Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Every card has four values, or stats. In the example card above, the card has the stats 3-P-6-0. Each stat relates to the card's strength. The second value (P) is always an alphabetical value, while the other three stats increase on a hexadecimal range, meaning they can range from 0-9, then through letters A-F.

The first value is for the power of the card. (3 above)
The second value is for the battle class of the card. (P above)
The third value is for the physical defense of the card. (6 above)
The fourth value is for the magical defense of the card. (0 above)

Each of the stats for power, physical defense and magical defense increase on a hexadecimal scale, with 0 being the weakest and F being the strongest.

Value Min Max
0 000 015
1 016 031
2 032 047
3 048 063
4 064 079
5 080 095
6 096 111
7 112 127
8 128 143
9 144 159
A 160 175
B 176 191
C 192 207
D 208 223
E 224 239
F 240 255


Whenever a card's value is assessed a random value is chosen between the minimum and maximum numbers that correspond to the value. For example, if a card has a value of "A", the strength of that value may be between 160 and 175. The minimum for a card's value is calculated by multiplying the base value to be considered by sixteen.

For example:

16 x A (10) = 160

The first value on the card is the power stat. This is the card's offensive value. The example card has a power stat of 3, which means its actual value is a number chosen between 48 - 63 HP.


The second value on the card is the battle class stat. This value is not based on the hexadecimal scale above, but instead is one of four classes. This stat is represented by the letters P, M, X, and A.

P is a Physical battle class
M is a Magical battle class
X is a Flexible battle class
A is an Assault battle class

The card's battle class determines how the values are assessed in card battles.

These all affect which stat the attacking card attacks. P will attack the Physical Defense stat, while M will attack the Magical Defense stat. The other two have more obscure effects as they are rarer. X will attack the lowest of the two defenses and A will attack the lowest value on the card.

The third value on the card is the physical defense stat. This is the card's defensive value when facing physical attacks. The example card has a 6, so this may be equal to anywhere between 96 - 111 HP.

The fourth value on the card is the magical defense stat. This is the card's defensive value when facing magical attacks. The example card has a 0, so this may be equal to anywhere between 0 - 15 HP.

If the challenging card has a battle class stat of P (physical), the power value of this card challenges the physical defense of the resting card. For an example of this, see below:

Challenging card Resting card
4P51 6M05

In the scenario above, the challenging card's power value (4) is assessed against the physical defense of the resting card (0). The challenging card would be a heavy favorite to capture the resting card.

When a card battle takes place, the winner is decided upon in three phases. Each of the phases are discussed below using the following example:

Card A Card B
5P33 attacks 2M10

Phase 1:

The challenging card's power value is randomly chosen within the stat range.

say, 85 (stat 5 = between 80 and 95)

The defending card's defense value is randomly chosen within the stat range.
The challenging card's battle class is physical so physical defense is chosen.

say, 23 (stat 1 = between 16 and 31)

Phase 2:

Next, a random number is chosen between 0 and the power value chosen for the challenging card (85).
This is the actual attack score.

say, 71

A random number is chosen between 0 and the defense value chosen for the defending card (23).
This is the actual defense score.

say, 3

Phase 3:

The scores from phase 2 are subtracted from the stat values in phase 1.

Card A: 85 - 71 = 14
Card B: 23 - 3 = 20

The highest difference wins the card battle.

In the scenario above, even Card B, with low stats, was able to defeat Card A.

A combo (short for combination) is a series of card take-overs that stem from one. When a card is defeated and captured in a battle, any enemy cards pointed at by the arrows of the defeated card are also captured. If the player loses the battle, they also lose control of all their own cards that the attacking card has arrows pointed at.

"100 brush strokes before sleep" is also the title of an autobiographic erotic book -the title implying female masturbation..keke. Unrelated but naughty culture is still culture!

The soundtrack to Nier was composed by a collaboration of the studio Monaca, consisting of Keiichi Okabe, Kakeru Ishihama, and Keigo Hoashi, along with Takafumi Nishimura from Cavia, the game's developer. Okabe served as the lead composer and as the director for the project as a whole. Okabe was brought onto the project when the concept for the game was first being devised, and worked intermittently on the soundtrack for the next three years until its release. The music for the game was generally composed entirely separate from the development of the game. Often, elements of the game were modified to match the music, rather than the other way around. Some tracks were used in ways that the composers did not envision, such as "Grandma", which was expected to be used in the prologue of the game but was instead chosen as a boss battle theme. The music was designed for different motifs to appear in various arrangements throughout the soundtrack, and also to convey a sense of sadness even during the "thrilling" tracks. Okabe was allowed a great deal of freedom regarding what the music was to sound like; game director Taro Yoko's main request was that he use a lot of vocal works.

The vocals and lyrics were provided by vocalist Emi Evans (Emiko Rebecca Evans), a singer from England living in Tokyo. She is the singer for the band freesscape, and had previously worked on video game projects such as the Etrian Odyssey arrange albums. The Monaca team had met her when considering her for a prior project, and Okabe wanted to work with her on Nier. She was approached a few months after the initial meeting in Autumn 2008 to be the vocalist for the soundtrack. In addition to singing, Evans was asked to write her own lyrics in futuristic languages. The composers gave her preliminary version of songs and the style they wished the language to be in, such as Scottish Gaelic or French, and she invented the words. Evans wrote songs in versions of Scottish Gaelic, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, English and Japanese, and wrote "Song of the Ancients" in an entirely fictional language. She wrote that song by listening to songs in as many languages as possible and jumbling them up together. For the other languages, she tried to imagine what they would sound like after 1000 years of drifting.

Okabe did not want to use traditional lyrics, as he felt they would clash with the design of the world in the game, and wanted to use a variety of languages to represent the open nature of the game's world. He also did not want easily recognizable lyrics to be sung in the background while the characters were speaking, and for any noticeable words to instead evoke emotions in the player. Evans only knew English, Japanese, and French when she began the project; she listened to the other languages on YouTube to learn the rhythms and sounds of the languages and then mixed and changed them. Okabe largely allowed Evans to decide how to integrate the lyrics with the early forms of the songs, and as he usually did not know where the songs would be used in the game gave her only light direction as to the emotional tone for the songs. The composers often would modify the songs in later revisions to follow how Evans had sung for that song.

The soundtrack to Nier is largely composed of melancholy acoustic pieces which heavily feature vocals by Emi Evans. Of the 43 tracks included in the released soundtrack album, only 9 do not have any vocal component to them; these are the four versions each of "Dispossession" and "Yonah", as well as "Dance of the Evanescent".[4] With the exception of "Ashes of Dreams", the lyrics are not intended to mean anything; for that song, Evans was given a list of Japanese words to use, which she then translated for the English, French, and Scottish Gaelic versions of the song. The song and its variants were the last to be recorded, and Evans convinced the composers that one song in the soundtrack should have recognizable lyrics rather than futuristic English as they originally planned. Evans found "Ashes" to be the most difficult song to write on the soundtrack, as she had difficulty writing lyrics that met the composers' criteria of despair and lack of hope.

"Hills of Radiant Wind" is one of the few upbeat songs on the largely dark soundtrack; for that piece Evans sang in a version of Portuguese in a style meant to sound like a spirit floating on the wind. For "Grandma", she sang in a French style, trying to "put in as much anguish and melancholy" as possible; she created the song in a single recording, and it is "one of the most memorable songs" that she has sung. "The Wretched Automatons" is sung in a variant of English and was recorded prior to the addition of the mechanical sounds that run throughout the track, while "Kainé" is in a version of Gaelic.

27 inches
AH-IPS panel
2560x1440 resolution
Nearly bezel-less which is really nice
3x HDMI and 1x Display-Port
4ms response time
No info on input lag, but it's probably negligible unless I play CS:GO
No refresh rate info, but most IPS panels typically sit at 60-75Hz
Oh and it has a pretty spiffy shiny sundial stand