The Division 2’s latest update for its Warlords of New York expansion will go live on Wednesday, March 25 at approximately 7:30 AM ET / 4:30 AM PT, following a three-hour downtime for server maintenance. The patch notes are already here, however.
The update retunes health and armor values across the board for enemies and allies. This includes a reduction in damage output for all enemies and NPCs, reduced health and armor for elite enemies, and an increase in health and armor for Heroic and Legendary enemies.It also changes Seasonal Manhunts to allow all players to receive progress towards their goals at Normal difficulty or above, regardless of what difficulty was set by the group leader.
The patch increases the drop rate for Coyote’s Mask on higher difficulties. The developers also say that they’re “looking into” giving the item to players who are Season Rank 35 or higher and do not already have it.
Pokemon TCG 2019 World Champion Henry Brand just added another major victory to his record, and this time he did it in style. Kanto style, to be exact. Brand took first place at the Pokemon Regional tournament in Perth, Australia with an “Ultimate Mew3” deck that had never been seen before — and the biggest surprise to longtime Pokemon fans was that it used all three Gen I starters: Charizard, Venusaur and Blastoise.
Even though those three superstar Pokemon are beloved in the fandom, anyone who plays the Pokemon TCG knows they don’t exactly have the best performance record. Instead, the strongest Pokemon in the card game tend to be the likes of Rayquaza, Gardevoir, and Garbodor. That said, each respective Kanto starter has had its time to shine over the years — a Blastoise deck won the 2015 Pokemon TCG World Championship, many decks have earned big wins with Reshiram & Charizard GX since it was released in May 2019, and Venusaur, well, it gets points for trying.
One key aspect that made Brand’s deck so unexpected is how it uses so many Pokemon of different types. Most meta decks are generally built focusing on one, maybe two Pokemon types. There are exceptions, of course, but it’s more common to see, for example, a pure Psychic or Lightning deck than a deck that tries to mix many types together. Having too many types hurts consistency, so it’s harder to make those decks work. That’s a big reason why it’s unheard of for the Fire, Grass and Water Kanto starters to all appear together.
The special ingredient that allows Charizard, Venusaur and Blastoise to coexist in the same deck is none other than Mewtwo & Mew GX. This obscenely powerful card has the “Perfection” ability that lets it use the attacks of other Pokemon GX on the bench or in the discard pile. Think of it as a Swiss-army Pokemon where a player can choose from a wide variety of attacks and use whichever is best depending on the situation.
For example, if Mewtwo & Mew GX takes a big hit, it can return the damage (and then some) with Reshiram & Charizard GX’s Outrage attack. If Mewtwo & Mew GX needs to reach a high number to take a knockout on a Pokemon with high HP, it can use Blastoise GX’s Rocket Splash to get there. As for Venusaur & Snivy GX, rather than its attack, it’s in the deck for its “Shining Vine” ability that lets it gust up vulnerable benched Pokemon.
Brand was able to answer the multi-type problem with the newly released Aurora Energy that provides all types of energy. When four copies are added to the deck along with four Rainbow Energy, which has the same effect for a different cost, the deck has eight energies that let Mewtwo & Mew GX use virtually any attack.
In addition to the Kanto trio, the deck uses a handful of odd Pokemon like Alolan Raticate GX, Vileplume GX, and Flygon GX that most other players had long written off as “binder trash,” but Brand saw they had very specific uses that he could exploit to take opponents off guard and come out victorious.
Those are just the highlights of the deck, but if you want a detailed explanation of everything it can do (and it’s quite a lot), then check out Brand and testing partner Jordan Palmer giving a full run-through of how it works on The SAbleyes YouTube channel.
Brand won the 2019 Pokemon TCG World Championship with a Mewtwo & Mew GX deck, as well. His winning list went on to inform how competitive players built the deck for the rest of the season, and now it looks like Brand has done it again by innovating to create a new kind of deck for the metagame.
What do you think of this unique deck that features the Kanto starting trio? Let us know in the comments.
Joshua is Senior Features Editor at IGN. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
Welcome to the IGN Unfiltered, our monthly interview series where we sit down with the best, brightest, and most fascinating minds in the video game industry. (Catch up on the other 40-something episodes here.) Our guests this month are Valve’s Robin Walker and Chris Remo two of the developers behind the long-awaited return of Half-Life in the form of Half-Life: Alyx. In this interview, Walker and Remo discuss everything from the unexpected origins of The Orange Box, Alyx’s insane level of audio-design detail, Left 4 Dead 3, Portal VR, and much more – including, yes, Half-Life 3.
Check out the episode in the video above, but if you’d prefer to listen to the hour-long interview, here’s an audio-only podcast download link. One way or the other we hope you’ll check out the interview!
Here’s a preview clip, in which Walker discusses where those Left 4 Dead 3 rumors from a while back came from:
And if you missed it, here’s the previous episode of Unfiltered, in id Software’s Hugo Martin and Marty Stratton discuss Doom’s long road back to greatness leading up to the release of the fantastic Doom Eternal:
Catch up on every episode of IGN Unfiltered here, including conversations with Bethesda game director Todd Howard, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, former PlayStation boss Jack Tretton, Journey creator Jenova Chen, Halo boss Bonnie Ross, and many more!
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.
Back in 2015, Konami cancelled Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hills, a much-anticipated reboot to the cult horror series. In recent weeks, rumors of a new Silent Hill game–or a restart to development on Silent Hills–have swirled around certain online gaming spaces, with some even analyzing Kojima’s tweets for cheeky hints. Well, before you start hanging your Pyramid Head flag from your porch again, you might want to wait a bit, because a Konami US representative has flatly denied the rumors.
“We’re aware of all the rumors and reports but can confirm that they are not true. I know it’s not the answer your fans may want to hear,” said the Konami US rep.
Though Rely On Horror–the site that’s reported on many of these rumors–notes that they specifically involved Konami Japan, not Konami US, it’s unclear to what extent that matters. Then again, if secret talks are indeed currently in progress, it’s not exactly surprising that a PR person would deny them.
The roguelike Risk of Rain 2 is getting a pair of big updates–one today on PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, and the other later this month on PC. The Hidden Realms update catches the console versions up with the PC update that’s been out since December. At the end of March, the PC version will add the Artifacts 2.0 update.
The Artifacts 2.0 update is coming to PC on March 31, with no console release date announced. Artifacts are earned by completing challenges and then can be equipped at the start of a run to add new modifiers to the game. Aside from the artifacts themselves, the Artifacts update will add a new Sky Meadow stage, a monster returning from the first game, and a hidden boss. You’ll also get new skill variants for Commando, Huntress, Engineer, and Acrid, a new Engineer skin, and new loot.
As with the PC version, Hidden Realms adds the melee-focused survivor Acrid, who has a passive poison ability and can release a deadly cloud as his special. It also adds some new biomes, enemies, and of course, extra loot to collect.
Xbox head Phil Spencer has outlined ways that Microsoft hopes to help people through their social distancing during the coronavirus outbreak, starting with special educational content to be distributed through Minecraft. In a blog post, Spencer cited “unprecedented demand for gaming.”
Part of that includes more kids going online to spend time with friends since they aren’t in schools. Spencer says that families are trying to strike a balance between socializing and fun, and continuing education through distance learning. To that end, Minecraft has opened a new Education category to the Minecraft Marketplace, which houses free educational content curated by Microsoft.
The first pieces of curated content include a model of the International Space Station, a coding lesson, recreations of Washington DC landmarks, lessons on 3D fractals and marine biology, and more. These free tools will be available through June 30, 2020.
If there was ever a time to binge-watch everything on Netflix, now is the time. While March is winding down, there is still plenty coming to the streaming service this week. An original series returns, there’s a highly-anticipated anime arriving, and there are new movies you’ll want to watch. Check out everything coming to Netflix for the week of March 22 and a few of our recommendations.
The most anticipated Netflix original return happens on Friday. Season 3 of the hit show Ozark is back. The series follows a financial advisor (Jason Bateman), who moves from Chicago down to the Ozarks in order to work for a drug boss and launder money. Of course, working for a criminal enterprise has its up and its downs, and things aren’t as easy as they seem. You can check out a trailer for the latest season below.
Netflix has been diving head first into the world of animated series–modeled after Japanese anime. One of the most-anticipated returns is none other than 7Seeds, which sees Part 2 of the current season land this Thursday. The anime is based on the manga of the same name by Yumi Tamura. The show follows a post-apocalyptic world after a meteor hit the Earth. However, before the meteor, scientists took young healthy people and put them into cryo-stasis. After the dust settled, a computer determined when to awaken these individuals, and these people must survive in a brand-new landscape. Check out the trailer for the new episodes below.