harder to think of what to do than to actually do it. You gotta get a little lucky so that PfMW doesn't run out as he hits you and does the stun (sleep?) stuff on you or that you don't get dispelled too soon. Not too bad once you know what to do.
Melissan: again Time Trap and backstab immunity. The first phase is the whole fight, pretty much. Usual buffs (improved haste+righteous magic) + BBD + Spell Immunity: Abjuration (to prevent dispel) can end it fast before it gets outta control. After that it's just a matter of abusing Spike Trap (4 traps for each phase) by using Simulacrums (scrolls or Vhailor's), Project Images and/or Rest Wishes (stop hoarding scrolls, it's the final fight!).
RANDOM STATS
Total scrolls I used in the whole playthrough:
-3 Disintegrations for dragons (Firkraag/Thaxll'ssillyia/Saladrex). I coulda Time Trapped and hit them for a few times but this is easier.
-2 Black Blades of Disaster (Ravager + Melissan's first phase).
-2 Simulacrums (Melissan trap shennanigans).
-3 Protection from Magical Weapons (Ravager).
-1 Absolute Immunity, which coulda been another PfMW (Ravager).
-1 Protection from Undead (to kill Kangaxx's Demilich form early on).
Basically, feel free to use more scrolls than I did, cause you rarely need them.
Wands I used:
-1 charge of a wand of spellstriking to Breach Melissan at the start of her first phase.
-3 charges of a wand of cloudkill on random enemies after getting UAI, then I forgot about it.
Coulda used a lot more wands (especially spellstriking, but with regen and stuff I just waited til PfMWs ran out on some mages and so on), but I was too busy having fun with Time Trap Assassinations trying to kill as many enemies before they fell to the ground.
How many times I used the super cheesy Nymph Cloak that I love but avoided using to focus on thief-related strats:
-A few times against Rakshasa very early in the game (Watcher's Keep rakshasa can destroy a good deal of the second level on its own).
-Once to charm the mage in the Aesgareth fight very early in the game to rush the +1 STR (Machine of Lum) and +2 DEX (Lum + Deck of Many Things).
FINAL VERDICT
Tons of fun. It's actually been a while since I last bothered to really finish Throne of Bhaal all the way through, but I was having so much fun with my Assassin that I did it. And it's boooooooooooooooooooooooooooonkers to think that some people think they're underpowered. Bonkers! They're almost fightemage/thieves on their own. And even if you don't like positioning for backstabs... You barely need it. I pretty much only did that before I got Assassination (and even then I didn't need to rely on it too much cause I already had 8APR and so on), afterwards it's Assassination-a-palooza. Too bad you only get 1 so you have to rest a bunch though, but you can still do plenty of damage with just Time Traps if you don't wanna abuse resting.

Card Balance in LoR

There's been a lot of recent discussion on what the next balance patch should look like, and I feel like a lot of discussion overemphasizes the importance of card balance as opposed to deck balance. I think it's reasonable that LoR wants a range of viable decks with similar power levels, but I'll argue that I don't even think having a game with balanced cards is a good thing.
Decks win games, not cards, and in decks with 40 cards and 2 regions there's a lot of room for cards that, in a vacuum, are more mana-efficient than their competition but don't hurt the metagame health because you can't just run the 20 best cards and win every game. Deck strength isn't a simple function of the individual strengths of cards, but rather that combined with their synergies and the current meta matchups.

Card Balance Statistics

Because of this, when you look at cards by win rate, you don't see the truly best cards, because it's hard to have a crazy high win rate if everyone uses something. If a card had an 100% usage rate it'd have a 50% win rate, after all. This means that I'm not going to use win rate to say that cards are good or bad, because the best cards by win rate are usually just the cards that only see play in tier 1 decks: not [[Mystic Shot]] (50% win rate on the dot), but [[Augmented Experimenter]] (55% win rate). Chances are, if you're running Augmented Experimenter, you're running discard aggro, which is a good deck that isn't hard to pilot, and so you're likely to win. Mystic Shot is included in all sorts of offbeat decks, so its gets dragged down even though I'd claim it's a much better card.
Instead, I'm going to use inclusion rate as a better stat, with some caveats when necessary. The list sorted by inclusion rate looks a lot more like the best cards in the game: [[Deny]], [[Pale Cascade]], [[Hush]], [[Mystic Shot]], and [[The Grand Plaza]] are the top 5.

Commonalities In the Best Cards

What do these top cards have in common? Some of the commonalities are probably due to the choice of statistic. Cards that require very specific decks to shine are obviously not going to be included because they get dragged down by every other deck their regions run. ([[The Harrowing]] is a fantastic card, but two of the most common SI decks, BWSI Go Hard and FTR Control, get very little value from it, and it's a 9 mana Slow spell so they're not going to just throw a copy in.)
You might notice that, while some of these are complained about often (I see you, Grand Plaza with over 2.8 copies per Demacia deck in both All Ranks and Masters!!!), many aren't: [[Mystic Shot]], [[Single Combat]], [[Thermogenic Beam]], and [[Glimpse Beyond]] are all top 15 cards by this metric. Why are some of these cards so hated when others aren't?

What Makes Cards Hated?

Let's look at some of these hated cards to try and find some commonalities.

• Being good is obviously correlated with being disliked: no one hates [[Parade Electrorig]] because it's complete trash. (What a revelation, I know.)
• Cards that have easy comparisons to other regions can feel overtuned because it's easy to see the mana advantage they give over other cards. [[Ravenous Flock]] is often highlighted for this reason: it's so much better than [[Paddle Star]] that it must be broken, right? [[Sharpened Resolve]] is a way better [[Twin Disciplines]], and [[Sharpsight]] is way better than both of them.
• Polarized cards with really good ceilings are easy to complain about. [[Hush]] singlehandedly dismantles some archetypes, and seeing a 2 mana card undo much more than that clearly suggests overtuning. Compare [[Mystic Shot]], which is extraordinarily consistent but rarely has some amazing payoff.
• There's also definitely an echo chamber effect which I won't ignore: watching a streamer dunk on [[Pale Cascade]] certainly prompts some thought about how insane the card is. This isn't really something balance patches control, though, so I'll ignore it.

But these aren't necessarily great predictors either: [[Relentless Pursuit]] is a top 15 card that compares very, very well to other sources of Rally (moment of silence for [[Shunpo]]), has one of the highest value ceilings in the game, but isn't complained about to the same degree as other cards like it.

Card Balance vs. Card Design

I think the answer is really that people dislike the appearance of imbalance more than they do actual card imbalance, because having better-than-average cards isn't actually a bad thing.
Let's say [[Single Combat]] was 1 mana more. In fact, we don't have to imagine, because [[Strafing Strike]] exists. It's not unheard of to run Strafing Strike as a fourth Single Combat, and if Single Combat didn't exist I think the vast majority of current decks running Single Combat would just run three Strafing Strike, even without the heal effect.
This makes Single Combat one of the best cards in the game for sure. It's 33% cheaper than a card that would see heavy play if it didn't outcompete it. There are an average of 2.65 Single Combats per Demacia deck, 6th in the entire game. The card is crazy.
Yet someone replying to my last post said the card was one of their favorites. I hear basically no one complain about Single Combat.
That's for good reason: the card is well designed! It makes games more interactive, it makes the most vanilla archetype in LoR a lot more strategic, it can be played around using a wide variety of mechanics so almost any deck has some way of dealing with it, and it's just an interesting card that makes interesting moments.
Because it's a fun card, having it be really good is, if anything, good for the game, because it means that on average more cards in a game are interesting. ([[Chief Mechanist Zevi]] is a super interesting card, but it doesn't make the game more fun because you'll never see it played!)
There's a lot of discussion that basically has people talking past each other here: "Hush isn't good" is not the opposite of "Hush needs a change." Cards can be badly designed even if they aren't good. A 0-mana Burst "win the game if your opponent has a Vladimir in their hand, deck, or board" would be unplayable, but it would be an awful card design.
This is not to say that card balance isn't an issue at all. This is mainly because overpowered cards can cause more random variation in games, which is personally not a fun part of the game. A 0-mana "win the game" card would obviously be terrible to play with, because it would make any game a coin flip. Cards like [[Targon's Peak]] have explicit randomness that can be frustrating, but cards that you really want to draw compared to other cards in your deck have a similar randomness that can be harder to spot because they don't say "random" on the card face.
This is a common link to a lot of the hated cards I was talking about earlier: they're cards you don't want your opponent to draw. Almost all of the cards I'm talking about are cheap and can use spell mana: people know that the chance their opponent has drawn [[The Dreadway]] by turn 9 is pretty good, but playing [[Teemo]] turn 1 prompts a sigh from people because it swings the game measurably but isn't incredibly likely either. Zoe is great if you can draw her. Pale Cascade is always great, but in the early game it's way more likely that the stats matter and the extra card can be seen earlier: its a great card to play early.

What Makes a Card Broken?

If I had to define "broken" using this metric, it would be this: a card is broken if, in decks that have high win rates even without it, that card being drawn significantly improves deck win rates. I don't know of any such stats that track this, but I'd be interested in looking at them.
To make it clearer what this definition is not:

• It's not "cards that make decks better when played", because otherwise [[Purrsuit of Perfection]] would be broken. Playing FTR usually wins you the game because your deck is made to win in the lategame and, if you're playing FTR, you got there.
• It's also not cards that improve a random deck's win rate the most. That's mainly a function of having high synergy, which isn't a bad thing on its own, although it can be argued that cards like this are still annoying because they make drawing it more important. I'd love to see a [[Yasuo]] tutor in the game, for example, because the luck of drawing him is a huge swing for Stun decks. But, importantly, [[Yasuo]] makes an awful deck playable, not a good deck overpowered.
• Similarly, it's not comparing decks by win rate with or without the card. That instead measures a card's "wins above replacement", which depends as much on the replacement as it does the card itself. [[Genevieve Elmheart]] is a great card, but she has the terrible luck of competing with [[Cithria the Bold]], which is one of the best cards in the game.
• It has virtually nothing to do with mana advantage or comparisons to other cards in the game! People often fall into a trap of comparing terrible cards to decent ones or overemphasizing nerfs because you remember how good it used to be. Just because [[Scaled Snapper]] is 100% objectively better than [[Golden Crushbot]] in every single instance it's played except Allegiance odds doesn't mean the card is good!

The main problem with this definition I can see is that it doesn't account for the meta knowledge of players. There's a class of cards like [[Deny]], [[The Ruination]], [[Sharpsight]], and [[Hush]] that are so common and have such a high potential to win games or net huge value that they can win games without ever being played or drawn! If I see a Shen/Fiora list has 7 cards and 5 mana open, there's no way I'm playing my [[Supernova]] unless I'm really in dire straits and can't afford to play around [[Deny]], but they might not even run it in their deck! Honestly, this is what makes the dominance of cards like [[Deny]] even more remarkable: they're so good that, even though just bluffing it is already good, playing it is still so much better: it's a buff to all of Ionia.
This has a direct correlation with the design goal of rewarding strategic play, and so it's clear why a card like this is bad for the game: if winning games is more about getting lucky than playing well, that's obviously not super fun for a competitive scene.

Is That Always a Bad Thing?

Cards that aren't even broken because they're not actually good can still be bad for the game's health if they still tick the other boxes. One reason I think Daybreak gets a lot of shade thrown at it is because the Leona level up condition is hugely draw dependent, and I'd like to see more tutors for cards like Yasuo that need to be played to make their decks work. Saying "oh look, Crimsons aren't that good, let's add [[The Scargrounds]]" just makes a deck that's either above average or really bad, not a deck that's consistently playable.
Similarly, I think there are plenty of objectively overpowered cards that I wouldn't tweak. Core cards help build region identity, which isn't often talked about as an important thing because it's not directly related to competitive gameplay but is still important. If you look at the list of cards by inclusion rate, you can see the core identities of different regions: counterspells in Ionia, direct damage in P&Z, combat tricks in Demacia, death synergy and high-end control in SI, etc. As long as they're not so good that they turn games into coin flips, they benefit the game and make deckbuilding more interesting. I want to play Fiora with the counterspells of Ionia, the protection and Spellshield of Targon, and the combat buffs of Freljord, but I have to pick one of them. The problem only comes when having [[Riposte]] and [[Bastion]] alongside a drawn [[Fiora]] are so good that you turn the game into a slot machine.

Wrapping Up

Sorry for the wall of text! One last thing is that I wish people talked more about the bad cards being buffed. Having good cards isn't necessarily bad, but I'd argue having cards like [[Parade Electrorig]] is basically just a waste of developer time for nothing: they could remove it next patch and no one would notice! These cards don't get talked about precisely because they're never seen, but if you look at the inclusion stats sorted in the other direction you see a ton of fruitless developer work making really interesting card designs that could be unlocked with just a bit more love from Riot.
tl;dr being a good card isn't the same thing as being broken: cards that make the game more random and less strategic because drawing them is more important than playing well are a problem, but plenty of absolutely overpowered cards make the game way more enjoyable, give regions identities, and still work because they give consistent value alongside other core cards and aren't so irreplaceable that you lose without them.
What do you all think about this? Do you think Glimpse Beyond needs to be nerfed? I'm interested to hear.

Note: Many of the links are to the Amity Arena Library, a website devoted to the game which includes tracking the history of it through patchnotes and a running history of what cards entered and left the meta. Their website was a valuable resource for this post.

Mobile gaming has taken off like a wildfire since the advent of the smartphone boosted the average processing power a phone could carry. Initially it took the form of crossing over older, more easily runnable games onto the mobile market to... mixed success, but in recent years we've seen both the West and East use mobile gaming to replace the old fashioned movie tie in game. It's easily accessable, has a much wider reach than consoles or PC, you can take it on the go and standards are inherently lower for mobile games than they are a full 60 dollar game.
Since the 2010s, mobile gaming has shifted to what's called the "Freemium" module. The game itself is free to download and start playing, but is insideously designed with obnoxious paywalls or artificial limiters put in place to limit how much you can play each day. If the game is part of a pre-existing franchise, additional money can be made through a premium currency or a chance to obtain high-powered units by rolling a slot machine random chance mechanic. And thus, gacha gaming was born. This sub has had several threads in the past on high profile gacha games, such as the monolithic Fate Grand/Order, Pokemon Go or Genshin Impact. One of the more popular things to roll for in gachas as a consequence is wallpapers for your homescreen, especially for high-grade units as they're usually animated to move a little bit on the homescreen. Today we're looking a low to mid-tier gacha game that rose and fell with the advent of one catgirl. Let's talk RWBY.
RWBY is an online web anime made by Rooster Teeth focusing on four prospective monster hunters who get embroiled in a world-spanning shadow war. It's of debatable quality in matters of animation, combat, voice acting, story, worldbuilding, romance, and it's kind of a little racist if I'm being honest, but one of the major positives of RWBY is that the series tends to have good character design. Series creator Monty Oum set in the guidelines for the show while making it that most if not every design should be made to be cosplay friendly, hence why most of the outfits have things most costume designers haven't heard of like... pockets. And Rooster Teeth, above all else, likes making money. So they know people like RWBY's character designs, enough so that in 2017 plans were made to release a gacha game themed around RWBY called Amity Arena, which would be developed by Korean company NHN Entertainment.
Amity Arena is a PvP tower defense game. Each player controls two turrets and a tower and has three minutes to use units themed from the show to destroy the other player's structures. Whoever took out more wins, destroying a tower is an instant victory. When the game launched, it had three tiers for units- Common (generally held for mooks or low-tier characters in the show), Rare (roughly protagonist-level or elite mooks go here) and Epic (High tier characters usually with an active ability that did lots of damage or stopped enemies in their tracks). The game launched in October 2018 to generally positive reviews from both mobile game players and RWBY fans alike. Fans were happy to get a lot of new official art for the characters in the game and the base gameplay loop was fun. Criticism at the time was largely themed around the lack of content besides PVP matches and some issues with the meta but overall, the launch went well. Each month, the developers would add new units, including popular characters like Neopolitian, Cinder Fall, Zwei the dog, and more.
But everything changed with February 20th 2019, which introduced Neon Katt, the titular catgirl (RWBY characters are themed around fairytales, except for Neon, who is themed around Nyan Cat, and her partner Flynt Coal, who is themed off a potentially racist joke made by Rooster Teeth).
Neon is a character from RWBY Volume 3 who's part of a team that RWBY face during a tournament arc. Her partner, Flynt Coal, was part of the game at launch, and Neon would join him a few months later. Neon in the show is a cocky fighter who taunts the heroes and zips around on rollarskates, which in-game is represented by Neon skating towards the nearest enemy structure to her and hitting it, while all units within a radius of Neon are taunted and provoked into attacking her above all other targets unless they-selves are coded to hit structures. On its own, not a bad idea for a unit, but Neon came with four big caveats:

• Neon was the fourth corner of the square that became known as the Artillery Arena meta, which saw Neon, Cinder (who had an AOE ability she could use which was wide enough to hit a turret and tower and single-handedly killed the entire launch meta of using fragile swarm units), Zwei (an on-summon high damage AOE on any part of the map) and Penny (another AOE ability that instead did chip damage and locked a location down) turn the game's meta into a chip game. Every player ran at least one of the above cards, if only to counter the others. Neon was the universal counter in being anti-swarm and the hardest to stop, especially at launch where her taunt range was so large, it could grab units from the other lane.
  
• Neon launched with a unit weight of "Heavy", which meant that if she was behind a unit she could push it on her way to the turret. This launched a sub-meta where Neon was placed behind a larger unit such as the Ursa (which like Neon was a unit that focused on structures but was made slow to cover its tankiness), to push them towards the turret faster. This was called Disco Bear. They eventually patched this so Neon phased through units by making her a lightweight.
  
• Neon couldn't die. She was invincible until she hit a structure, which combined with her taunt meant that Neon was very annoying to fight and could lock down an entire lane of the battlefield by being placed well and taunting enemies to let you prepare a counter.
  
• Neon was a very cheap unit to summon. Amity Arena uses a mechanic called "Aura" where all units cost a certain amount and it recharges over the match- for instance, protagonist Ruby Rose has a Rare card that costs four Aura to summon, while Weiss Schnee has two rares that cost three and five. Neo only cost two Aura, which made her one of the cheapest units of the game and thus disproportionately powerful for her cost and easy to cycle through your deck so you could spam her.
  

From the word go, Neon is an unpopular unit; she's clearly overbalanced and elements such as the Disco Bear glitch have players thinking she'll have to get knocked down in a nerf- she'll either be made slower, more expensive, or able to die pre-hitting a structure, right?
Neon doesn't show up in the next patch. Instead, before she's fixed, an entire new class of units called Legendaries are introduced, and this is where the game goes full gacha. Legendaries were meant to represent the highest tier characters in the game, the ones who were either the most popular characters or the highest-tier fighters in the show. Or in some cases, the popular ships such as combo cards for White Rose (Ruby/Weiss), Bumblebee (Blake/Yang) and Flower Power (Ren/Nora). Legendaries, representing their value, were impossibly rare and had an infinitely small chance of actually appearing (The most reliable method was to buy the premium chests and hope you'd roll a Legendary, which often cost tons of money), and if you did get one, there was no way to guess which Legendary you'd actually get. Some such as White Rose and Adam were high tier units, others like Hazel or Checkmate were... kinda broken at launch. The playerbase isn't happy at this, especially as free to play players are left out in the cold and reliant on the game giving them high tier units effectively out of pity.
Neon would get a small nerf in the April patch which lessened her taunt range and killed the Disco Bear meta, but her invincibility would be left untouched, even as players submitted feedback regarding how to make it more efficient. The official Amity Arena discord has a weekly feedback section on Tuesdays where players could submit up to four suggestions on how to nerf/buff units and general requests for quality of life such as "Can this character get a new skin from this part of the show," or "Can we have an option to lower music volume that's not just muting all music?" (they never did add that second request) Neon would then remain in this state until the November patch, despite constant weekly requests for a Neon rework, and all it would do is make Neon functionally mortal, in that she had a flat shield bar of 20 that would be lowered by one for each attack before the next hit would kill her. Neon could now die... but your chances of actually doing enough damage to stop her were slim, and regardless, you were now at a serious Aura defecit.
It took seven months for this one unit to get a substantial nerf, all while the game added new units every week and the number of units being affected by patches each month began to gradually sink. To round up some of the major issues people had with Amity that developed throughout 2019 alongside Neon's general existance making life hell:

• Common units were meant to be chump fodder, but could level up the most amount of times with a level cap at 13. This meant longer-term units that had a long time to level such as the Xiong Family card, the AK-130s the Beowolf Pack, or the White Fang gunners, could become shockingly strong if players grinded the money up to reach max level.
  
• A pre-existing divide between free players and players willing to burn money IRL to get access to premium currencies led to a huge disparity in play. Free players have long complained about how hard it is to scrounge money together to level up units at higher costs as even the basic currency of Lien is hard to get large quantities of (you get a certain amount every match win but otherwise you need to burn the Schnee Premium Dust currency for the highest payouts, but SPD is also needed for shop resets, buying crates or unlocking cosmetics). The developers used to do frequent double weekends where all gains were doubled for a weekend, but these became less and less frequent as time went on. Legendaries only added to the divide, as their rarity was bad enough for players willing to spend money (one player, known as one of the largest whales in the community, in trying to get Sienna Khan, reported burning nearly nine hundred dollars on her, while taking nearly six hundred to get the Ice Flower card).
  
• One actual counter was born to fight Neon in the Argus Shield, a stationary unit that existed solely to stall units and take damage. At 2 Aura, it was the first structure to counter Neon, which allevated one of the primary problems with Neon in that no way to counter her was cost-efficient for an enemy player. They buffed the Wall to 3 Aura eventually which killed that hope, and all this happened before Neon's November nerf.
  
• The Summer of 2019 saw a large number of defensive units released; alongside the Argus Shield, several different units were released themed around turrets for the technological kingdom of Atlas, such as the Beam Turret. The Atlesian Burrow Gun was the straw that broke the camel's back and made for a miserable meta as the Burrow Gun would only appear (and be available to take damage) when a unit entered its range. These three units together were all very overpowered on launch and led to a large exodus of players sick of defensive and chip-based metas, especially as what few offensive units that were good enough to counter these metas (such as Professor Port and Adam Taurus) were often nerfed into the ground within a month of release.
  
• Also around this time it became apparent that the developers were unable to meet the quotas that Rooster Teeth was forcing on them. The social media team admitted that a certain number of units needed to be in the game in time for Winter 2019 when Volume 7 was set to start, and as the year went on more and more game-breaking bugs were being found in units, or they were at best horrifically undertuned or overpowered. The Apathy was perhaps the largest case of this, as an unfound bug pre-release meant that the Apathy (who have a passive ability that let them self-duplicate) had no cap on their power, meaning that they could immediately overwhelm defenses and in the case of some phones, be such a resource hog the phone would crash. Many Legendary units were especially guilty of being under-tuned due to low Legendary availability meaning they were simply weren't powerful enough to compare with high-levelled units. Checkmate's ability simply didn't work at launch, and Neon made several more such as Hazel Rainart a joke. May Marigold's invisibility bubble would have been an interesting game changer... were it not for a bug that made it that units placed in the bubble still played their sound lines, meaning players knew what to expect. Things were so bad that when Flower Power launched and wasn't broken or needed an emergency patch, the playerbase were shocked.
  

Unfortunately, the Novemember patch did little to stop the problems with Neon, and a new problem would rear its head for Christmas: Jinn. This unit embodied many of the problems players had: She was a Legendary so it would be hard for free players to get her, and only added to the sheer number of Legendaries that were out there. She was another structure card, and she was horrifically broken. Stopping time for seven seconds in an area around any friendly units, Jinn broke the game overnight, with players horrified at how little playtesting she'd clearly had. Most chip units now couldn't damage structures as Jinn simply could stop time and freeze the turret for the duration of the attack. And to make matters worse? She cost two Aura, meaning it was very easy to cycle a deck and start Jinn spamming.
And yet at two aura she was still one of the only cost-efficient Neon counters... until they patched her to be worth three Aura instead. Talking of the feline menace, January saw Neon get a HP nerf that set her shield at 14. Finally, Neon could be realistically be taken out, still at an Aura defecit but at least it can be countered and now they just have to raise her Aura- why are you buffing her game?
Less than a month later, Neon got, of all things, a buff. Her HP shield was set at 20, and her attacks now did double damage. This is around the point where a lot of players begin to suspect the developers aren't listening to feedback and more long-term players dip out or drop the game. Neon got touched one more time in April, which slowed her down (which itself was a problem as Neon's lessened speed on spawn simply made her better at generating aggro), she dealt 10% less damage and made it somewhat easier to hit her enough to kill her, but a new problem was on the horizon. Because Neon was now no longer the game's White Whale for patches.
Meet the White Fang Gunner Barracks. Added in September 2019, the Barracks fell under many player's radar simply because they were horrifically undertuned. Their gimmick was that every few seconds, a White Fang Gunner would spawn, with three spawning on death. In April, as Neon got her last appearance in the patches, the Barracks got a huge buff and became the centerpiece of the meta; they now spawned two Gunners, which made them immensely valuable for just five Aura. You could overwhelm many anti-swarm units before they had a chance, and shred your way through turrets.
The Barracks would then go six months before this overtuning was rectified, barring one nerf in August that lowered their health to try and stem the tide of units. To sum up every other thing that went wrong during the year meta-wise:

• The playercount was getting so low that players were able to make lists of the AI bots the developers had in place so lower-level players had a challenge (Amity breaks up players by a trophy system where you gain trophies with every win, and by this point most of the active players were in the 2500 to 3500 range. This also meant new players steamrolled through the lower levels only to hit a brick wall in the 3000 range, with the only reliable solution being to willingly lose matches until you were in your optimal range and grind victories until you reached a certain level.
  
• The patches became more and more threadbare, going from 8+ units getting changed each month in early 2019 to three units at most getting changed in 2020 patches outside of the anniversary patch going back to the golden days of eight. The only area where they didn't get more threadbare was in the cosmetics and emotes that the developers were cranking out, all of which were only available through hours of grinding or premium currencies. This was despite the fact that the units were being released slower, going from once a week to once a fortnite.
  
• The majority of units added in 2020 were Epic or Legendary tier, which were the hardest to get for free players unless they got lucky and they were added to the store (and if they had the lien as a Legendary in the store costs a flat 40,000 Lien). One Common and four Epics were released compared to twelve Epics and seven Legendaries. The release of Moonslice Adam especially was annoying for this regard, as Adam already had a Legendary released (at least for Team RWBY, each of them headlined a Legendary when it came to the team attack cards), and this was clearly done to pander to Adam's fans again as his first unit saw a spike in interest in the game. The math was done and showed how artifically scarce Legendaries were made.
  
• The undeovertuning was still in play. Colossus is seen as one of the worst cards in the entire game because of its gimmick. I have literally never seen anyone play it. Flynt became overtuned and now he's a staple thanks to his trumpet's AOE attack being able to hurt turrets and shred most units. Launcher Nora was an especially overtuned unit thanks to her high-damage constant AOE barrage and long range meaning she could annhilate most anything if given enough cover. Even after patches she's still dangerous. September saw the White Fang Dropship Formation added, which was widely seen as a terrible unit and done as an emergency addition because the planned unit for September in the Grimm Seer had to be cut last minute for technical reasons.
  
• The game has barely had significant content added since launch, with the primary gameplay still just being PVP. Barring Battle of Beacon (a mode where you can play as Ruby and Weiss and fend off Grimm which most players just use to grind chests, and no, they still haven't added Blake or Yang) and Plaza (a lobby where you can dress up as a character and run around Beacon), the game has added no new features and quality of life content players have requested since launch (rerolling in the shop, Superior Crates having guaranteed Legendary spawn rates) have been released at a snail's pace (you still can't reroll Legendaries if you're looking for a specific unit). Academies where players can unite to trade units and chat still lacks features that have been requested for years such as the ability to delete messages. And Plaza immediately went to hell because players were doing erotic role play in the chats and after people came forward with proof that minors were being sexually harassed in the Plaza or being coerced into side-channels, the dev response was to... just turn off the chat entirely instead of banning the accounts or implementing moderation. This also removed the chatlog which deleted a lot of the evidence of said harassment.
  

As OctobeNovember comes in, the players are getting more and more furious. The weekly feedback includes a near constant demand for an acknowledgement from the developers given how often it feels like the feedback is being ignored. The social media team get caught several times hyping up how the coming patch would address player concerns, only for said patch to lack those units. The meta has been locked down to the Xiong Family, Flynt, Launcher Nora, Spider-Mines and the hell-cat herself in Neon. Everyone runs at least one of these, people run meta decks not because they want to, but because it's the only way to have a chance of victory.
And then in December, things implode. The patch for the month was set to launch on December 10th with the monthly event missions. But when the clock rolls around, the event missions (which usually take about two weeks to do if you're doing as many as you can a day)... has a six day timer. And the update doesn't come out. The art team doesn't release new unit art. The shop has no special timed bundles. There's no patch notes. And then the Twitter team who've been hard carrying the game through... actually talking to the players and acknowledging the grievances they have... admitted that they don't know what's going on either. The best guess is that the devs have come down with Covid, but no statements to confirm or deny this leave it as guesswork. The timer eventually got reset and people could do the event, but then on Christmas itself, another issue.
Ruby has appeared in the plaza on Halloween (her canonical birthday) and Christmas, and if you go talk to her you get free stuff. But on Christmas people, people discovered that Ruby was talking as if you'd already talked to her. Because they hadn't updated Ruby yet for 2020. She still thought it was 2019 so if you'd talked to her then for goodies, she had none now. They patched it eventually but a lot of people didn't see this fix before the timer ran out to get the free stuff.
Some have resorted to memes to cope with the fact that the game just seems to have died out of the blue. Others have been trying to desperately rally the players and find a way to save it. Some resorted to friendly mockery of the whales who'd spent thousands on a game that seems to be dying (seriously though gacha games need to curb this shit but they won't because whales are godsends for their bank balances).
If the game doesn't get an update in January then two months without new content will mark the end, and the already significant playercount drops will only increase. And it's hard to say if any one thing could have turned Amity Arena's fate around beyond just "Have a better balancing team who can respond better to feedback." Neon began the time of death, but by the time December rolled around the meta was in a horrifically toxic place where if you wanted to make any progession, you had to get down and dirty with the pigs. The team just constantly failed to balance problem units outside of their emergency hotfixes of Jinn, and more often then not they went after units and buffed or nerfed them at random going off playcounts to determine what needed fixing instead of the actual written feedback they were getting. It's clear from the references to the show and some of the attempts to reach out to the community that at least one person in the team genuinely wanted to make the good appealing to RWBY fans, but somewhere during the game's lifespan, they lost their way. Less focus needed to be put on how to milk the players, and instead focusing on making a game sustainable and enjoyable enough to warrant the cosmetics and emotes. The game's failure ultimately isn't on the playerbase. It's on the people who were actually making the game who chose to slack off because they thought it acceptable to do so.
Thanks for reading.
EDIT: HOT OFF THE PRESSES, I JUMPED THE GUN
Had I waited one more day, my story would have had a far more sudden ending, as the game just announced its shutdown for January.
RIP.