End of First Run Puzzle Strike

Orders for the current version of Puzzle Strike will end around October 31st, and then I'll transition to taking pre-orders for the second printing (and for Yomi, by the way).

A few things about the current and second printing. Both versions have the same game data on the chips. The latest sets from the current run switched to a different printing method after hearing many complaints about blurry chips or wrong-colored chips. Now, large sheets of wood are covered with a white label sheet , and printing is on THAT, so that it turns out brighter and less blurry. Then whole thing is cut into circular chips so that the image is exactly edge-to-edge with nothing hanging off the edge or anything like that.

Also, every single chip back is now laser engraved! This upgrade is partly to avoid using the printing hardware that had such variation in quality, but actually the original plan was to laser engrave them anyway as a perk. The regular version has a fancy "PS" engraved while the bigger chips of the deluxe have the Puzzle Strike logo engraved.

Orders for the current version of Puzzle Strike will end up shipping in the first, second, and third week of November, depending on when the order was placed and where you happen to live.

The second printing will be on chipboard, not on wood like the current sets. It's pretty thick chipboard though, 1/8th of an inch, and still very sturdy. It will be $59.99, which is $15 cheaper than the current regular version, and also have free shipping in the US, so that's actually more than $25 cheaper for most people in total. International shipping will be more expensive than before for several countries (sorry), but the game will also finally be available to retailers through standard channels, so if you tell your local hobby shops (in any country) to carry it, they'll be able to stock it like any product. sirlin.net/contact to get info on ordering as a retailer or distributor.

The ship date has kept slipping due to the specs being being refined and iterated several times. At first the Yomi cards were going to be printed on very thick cards, but after consulting with players, I changed the spec to a thinner card with a sturdy core (similar thickness to playing cards), and with playing card coating. Playing cards are they way they are for a reason, and it makes them easy to shuffle and more durable than the standard uncoated, less bendy CCG cards.

There was also some iteration on getting just the right material for Yomi playmats, for aligning the box art just right on Puzzle Strike, getting the internal storage tray for Puzzle Strike to go exactly to the top of the box so that you can turn it upside down without making the chips go everywhere inside, for revising the rulebook of Puzzle Strike at the last moment to match www.sirlin.net/ps/rules (with a change to a FAQ entry for Lum's Poker Winnings), and like 100 other details that all needed approving. It was honestly long and grueling.

Because of all that, the ship date might end up being January. I think December is still doable, and it might be before Christmas if we're lucky, but it would be safer to just claim January and then be pleasantly surprised if it turns out to be early. Whenever it is, all orders of Puzzle Strike and Yomi will ship at the same time though, it won't be a trickling out of orders over time as the current Puzzle Strike has been. It will be so great to have lots of inventory and reasonable shipping times once this new stuff is ready.

So again, you have until around October 31st for orders of the current version of Puzzle Strike, then you can expect pre-orders for the second printing to replace that. And Yomi pre-orders at about that same time.

Advantage Time in Fighting Games

When I see new players try a 3D fighting game such as Soul Calibur or Virtua Fighter, they often have trouble understanding advantage time. The concept matters in 2d fighting games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear as well, but because 2d games tend to have so much emphasis on zoning and controlling space, advantage time is more of a concept for intermediates or experts, rather than a thing beginners get crushed by. (They are too busy getting crushed by fireball traps or rushdown!)

What is Advantage Time?

In a fighting game, advantage time is the length of time (usually measured in 1/60ths of a second, called frames) that you recover from your attack *before* the opponent recovers from blocking (or getting hit by) your attack. If you do a kick, then the opponent blocks it, you have to recover from your kick (that takes some time) and your opponent gets briefly locked into "blockstun" (a state where they are stuck blocking) and that takes time for them to recover from, too. If you recover 3 frames sooner than the opponent in this situation, we say that you have 3 frames of advantage time. If instead the opponent recovers 3 frames first, most charts of frame data will call that "-3 advantage time" though in spoken English you could just say the opponent has 3 frames of advantage time.

Why does this matter so much?

If after a blocked attack, you recover a few frames before the opponent, that means if you both immediately do a move, yours will probably win. Your move will come out sooner and get to the active/hitting part before his, if the moves were the same speed.

In 3D fighting games, beginners can get totally destroyed by advantage time tricks without even knowing what's going on. The opponent does some moves, then it seems like it's the beginner's "turn" to do something, but whatever he does gets beat out. He's probably attacking in a situation where he has frame disadvantage, but he doesn't even know it. 

Nitaku / Forced Choice / 2-Choice Situations

In 3D fighting games, there's a term called 2-choice (or "nitaku") situation which means you put the opponent in a bad situation where he must choose between 2 things, and the deck is stacked against him, so to speak. If he's attacking from

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