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

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.

Coming into the 2020 season, I had the Steelers ending the season at 13-3 and winning the AFC North. I figured if they could go 8-8 with Mason and Duck they should easily win 12-13 games with Ben. I also thought they had a chance to make a run at a Lombardi. And they did. Until they didn't. What a weird season. I'm going to go through this season position-by-position and then take a look toward what I'd like to see during the offseason.
QUARTERBACK -- B-
People around here have been quick to shit on Ben for his performance in the second half of the season -- which is fair -- but they also want to ignore his success in the first half of the season -- which isn't. Ben threw 33 touchdowns and only 10 interceptions. It shouldn't surprise anyone that he looked much better when the team had a running game than when they didn't. At his age Ben isn't going to carry the offense week after week. He can still win you games. But you need to help him too. Ben's idol growing up was John Elway. Elway is the reason Ben wears #7. Elway never wins two Super Bowls at the end of his career without a strong defense and Terrell Davis. Ben has the strong defense, now they need to get him his Terrell Davis.
2021 Outlook -- I expect Ben to be back with a couple voidable years on his contract to allow relieve some of the 2021 cap hit.
RUNNING BACKS -- D
A lot of time was spent on this sub debating what happened to the run game after they began the season running well. But to me the even bigger mystery is how they managed to be as good as they did for as long as they did with such poor offensive line play and such little talent in their running back room. James Conner is fine when he's healthy but he's never healthy. He is the Sean Lee of running backs. Behind him the team got nothing from Benny Snell, less from Anthony McFarland, and while Jaylen Samuels is good at what they ask him to do, that isn't much. This is easily the Steelers worst position group and they could do well to bring in a cheap free agent and draft a Day 2 running back to try and turn this position around.
2021 Outlook -- Conner will probably not be back. But they can't go into the season with Benny Snell as their incumbent starter so I think they will sign a guy like Mike Davis to come in and be the veteran presence. But they have to draft a RB.
WIDE RECEIVERS -- A
Some people will make a big deal about Diontae's drops but I don't think it's a big issue. The WR position was the crown jewel of their 2020 offense. Diontae Johnson continued to show he can get open against any corner in the league, JuJu was JuJu, Chase Claypool emerged in his rookie season as a force to be reckoned with, and James Washington was a steady force. I don't think anyone can complain about the WRs as a whole.
2021 Outlook -- I think they will draft a WR early on Day 3 to replace JuJu and as usual it will work. The other three returning WRs will continue to make the position a strength in 2021.
TIGHT END -- C-
Despite some issues with drops, I think the tight end position was adequate in 2020. Vance gave little to nothing as a receiver but was decent as a blocker. Ebron is a glorified wide receiver but cornerbacks can't cover him and the only way to really stop him is for him to drop passes. Zach Gentry is worthless and shouldn't be back in 2021.
2021 Outlook -- With Vance retired I think they will give Kevin Rader every opportunity to make the team because he is a phenomenal blocking tight end who has a mean streak and wants to eliminate every defensive player he locks onto. I would draft a tight end but with so many other needs I could see a veteran free agent being brought in.
OFFENSIVE LINE -- D
Alejandro Villanueva, a free agent in 2021, was atrocious. Matt Feiler was fine at LG but Kevin Dotson proved to be the future there. Maurkice Pouncey's body is far to beat up for him to be close to how good he was in his prime. Decastro seemed to be playing hurt all season and Chuks Okorafor was alright. This assessment seems like they should get a higher grade but they got abused in the run game for most of the season and didn't give up a lot of sacks because Ben was getting the ball out quick. The #1 priority of the 2021 offseason should be improving the offensive line.
2021 Outlook - With AV, Feiler, and maybe Pouncey gone I think the 2021 O-Line will look pretty different. Banner should be re-signed and Kevin Dotson should start at LG. If the team thinks Chuks or Banner can play LT then an early round pick at Tackle could be their swing tackle. I expect a center to be signed whether Pouncey retires or not. There's a reason to be optimistic but until we see it on the field there's also room for concern.
DEFENSIVE LINE -- A
I don't think I really need to say much here. Heyward was great until the playoffs. Alualu dominated in the running game. Tuitt had a quiet 12 sacks. They could use more depth there but the starters are so good that as long as they stay healthy they can dominate.
2021 Outlook -- No real changes. Maybe a free agent or a draft pick to round out the depth.
LINEBACKERS -- A-
I'm lumping inside backers with the edge rushers. TJ Watt should be the DPOY, Budupree was great until he got hurt, Alex Highsmith showed he is going to be a fantastic player. Inside Devin Bush getting injured hurt the team more than anyone thought. Vince Williams was alright, Robert Spillane wasn't good.
2021 Outlook -- They have to draft an EDGE guy to replace Bud. And they really should try to upgrade the ILB position somehow.
CORNERBACKS -- B-
It's strange because when I was going back through my notes on the 2020 season I really didn't have a lot of positive, or negative, notes on the corners. The outside guys were better than adequate, the slot guys played well, and the depth guys stepped up and made plays when called upon.
2021 Outlook -- I would consider cutting Joe Haden for cap purposes. I think Mike Hilton is gone but I think they keep Cam Sutton which is better for the team anyway. If they lose both slot guys they have to keep Haden because that's a disaster for them.
SAFETIES -- A
I don't think anyone needs me to say anything about Minkah Fitzpatrick so I'm gonna devote this space to Terrell Edmunds, who quietly had a really good season. Opposing tight ends used to destroy the Steelers defense. But in 2020 the Steelers were a Top 5 team against tight ends and while they didn't play a ton of excellent ones, Terrell Edmunds was the main reason why they did so well. He outright erased a couple tight ends from the game and, despite a couple blown coverages, was overall pretty solid in that area. He is improving and giving the Steelers a chance to focus on upgrading other positions on defense.
2021 Outlook -- With both starters back I expect the safeties to be fantastic again. A depth signing could be made to give them some snaps in case of injury but overall I think the safeties remain a consistent force.
SPECIALISTS -- A
Boswell was Boswell, no further explanation required. And when Colquitt sucked they cut bait and brought back Jordan Berry who was surprisingly good.
2021 Outlook -- Status quo.
COACHING -- D+
Mike Tomlin clearly had the team ready to play most weeks despite some crazy scheduling fuckery. The offensive coaching left a lot to be desired but defensively they were well coached and quick to make adjustments. But I can't deny that they fell apart at the end of the season. Again. And that falls on coaching just as much as it can be excused away as the players being tired. Mike Tomlin said all the right things in his end-of-season presser but the decisions he makes on who to hire as the new Offensive Coordinator, and the new O-Line Coach will go a long way toward determining their success in 2021.
Off-Season Outlook
Let's take a look at who the Steelers have as potential free agents and who I want to keep and who I think they can't afford to keep.
Priority Free Agents To Sign -- Zach Banner, Cam Sutton.
These are the two guys I think you have to bring back. Banner is your potential starter at left or right tackle next year and Sutton is your best coverage slot corner who can also play outside if someone gets hurt.
Would Like To Re-Sign But Can't Afford -- Bud Dupree (Titans), JuJu Smith-Schuster (Ravens), Mike Hilton (Seahawks)
Fine With Leaving -- Conner, Williamson, Villanueva, Feiler, Marsh, Elliot, Wormley, McCloud, Allen, Dobbs.
Depth Re-Signings If Price Is Right -- Tyson Alualu, Jordan Berry, Jordan Dangerfield, Ola Adeniyi, Robert Spillane, Jerald Hawkins, Sean Davis, Danny Isidora, JC Hassenauer.
Free Agent Signings I'd Like To See -- Mike Davis (RB), Mohamed Sanu (WR), Ben Garland (C), Carl Lawson (Pipe Dream), Tyus Bowser (EDGE), Jourdan Lewis (CB), Artie Burns (For Real -- cheap depth).
Positions To Look For In Draft -- (not in order of need) RB, WR, TE, OT, OG, EDGE, ILB.
Unofficial Mock Draft using TheDraftNetwork's Mock Draft Machine:
1.24 -- Christian Darrisaw - OT - Virginia Tech
2.56 -- Javonte Williams - RB - North Carolina
3.87 -- Joe Tryon - EDGE - Washington
4.128 -- Drake Jackson -- OG/C -- Kentucky
4.141 -- Marco Wilson - CB - Florida
5.204 -- Paul Grattan - G - UCLA
6.224 -- Trevon Grimes - WR - Florida
7.242 -- Garrett Wallow - LB - TCU
7.251 -- Lorenzo Neal Jr - DL - Purdue

First | Previously | Next Time
"You want to aim for the center of the board, that way, if you miss, you still have a chance to score. Those 100s up in the corners are for people with the time and money to practice this instead of working a job."
Dan was casually rolling heavy wooden spheres up a ramp, and sinking ball after ball into the upper chutes marked 100. He rolled the last ball, and looked at Hanna. She watched it drop in the same chute as every other ball he had thrown, and when she looked back at him, his face was covered in a huge smile, and he gave her a wink.
"It helps if you can use wind magic." He whispered in her ear. He then collected a big stack of tickets from the dispenser of the machine. He slotted a token into the front panel, and hit the start button, then bowed out of the way.
Hanna gave him a wry smirk as she moved in front of the ramp. She hefted a ball a few times to get a feel for it, then casually tossed it into the chute.
"It also helps if you're just naturally gifted...I guess." She said coyly over her shoulder before reaching for another ball.
Mike and Melody busted out laughing, as Dan looked slack jawed at the target board.
"She's a skeeball wizard!" He mumbled, which only made Mike and Mel laugh harder. Marv wandered over, his hands, head, and face festooned with cheap plastic novelty items from the prize counter.
"Hanna beat his ass hands down, huh? Saw that coming." Marv said.
"What!? How?" Asked Dan, looking slightly miffed.
"Mate, she exercises five hours a day, including throwing knives at targets. You sit at a table and draw. Doesn't take a royal court magician to figure out who's gonna win a game like that. Ooooh, they've got 'Pop up Poker'!" Marv wandered off.
"I cast spells, too! I train for stamina." Dan said.
Hanna sank her last ball, and collected her tickets. "Come on, Dear Heart, I know you work hard." She kissed his cheek. "I'm just better at this, that's all." She grinned at him as Mike and Mel burst out laughing again.
"Who's ready for drinks?" Asked Dan in a flat, deadpan tone.
"Oh, let's turn in our tickets, and then head to The Central." Mel said.
"Are we banking these, or are we finally getting something?" asked Mike, wandering after her towards the counter.
"If we have enough for the giant bear, we're buying it!"
-----
The Central was quiet, and the only people in the bar were Quacksworth and his entourage. After ordering a round of drinks and some snacks, and setting up in the corner booth, everyone split up. Marv and Quacksworth were conversing with The Barkeeper, Mike and Mel were selecting songs on the jukebox, and Dan and Hanna were standing near the table talking.
"So what did you think of the old neighborhood?" Dan asked.
"The pizza was good, those deep fried cheese things were outrageous, and skeeball is fun, but it's loud and bright," Hanna put her arms on Dan's shoulders, " and the only thing I want from that world is right here."
Dan felt his cheeks go a little flush as he looked into Hanna's eyes. He was trying to form some sort of coherent thought, but being confronted with mind numbing beauty made him speechless. Just as things were bordering on awkward, music started out of the hidden speakers.
Dan seized the opportunity, and grabbed Hanna's hand from his shoulder, spun away to the middle of the floor, and then with a slight tug, pulled her close. They began to dance to the song, slowly getting closer as it played.
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, everybody knows the good guys lost…
"Where should we go next? What should we see? With The Central as a waystation we can visit anywhere in the universe. I'm sure we could ask The Barkeeper to give us some suggestions." Dan said, as he danced slowly across the floor with Hanna.
"I wouldn't even know what to ask for. Just seeing your home is a lot to take in. I don't think I'm ready for the wonders of the universe, not just yet." Hanna laid her head on his shoulder, slowly turning circles as he held her close.
Everybody knows, everybody knows, that's how it goes, when everybody knows…
As the song ended, Dan kissed her gently on the forehead, and said "I have the perfect idea." He walked over to the Bar, and spoke with The Barkeeper and Marv. He then went and spoke with Mike and Melody.
After a couple of minutes, he came back to Hanna with a smile on his face.
"What?"
"What do you mean 'what'?" Asked Dan in response.
"You just came over here looking like the cat that ate the canary. What are you planning?"
"A surprise." Dan said, doing his best time look cryptic, but the uncontrolled smile on his face just made him look adorably goofy.
-----***-----
Everyone was standing by the door to The Central that had appeared in Melody’s courtyard. Dan was holding Quacksworth under one arm. Everyone was wearing light summer clothes, and Dan had a haversack slung over one shoulder.
“Everyone ready?” he asked. Four nods and a quack to the affirmative, and Dan turned the knob and entered to the sight of the comforting interior of The Central Bar, including the now familiar sign.
Everyone walked into the bar, and Dan said “Wait here for a minute.” and left everyone standing in front of the door. He walked to the bar, and spoke with The Barkeeper for a moment, then slung his bag across the bar. The Barkeeper picked it up and put it behind the bar for a few minutes, and appeared to be putting things into it. The Barkeeper handed the bag back, and Dan slid a few coins across the bar as payment. He waved goodbye and walked back over to the others by the door.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have planned a very special outing for you today. After checking with the local authorities, I have found one of the most beautiful of all natural wonders in the universe.” He swung open the door and stepped through.
“Welcome to the Amethyst Falls of Belephon Septus!”
On the other side of the door, a breathtaking landscape of nature was framed by mountains of amethyst, which glittered in the sun brilliantly. In the center of the mountain, a deep emerald green waterfall plunged down half the height of the mountain, in stark contrast to the purple of the mountain itself.
Everyone “oohed” and “ahhed” as they took in the sights. Dan led them a short way through some foliage, until they came to a clearing next to a river. There was an unobstructed view of the falls. Dan laid out a large blanket he pulled from his bag, and everyone got comfortable.
Dan leaned over and whispered into Hanna’s ear “You’re still, by far, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.” And kissed her on the cheek.
---***---
Hope you guys like it. There's a big change up coming soon. Get ready!
​
Link to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxd23UVID7k

Almost everything in Path fo Exile is tied to some kind of reward hidden behind an RNG mechanic. And this is fine, however since 2020 many of the drops and reward mechanics the game offers feel unrewarding and I decided to reflect and think about why I feel this to be true. I could write en entire essay on the subject matter but I boiled my notes in to the below points.
1) most “rare” drops, from incursion and betrayal became more common and as a result less valuable. That problem was magnified by delirium and heist where these items started dropping like pebbles in a gravel pit. To make god rolls drops stay the same (in terms of rarity) the weights became even bigger for certain item rolls, and thus the chance of dropping a decent incursion item for example became even smaller. Thus for the average player this reward mechanic got devalued.
2) Div cards - the nerf was not about how often you’d drop a doctors card. That chance is actually pretty stable throughout the leagues, looking at MbX and other content creators who gamble literally tens of thousands of stacked decks or Cutedog or Empi running deliriumed maps for hard drops each league. For the average player like myself its the list value of the other 999 cards I encountered while playing/ opening stacked decks, rendering this reward mechanic as bad and “not worth it”. So the only div cards that are rewarding but not as rare as doctor cards are RNG sets themselves - that could lead to past league or hard to access items (awakener gem cards for example). However these cards themselves have bad RNG outcomes and so the “outcome effect” of that bad RNG of these “aggregation” cards is transferred to overall feeling of div cards being bad.
3) In the last 4 leagues hard currency became more and more available. Just an example fusings in legion were around 2 - 2.5 fus per chaos with bulk orders being slightly more expensive at around 1.5 - 2 fus per chaos. With each subsequent league the price of fusings dropped and dropped. Same thing for the chance and scour orbs. Most importantly same thing happened with chaos up until heist and the chaos/exa price crash. All this points to a couple of things. First almost all currency div cards became next to useless. Second picking up currency from the ground felt more and more tedious chore instead of rewarding mechanic due to the lower perception of value these drops had/have.
4) Delirium, blighted maps and now heist introduced “endgame” activities that devalues another part of the loot pool. These activities provide a very straightforward way to mass farm scarabs, Atziri frags, double and tripple corrupted gems and uniques. These flood the market that was traditionally supplied by div card outcomes or “knowledge of the game” farming methods, making the game feel dumber for the smart/long time players and unrewarding to the rest.
5) Harvest and Heist devalued the price of exalts where the former gave access to targeted exalts and trivialized influenced/double influenced crafting that otherwise soaked most of the exalts from the market and the latter increased the drop rate of exalts and currencies in general by a big factor. These two leagues devalued the last consistent profit strategy for most of the player-base including myself - alch and go mapping. See the 90+ % of the player-base is just your average alch and go player with the occasional shaper, juiced map and Sirus sell for 2 ex. These people would gather their hard farmed chaoses via “lucky” 15c rares, chrome and jeweler sells and the occasional 5c unique or 50c good roll belly of the beast and would scrape the barrel enough hours to afford their next “BIG” 5 ex upgrade or convert everything to exalts and save for their “big boy” build. With exalts crashing down the last heaven for the already devalued maps drops they pick up from the maps, the game lost a BIG chunk of its appeal. Why play a game where the sole objective is to pick up stuff from the ground and trade it for other stuff you need, when what you pick is more and more worthless and feels more and more like a chore. Path of Poverty . Yeah I have a low paying job in real life. I don’t want to feel powerless in my escape from reality game as well thanks. And its not because I am powerless on the contrary I am more powerful than ever, its about obtaining that power that feels bad.
In conclusion - Drops in PoE in my mind are the slot machine of PoE and this machine, depending on the gambler’s preference, could be tuned in two ways - lengthier dry streaks but with objectively higher chance for a big score that will recuperate the losses (classic variant) or constant small rewards but with a very very small chance for a big score. Path of Exile and most games in general have the latter approach where you “win” with almost every spin(read action/objective) but the reward is small. What happened in the last year of leagues is that these small rewards got devalued hard and stopped feeling as rewards at all, yet the chance of winning big remained very very low, instead of being bumped to retain the allure of the gamble, thus made the game appear from unfair to unrewardingly grindy.

1st Round
1. Jacksonville - Trevor Lawrence (QB)
The clear choice
2. Houston Texans (Sam Darnold, 1.02, Giant’s 2021 5th and the Seahawk’s 2022 1st pick for Deshaun Watson) – Zach Wilson (QB)
The Texans acquire future draft capital and enter a rebuild. They have a top pick this draft, and 2 first next year – enough to make a new team and start to erase the errors of BoB. The Jets get their QB of the future. The Texans get Darnold and see if he can produce outside of a Gase offense, but select Zach Wilson as the QB of the future. This will give the Texans a chance to let Wilson get acclimated to the NFL before being thrown into the fire. The Texans also likely decline Darnold’s 5th year option, because he will either be irrelevant by then, or will be good enough to sign to another team for significant money and give a comp pick.
The Jets get a franchise QB while still having a first this year and next year, their future is immediately very bright. The Texans might demand more compensation, but they have a new GM and if Deshaun refuses to play, they may have to settle for a ‘mere’ 2 1st round picks.
3. Miami – Penei Sewell (LT)
A franchise left tackle. While Miami may not need him as much as Cincinnati does, their line isn’t nearly stellar enough to pass on his talent.
4. Detroit (from Atlanta for 1.07 and 2.41 for 1.04) – Justin Fields (QB)
Detroit trades up to get Stafford’s replacement. Atlanta gives Matt Ryan more time.
5. Cincinnati – Micah Parsons (LB)
Parsons has sideline to sideline speed and should be a Pro Bowler quickly at a Cinci position of need. The Bengals OLine has been poor, but it needs more than just 1st round picks being thrown at it. The Bengals can address it later in the draft.
6. Philadelphia – Ja’Marr Chase (WR)
Although it is unclear who Philly’s QB will be, who ever it is will need to have more weapons available to them. Ja’Marr Chase is the best player available here, and fits Philly’s needs. While Zach Wilson and Trey Lance are still available, the Eagles give Wentz and Hurts another go at things with a better supporting cast and different HC before they completely move on.
7. Atlanta – Kwity Paye (DE)
Atlanta’s weakest position group might be their EDGEs, and despite trading back they still get the best one off the board. I personally like Rousseau better tho...
8. Carolina - Trey Lance (QB)
Carolina gets a QB of the future, who will be able to take reps behind their current QB of Teddy Bridgewater while he quickly grows a starter. Lance’s biggest flaw as a prospect is his inexperience with an NFL offense. NDSU’s offense is designed runs against slower LBs and deep balls to open receivers. Lance’s ability to dominate in the FCS is clear, but he needs to learn when to throw a check down before he will be ready for the NFL, and sitting behind Teddy will let him do that. Lance’s athleticism as a runner and capability as a thrower make him a more appealing pick to the Panthers here.
9. Denver – Caleb Farley (CB)
Farley has asserted himself as the best CB in the draft. He can be another piece in a Fangio defense that becomes one of the best in the league. They only need their offensive weapons to play to their potential…
10. Dallas – Patrick Surtain II (CB)
The Cowboys have holes to fix on their much maligned defense from last year, in addition to their offensive line issues. However, the Dallas offense looked acceptable when they had Dak, while their defense did not. They take the next off the board, and hope the Dak can return to form next year.
11. NY Giants – Jaylen Waddle (WR)
The Giants need an elite receiving option and get a number one receiving option. He has the route running skills and ball skills to play on the outside, and the size to be durable. When both Waddle and Smith where heathy at Bama, Waddle actually had more production.
12. San Francisco – Jaycee Horn (CB)
SF will likely be losing Richard Sherman, and Jaycee Horn has all the skills necessary to be a shutdown corner, although he may have some hiccups on the way.
13. LA Chargers – Rashawn Slater (OL)
The Chargers clearly need to improve all over their offensive line, as all 3 positions were rated in the bottom 2 by PFF. Slater has the versatility to move all around the offensive line, and the ability to match. His demonstrated ability against NFL prospects such as Chase Young in college is very enticing and leads the Chargers to select him above fellow prospect Christian Darrisaw
14. Minnesota – Gregory Rousseau (EDGE)
Minnesota’s defensive line struggled without Danielle Hunter. With Rousseau and Hunter back, the DLine may actually become a strong suit.
15. Lions (trade from New England for Matthew Stafford) – DeVonta Smith (WR)
The Lions, in their trade for Stafford, get the last of the big 3 stud receivers. New England effectively drafts Matt Stafford with their first round pick, and hopes to fill the smaller holes on offense and defense in the later
16. Arizona – Kyle Pitts (TE)
The Cardinals get a second option for Kyler to throw to. Pitts is a great fit for the Cardinals because they run 12 personnel the 3rd most often in the NFL and 10 Personnel the most in the NFL, but don’t have a passing option like Pitts on their roster (not like there are many options like Pitts on any roster). Pitts falls to the Cardinals and helps Klif put together a lightning fast scoring machine.
17. Indianapolis (trade from Las Vegas 1.17 for 1.21 and 4.118) – Christian Darrisaw (OT)
Indy selects their next franchise left tackle to compliment Quinton Nelson after the retirement of Anthony Castonzo.
18. Miami – Azeez Ojulari (EDGE)
Ojulari is a good DE prospect who gets to the QB at a very efficient rate. The Dolphins have already invested in their secondary, but you need a pass rush too the get the benefit of it.
19. Washington – Alijah Vera-Tucker (OT)
The Football Team would like to take a QB here, but Mac Jones and Trask are major reaches. Honestly I don’t really know what Washington takes here, but you can never have enough O Line depth. They take Alijah Vera-Tucker, who can play at tackle and guard, and hope that Jones or Trask is available in the 2nd.

1. Chicago - Sam Cosmi (OT)

Chicago looks to improve their offensive line and selects the 6-7 tackle out of Texas. He has the room to fill out and become an absolute bruiser in both the run and pass game.
21. Las Vegas(trade from Indianapolis 1.17 for 1.21 and 4.118) – Jayson Oweh (EDGE)
The Raiders need help on their OLine. Oweh is yet NFL ready, but he is an absurd prospect. Nonetheless, his wild build will allow the DC in Vegas to get creative. I realize this is a reach, but I think he is the perfect type of freak athlete Gruden and the Raiders would select.
22. Tennessee – Carlos Besham Jr. (EDGE)
The Titans defense needs to be better getting after the passer. Besham has a very high motor to get after the QB, and is the type of player that can really bolster a defense in my opinion.
23. NY Jets via SEA – Wyatt Davis (OG)
The Jets have their QB of the future in Deshaun Watson. Wyatt Davis, along with Mekhi Becton and their other signings will make their offensive line a force as well, in both the pass and running game. An elite QB + elite OLine play should get the Jets most of the way to a great offense, but the Jets will quickly need to get weapons for the run game and the pass game too
24. Pittsburgh – Creed Humphry (C)
Creed Humphry becomes the replacement for longtime center Maurkice Pouncey. While Pouncey has not retired yet (and this assumes he will), the Steelers have clearly been affected by subpar OLine play. The offense never had a run game and relies on quick passes, which failed them down the stretch. The solution is more than just drafting a new HB, it requires an overhaul of the offensive line. Humphry is the first center of the board.
25. Jacksonville via LAR – Christian Barmore (DT)
Having selected Trevor Lawrence, Urban Meyer knows the next step to winning is domination in the trenches. Barmore proved his ability to get to the QB in the National Championship against some of the same Buckeyes that Urban himself recruited. Although Barmore still has questions about his game, namely his ability to help in the run game, his ability to get to the QB is rare and gets him picked in the first round.
26. Cleveland – Zavon Collins (LB/EDGE)
Collins is an athletic freak and his college tape is something else. The Browns are enthused to get a linebacker who can both cover and rush the passer to anchor a poor defense. The Browns will also need to address the DE position because of the Achilles injury to Olivier Vernon. Almost certainly this will be a job for Free Agency, because I don’t see any EDGEs left that will be able to immediately produce, and the Browns are in their championship window with cap money to spend. Look for them to be in play for Leonard Williams or Trey Hendrickson (or whatever other DEs can be found in free agency or trade).
27. Baltimore – Rashod Bateman (WR)
Lamar Jackson gets a large target to throw to, and the offense can finally be the balanced threat that they clearly would like to be.
28. New Orleans – Rodarius Williams (CB)
NO defense is already very formidable, they take a good coverage CB to play across Lattimore.
29. Tampa Bay – Shaun Wade (CB)
Wade played out of position most of the year, but is a very talented nickel corner who can play anywhere in the secondary, as well as help out the run defense. With the return of Vita Vea, and the drafting of Shaun Wade, it becomes very difficult to run against the Bucs, and the Bucs play in shootouts that Bruce Arians loves to win.
30. Buffalo – Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah (LB)
Buffalo tries to fill a hole in their defense with BPA Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah out of Notre Dame.
31. Green Bay – Najee Harris (HB)
Green Bay is likely losing Aaron Jones. How do they respond? By possibly upgrading at the position. Najee Harris is a beast at breaking tackles, and can catch balls like a wide receiver, making him dangerous with
32. Kansas City – Rashad Weaver (EDGE)
Kansas City’s DEs are the worst graded DEs in the NFL. Rashad Weaver has the talent to have gone earlier, but his battles with injury make his stock volatile. With that being said, he has the talent to make this group improve, as the Chiefs hope Frank Clark plays like the player he was Seattle.
Second Round
33. Jacksonville – Alex Leatherwood (OT)
34. NY Jets – Rondale Moore (WR)
The Jets’ offense adds Deshaun Watson, Rondale Moore, and Wyatt Davis. Their defense will need work, but the NFL runs through offense, and this should be the best offense New York has seen in awhile, and is set for the long haul.
35. Atlanta – Paulson Adebo (CB)
I love Adebo as a prospect, and feel he would go much higher if didn’t opt out and played his senior year. The Falcons get a high end athlete, though he has to improve his coverage to avoid getting burned.
36. Miami via HOU – Joseph Ossai (LB)
Joseph Ossai is probably the best defensive player on the board, and the Dolphins continue to add talent.
37. Philadelphia – Tyson Campbell (CB)
38. Cincinnati – Jalen Mayfield (OT)
Mayfield likely slots into the RT position, which is what he played in college. The AFC North is deadly for tackles, especially RT, having a slate of Myles Garrett, TJ Watt, and Matt Judon. Mayfield has his faults, but he was able to handle Chase Young in college.
39. Carolina – Jevon Holland (S)
40. Denver - Landon Dickerson (C)
41. Atlanta – Travis Ettienne (HB)
42. NY Giants – Trevon Moehrig (S)
43. San Francisco – Mac Jones (QB)
44. Dallas – Dylan Moses (LB)
45. Jacksonville via Minnesota – Patrick Jones (EDGE)
46. New England – Terrace Marshall Jr. (WR)
47. LA Chargers – Walker Little (OT)
48. Las Vegas – Marvin Wilson (DT)
49. Arizona – Joe Tyron (LB/EDGE)
50. Miami – Baron Browning (LB)
51. Washington – Kyle Trask (QB)
52. Chicago – Asante Samuel Jr. (CB)
53. Tennessee – Jaelan Phillips (EDGE)
Tennessee goes for 2 EDGEs, but pass rush seemed to be a major issue, and you can never enough DLine players.
54. Indianapolis – Amon-Ra St. Brown (WR)
55. Pittsburgh – Monty Rice (ILB)
Steelers were killed by injuries at MLB, Rice will be able to help there while providing help in pass rush on occasion.
56. Seattle – Ronnie Perkins (EDGE)
57. LA Rams – Nick Bolton (LB)
58. Tampa Bay – Daviyon Nixon (DT)
59. Baltimore – Josh Myers (C)
60. Cleveland - Dayo Odeyingbo (EDGE)
61. New Orleans – Jay Tufele (NT)
62. Buffalo – Eric Stokes (CB)
63. Green Bay – Pete Werner (LB)
64. Kansas City – Jordan Smith (LB)
​
edited: a typo with Ettienne and gave Jacksonville Min's pick from a trade

I was hoping I wouldn't have to make another one of these post but here we are.
Roster Cuts:

Bears are projected to be 90k over the cap, so cuts are needed to address positions of need. The most likely candidates should be:

Bobbie Massie
Jimmy Graham
Buster Skrine
Projected Cap Space: $17M
Franchise tag:
Allen Robinson (Proj:$16M)

Robinson wants more, but it's in the teams best interest financially to tag him. From here we decide, to we commit to a rebuild and trade ARob for draft capital, or do we go all in? To that I say...

Trade:
Kyle Fuller, Nick Foles #20, 2022 1st & 2023 1st for Deshaun Watson.

The opportunity to right a wrong rarely comes for most people, and there's a real possibility we can right the wrong of the 2017 draft and end the memes. According to ESPN, Watson wants the owner to sell the team, so he'll likely be traded. Some GM's around the league have speculated, they believe Watson can be had for 3 1st, but the Texans might be expecting these to be high picks and may demand more. In this trade proposal, we offer 3 1st, an elite CB in Fuller who can either fill their need in their weak secondary, or whom they could flip for a high pick, as well as a stopgap QB. Its a lot to give up, but wed likely be wasting these picks anyways on QBs we hope to be even close to Watsons level. He'd instantly be the greatest QB for Chicago in the Superbowl Era and would have deep dish pizza specials named after him. He'd be treated like a God in Chicago and we can give him a chance to win it all, which is why I belive he wouldn't use his no trade clause if a trade materialized. Plus, i'm sure the Texans would prefer to send him outside of the conference, rather than admitting their wrongs and sending their star QB to Miami for their pick back only for that QB to keep them out of Superbowl contention for over a decade. Whatever the cost, we need to get Watson if available.

Restructure:
$15M of Mack or Hicks contract

We have no cap space so we have to restructure contracts into next year to address holes.

Projected Cap Space: $18M
Free Agency:
K - Cairo Santos (4yr; $17M)

After setting the franchise record of most consecutive field goals, Cairo is the most worthy of resigning.

P - Pat O'Donnell (3yr, $5M)

He benches more than Clowney. Enough said.

S - DeAndre Houston-Carson (1yr, $2M)

Bears are limited in money and should be shopping for bargain deals at strong safety at this point if we want any room to replace Massie. DHC hasn't been stellar, but hes a value option who can play strong safety and his been calloused in the defense. And any DB who can get an INT and a fumble recovery in a Pagano lead defense, deserves a shot to compete as a starter.

OT - Daryl Williams (2yr; $9M)

While he might not be the top OT on the market, after signing a 1yr 2M deal prove it, Daryl Williams outperformed his contract and looked really impressive at RT for the Bills. Especially when he was bullying TJ Watt in the playoffs. A good starter that doesn't break the bank.

Projected Cap Space: $6M
Draft:
Based on thenflnetwork.com's mock machine
2nd Round - Shaun Wade - CB - Ohio State

Wade was a consensus 1st round talent amongst anylast prior to being burned by Devonta Smith in the Championship. Now he's starting to slide into the 2nd in mocks. Outside his bad game against Bama, I see the makeup of a stud DB and has the versatility to play outside, slot and safety. So much room for activities!

Pro Comparison: Minkah Fitzpatrick
3rd Round - Paris Ford - S - Pittsburgh

Ford thrives in what the Bears need in strong safety, plus more. Hes a hard hitting run stuffer in the box, who is interchangeable at free and strong safety. Wouldn't be long before he beats out DHC for the starting position if he isn't already a day 1 starter from the get go.

Pro Comparison: Adrian Amos
5th Round - Paddy Fischer - LB - Northwestern

His game reminds me of Kwiatkowski. Great run stuffer who struggles in coverage. Considering Roquan can take most the coverage assignments, Paddy would be a solid depth piece against the run and in exotic blitz packages.

Pro Comparison: Nick Kwiatkowski
6th Round - Shakur Brown - CB - Michigan State

Shakur will fall because he doesn't have ideal size and physicality to be an outside corner, which I think is a big mistake for the teams who pass him because this kid looks good. Netting 5 INTs and 4 deflections in the 7 games he played this season, Shakur is going to be a steal. Would be a perfect candidate to compete with Vildor in the nickel/slot.

Pro Comparison: Damontae Kazee
6th Round - Nick Eubanks - TE - Michigan

Eubanks is a well rounded TE. He's not an elite pass catcher or blocker, but hes a decent pass catcher and a decent blocker. He can get the job done, which is all we need out of him in his rookie year since we'll lean more towards Kmet in the passing game when it comes to the TE room.

Pro Comparison: Devin Funchess
6th Round Pick - Jarrett Patterson - C - Notre Dame

I like the idea of Mustipher between Leno/Whitehair & Daniels/Williams. But it wouldn't hurt bringing in another Notre Dame Center to compete with and provide solid depth. He's falling due to a foot injury that he recently had surgery on, but the kids plays well in both the run and pass blocking, so he'd be a solid pick if he's still on the board in the 6th.

Pro Comparison: Lloyd Cushenberry
Use your imagination for depth signings & UDFA's
Summary:

In this off-season scenario, we have the roster to not only repeat, or three peat or even a four peat. That's right, I'm talking about a minimum eight peat. Best part is, getting Watson and addressing the offense is a real life possibility. This will be an entertaining F5 season ladies and gentlemen, and I can't wait to be filling this sub with Watson rumors like it's 2017 offseason all over again.

Warning: long rambling stories ahead. I am bored and waiting to get through my first day back at work since before Christmas. You've been warned!
I've been going to the casino pretty regularly for the past few years. Before that, I played occasionally. I exclusively play slots. I view it as a night out - first with friends back when I brought $50 and played penny denom minimum bet spins and prayed to win $20, and then eventually shifting my mindset to playing higher bets and denominations. I hit my first jackpot handpay a couple of years ago. I hit $3700 on a $27 bet on a Geisha machine. I've hit a few other jackpots here and there, culminating with my biggest jackpot ever this past summer. I hit $12K on a $50 bet on a Pompeii slot machine.
Well, the long story short is that I have fallen out of love with gambling. I have somehow managed to have a positive ROI on gambling. I track my withdrawls and win on a spreadsheet. To put it bluntly: I have been extremely lucky over the past few years. I know that slots are not a viable way to win money in the long run, so I made a decision a few months ago to "retire" from gambling at the end of 2020.
I went to my local casino last Wednesday. It just so happens when I hit a jackpot that I usually do it within the first half hour or so I'm at the casino. Well, it happened again. After going up $600 or so on another slot machine (I don't remember the name), I went to one of my most hated/favorite old school slots - Zeus dollar denomination. One of my worst moments in all of gambling was a few years ago. I got a bonus round on the Zeus dollar denomination on max bet of $45 a spin. I was BEYOND excited. I've seen Youtube videos where people have won tens of thousands of dollars in that exact scenario. Much to my shock, I won nothing. In that game, you don't win anything for triggering the bonus. So I actually *lost* $45 on getting the bonus. I cashed out and left immediately.
Anyway, last week I hit a modest $4500. It was exciting...but not as exciting as I thought it should be. I was cool, calm, and...detached. The wins didn't mean much to me, and the losses mean absolutely nothing. My wife and I are in the EXTREMELY fortunate position that losing $500 or so every week or two at the casino is affordable. I'm not ignorant to how lucky we are to be in this position.
After getting paid out, I played a bit longer. But that hand pay drove home the realization that I had a few months ago: it was time to stop gambling. If I can't get pumped about a big win like that, and if I'm not even phased a little bit by losing, it's just not worth gambling any more. I used to go for entertainment, but even now gambling doesn't provide that much.
As I sit now, I am up roughly $18K over three years of slots. Not bad, but not life changing. Enough that I bought my wife a Burberry and Louis Vuitton handbag on separate occasions. The rest if stashed in savings or in an investment account somewhere. But I am 100% committed to being done. At least for 2021, and probably longer.
If anyone is interested in hearing my thoughts on how to win...I don't have any insight to share. It's luck. I got lucky. I know I got lucky. The usual tropes about setting win and loss thresholds is good advice. Sometimes I chased payouts and hit them. Sometimes I chased and lost. But I managed to hit more than miss, and for that I'm lucky. And thankful.
Anyway. I don't have a major takeaway or anything. I don't have many people I can talk about this with in my personal life, so I figured I'd share a bit of my story here.
If you do gamble, please do so responsibly. Good luck, and try to have fun. If you're not having fun, it's probably not the right way to spend your time or money.
EDIT:
I just wanted to say to anyone who reads this in the future that I appreciate the nice responses and PMs from people. It's nice to share a positive experience with others! I sincerely hope that if any of you choose to play in the future, you choose to do so responsibly. Gambling can be a hugely problematic lifestyle for some people. Stay safe. (end of preaching here).
I also want to take a second to address some comments from some people about slots being skill based. This is 100% false. The concept of slots being skill based in any way is demonstrably untrue with three seconds of reasonable thinking. If we accept that there is a hypothetical slot game which is based on skill and not pure luck, what are the consequences of that? First of all, this information would leak out. There would be no way to contain it. If one person can solve the system, another an as well. Subsequently, someone would write a book on the subject. Think about all the poker and blackjack strategy books out there. These are games where skillful play can increase your odds of winning. Last I checked, there aren't any books or Supersytem-level analyses from prominent individuals willing to stake their names and reputations on publishing a "slot technique" book. There's a reason for this. And also - think about this: casinos still carry blackjack tables for a reason: they still have an edge to win. If there is a surefire way for individuals to win when playing slots, casinos would 100% for sure take these games out of circulation. Casinos are not in the business of giving away money. Any claim there is a foolproof way to win money playing slots does not make sense when critical thinking is applied to the circumstances.
Slots are not like card games. Finding and playing only games where there is a "must win by" progressive is not the same thing as skillful play. That's more akin to something like card counting in blackjack. Many people who design slot machines and engineer the software behind the scenes have posted on Reddit and elsewhere that wins are based on random number generators running behind every spin. There is literally no skill involved - you win or lose each spin based on pure random luck.
I am saying this because there are a number of people who come to this subreddit to look for ways to cheat the system and get easy money. I see posts like this fairly often, and I'm only browsing this subreddit occasionally. Gambling is not, and should not, be a way for anyone looking to make a quick buck. If you're looking to get an edge playing slots because you need to pay bills or make a quick buck, you are already in serious trouble. Do not buy into the delusion that you can get an edge or guarantee a win. People saying this are snake oil salesmen who do not care for you or your well-being.
Anyway. I'm going to stop monitoring this post. I'm still open to receiving PMs or messages, but I've had my fun with this so far. I could do with fewer trolls, but this is the internet. I knew what to expect. Bon chance, everyone!

A Link to the Index: https://www.reddit.com/AlchemistCodeGL/comments/adzjua/the_alchemists_index/
First off, a big thanks to the people who have given my last few reviews some reddit awards!
Welcome to the 121st Alchemist's Toolbox review!
Today we're heading to Slothstein to take a look at one of Thunder's biggest "rags to riches" stories. So without further ado, here's the next unit for revisit: Edgar!
Edgar is the protagonist of Chapter 2 of the main story. Let's see what he can do as a unit, shall we?
Personal Investment:
I've got Edgar at 5/5/5/5/5 Enlightenment with all his jobs mastered (Gunner JE mastered, Job+ and 3rd job enhanced). He's one of my top physical Thunder units.
Element:
Basic:
Edgar is a Thunder unit, which means he's strong against Water and weak against Wind. Compared to a hypothetical Light or Dark unit with the same stats and jobs, he would be better defensively and worse offensively in multi-element content.
Competition:

• GunneGunner [Scorpion]: While there are other Thunder units with the Gunner job, Edgar's Job+ is basically a better version, so comparisons to other Gunners will be done there.
  
• DrifteWandering Gunner: Comparing to Gunners, Edgar competes with Alfred, Caris, Justin, Magnus, Megistos, and Prompto. He beats Alfred in everything except horizontal mobility; beats Caris in bulk, vertical mobility, and damage (unless facing Machine, Beast, or Airborne type enemies, in which case Caris wins in damage) while losing to her in speed; beats Justin outright; beats Magnus in bulk, damage, and vertical mobility while losing to him in speed; beats Megistos in damage and vertical mobility while losing to him in speed and bulk; and beats Prompto outright. Factoring in Gates 1-5 of Enlightenment, Edgar now loses to Alfred in vertical mobility; his comparisons to Caris and Justin remain the same; he now ties with Magnus in vertical mobility and loses to him in horizontal mobility; and now beats Megistos in speed and bulk (but loses to him in damage when using Thunder skills against Water enemies).
  
• Hard-Boiled Man: Since this job is unique enough to be distinct from Gunner, Edgar faces no direct competition here.
  

Leader Skill:
+20% PAtk for Thunder units. Good effect, bad potency.
Jobs:
Edgar's 3 jobs are Gunner, Drifter, and Hard-Boiled Man, with the Scorpion JE for Gunner and a Job+ for Drifter.
Gunner is a sort of ranged physical damage-dealedisruptor hybrid job. It has:
Main Skillset

• A weak single-target damage skill that inflicts Slow.
  
• A weak single-target damage skill that inflicts Bind and Daze.
  
• A penetrating single-target damage skill that deals bonus damage to Airborne type enemies.
  
• A single-target damage skill that always hits and inflicts Stop.
  

Sub Skillset

• A single-target damage skill (unlike the rest of this job's skills, this skill has a cast time).
  
• A hitrate self-buff.
  
• A melee-range AoE damage skill that deals bonus damage to Beast type enemies and boosts the user's agility.
  

Its reactive is a chance to perform a ranged counter, and its passives boost range and boost Missile damage respectively.
Gunner [Scorpion] does the following:

• Adds a single-target damage skill that can hit enemies mid-jump, deals bonus damage to enemies mid-jump, and interrupts jump attacks to the main skillset.
  
• Adds a single-target Thunder damage skill (that has a cast time) that deals bonus damage to Human type enemies and deals bonus damage to Water enemies to the main skillset.
  
• Increases the buff potency of Take Aim and adds a Dex buff to it while increasing its jewel cost.
  
• Adds a weak single-target damage skill that permanently boosts the user's Missile damage and has a chance to inflict Paralysis to the sub skillset.
  
• Boosts the Missile damage increase of Shot Mastery +1 and adds a hitrate boost to it.
  

Drifter is a sort of ranged physical damage-dealedisruptor hybrid job. It has:
Main Skillset

• A weak single-target Thunder damage skill that inflicts Slow.
  
• A weak single-target Thunder damage skill that inflicts Bind and Daze.
  
• A single-target penetrating Thunder damage skill that deals bonus damage to Machine type enemies.
  
• A single-target Thunder damage skill that always hits and inflicts Stop.
  

Sub Skillset

• A single-target Thunder damage skill.
  
• A hitrate/Dex self-buff.
  
• A single-target healing/status cure skill.
  
• A melee-range AoE Thunder damage skill that deals bonus damage to beast type enemies and boosts the user's agility.
  

Its reactive is a chance to perform a ranged counter, and its passives boost range and Missile damage respectively.
Wandering Gunner does the following:

• Adds a single-target damage skill that can hit enemies mid-jump, deals bonus damage to enemies mid-jump, and interrupts jump attacks to the main skillset.
  
• Boosts the damage of Piercing Shot (as well as giving it the ability to critical) and adds a Critical Rate buff to it.
  
• Adds a 3-hit single-target Thunder damage skill that deals bonus damage to human type enemies and deals bonus damage to Water enemies to the main skillset.
  
• Adds a weak single-target damage skill that permanently boosts the user's Missile damage and has a chance to inflict Paralysis to the sub skillset.
  
• Adds an agility boost to Long Range.
  

Hard-Boiled Man is a ranged physical damage-dealer job with disruption elements. It has:
Main Skillset

• A single-target Thunder damage skill that deals bonus damage to Airborne type enemies, can hit enemies mid-jump, deals bonus damage to enemies mid-jump, and interrupts jump attacks.
  
• A penetrating AoE damage skill that inflicts Bind and Daze.
  
• A 3-hit AoE Thunder damage skill.
  
• A single-target Thunder damage skill that always hits, deals bonus damage to Human type enemies, and inflicts Stop.
  

Sub Skillset

• A melee-range AoE Thunder damage skill that deals bonus damage to Machine type enemies.
  
• A single-target PAtk/PDef/MAtk/MDef/agility/Dex/Crit/Luck/Missile Res debuff.
  
• A single-target healing/status cure skill.
  
• A range/Missile damage self-buff.
  

Its reactive is a chance to negate Missile damage attacks, and its passive boosts range and Missile damage.
Master Ability:
Since he's a protagonist, Edgar has a Master Ability that functions more like a Babel War Art in that it's an active skill. Edgar's Master Ability is a single-target Thunder damage skill.
Stats:
In a bit of a unique situation, Edgar doesn't really have the ability to fully utilize his 3rd job as a main (he can't even get its Mastery bonus) until he gets his Enlightenment, so the stats section will be slightly different in that pre-Enlightenment stats will use Wandering Gunner and his Enlightenment stats section will use Hard-Boiled Man.
With that being said, Edgar's stats support a fairly fast, fairly squishy unit with good damage. All stats assume level 75 with his Job+ and Gunner JE mastered + his Job+ enhanced. Table Key: NP = No Passive, E = Extension

Stat	Wandering Gunner
HP	1643
PAtk	375
Dex	408
Agility (NP)	119
Agility (E)	131

Enlightenment:
Edgar currently has 5 Gates of Enlightenment.

• His Gate 1 boosts HP, PAtk, MAtk, and agility while leveling, and boosts HP, PAtk, and Dex when maxed.
  
• His Gate 2 boosts PDef, MDef, Crit, and hitrate while leveling, and upgrades Extension to +2 Range, +20% agility, and +10% hitrate (previous effect of +1 Range and +10% agility) when maxed.
  
• His Gate 3 boosts HP, Dex, agility, and evasion while leveling, and upgrades his Leader Skill to +50% HP and +20% All damage for Thunder units when maxed.
  
• His Gate 4 boosts HP, PDef, MDef, and hitrate while leveling, and boost HP, PAtk, Dex, damage against Sloth type enemies when maxed.
  
• His Gate 5 boosts HP, PDef, MDef, agility, and Crit while leveling, and boosts the damage, range, and number of uses of Cypher Impulse; boosts the range of Breaking Shot while lowering its jewel cost; and boosts the damage, number of uses, buff potency, and maximum amount of buff stacks of Accelerated Shot when maxed.
  

Recommended Enlightenment: Due to the good benefits from all his Gates, Edgar's best Enlightenment setup is 5/5/5/5/5, with alternative options being level 3 Gate 3 if you don't want/need his Enlightenment Leader Skill and level 4 Gate 4 if you want to save Gate 4 and 5 resources.
Enlightenment Stats:
In addition to the general boosts from Enlightenment, Edgar can now fully utilize his 3rd job as a main, which provides major boosts to bulk, speed, and damage. All stats assume level 95 with the recommended Enlightenment setup of 5/5/5/5/5, all jobs mastered, and Hard-Boiled Man enhanced. Table Key Changes: E -> G = Gumption

Stat	Hard-Boiled Man
HP	4686
PAtk	546
Dex	676
Agility (NP)	152
Agility (E)	182

Example Builds:
Drifting Rogue

• Main Job: Wandering Gunner
  
• Sub Job: Wandering Gunner (sustained damage)/Hard-Boiled Man (burst damage/Missile Res debuff)
  
• Reactive: Revenge (don't have 3rd job reactive available)/Sweeper Intuition (best option if available)
  
• Passive 1: Extension {Gumption}
  
• Passive 2: Marksman's Training (3rd job passive not available)/Natural Marksman (best 2nd passive option if available)
  

Edgar's main setup before Gate 5. Sub depends on if you prefer sustained or burst damage/Missile Res debuff, and reactive and 2nd passive option depend on if you have the options from Hard-Boiled Man available. Extension/Gumption is basically mandatory for the speed. Basic staretgy is to hit enemies from a safe distance and utilize support/disruption options as necessary.
Hero of Slothstein

• Main Job: Hard-Boiled Man
  
• Sub Job: Wandering Gunner (sustained damage)/Hard-Boiled Man (burst damage/Missile Res debuff)
  
• Reactive: Sweeper Intuition
  
• Passive 1: Extension {Gumption}
  
• Passive 2: Natural Marksman
  

Edgar's post-Gate 5 setup. Basically straight Hard-Boiled Man with Wandering Gunner sub as a potential alternative based on your needs, and Extension/Gumption (though if you have Gate 5 unlocked then you should generally already have Gate 2 maxed) to fill the empty passive slot. Basic strategy is to hit enemies hard from a safe distance and utilize and support/disruption options as necessary.
My Recommended Build:
If you have Edgar's Hard-Boiled Man at Job level 11 or Mastered, use it. If you don't then Wandering Gunner is the way to go.
Gear Recommendations:
Armor and Accessories: Any HP, agility, Dex, or PAtk boosting gear; Screaming Bullet (agility + All damage); Trick Deck (HP + Missile Damage + Thunder damage against Water enemies); Promised Bottle (agility, Healing Potency, solid Weapon Ability)
EDIT: u/TypeTragedy pointed out Elaine’s Feathered Hat, Legion-God Necklace, and Anti-Colossus Gear as good accessory options due to the combination of agility and 1 other strong stat (Dex for ACG and LGN, Range for EFH). Thanks for pointing that out!
Weapon: Charm Pistols (solid stats); Gunner Rifle (great stats, agility); Twilight Pistol (best standalone stats, agility, given via milestones from event); Vulkan (great agility, farmable from Magni Historia)
Memento Recommendations:
Edgar's best Memento is the one he shares with Lisbeth, Drink Away the Tears. This Memento boosts his HP; Single-Target damage; Dex; Status Res; agility; Thunder damage against Water enemies (also Water damage against Fire enemies, but Edgar can't actually utilize that); and All damage; with evasion, Buff Duration, and an additional agility boost at MLB.
Edgar also semi-shares Toritoh's Memento, From Unkind Past to Hopeful Future. This Memento boosts his hitrate; HP; and PAtk, with an All damage and agility boost at MLB.
Edgar also has a budget option with the free Memento A Hopeful Future. This Memento boosts his HP and agility, with a Dex and an additional agility boost at MLB. It also has a Vision Ability that casts Auto-Heal and Jewel Regen in a self-based AoE.
Since Edgar has a free Memento and a Memento that you get 1 copy of for free from an occasional Challenge Board run, there's not much point to listing other options.
Rune Recommendations:
Charge Forth Runes are Edgar's best Rune type (though only Sorcery Runes are utterly worthless for him).
For primary stats, PAtk/PDef or Crit/HP/Dex/MDef or Luck/agility is the way to go.
As for secondary stats:

• Envy: Missile damage, hands down (do I even need to say this one?).
  
• Sloth: Any of these work depending on needs, though Missile Res is less valuable due to Sweeper Intuition being a reactive.
  
• Lust: All of these work depending on your needs, though Charm Res, Rage Res, and Delay Res stand out a bit more.
  
• Gluttony: Max Jewels, Crit Rate, and Healing potency are the top 3 options here.
  
• Wrath: PAtk Debuff Res or Dex Debuff Res, your choice.
  
• Greed: All of these can work depending on needs, though Petrify Res, Death Sentence Res, and Stop Res all stand out a bit more.
  

Futureproofness:
Edgar's only updates down the line compared to JP are Gates 6 and 7 of Enlightenment.
Overall Asessment:
Edgar's a pretty darn good unit. While he takes a tremendous amount of time to get to max potential, once he's there he can be a potent addition to your toolbox.
And that's the review! As always, feedback is greatly appreciated!
Make sure to let me know which of the following units you want me to review next:
Cassius, Eros, Hozuki, Melty Melromarc, Rahu, Sakura
Or choose one of the revisit options below!
Annerose, Flamel, Sieba, Vanekis