Roughly a year ago, I jumped on the end of a bandwagon of posting up what I played throughout the previous year (that being 2019). That list was a whopping 33 games long, for which my excuse was some personal issues that gave me an unusual amount of free time. Now, roughly a year later, there has been a global issue that has given me an unusual amount of free time!
This year's list has around 40 games on it, which seems like more than I played last year, but I also played a further 16 VR games in 2019 that I had posted about elsewhere. Still, my total hours played is probably greater because I got really in to some of these at the lowest points of 2020.
This is a very long post, with a paragraph or two for each game. For those who prize brevity (or are browsing on mobile, I guess), I apologize. I've provided a short list of games I found to be stand-out in one way or the other immediately below this; then I have a few lists of games categorizing them by whether or not I recommend them and my perception of their popularity. Then there's ~25,000 characters of my expanded thoughts on the various titles. I recommend ctrl+f if you want to know my thoughts on a given game.
A BRIEF TL;DR OF MADE UP AWARDS:
Game of My Year: Disco Elysium
(runner up: CrossCode)
Most Time, Best Spent: No Man's Sky
Hiddenest Gem, I Think: Super Daryl Deluxe
Oldest Game I Played For the First Time: Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
Best VR Game: The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners
Biggest Disappointment: Indivisible
Commonly Recommended and/or Popular Games I Also Recommend: Disco Elysium, The Outer Wilds, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Detroit: Become Human, Rimworld, Cave Story+, Deus Ex (2001), Superhot, Death Stranding, Sonic Mania, Among Us, Return of the Obra Dinn, Mirror's Edge, No Man's Sky, Elite Dangerous
Highly Recommended, More Obscure Titles: Cursed Castilla, The Messenger, Cosmic Star Heroine, CrossCode, Super Daryl Deluxe, Overgrowth, 100% Orange Juice, Barony, Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest
Popular-ish Games I'm Ambivalent About: Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, Pokemon Shield, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Subnautica, Indivisible
More Obscure Games That are OK, I Guess: Graveyard Keeper, The Final Station, Chantelise, Out There: Omega Edition, The Invisible Hours, Dual Universe
Games I Actively Disliked: Fantasy Blacksmith, This is the Police
VR Exlusive Games (all more or less recommended): Sairento VR, Espire 1: VR Operative, The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners
Without further ado, here's my List of Games I Played, Mostly in 2020, in a Very Particular Order that Only Makes Sense to Me
A Few Mild-to-Moderately Obscure Titles I Highly Recommend
Cursed Castilla (Maldita Castilla EX) (PC) - This is basically inspired by Ghosts and Goblins. It has a fun aesthetic and 'story' based around Spanish knights(?) crusading against demons. Its gameplay is a bit more forgiving than Ghosts and Goblins, but is still excellently done side-scrolling platforming in an SNES style. I highly recommend it for folks looking for a retro throwback.
The Messenger (PC) - This is to Ninja Gaiden as Cursed Castilla is to Ghosts and Goblins. It is much easier than its legendary forebear, but it's a fun retro romp through a ninja-themed tongue-in-cheek world. Gameplay is smooth with lots of movement options and fun boss fights.
Cosmic Star Heroine (PC) - Another SNES-esque game, this time harking more to Chrono Trigger and other RPGs. I had this on my list for a long time, and upon picking it up I was shocked that it looks like exactly the sort of game I would have made had I ever seriously gotten into it beyond dicking around in RPG Maker. There's a huge cast of characters, each with unique skills that all chain off each other and need to be managed through intricate cooldowns, all with a system that steadily increases damage over the course of combat to ensure nothing goes on too long.
Unfortunately, this was all so complicated for me to keep up with I bounced after the first couple of chapters. It's still an excellent experience, but you do need to either be in the right headspace or absolutely adore this sort of game and/or systems.
CrossCode (Gamepass on PC) - This is another 2D game with gorgeous pixel art that wouldn't look too out of place on the SNES. This time it's an action RPG with a sort of hokey 'you're playing an MMO' story ala Sword Art Online. The narrative actually goes to interesting places, though, but I won't spoil it. The gameplay is a top-down brawler sort, with a lot of choices between throwing energy balls, beating on things with your melee attack, and casting various elemental spells. There are also a handful of dungeons with progressively more interesting puzzle gimmicks, though it mostly involves variations on block pushing and ball bouncing. I do see this game mentioned sometimes, but not as much as it deserves, IMO. The only downside is the itemization and equipment takes a little too much inspiration from MMOs, but it doesn't really hold the action part of the game back much.
Super Daryl Deluxe (PC) - This is an absoutely criminally underrated game which I had mistakenly thought was more popular because several folks in my friend group had played it. This is a Metroidvania-esque title that plays more like a side-scrolling brawler, with a wide variety of skills to choose from and upgrade as you gain collectibles. The core brawler gameplay is just a real treat on its own. The game's narrative is a very surreal high-school themed experience, with the strangely silent protagonist running increasingly bizarre errands through bizarre worlds themed after typical school courses, like Science, History, and Music/Art. The aesthetic is a pleasant sort of squash-and-stretch cartoony thing. Despite a kind of mediocre payoff plotwise, I still enjoyed my time with both the gameplay and the narrative just because of that 'what's going to happen next?' factor. I highly recommend anyone with a remote interest in it to give this game a shot while it's still on sale on Steam.
Some of My Favorites That are Also Popular and/or Contentious
Disco Elysium (PC) - I cannot praise this game highly enough. It's a roleplaying game in the truest sense of the word. There is no combat, but the skills you choose and develop have so much impact on how you progress through the story it's kind of nuts. Every little bit of detail in the world is interwoven with others and while the core mystery of the game is a little simplistic, all of the sidequests and tertiary stuff impact each other and it is in general fascinating. The writing is excellent and the feeling of pulling at strings until you figure out what's going on is something I've never seen matched by another game of this type. I don't want to say anymore as I'll inevitably enter spoiler territory, but if this type of game is up your alley at all, I recommend picking this up.
The Outer Wilds (PC) - I played this immediately after Disco Elysium, and despite being two very different games, they excel in the same place: everything is so masterfully interconnected. The central mystery of The Outer Wilds is about what the heck is going on in your solar system, not a murder mystery, but nonetheless everything you see has some impact on something. It's absolutely fascinating piecing it altogether. Unfortunately, the core gameplay is a bit looser - some of the physical puzzles are tedious or obtuse, and the spaceflight in this game is difficult to control. You will pitch yourself into the sun more than once, usually on accident. I can't give it quite the same glowing recommendation as Disco Elysium because while you can blunder through and enjoy that game, it's entirely possible to be stymied entirely by The Outer Wilds.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (PC) - This is such a strange piece of history. The game looks like it belongs in 2004 right until you meet one of the central characters from the act one plot, whose model wouldn't look terribly out of place in an indie game today. Honestly the whole game is like this given its apparently troubled development history, with some aspects shining bright and others just being awful. The writing is absolutely great from start to finish; the gameplay dips and dives from point to point, especially the oft-dreaded sewer levels which kept seeming not quite that bad except that they just kept on going. Some setpieces are well-realized dungeon romps, and sometimes you're beating off zombies in a crackhouse for way too long. Overall, it's just good enough that I'd recommend it as an invesment of your time if you can forgive a few gameplay sins in the name of good writing and a solid plot.
Detroit: Become Human (PS4) - This one had been on my list for quite a while. It's essentially a modern adventure game in the vein of TellTale, and while I'm not sure I'd say it entirely succeeds at the idea of making choice meaningful, the ridiculous number of branches in the story is absolutely unreal. The game even maps out all these branches for you after completing a chapter, often leading to a 'what the heck could have gone differently there?' sort of thing. This is my first David Cage game, so I don't have a history with his style. I found the plot to be merely so-so, and of the three playable protagonists, two are a little too simplistic and tropey for my tastes. However the writing and dialogue in Connor's segments is second to none, and I would love an entire buddy cop game in this style. Overall, I'd recommend it for what it is - a hamhanded morality tale with crazy production values.
Stuff You've Likely Seen Before
Rimworld (PC) (replay/new content) - Rimworld is a top-down colony building game where your colonists crash-land on a lowtech Rimworld at the edge of human space. You build a shelter and work towards either constructing you own spaceship or building up enough supplies to hike to one you're told the location of. It's got a solid gameplay loop in this vein, and I played it this year because of the Royalty expansion pack, which introduced a new faction and end-game goal - impress the feudal leader of a fleet over the Rimworld to take you to the stars. Overall, I highly recommend Rimworld to fans of the genre, and the Royalty expansion is also worth it as it spices up combat with psychic 'spells' and whatnot.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (PC) - While this game does wear its Batman: Arkham Games inspiraton on its sleeve, it's a little more than that. Combat is more central than in the Batman games, and it's just a lot of fun skewering orcs and taking down Sauron's armies using the vaunted 'Nemesis' system. Shadow of Mordor - the first one, since I know it's easy to mix them up - is a nice, brisk game that has a reasonably quick core plot and doesn't overstay its welcome. In fact, I was left wanting more, so...
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War (PC) - In a lot of ways, this game is more of the same. It does, however, introduce more itemization; while in Mordor, you simply upgraded your weapons by completing challenges, War requires you to level up and replace weapons as you go. This does create a few more interesting systems with damage types and whatnot, but ultimately I stopped because the new elements just weren't much fun and I didn't need that much more Middle-Earth Batman in my life. The plot also goes from 'Well, it's Tolkienish, I guess' to just being kind of dumb all around.
Cave Story+ (PC) (replay) - It had been a while since I beat Cave Story, so I picked this up and did a full run including the 'true ending' hell run. For those who haven't played it, Cave Story is a charming little side-scrolling shooter with a variety of fun weapons. There's not a lot to say beyond that; it's a short, sweet retro experience I also recommend.
Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition (PC) (replay) - I'm referring to the 2001 game, not the Square Enix one from whenever that was. Deus Ex is probably one of the earliest 'with RPG elements' games. At its core it's a first-person shooter set 20 minutes into the future, but your weapon efficacy is determined by skill points you earn by exploring, completing objectives, and interacting with NPCs. The plot has a lot of classic cyberpunk and conspiracy plot beats to it and I highly recommend it even though the core gameplay feels dated in 2020. It is still an absolute masterclass in level design, with so many little hidden secrets, bonuses for exploring, and ways to complete your objectives. I kid you not when I say that after a dozen playthroughs over 20 years, I still find entirely new side areas and routes. There are multiple modernizing mods; I used Deus Ex Revision, available through Steam if you own the base game there.
Pokemon Shield (Switch) - I wasn't patient for this, and in fact probably actually beat it in 2019, but it wasn't a Patient game at the time so it didn't make last years list. That said, it's Pokemon - you almost certainly have your own opinion on it at this point. That said I still felt sort of disappointed even with low expectations going in, as it was basically as brain-dead as other recent entries in the series. It's a shame we're not seeing more out of it given how stupidly huge the franchise is.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch) - This is a 2020 Pandemic Classic, but I kind of bounced off it despite enjoying previous Animal Crossing games. The only gameplay evolution is to add a weird survival-game element of your tools breaking and admittedly a sort of neat crafting/terrain alteration system, but this was gated behind so much grind I just felt I could get this same experience, only better, elsewhere.
Subnautica (Gamepass on PC) - Subnautica is a survival/exploration game set on an alien world after a crash landing. Basically the entire game is spent in the ocean, hence the name. The game is gorgeous and has some fun encounters, but the core gameplay is a bit of a slog, requiring you to scour the ocean floor for bits to find upgrades and slowly solve how to get your ass off the world. The intent is to force you to build multiple bases, but I short-circuited this by building the Giant Monster Submarine Mobile Base. Following the breadcrumbs of the plot is alright, but then you occasionally just hit a 'go scour the ocean floor for wreckage so you can get the upgrade to go past this arbitrary depth'. I think I dropped the game shortly before its climax because I just couldn't be bothered anymore.
Indivisible (PC) - This is a gorgeously animated game that at first glance, looks like Valkyrie Profile with a Metroidvania-ish overworld. In practice, though, it's very linear and the combat system has little more depth than button mashing. The narrative tries to do some interesting things but ultimately falls flat due to some mixed messages with tones and general pacing issues. The voice-acting talent in this game is top tier, though. Overall, I feel like this is a 'good enough' popcorn filler game that's worth your time, but I also feel like it could have been so much more.
Death Stranding (PS4) - I got a fairly solid deal on a used copy shortly after launch, so I wasn't exactly Patient. Hideo Kojima Pretends He's a Film Guy isn't exactly a gripping narrative, but I actually enjoyed the literal walking simulator gameplay. Other players affect your experience indirectly, sort of like the Dark Souls message system. But rather than crude jokes about awesome chests or but holes, they leave material goods. By this I mean both useful equipment and literally dropped cargo, and they literally alter the terrain by forming 'desire paths' as more people take the same route. The whole game is fascinating even if a lot of it is just Kojima being weird.
Superhot (PC) - I don't have a lot to say about this other than I played it. It's basically an FPS where you are in constant bullettime, with the world only advancing extremely slowly until you move. It creates a sort of puzzle game as you figure out how best to dispatch foes without getting overwhelmed. I played the VR version on PS4 in 2019, which has no locomotion. I preferred the 'puzzle solving' elements of this version where you actually have full freedom of movement rather than simply leaning in place.
Sonic Mania (PC) - This is a short and sweet love letter to classic Sonic. I only ever got into the blue blur with the Gamecube MegaCollection, so this just seemed like a welcome return to a familiar gameplay style. I don't have much more than a vague thumbs-up recommendation for folks looking for, well, more classic Sonic.
Among Us (PC) - I really appreciate the chance to murder my friends and convince them they didn't. I don't really see the appeal of playing with randos, but if you can get six-to-seven people together on Discord it's a grand old time. Your experience with more may vary.
Return of the Obra-Dinn (PC) - Sleek graphical style, and neat puzzle-esque gameplay. Basically, you're an insurance... person asssessing what happened to the crew of a ship in the Age of Sail (I forget the exact year). You progress through the stylish black-and-white ship using a magical timepiece that lets you see the last moments of the various corpses you find. The goal is to discover what happened to each of the several dozen crew members on board - how they died, whether they somehow got off the ship, and what (or who) killed them. It has some flaws, as a puzzle game, but it's still well worth trying out if this is the sort of thing you're into.
Mirror's Edge (PC) - I made it about three-quarters of the way through this game years ago, but dropped it for... some reason. It's famously a game about free-running, and it's essentially one long puzzle game about how to maneuver around an urban environment by maintaining momentum, jumping, climbing, and swinging. It's serviceable enough in all respects, though I had a rough time figuring out how to proceed in a couple of areas. The aesthetic is slick, and the plot is merely serviceable.
Some More Obscure Stuff
Overgrowth (PC) - This game is slightly hard to describe. Basically, it's a... character action game based around physics, I guess? About an anthropomorphic rabbit who fights other anthropomorphic animals. The plot has a gritty low-fantasy bent to it, but the meat of the game is in doing crazy high-jumps around the environments (including some parkour!) and sneaking around to grab weapons and slaughter your enemies. Both you and your enemies have very low health pools. The physics do feel a bit janky and floaty, but you can still do a lot of crazy cool stuff - like a flying kick that all but guarantees a kill, but if you miss leaves you very open.
100% Orange Juice (PC) - This is basically Honest Mario Party for weebs. It's typically referred to as orenji, i.e. RNG (randomly generated number). You roll a dice to move your ridiculous anime girl around a board, then roll some dice to see what happens, from simple combat to gaining stars to a very small smattering of minigames. Your goal is to go around the board and make it to your home square with a certain number of stars or a certain number of 'wins' from defeating other players or NPC encounters in combat (your choice). If you do this five times before anybody else, you win! It's a charming little game to goof around with friends on, and often very cheap.
Graveyard Keeper (PC) - It's like a grimly humorous version of Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley. A literal braying ass delivers corpses to your graveyard, you have to bury them with appropriate headstones and whatnot or, you know, throw them in the river I guess. Overall it's a bit too grindy and repetitive despite having a fair number of gameplay systems (having to kill bats on your way to quarry stone for headstones, etc.) Some folks might enjoy the dark humor more than I did, and the gameplay is roughly in line with something like Stardew Valley, so if you want a twist on that formula, give it a look.
The Final Station (PC) - This is a side-scrolling game in which you operate a train across a country while weird shit happens. Gameplay is split between tending the train, which involves fiddling with the train systems as they go down and tending to passengers by delivering food or medicine. At each station, the gameplay is more of a side-scrolling shooter mode where you methodically fight weird zombie-like creatures while looking for the access code to release your train for the next leg while gathering as many supplies as you can. The narrative is jank and intentionally obtuse, but I dug the moment-to-moment gameplay. Overall it gets an 'eh' from me.
Barony (PC) - I played this with my friends when it had a free weekend on Steam. It's a 3D Roguelike that plays in real time rather than the standard turn-based. You have several base classes that determine starting skills, but over the course of a run you may well develop an entirely different set. It's pretty standard stuff if you're used to Nethack or Dungeon Crawl, but the novelty of having multiplayer was good for a weekend. If my friends weren't such dumb butts I'd probably have played more of it.
Chantelise (PC) - This is one of those mid-2000s Japanese action games that got a Steam port at some point. It's got some janky camera issues and a fairly basic combat system where you swing your sword around and gather gems that allow you to release various elemental attacks depending on what's in your gem queue. The story's your typical anime bullshit with two sisters trying to discover why one of them got cursed to be a fairy. It's a solid romp if you can manage to acclimate to the weird camera and input scheme.
Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest (PC) - I was interested in this because it was by the folks who did The Legend of Grimrock. It's an isometric strategy game with the typical vaguely-X-COM 2012 inspirations. There are some interesting choices to be made in ability and equipment loadouts and I vaguely enjoyed the first several missions, but the story didn't grip me and the combats were a mix of uninteresting slugfests and overly tense 'how do I reach the objective while not dying?' sorts of things, at least as I recall it now. This is on my list of things to go back and give a more proper shot as I wasn't really quite in the headspace for it on my first try.
Out There: Omega Edition (PC) - I believe this is a port of a mobile game that is basically a weird sort of existential space exploration. You move from star to star, trying to keep your supplies topped off, and progress towards your homeworld. There are a few different endings, and in general the writing is OK. It's a fun little space-themed choose your own adventure/resource management sort of rogue-like-ish (I hate that I typed this) game.
I Didn't Like These Very Much
Fantasy Blacksmith (PC) - I installed this thinking it'd be a fun little sim game. While it is kind of neat to run around messing with the tools to go through the full process of heating an ingot, beating it into a blade, and performing minigames to sharpen and do final assembly, there's so damn much waiting involved. To profitably sell a sword, you need to wait until you hear knocks on your door (which may well be in the middle of you doing a time-sensitive step in the process). You have to wait for deliveries. You can mine in your basement, for some reason, but it's so agonizingly slow and, again, if you hear some knocking - you better rush to the door! Overall, this game was a disappointment.
This is the Police - On the surface, I really liked the idea of Duke Nukem voicing a tired old cop, with gameplay revolving around time management as you play admin and dispatch for your various police officers. It also has a great, sleek aesthetic and general presentation. In practice it's a needlessly gritty drama about crime and corruption with very little feedback on how well you're doing at the actual game portion. I intentionally ignored the mafia's attempts to bribe me into ignoring their activity, and my game officially ended when the main character got shot in a driveby at breakfast. The fact that it was preordained that I had to be a dirty cop, combined with the fact that the only warning of this was the same 'The Mafia will remember that.' message with no further escalation or actual warning about it being a gameover condition lead me to drop it there (on top of others saying this isn't the only incident of being in a losing game state without any real forewarning).
And Now for Some VR Games
The Invisible Hours (PS4) (also has a flat-screen mode) - This isn't really a game, as there's literally zero interactivity. All you can do is move the camera around, pause, and rewind. It self describes itself as a sort of play, which is appropriate. You follow the seven or so individuals as they interact and reveal more about their own personal mysteries and the central murder mystery. The plot is a little campy and the drama a bit melo, but overall it's still a neat ride and a novel experience, even if you aren't literally in the middle of it as it unfolds in VR. It's a neat use of a few hours of your time.
Sairento VR (PS4) - For those who don't know, VR is absolutely filthy with wave shooters - simple arenas where enemies come until you have spent enough time murdering them all. Sairento is basically one of these with the twist that throwing your hands in the air causes you to do a sick ninja flip into the air and slows down time while you mow down enemies with whatever silly cyberpunk weapons you have. It's all well and good for some dumb fun, but its central gimmick doesn't really carry it given the price tag. There are other, better shooters and explorations of VR mobility.
Espire 1: VR Operative (PS4) - This piqued my interest due to being a stealth game. The highlight, in my opinion, is your ability to climb almost any wall, which along with some solid, classic Deus Ex level design, leads to a lot of neat options for sneaking around. The campaign is fairly typical both plot-wise and gameplay objective wise, and after a while sneaking around in the rafters just doesn't carry the game anymore. By the end I'd just given up on stealth and was mowing down my enemies, which is also a viable gameplay choice. Overall it was OK, I guess.
The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners (PC) - This is the first totally new game I played with my recently acquired HP Reverb G2. This is the first VR game I've played that really seemed to benefit from the previous years of design. Everything just seemed smoother and less janky. The core gameplay is basically scavenging and finding items you're sent for, which is well-suited to VR and the genre. Combat is very satisfying, and I had several tense moments where either there were too many enemies to handle in melee and managing the reloading and gunplay was just frantic enough to feel 'authentic' to a zombie apocalypse. The plot is very modern Walking Dead-ie, which you probably already have an opinion on. In the end I put more hours into the 'Trial' mode, which will being Yet Another Wave Shooter, was actually tense and engaging compared to the many, many previous games with the same formula. I think this has to do with the very satisfying 'pierce the skull' motion and literally grabbing zombies by the head and shoving them back to help manage crowds. All in all, I now consider this a quintessential VR experience alongside Beat Saber.
Unlimited Time Dumps
No Man's Sky (PS4, PC) - Like a non-trivial number of people, I watched the Internet Historian's The Engoodening of No Man's Sky. The game was on sale, it had relatively recently received a VR update for PSVR, and I said screw it and picked it up. This was right around when we were all realizing just how serious the whole pandemic was going to be, and I dumped an ungodly number of hours into the game during March through May. What I appreciated most about NMS - apart from being fairly breathtaking in VR, even in the muddy potato-water of a PS4 Pro's graphical capabilities - is how seamlessly the transition from on-foot to starship gameplay was. Neither is super deep, and the game is mostly about following quests from point-to-point, meandering exploration, or at-best-serviceable basebuilding with some survival elements. But it's all done well enough in the same package that it's entrancing. If you do pick it up, for the first time or to mess around, be sure to check out the crazy folks at the Galactic Hub.
Also yes, I bought NMS on both platforms. I used a program called iVRy to be able to use my PSVR headset on PC, but despite my best efforts I was never able to get anything other than head tracking working. NMS is sort of playable without motion controllers, until you try to build and your hands are behind you so you can't actually place anything. But this setup was fine for...
Elite Dangerous (PC) - There's a YouTuber by the name of Exigeous who says that Elite Dangerous is a pretty alright spaceship game if you play it normally. But if you play it with a VR headset, you are flying a fucking spaceship. I could not agree more. I spent an embarassing number of hours putting this game through its paces from late Spring through the Summer. The game has imeccable sound design, unbelievably good presentation, and a very solid space-dogfight flight model.
Unfortunately, it's hard to recommend almost anything else about the game. Doing almost anything involves either multiple-minute commutes in 'SuperCruise', the only-somewhat-faster-than-light in-system movement mode, or multiple loading-screen warp jumps between stars to get where you want to be. 'Space trucking', or trading, is very janky, as the economic simulation is fairly minimal. Doing anything to the 'background simulation' and affecting the galaxy requires a Herculean effort with a Byzantine system that is less clear than mud. The game probably has the most interesting asteroid mining systems, from relatively simple but pleasant to execute laser mining to cracking the cores with explosives and hoovering up the goodies, but it's still a very simple loop and relies on the aforementioned jank economics. The real strengths are the breathtaking universe (if you can stand jumping and supercruising for hours), and the remarkably complex, modular system for fitting your ships. This is especially true of combat, and with over two dozen ships to choose from there's a wide variety of options from stacking shields and wading into 'melee' with various lasers and kinetic weapons to hull-tanking and railgun sniping.
I'm still very mixed on Elite, but it's basically a must-have VR experience for the atmospheric aesthetics and sound design alone.
Dual Universe (PC) - I'm breaking patient rules here, as this 'released' as a beta in August, but it was in Alpha for a while before that. This is an MMO with influences from EVE, Avorion, and Space Engineers. It intends to be a 'civlization building' game where players run the sandbox. The core gameplay is voxel-based spaceship building, where you can freely design the ship's hull and apply various flight elements to give it capabilities (atmospheric flight, space engines, guns). Production of these elements is done by running Industry machines, and while it's not as complex as something like Satisfactory or Factorio, there is still a fun element of industrial planning (though currently this is a grind-gated gameplay loop).
It calls itself a Beta but feels much more like an Alpha, and frankly NovaQuark is a newbie developer who doesn't seem to have much of a clue. If this game didn't scratch all the right itches for me, I probably wouldn't even mention it; but it's such a fascinating project and is the only true MMO I know with such extensive usage of voxel deformation from everything from ship damage to terrain to mining, with an EVE-like sandbox ethos at least stated.
A Conclusion
If you read all that, I'm so sorry. This yearly roundup means a lot to me as I put my thoughts in order about what I played over the year, and recall some of the more obscure stuff I had forgotten I played. (In particular, I really enjoyed Overgrowth, which I played in July or so, and had totally forgotten Indivisible which I bought at the end of the 2019 Steam Sale, and was a real mixed bag).
I did play a few other games this year, but this list is exclusive to games I at least gave a fair shake of a few hours rather than simply playing for a tiny bit and putting down. My primary methodology was to pull the highlights out of my brain, then check the play history of my consoles (which is fairly inaccurate, probably). My PS4 got a lot of use on one game this year (No Man's Sky), but my Switch sat largely-dormant. PC was my primary platform, where Steam's excellent 'sort by recent activity' function gave me a fairly comprehensive list of what I had played and when.
I think my New Year's Resolution will be to actually post more about games as I play them here on /patientgamers, if only so I can just link to some posts and do a quicker list next year (though hopefully 2021 won't see me with quite so much free time).

Changelog:
December 30th 2019: Guide Created
June 12th 2020: Formatting changes, minor clarity changes and updates to Part 3 and Part 4 due to new Grail heroes being released
August 11th 2020: Added Part 5: Other Guides
August 24th 2020: Removed part 4, changed Part 5: Other Guides to be Part 4: Other Guides, made minor changes to Part 3.
Contents:
Part 1: The Basics
Part 2: The upgrading system
Part 3: Resource management and Progression
Part 4: Other Guides
Q&A will be found in the comments.

Part 1: The Basics

If you’re here, you’re probably very early in your FEH life. To start out, it’s important to cover a few of the basic concepts - Combat and summoning are the most important to look at here.
Combat in FEH is fairly simple on the surface, with only a few guiding rules:
The higher a hero’s Atk, the more damage they deal
If a hero has 5 more Spd than the hero they are in combat against, they attack twice
The higher a hero’s defence, the less damage they take from physical attacks (swords, lances, axes, daggers, bows and beasts deal physical damage)
The higher a hero’s res, the less damage they take from magical attacks (Tomes, Staves and dragons deal magic damage)
When attacking an enemy, if that enemy has equal range to you, that enemy can counterattack after you have attacked
Whenever you attack an enemy or get attacked by an enemy, you gain charge for your special, which can be used to deal massive damage or gain other powerful effects.
Red > Green > Blue > Red. Meanwhile, colourless weapons are neither strong nor weak to any weapon type
When you want to initiate combat, you will see a forecast at the top of the screen - this indicates the results of any given battle, and can serve as your guide as to if a certain battle is a good idea. As a new player, definitely take a look at the forecast before you attack enemies - it will help you get a feel for what works, and what doesn’t.
If you’re interested in the more technical details of the full damage calculation, I recommend looking here.
Next is summoning. There are a few basic rules:
Various banners exist - each with higher rates for certain heroes. Certain banners, such as the “Hero Fest” banner you have at the beginning has a higher rate of obtaining heroes than normal
You can summon up to 5 consecutive times.
Your first of the 5 consecutive summons costs 5 orbs
Your second, third and fourth of the 5 consecutive summons each cost 4 orbs
Your fifth of the 5 consecutive summons costs 3 orbs
Red, blue, Green and colourless stones appear whenever you summon. A red stone will always contain a red hero, blue stones always contain blue heroes, ect.
For every 5 heroes you summon on a single banner (this does not need to be consecutive) without getting a 5 star rarity hero, the % chance of getting a 5 star rarity hero increases slightly. As a general rule, if you want a hero of a specific colour, it is ideal to pull only stones of that colour. However, I always recommend having a backup colour in mind in case no stones of the colour you want appear. If you want to find your odds of pulling a hero, I recommend using this site, since it is generally the most accurate and easily used source, and is updated whenever needed.
Finally, I strongly recommend all new players to enter Misc. —> Settings —> Turn Asset/Flaw Colour Display On. The reason you will want to do this is because a hero’s boon will be displayed in blue, while their bane will be displayed in red. A hero’s boon stat will typically be 3 points higher than normal, while a hero’s bane stat will typically be 3 points lower than normal.
While in settings, I also strongly recommend setting “Auto-Favourite” to 5*. When a hero is favourited, they cannot be deleted by any method - this includes being sent home, being turned into a combat manual and being used as fodder for skill inheritance, which are all things you will do a lot of later on. Removing the favourite mark allows a hero to once again be deleted. Changing this setting to 5* allows you to automatically protect your valuable heroes, and means you won’t have to constantly be removing the favourite mark from your less valuable heroes.
Additionally, I strongly recommend upgrading your castle level using orbs (if you intend to reroll, I recommend doing this after you have rerolled) - this can be done on the home screen in the upper left corner (the small green castle icon with a + sign over it). Doing so will increase the amount of EXP you receive from battling, which (over time) will save you a considerable amount of time levelling up your heroes.

Part 2: The upgrading system

There are a lot of ways to make a hero stronger in FEH. So many that it can be daunting to a new player.
If you go to Allies —> Ally Growth, you will see 8 tabs. For all 8 of these tabs, I will be using Hana with a Spd boon and an Atk Bane as an example.
Tab 1: Level Up
Heroes naturally level up by entering combat - and gain even more EXP by winning combat. Their level caps at Lv40 - which is very easily reached. Outside combat though, EXP can also be gained through the Level Up tab. Let’s say you just summoned your Hana and want her to be stronger. I absolutely do not recommend levelling her up here. As new players, most of your levelling up will be done through combat rather than through the Level Up tab. This allows you to build up SP more quickly - which will be relevant for our next tab. Note that the game says the training tower is the most efficient place to level up. This is an absolute lie. Go to Battle —> Special Maps —> Special Training “XXX” (Where XXX is the type of hero the game is recommending you to train on that map). These maps give a lot more EXP than the Training Tower maps, though can be a bit more difficult in exchange. For new players, I recommend using a mixture of the story maps and the Special Training maps to level your core teams.
Tab 2: Learn skills
Every hero naturally comes with skills they can learn. These skills might be new weapons, new assist skills, new special skills or passive skills. These skills are possibly the most critical aspect of making a hero stronger. Learning skills costs SP - which you get for levelling up or for killing enemies. To learn these skills, you simply select the hero you want, then tap the skill you want to learn and hit Confirm. So let’s assume you’ve levelled your Hana up to Lv10, and you want her to learn a new skill. You come here, select the skill you want, and press confirm to learn it. Alternatively, you can select Auto-Learn to learn multiple skills at a time - which can save time. Most heroes only have a few skills available to them. This is where our next tab comes in.
Tab 3: Inherit Skill
You recently got your Hana to Lv30. She has a weapon, an Assist Skill, an A skill and a B skill - but no special skill or C skill. Let’s assume you have a Peri with the skill Glimmer, and you want to give Glimmer to Hana. To do this, you enter the Inherit Skill tab and place Hana in the “Inherit” box. You then place Peri in the “Lose” box. You then select the skills you want to inherit from Peri onto Hana. Note that some skills have a prerequisite - this is always stated in small red text if the prerequisite is not met, so understanding what to do from here should be fairly straightforward. Keep in mind that the hero in the “Lose” box for skill inheritance will be removed from your barracks permanently.
Tab 4: Unlock Potential
Let’s say you just got your Hana to Lv40. You REALLY like your Hana, but she’s only a 4* hero - so her potential is crippled forever, right? Wrong. In Unlock Potential, you can increase the star rating of your Hana - allowing her to become a 5* hero, which unlocks new skills she can learn, and grants her extra stats. Doing this costs feathers, which are fairly valuable. It also costs badges, which are practically worthless as you get further, but can be rare early on. Keep in mind that using the Unlock Potential tab will reset her level back to 1 - but this isn’t necessarily bad, since it allows her to gain a lot more SP, which in turn is useful for learning her newly upgraded skills.
Tab 5: Use Dragonflowers
Your Hana is now 5*, and you got her back to Lv40 - she’s looking very strong now, but you want more. Dragonflowers can help. Using dragon flowers, you can increase a hero’s stats. Most can only gain 1 HP, 1 Atk, 1 Spd, 1 Def and 1 Res, but older infantry heroes can gain 2 to all stats instead of just 1. This small increase probably doesn’t seem game-changing - and it isn’t. But by combining enough small increases, you get a large increase. That’s where our next tab comes in.
Tab 6: Merge Allies
You pulled another 4* Hana - but you already have one at 5*, so don’t know what to do with this new, inferior version. Thankfully, FEH has you covered. You can merge this new Hana into your existing one. Merging is performed similar to skill inheritance - you lose one hero, while the other becomes stronger. Never merge a hero of lower rarity into a hero of higher rarity. In other words, do not merge the 4* Hana into your 5* Hana. Doing this will grant a small amount of SP, and nothing else.
Instead, use the “Unlock Potential” tab to increase your 4* Hana to 5*, then merge the new Hana into your old one.
As a result, several things will happen:
1: Your old Hana will gain +1 to two different stats.
2: Your old Hana will have her bane removed - so remember how I mentioned she was a Spd Boon, Atk Bane Hana at the beginning? Now she has no bane at all, but keeps her boon
3: Your old Hana will learn all the skills your new Hana had
You can merge a hero up to +10 maximum - allowing for +4 to all stats.
There are a few other very minor traits of merges, so if you’re interested to learn everything about how they work, I recommend looking here.
Tab 7: Weapon Refinery
You’ve learnt Hana’s unique weapon - Hana’s Katana. You probably thought it was pretty strong - but with the Weapon Refinery, it can get MUCH stronger. Generic Weapons (Indicated by a + after the weapon name) can be refined to give extra stats using 50 Refining Stones and a bit of SP. Some unique weapons however can be refined to grant unique effects - doing this costs Divine Dew and a bit of SP. You can gain a small amount of Divine Dew from events and some weekly activities, but the main source of Divine Dew comes from using Refining Stones. Whenever you refine a weapon using Refining stones, you get 50 Divine Dew. Some weapons can even be evolved into a different weapon here - but only a very small number can do this. Here, you can upgrade Hana’s Katana to Hana’s Katana (PRF Refine). Note that you can access the weapon refinery from the home screen by tapping the Refining Stones icon in the upper right corner.
Tab 8: Confer Blessing
Blessings take a fairly minor role in most content. Let’s say you use an Earth Blessing on your Hana. If you place Legendary Ike - an Earth legendary hero everyone can get for free - on the same team as your Earth Blessed Hana, and if the current “Season” is Earth, your Hana will get boosted stats. Obviously, this highly conditional nature makes the stat aspect of blessings quite niche. However, blessing a hero permanently grants them double EXP gain and double SP gain - so it can help a lot to get your heroes built faster. I recommend blessing all your strongest heroes with the light blessing as a new player - since this will give you the most benefit at the beginning.
Finally, there are sacred seals. You unlock Sacred seals by clearing Book 1. These act as a sort of wildcard skill that any hero can equip. These can be created and upgraded at the cost of Sacred Coins by going to Allies —> Change Equipment —> Sacred Seal Forge or by tapping on the sacred coin icon in the top right corner of the home screen. Sacred seals can add a huge amount of power to heroes, and definitely should not be neglected.

Part 3: Resource management and Progression

To manage resources as a new player, you have to know what resources you have, and what they are worth.
219 orbs in Book 1, of which 152 are accessable in Normal and Hard difficulties (Which can for the most part be cleared by a player even on their first day)
194 Orbs in Book 2, of which 129 are accessable in Normal and Hard difficulties
194 Orbs in Book 3, of which 129 are accessable in Normal and Hard difficulties
119 Orbs in Book 4, of which 79 are accessable in Normal and Hard difficulties
411 Orbs from Paralogues and Xenologues, of which 273 are accessable in Normal and Hard difficulties
26 Orbs and 41,100 Feathers from Tactics Drills. If you are struggling with any of these - or with any difficult map for that matter - I recommend looking for a person who makes guides such as Phoenixmaster1.
25 Orbs from Special Training maps (Found under Special Maps)
20 Orbs and 20,000 Feathers from Linking your Nintendo Account to the game, and then using the Nintendo Website’s platinum Point system
This gives you a total of 829 orbs and 55,400 feathers that can easily be obtained by a new player
You also get:
1 copy of Fjorm (For clearing Book 2 Chapter 1)
1 copy of Eir (For Clearing Book 3 Chapter 1)
1 copy of Peony (For Clearing Book 4 Chapter 1)
1 copy of Legendary Ike (For Clearing Xenologue 3 in the Paralogues section)
1 copy of Takumi at 4*
1 copy of Male Byleth (Only if you have a linked Nintendo Account that has purchased Fire Emblem Three houses. If you got a physical copy instead of a digital copy, you can redeem the Gold points for the game with a certain user and this is what flags the purchase for the account)
3 Water Blessings (1 obtained alongside Fjorm, 2 from the daily Special Training maps)
2 Earth Blessings (1 obtained alongside Legendary Ike, 1 from the daily Special Training maps)
2 light Blessings (1 obtained alongside Eir, 1 Obtained alongside Peony)
1 Fire Blessing (from the daily Special Training maps)
1 Wind Blessing (from the daily Special Training maps)
Various heroes between 1* and 2* heroes (From hero battles. These are found in Special Maps with a Silver outline)
As you get a little further on (For example, beyond your first week-month), you can attempt the following content:
Squad Assault: 70 Orbs and 35 sacred seals
Chain Challenges: 350+ Orbs for Lunatic difficulty, 70,000+ Feathers for Hard difficulty, 35,000+ Feathers for Normal difficulty
Grand Hero battles: Various 3* and 4* heroes and 80,000+ Feathers
Now that we’ve listed the available rewards and the available content, we can move on to resources, how valuable they are and where to find them:

Resource	Value	Primary Sources
Orbs	Extremely high	Events, uncleared maps, daily gifts, Quests
Divine Codes	Extremely High	Mjolnir's Strike
Hero Feathers	Extremely high	Events, Certain uncleared maps, Daily gifts, Arena, Allegiance Battles, Arena Assault, Aether Raids, Quests, tapping on heroes on the home screen who have hearts over their heads
Heroic Grails	Extremely high	Aether Raids, Events
Sacred Coins	High	Events, Arena Assault, Arena
Divine Dew	High	Refining weapons, Events
Refining Stones	High	Arena Assault, Events
Dragonflowers	High	Heroic Ordeals, Aether Raids, Allegiance Battles
Midgard Gems	Medium	Mjolnir's Strike
Light’s Blessings (Not to be confused with Blessings)	Medium	Quests
Aether Stones	Medium	Aether Raids
Heavenly Dew	Medium	Using Aether Stones
Blessings	Medium	Aether Raids, quests, summoning legendary or Mythic heroes, Blessed Gardens
Badges and Great Badges	Low-Medium	Training Tower
Crystals	Low	Training Tower
Arena Medals	Worthless	Arena

Now that’s covered, we can move onto progression:
Your goal to progress is to gain as much currency as possible while spending as little currency as possible. Here, we also delve into the two biggest things I didn’t mention above - Choose your Legends and Heroes’ Path.
Your general progression will look like this:
Start Game —> Complete Tutorial —> Reroll (Assuming you want to Reroll, which I don’t particularly recommend unless you really want the best start you can get) —> Choose your Legends
This is a big step, and should be among your first.
You can choose one hero from a selection of 4 options.
Choose your Legends 2 offers the following heroes:
Brave Hector
Brave Ephraim
Brave Celica
Brave Veronica
To briefly list the pros and cons:
Brave Hector:
He’s a powerful hero later in the game, but early on he might be underwhelming. If you’re looking for a strong endgame armour hero, he has you covered. He noticeably has underwhelming fodder if you eventually choose to no longer use him.
Brave Ephraim:
He’s a strong hero for early on, but I personally found him very underwhelming. I wouldn’t recommend using him - instead, I would (and did) use him for Skill inheritance to give another hero Special Fighter - which is an extremely strong skill.
Brave Celica:
She’s a little quirky to use, but still a very dangerous powerhouse. Early on, she will easily be able to crush most content. Later on, she can still be devastating, but you’ll need to build a team around her rather than just slot her into any team and get great results. Alternatively, you can use her as skill inheritance fodder to give another hero the Death Blow 4 skill - this is most commonly seen on Reinhardt, but a few others can use it well too.
Brave Veronica:
If you use F2P guides, she’s included in a lot of them. Very strong hero both early and later on - she can be placed in any team and succeed due to the massive amount of buffs and debuffs she can spread. However, once you reach truly lategame status (Which you likely won’t reach for a very long time), she falls off extremely hard. Even in this situation, she can be used as skill inheritance fodder for the wrathful staff skill. She is the most commonly chosen hero.
Choose your Legends 3 offers the following heroes:
Brave Alm
Brave Eliwood
Brave Micaiah
Brave Camilla
To briefly list the pros and cons:
Brave Alm:
I have almost nothing good to say about him. He does a lot of damage, and can break through tanks with relative ease, but he suffers from three very unfortunate traits. Firstly, he is an infantry sword hero - a class that is swamped with options. Even if he’s good, there are at least 5-10 other heroes who fill almost the exact same niche as him, and at least a few of them do it better than him. Secondly, he doesn’t have the most impressive options for skill inheritance if you choose to no longer use him. Threat. Atk/Spd 3 is a niche skill. It’s not necessarily a bad skill, just very niche. If only had been Threat. Atk/Def instead, this problem could have been avoided in my eyes. And finally, the competition here is fierce - Brave Alm is in my opinion by far the worst option on this banner unless you are a diehard Alm fan.
Brave Eliwood:
As a hero, he can be very lethal when initiating combat. If you inherit the Galeforce special skill onto him, he can be a major asset. However, he suffers from the downside of not being able to easily trigger the Galeforce skill, which means he requires at least a little bit of team support. If you like his character and/or design and are willing to build a team around him, he will be great early on and still great later on. If you choose to no longer use him, he’s a goldmine for skill inheritance. If using him for skill inheritance, I recommend taking both Swift Sparrow 3 and Atk/Spd Ruse for general use, or both Swift Sparrow 3 and Rally Atk/Def+ if you want to be a top Arena player.
Brave Micaiah:
The most commonly picked hero from this group. I can summarise why she’s so strong in just a few points:
1: She has great synergy with Brave Veronica, the most picked hero of the other group
2: Her tome allows her to become unbelievably strong in the right circumstances
3: The free Takumi at 4* that I mentioned earlier has a skill called Close Counter, which can be given to Brave Micaiah alongside a skill called Vantage to make her a powerful threat both in PvE and PvP content.
4: Her PRF B skill, Yune’s Whispers is a powerful and global debuff, something rarely seen
5: If you choose to no longer use her, she can be foddered to inherit both Atk/Res Bond 4 and Ground Orders to a hero - both powerful skills.
Overall, I would say she is absolutely the prize of this group, and strongly recommend any new player to pick her up.
Brave Camilla:
With her huge offensive stat spread and PRF weapon, Camilla can actually cheese quite a lot of content. She can be very effective on a lot of PvE maps. For PvP, she isn’t particularly amazing, but she can definitely work miracles in the right situations. In terms of her skills that are good for skill inheritance if you no longer want her, you can either inherit Wrathful Staff and Restore+, or you can inherit Atk/Spd Push 4 which is a powerful skill for offensive healers and even can be situationally good on conventional offensive heroes such as Kagero.
On to Heroes' Path, it will be your main guide through the game - it serves as a good example of how to progress, so the progression will follow from there.
After choosing your Choose Your Legends heroes, it’s time to start on the Heroe’s Path, which can be found at the top left of the Home screen.
First of all, clear Heroes’ Path Rank 1. Collect your free Reinhardt and 2 orbs and rank up to Rank 2. Then, do the three tasks of Levelling up an ally using the Level Up tab, Clear Book 1 Chapter 1-1 and Book 1 Chapter 1-3.
Now you get an important resource - your first 100 Heroic Grails. At the beginning, 100 is a lot, and even as a high ranking player, I net under 300 grails per month - so these are a valuable resource. You will want to use these immediately to continue ranking up, but on what hero? Due to feedback, this section has been changed to be more simple.
My recommendations:
Astram is great if you didn't take Brave Veronica as your Choose Your Legends 2 hero, since he can buff your team with ease, and later on can be used as Wrath fodder.
Minerva is a bulky offensive hero. She is a force to be reckoned with, and even if you don't end up liking her play style, you can fodder her to other heroes for the Flier Formation skill.
Kronya is a powerful hero lategame, but might be a bit underwhelming at first. She's probably my top recommendation if you don't know exactly what you want.
Due to popular demand, Aversa. I do not personally recommend her, but she's generally a good support hero for PvP content, and has some use in PvE content.
After you have chosen your first grail hero, you can rank up to Rank 3, which is very straightforward.
With rank 4, the tasks are all straightforward once again, however now you are introduced to ally support and summoner support.
Summoner support is simple. You choose a hero to summoner support, and they gain stats - at max they can get +5 to HP, and +2 to Atk, Spd, Def and Res. You can change your summoner supported hero at any time. This is a great way to make your absolute favourite hero a bit stronger, but since you can only have one hero chosen for summoner support at any given time, I recommend giving this bonus to your favourite hero - obviously.
Ally support is slightly more complex. You pair up two allies, and if they are within 2 spaces of one another while on a map, they both gain invisible stats during combat. They gain more stats for being one space away (adjacent) compared to being 2 spaces away. Like Summoner support, you can change ally support at any time.
With that explained, you can move up to Rank 5, which is pretty simple, but you do get rewarded a copy of Ninian for this rank, which is helpful. You can then clear rank 6 and reach rank 7.
Rank 7 has a quest that gives you a bit of a suggestion. For Clear Book 3, Chapter 1-5, you are rewarded a copy of Xander and given 20,000 feathers. The next quest is Unlock an Ally’s potential. Obviously, the game wanted you to unlock Xander’s potential here, however there are actually 2 much better candidates. Firstly, you may want to use the 20,000 feathers to raise your free Takumi to 5*. This grants him access to the Close Counter Skill - and therefore allows him to give it to another hero using skill inheritance. Alternatively, you could upgrade the hero you chose using Heroic Grails earlier (Which unlocks their PRF weapon, and with it a major source of their potency). Either of these options are good choices, - I recommend upgrading Takumi if you really want to use the Close Counter skill as fodder, but otherwise upgrading your grail hero is probably a better choice.
For Rank 8, you have the quest “Enhance a Sacred Seal”. If you do the “Equip a Sacred Seal” task first, you should have 100 sacred coins. With this 100 sacred coins, I recommend you go to the “Creation” tab of the sacred seal menu, and select Brazen Atk/Spd - this is currently among the most powerful sacred seals in the game, and I would argue it is the single best currently - and that doesn’t look like it will change in the near future, either. Creating this Brazen Atk/Spd seal will cost 40 sacred coins. You can then upgrade it to rank 2 for 50 additional coins. Alternatively, you may wish to create and upgrade the Swift Sparrow or Death blow sacred seals - since these two are also among the strongest sacred seals currently available.
For Rank 9, you have the task of Merge an Ally. They clearly wanted you to merge the free Xander at 5* with the Xander they gave you earlier (The one you were meant to upgrade, but hopefully didn’t). For this task, you have three options. Firstly, if you have been summoning and have two heroes of the same type, you can merge them now. Alternatively, you can wait until you summon more heroes. This will stop your progress with Heroes' Path, but isn’t particularly detrimental, since you’ll get stuck at rank 13 anyway, and you have already obtained the majority of the rewards you need. If you haven’t been summoning, and can’t wait to summon, you can clear the Hero Battles maps (The ones that grant 1* and 2* heroes) and merge those two. Keep in mind that if you are a collector, there is currently no way to obtain 1* and 2* heroes, so if you do this, you will never be able to recover the low rarity hero you had to sacrifice. If you got scared off by that, keep in mind that 1* and 2* heroes aren’t very valuable unless you’re a hardcore collector or you want to make a meme build out of them. Or if it’s a 1* or 2* Hana. Only villains needlessly waste perfectly good copies of Hana they will inevitably use to merge her to +10 once they realise how amazing she is both as a unit and as a character. Additionally, I recommend following their implicit advice and using the free Barst to give one of your heroes Reposition - your best heroes to receive the skill are Fjorm, the grail hero you chose, Legendary Ike, one of your Choose your Legends heroes or Eir
For Tier 10, the main problems are the get 5 Arena wins and the Refine a Weapon challenge. For Get 5 Arena wins, just use Duelling Crests to recover your Arena attempts - You’ve already been given 2 through Heroes’ Path rewards. You do this by running out of Arena attempts then trying to battle again, or can refresh your attempts from the home menu by tapping on the duelling crests symbol. For refine a weapon, I recommend upgrading Ninian’s level either by fighting in stages or using crystals, then refining her weapon for Spd - since this is the refine I believe she benefits the most from, though arguments can be made for Def and Res refines instead.
Tier 11 should be fairly simple. Note that you can only enter blessed gardens if you have enough heroes with the required blessing. For the Grand Hero Battle on Lunatic, you should be able to clear one, but if not, consider looking at guides.
Tier 12 is also quite straightforward. I recommend you use dragonflowers on a favourite of yours. If you don’t have your favourite yet, I recommend just waiting. In the upcoming tier 13 of Heroes’ Path, you have to reach Tier 10 in both Arena and Aether Raids to progress. From memory, this will take 3-4 weeks, so you aren’t very rushed from here.
Once you’ve gotten to this point, I recommend clearing out as many normal and hard difficulty maps as you can - Lunatic difficulty maps cost more stamina to attempt, are more difficult and give exactly the same amount of rewards, so there is no reason to attempt these early on.

Part 4: Other Guides

My Aether Raids Guide
Building heroes for YOU! - go to the bottom of the resources sheet to find the most recent thread, and if you have heroes you are struggling to build, I can help you out.

THE PRESIDENT posts a video of himself pummeling a man with CNN logo on his face -- CNN: ‘We will keep doing our jobs. He should start doing his’ -- SASSE punts on '20
by [email protected] (Daniel Lippman) via POLITICO - TOP Stories
URL: http://ift.tt/2tALnd9
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES tweeted a 28-second video of himself punching someone whose face is covered by the CNN logo. The altered video is from one of his appearances 10 years ago on WWE.
THE TWEET -- THE PRESIDENT at 9:21 a.m.: “#FraudNewsCNN #FNN” http://bit.ly/2sfIASR
LET’S BE CLEAR -- The president has just sent his 33 million followers a video of himself pummeling a man covered by the CNN logo. CNN anchors and reporters -- indeed, anchors and reporters from many media outlets -- have been threatened and harassed. The president tweeted this message from the comfort of his summer golf home in New Jersey, surrounded by Secret Service. Meanwhile journalists are in the field, across the country and the world.
THE WHITE HOUSE keeps telling us the president wants to talk about policy, but the media doesn’t want to cover it. Since June 30, the president has tweeted once about health care -- and it was to suggest a new strategy for Republicans. He has tweeted eight times about the media.
CNN’s FIERY RESPONSE: “It is a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters. Clearly, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied when she said the President had never done so. Instead of preparing for his overseas trip, his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, dealing with North Korea and working on his health care bill, he is instead involved in juvenile behavior far below the dignity of his office. We will keep doing our jobs. He should start doing his.”
THE WHITE HOUSE did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the tweet.
FROM A D.C. REPUBLICAN: “Lord almighty. It seriously gets worse every day.”
-- @NancyPelosi: “Violence & violent imagery to bully the press must be rejected. This #July4th, celebrate freedom of the press, guardians to our democracy”.
TOM BOSSERT, the president’s homeland security adviser, walked onto Martha Raddatz’s set on ABC’s “This Week” just moments after the tweet posted. Jake showed him the video on his iPhone just as he was walking out of the green room. Raddatz asked him for his reaction on set. “There’s a lot of cable news shows that reach directly into hundreds of thousands of viewers that are really not very fair to the president. So I’m very proud of the president for developing a Twitter and social media platform where he can talk directly to the American people.” He said Trump is the most “genuine president” and “non-politician president” in our time. “No one would perceive that as a threat,” Bossert said.
BUZZFEED: “The edited version of the clip has circulated on Reddit’s The_Donald -- which has become a hub for followers of alt-right, far-right, and Trump supporters -- over the last few days prior to the President tweeting it. It is not clear how the president became aware of the clip.” http://bzfd.it/2uyuwVv
-- REMEMBER: A few weeks ago, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot and he now lays in a Washington hospital recovering. The president, at that time, called for the country to unify. He was roundly praised. Republicans and Democrats said it was time to ratchet down the political rhetoric.
ANA NAVARRO, on “This Week”: “It is an incitement to violence. He is going to get somebody killed in the media. Maybe that will stop him.”
KEEP IN MIND -- Ben Jacobs, a reporter from The Guardian, was recently bodyslammed by a congressional candidate.
BY THE WAY … The man whose face is covered up appears to be Vince McMahon, the husband of Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon. See the original clip from 10 years agohttp://bit.ly/2t5V2Yx
Good Sunday morning. TWO QUOTES THAT CAUGHT OUR ATTENTION…
-- BARACK OBAMA in Jakarta, Indonesia, per the AP: “‘I wasn’t worried about what was in the newspapers today,’ former President Barack Obama said Saturday during a nostalgic visit to Indonesia's capital, his childhood home. ‘What I was worried about was, ‘What are they going to write about me 20 years from now when I look back?’” http://bit.ly/2uxxI3E
-- MITCH MCCONNELL, per the AP, in Kentucky: “‘If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!’ Trump wrote early Friday. Later that day, McConnell told reporters after an event in his home state of Kentucky that the health bill was challenging but ‘we are going to stick with that path.’ He added: ‘It’s not easy making America great again, is it?’” http://bit.ly/2t5w6jF
PRESIDENT TRUMP at the “Celebrate Freedom” rally honoring veterans last night at the Kennedy Center: “My administration is transferring power outside of Washington and returning it to where it belongs, the people. The fake media is trying to silence us but we will not let them. The people know the truth. The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House, but I’m president and they’re not. … “The fact is the press destroyed themselves because they went too far. Instead of being subtle and smart, they used the hatchet and the people saw it right from the beginning. ... The dishonest media will not stop us from accomplishing our objectives on behalf of the American people. Their agenda is not your agenda.”
-- DESPITE THE BLUSTER, we’d venture to say President Trump has given nearly as many interviews to the New York Times and Washington Post since winning the presidency in November than Barack Obama did in eight years. Right?
-- @maggieNYT: “POTUS used July 4 vets event to attack the press/first amendment: ‘The fact is the press destroyed themselves because they went too far.’”
-- QUICK NOTE: Imagine if Barack Obama used a veterans event to attack the press.
THE NEW WALL STREET JOURNAL -- SAM WALKER, the deputy enterprise editor at the WSJ (@samwalkers): “Are WH attacks on TV media ‘news’? I dunno... These @shaneharris scoops definitely are: http://on.wsj.com/2sfE2vT … http://on.wsj.com/2tyk4QM”
FOR POSTERITY --@realDonaldTrump at 3:41 p.m.: “My use of social media is not Presidential - it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!”
IVANKA WATCH -- “When Dad’s the president -- a look inside Ivanka Trump’s complicated world,” by WaPo’s Monica Hesse and Krissah Thompson: “Ivanka Trump’s office: clean, white, quiet. A zone of punctual start times and promptly-offered water bottles, and a conference table at which she conducts meetings. A short, winding walk away from her father’s Oval Office downstairs. She does not necessarily appreciate daily schedules. Neither does her father. When Ivanka needs to see the president, she stops by. When he needs to see her, he calls. When he wants her opinion, he asks for it and she gives it, but without expectation that it will be followed.She sees her role as not to persuade, but to inform and support ...
“Anyone who has invested in her the ability to change her father clearly doesn’t understand the dynamic that has always governed their relationship and also the dynamic of a president and his staff. After all, she works for him. ... When she disagrees with her dad, she asks herself whether the issue was a campaign promise or not. If it was, she readily suppresses her own wishes. She believes that doing otherwise would undermine what the American people voted for. She asks herself why her opinion is more right than the 46 percent of the country who put her father in office.” http://wapo.st/2tzSAKq
NOTHING TO SEE HERE -- “With health bill looming, senators aren’t rushing into the July Fourth spotlight,” by WaPo’s Paul Kane: “Sen. Susan Collins will celebrate the Fourth of July within view of the Canadian border, at a remote northeastern Maine town’s annual parade. Sen. Lisa Murkowski will appear on the other end of the continent in an old timber town on an isolated Alaskan island. These two Republican senators, critical swing votes in the debate over health-care legislation, are not exactly rushing into the public spotlight to engage their constituents on the controversial plan and their own decision-making about the proposal.
“Then again, at least they have released information about where they will be. That’s more than most Senate Republicans have done at the start of a 10-day break wrapped around the nation’s Independence Day celebration. This creates the belief among liberal activists that Republicans are trying to hide, which in turn primes every public moment to become that much more confrontational.” http://wapo.st/2tzSYZ9
-- W.H. LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR MARC SHORT ON TIMING, to JOHN ROBERTS on “Fox News Sunday”: “Well, look, we’ve gone through a long process in the House and got it completed and passed in the House. We now are in the Senate where there’s been obviously a lot of procedural delays in this process. We are at the point of scoring two separate bills throughout the course of this recess this week. So, we hope that we come back the week after recess, we'll have a vote.”
WHAT BRAD PARSCALE IS READING -- “Pro-Trump Twitter operatives market paid tweets,” by Shawn Musgrave: “From the moment he declared his candidacy, President Trump commanded legions of online followers. Now, having helped win the White House, factions of self-made social media operatives are redirecting their skills and infrastructure to promote other candidates nationwide. Some are even vying to spin their experiences from the presidential race into new business models, seeking to promote other candidates by paying pro-Trump Twitter users to tweet and retweet scripted messages. Pro-Trump tweeters say they deserve at least partial credit for defeating Hillary Clinton, as well as for the string of Republican victories in recent special elections. A handful are pursuing paid gigs from aspiring conservative politicians, pitching their organized -- and often secretive -- follower networks to ‘America First’ candidates willing to pay.
“It’s an unproven concept, one viewed with skepticism from established campaign veterans and with varying levels of disdain from those who tweet Trump’s virtues for free. After all, Twitter derives its power from authentic, grass-roots messaging. But pay-to-tweet enthusiasts say they’re selling the future of social media strategy, and that candidates won’t have any choice but to pay.” http://politi.co/2tEmwFV
MAUREEN DOWD in the NYT: “Cruella de Trump”: “The 71-year-old president’s pathological inability to let go of slights; his strongman reflex to be the aggressor and bite back like a cornered animal, without regard for societal norms; his lack of self-awareness about the power he commands and the proportionality of his responses; his grotesque hunger for flattery and taste for Tony Soprano tactics; his Pravda partnership with David Pecker, the head honcho at The National Enquirer, which has been giving Trump the Il Duce treatment while sliming his political opponents, the ‘Morning Joe’ anchors and Megyn Kelly -- these are all matters that should alarm men and women equally.
“Trump has moved his shallow kiddie wading pool of gossip and ridicule from Trump Tower to the White House, where it is so outlandishly out of place that it often feels like we have a Page Six reporter as our president. … Before he got to D.C., Trump was used to media that could be bought, sold and bartered with. He is not built for this hostile environment and it shows in his deteriorating psychological state. Even though he’s in the safest space of all, he’s not in a safe space.” http://nyti.ms/2tye4rz
THE WHITE HOUSE appears to be putting more of their aides on television to talk about the president’s agenda. They had Tom Bossert, the president’s homeland security adviser, on ABC and Marc Short, the president’s legislative affairs director, on Fox. The Trump administration has had no one on the Sunday shows on many occasions. A few weeks ago, Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow went on the shows.
SUNDAY BEST -- HHS SECRETARY TOM PRICE to NBC’S CHUCK TODD on “MEET THE PRESS” -- TODD: “I’m just asking you as a father. If your son tweeted about a woman like that, what would you say to him?” PRICE: “Chuck, you know, this is really remarkable. You’ve got incredible challenges across this nation, incredible challenges around the world. The challenge that I've been given is to address the health care issues. And your program, a program with the incredible history of Meet the Press, and that’s what you want to talk about?” TODD: “I don’t.” PRICE:“Let me suggest to you that the American people want to talk about the challenges.”
TODD: “Mr. Secretary, I don’t. Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, you’re blaming me for what the president of the United States has spent his entire week focused on?” PRICE: “No. Listen to me, with all due respect. The American people are concerned about a health care system that is not providing choices, where premiums are going up, where insurance companies are vacating markets all across this land. And that’s what they want us to concentrate on. And that’s what they want us to fix. And that’s what I and the president are working on.”
TWO INTERESTING BITES FROM JAKE TAPPER’S interview of SEN. BEN SASSE (R-NEB.) on CNN’s “STATE OF THE UNION” …
-- CANCEL AUGUST RECESS: “Let's bring everybody into the room. Let’s do this full-time 18 hours a day, six days a week. Let’s cancel the August state work period, and let’s do it in full public view and have hearings and get to work on something that works better than Obamacare. We pledged that, and the American people deserve that.”
-- NO ANSWER ABOUT A 2020 CHALLENGE TO TRUMP: TAPPER: “So, senator, you're not taking that advice. In fact, you’re going to be crossing the Missouri on Friday, going to Iowa and speaking at the Judge Joseph Story Dinner. Is there any chance that you will challenge President Trump for the Republican nomination in 2020?”
SASSE: “Well, first of all, let’s be clear why I’m going to be in Iowa this weekend. I don’t want to admit it anywhere, let alone on national TV, but Nebraska lost to Iowa last year in a football game, and I lost a bet. So, I have to drive Uber in Iowa next weekend. So, that’s the reason I’m going to be in Iowa. It’s about Hawkeyes and Huskers’ bloodletting on the football field and the aftermath of that. But I don’t know who that guy is in your segment, but here’s what I believe.
“I believe that, on the Fourth of July weekend, we ought to have every kid in America having their moms and dads and aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas getting together and saying, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, that they’re endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
“That’s what America is about. It’s not about Republicans and Democrats who have important differences on policy screaming at each other that the other side wants to kill somebody. Politics are subordinate to the things that are supposed to unite Americans. And this is a weekend that we should be celebrating all that.”
JOHN ROBERTS talks with SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.VA.) on “FOX NEWS SUNDAY” -- “Manchin: Dems want to work with Trump on health care,” by Connor O’Brien: “Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Sunday said members of his party are willing to work with Republicans and President Donald Trump to find a bipartisan solution on health care. ... ‘I want him to know there are Democrats that want to work with him,’ Manchin said. ‘But right now, they can’t even repeal it. They can’t get 50 votes to repeal it because somebody’s getting hurt more than what they’re willing to sign on to.’ ‘Look at some of us. Work with us Democrats who are willing to meet you in the middle, who have always been willing to meet you in the middle,’ Manchin said.” http://politi.co/2tF5tnp
JOHN DICKERSON talks with SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UTAH) on CBS's "FACE THE NATION: DICKERSON: "If Republicans can't agree on a replacement option at the moment why would they be able to agree on one in the future?" LEE: "Well, if we adopted a measure, if we passed a measure repealing Obamacare, and put a delayed implementation measure in there. With the understanding that at that point after passing the repeal measure we would undertake the step by step process of deciding what comes next. I think it's easier, sometimes when you lump too many things into one piece of legislation, you doom its likelihood of success and I fear that that might be where we are today and i think that explains a lot of what President Trump was talking about in his tweet the other day. What Senator Sasse mentioned in his series of communications on Friday and I think it’s very much worth considering, it’s consistent with what I thought would be better, a more likely to succeed legislative strategy over the last six months."
REMEMBER THIS GUY? -- “Christie adds government shutdown to his legacy: The move comes after New Jersey lawmakers failed to pass a budget by the annual deadline,” by New Jersey Playbooker Matt Friedman: “Chris Christie is heading into his final six months as governor presiding over New Jersey’s biggest government crisis in more than a decade: A shutdown that will literally turn the lights out in Trenton. New Jersey lawmakers failed to pass a budget by the annual deadline at midnight last night, and Christie promptly issued an order sparking the closure of government offices and services deemed non-essential. State parks and beaches will likely be closed this morning, just in time for the holiday, as will motor vehicle offices. Courts could be closed come Monday. Tens of thousands of state government employees will be furloughed. …
“‘It’s all going to come down to when folks get up tomorrow for the July 4th weekend and drive down to Island Beach State Park to spend the day and a sign says it’s closed,’ said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. ‘They’re going to blame Gov. Christie and nobody else.’” http://politi.co/2t56rb0 … Subscribe to New Jersey Playbookhttp://politi.co/1HLKltF
-- “Illinois blows budget deadline as threat of downgrade looms,”by Illinois Playbooker Natasha Korecki: “Illinois lawmakers blew their deadline for a budget agreement and instead entered their third fiscal year without a spending plan on Saturday, despite worries about the state facing an unprecedented downgrade to junk status.” http://politi.co/2tec3ht … Subscribe to Illinois Playbookhttp://politi.co/1N7u5sb
THE CABINET -- NYT A1, “E.P.A. Chief Voids Obama-Era Rules in Blazing Start,” by Coral Davenport (online headline: “Counseled by Industry, Not Staff, E.P.A. Chief Is Off to a Blazing Start”): “In the four months since he took office as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt has moved to undo, delay or otherwise block more than 30 environmental rules, a regulatory rollback larger in scope than any other over so short a time in the agency’s 47-year history, according to experts in environmental law. Mr. Pruitt’s supporters, including President Trump, have hailed his moves as an uprooting of the administrative state and a clearing of onerous regulations that have stymied American business. Environmental advocates have watched in horror as Mr. Pruitt has worked to disable the authority of the agency charged with protecting the nation’s air, water and public health.” http://nyti.ms/2svjtzB
STEVEN BRILL in WaPo’s Outlook section, “Nine ways to really fix Obamacare”:http://wapo.st/2teHrwn
MEDIAWATCH -- “Wall Street Journal Said to Reduce Print Operations Outside U.S.,” by NYT’s Emily Steel and Prashant S. Rao: “The Wall Street Journal is scaling back its print operations in Europe and Asia, two people familiar with the plans said … [as] part of efforts by the news organization to cut costs and focus on its digital offerings. The latest move would involve greatly reducing publication of its print newspaper in Europe … That includes eliminating free copies and reducing hotel distribution deals that are not profitable. The Journal will continue to publish an Asian edition in Tokyo, but is exploring other ways to reduce print publishing elsewhere in Asia.” http://nyti.ms/2suL3x0
FUN READ – “Beach reading for a summer of scandal,” by Darren Samuelsohn: “Feeling overwhelmed by nonstop news about the Russia probe and desperate for some historical context? Do you work or live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? If you answered yes to either of those questions, POLITICO has some summer reading recommendations for you. We canvassed veterans of previous investigations and longtime Washington fixtures for suggestions beyond All the President’s Men. Our list covers everything from subpoenas to grand juries and how a White House can weather scandal. Ahead of the Fourth of July holiday, here’s some great material to pack in your beach bag:
“‘A Timeline: Russia and President Trump,’ by Steven Harper, recommended by Nick Akerman, former assistant Watergate prosecutor ... ‘All the King’s Men,’ by Robert Penn Warren, recommended by Jim Manley ... ‘The Breach,’ by Peter Baker, recommended by Don Goldberg, former crisis communications spokesman, Clinton White House.” With four more selectionshttp://politi.co/2sfRDDe
BONUS GREAT WEEKEND READS, curated by Daniel Lippman, filing from Great Barrington, Massachusetts:
--“The Rise of the Thought Leader: How the superrich have funded a new class of intellectual,” by David Sessions in TNR: “Interviewed for The Ideas Industry, [Niall] Ferguson is frank about his transformation from Oxford don to thought leader: ‘I did it all for the money.’ ... Thought leaders all share a core view that extreme wealth and the channels by which it was obtained are not only legitimate but heroic.” http://bit.ly/2urqqyi (h/t ALDaily.com)
--“Zohar’s Translation Unlocks the Secrets of Jewish Mysticism in an Age of Extremism,” by Newsweek’s Alexander Nazaryan: “Imagine the Old Testament as written by H.P. Lovecraft, Bible stories tripping on acid, rendered in difficult-to-decipher Aramaic, full of wisdom and beauty but shrouded in obscurity, a 1,900-page text written more than 700 years ago whose teachings have been embraced by celebrities like Madonna but not fully understood even by most scholars of Judaism.” http://bit.ly/2sfiVtB
--“How We Save Face--Researchers Crack the Brain’s Facial-Recognition Code,” by Knvul Sheikh in Scientific American: “A Caltech team has deciphered the way we identify faces, re-creating what the brain sees from its electrical activity.” http://bit.ly/2sZlQcN
--“Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?” by Stephen Buranyi in the Guardian: “Despite the narrow audience, scientific publishing is a remarkably big business. With total global revenues of more than £19bn, it weighs in somewhere between the recording and the film industries in size, but it is far more profitable.” http://bit.ly/2ttXXKU
--“Retail giants enable trucker exploitation,” by Brett Murphy in USA Today: “Powerhouses such as Target, Costco benefit while drivers plunge into debt.” https://usat.ly/2ua2Dnm
--“Anxiety at the Gates,” by Edward Schwarzschild in Hazlitt: “[E]very morning, as part of my job [as a TSA screener], I was supposed to run my hands up and down the legs, torsos, and arms of my fellow citizens. I was supposed to do this in such a way that no one would feel groped. Our cheerful instructors offered guidance. Exert the same pressure you use to spread peanut butter on a sandwich. Say clearly what you’re going to do and then do it. We’d grow numb to it before long, they assured us.” http://bit.ly/2s9FPm9 (h/t TheBrowser.com)
--“The Killer in the Pool,” by Tim Zimmermann in the July 2010 issue of Outside magazine – per Longform.org’s description: “In February 2010, a killer whale named Tilikum dragged his SeaWorld trainer into the pool and drowned her. It was the third time the orca had been involved in a death during his 27 years in captivity. This is his story.” http://bit.ly/2sp7dAM
--“In the Light of the Conflict: Photographer Andrew Quilty’s experience in Afghanistan,” by Jelena Bjelica on Afghan Analysts Network: “I do not think of myself as a huge risk taker. A lot of planning goes into travel outside Kabul. We do not just jump in a taxi and head for the hills. I was inexperienced and a bit ignorant in Badakhshan, and probably pushed my luck more than I would these days. Now, working with colleagues, I’m often the one telling journalists to wrap up their interviews because it feels like we have been in one place too long.” http://bit.ly/2sZ4tZC ... 26 of his Afghan pix on one pagehttp://bit.ly/2u6ErCf
--“The Shah of Iran: An Interview with Mohammad Reza Pahlevi,” by Oriana Falaci in the Dec. 1, 1973 New Republic: “‘[A] monarchy is the only possible means to govern Iran. If I have been able to do something, a lot, in fact, for Iran, it is owing to the detail, slight as it may seem, that I’m its king. To get things done, one needs power, and to hold onto power one mustn’t ask anyone’s permission or advice.” http://bit.ly/2su5o0K
--“The Gay Men Who Fled Chechnya’s Purge,” by Masha Gessen in the New Yorker: “The stories of those who survived detention and torture and are now living undercover in Putin’s Russia.” http://bit.ly/2s9GbcA
--“The Future of Coal Country,” by Eliza Griswold in the New Yorker: “A local environmental activist fights to prepare her community for life beyond mining.” http://bit.ly/2su54z4
--“The Polaroids of the Cowboy Poet,” by Dan Zak in the Jan. 13, 2016 WaPo: “He captured a crumbling city and almost went down with it. Then one man saw his photos." http://wapo.st/2urjssX
SPOTTED IN NANTUCKET: Greta Van Susteren and John Coale walking on the island’s Straight Wharf dock on Friday night.
OUT AND ABOUT IN THE HAMPTONS -- LALLY WEYMOUTH held her annual summer party last night at her house in Southampton. There was a long gold carpet entrance from where the parking was to a big tent next to her house. She served champagne, rare filet, fried chicken, cornbread, a big chocolate cake, ice cream and cookies decorated as American flags. Brother Don Graham did a big tribute to toast Lally (whose birthday is tomorrow) and shouted out Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film about how Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham challenged the government for the right to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971 (Tom Hanks is playing Bradlee and Meryl Streep is playing Graham). Don made a big deal that Spielberg was there and jokingly conceived a Spielberg movie about Lally and described the cast (some actors and some in the room).
-- SPOTTED: Jared and Ivanka chatting with Joel Klein and Alan Patricof, Kellyanne Conway on the dance floor, Boyden Gray, Chris Ruddy, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and wife Iris, Katharine Weymouth, Mary Jordan, Richard Cohen, Margaret Carlson, Gillian Tett, Steven Spielberg chatting with Steve Clemons and Robert Hormats, Carl Icahn, Tom Lee (famous for doing a leveraged buyout of Snapple and now lives in Princess Radziwill’s house), Charles Koch, John Paulson, Dina Powell, Richard Edelman, George Soros and his wife Tamiko Bolton, former Florida Gov. and Sen. Bob Graham (Lally’s uncle), her cousin Gwen Graham (who is running for Florida governor), Maria Bartiromo, Ray Kelly, Bill Bratton, Alan Patricof, Jeff Rosen, William Drozdiak, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.).
SPOTTED at a dinner Friday night in Aspen in honor of Fareed Zakaria hosted at the residence of Alexandra Munroe, senior curator at the Guggenheim and her husband Robert Rosenkranz, chairman of Intelligence Squared US: former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, K.R. Sridhar, Karen Brooks and Bob and Soledad Hurst. Pichttp://bit.ly/2tewafz
WEEKEND WEDDINGS – “Chrysovalantis Kefalas, Thomas Pavlick” – N.Y. Times: “Mr. Kefalas, 37, is a vice president for executive communications at the National Association of Manufacturers, an advocacy group based in Washington. He graduated from Loyola University Maryland and received a law degree from the University of Baltimore. ... Mr. Pavlick [Tommy McFly], 31, is the host of ‘The Tommy Show,’ a weekly talk show on CBS Radio’s 94.7 Fresh FM in Bethesda, Md., and a special-projects reporter for WUSA 9, a television station in Washington. He graduated from Luzerne County Community College. ... The couple were introduced through mutual friends in July 2013 at Lauriol Plaza, a restaurant in Washington.” With pichttp://nyti.ms/2sAPoKt
--POOL REPORT FROM KELLEY MCCORMICK: The ceremony was at “Sagamore Pendry Hotel in Baltimore on Saturday night, surrounded by family and friends. Officiated by Bob Madigan, serenaded by Erin Willett [of ‘The Voice’] and attended by Kelly Collis, Jen Richer, Samuel Ashner, and Zoe Shyn. Late night pizza and dancing was still going on when this report was filed [at 1:24 a.m.], with music being spun by DJ Neekola.” Picshttp://bit.ly/2tetrCT ... http://bit.ly/2teOtRB ... The autobiographical cake by Charm City Cakeshttp://bit.ly/2sviCin
SPOTTED: Ellie Schafer and Heather Rothenberg, Tammy Haddad, Kate Bennett, Kevin Baron, Cathy Merrill, Susanna Quinn, Matt Glassman (credited for first introducing the couple), Kelley and Brian McCormick, Jay Timmons and Rick Olson, Erin Streeter and Chris Israel, Wendy Gordon, Jill Collins, Elizabeth and Penelope Thorp, Jake Maccoby, Kris Van Cleve, Emily Miller, Peter Morris, Barbara and John Martin, Mike Drachkovitch and special guest Connor O’Donnell.
--“Eliese Lissner, Derek Callahan”: “The bride, 28 ... is the director of missions and an associate director of leadership at the Anti-Defamation League in New York. She develops international travel programs to engage lay leadership, and recently coordinated the league’s mission to Rome, where she met Pope Francis. She graduated from Drew University and received a master’s degree in integrated marketing from N.Y.U. ... The groom, 30, is a news producer in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., for CNBC’s ‘Mad Money,’ a financial investment program hosted by Jim Cramer, and is pursuing an M.B.A. through Syracuse. He graduated from Ithaca College.” With pichttp://nyti.ms/2sfCMcj
OBAMA ALUMNI -- “Nirupama Rao, Matthew Landy”: “The bride, 35, is an assistant professor of economics and public policy at N.Y.U. Next month, she is to join the faculty of the University of Michigan. She graduated from M.I.T., where she also received a Ph.D. in economics. From 2015 to 2016, she served as a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in Washington. … The groom, 44, is a portfolio manager in New York for Lazard Asset Management. He also serves on the board of Friends of the Children New York, a nonprofit that mentors at-risk children. He graduated from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.” http://nyti.ms/2sfTCrm
--Former Obama White House intern and Navy officer Mark Jbeily married Helen Hansen, art historian and Courtauld alum, at Perkins Chapel in Dallas on Saturday. “Helen and Mark met in their first day of their first class of their first year at UT. Both just finished graduate school in the UK where Mark was a Marshall Scholar, and they are now off to Pensacola for Mark’s naval aviation training.” Picshttp://bit.ly/2sfHM0q ... http://bit.ly/2sfL2ss
TRANSITIONS: Chris Kelley has started on API’s federal relations team as a director focused on international and corporate issues. He most recently was deputy chief of staff for Rep. Brad Ashford (D-Neb.).
BIRTHWEEK (was Friday): Kristen Ellingboe, researcher for CAP Action
BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Jonathan Capehart, WaPo opinion writer and MSNBC contributor. How he’s celebrating: “I’ll be with my husband Nick with our friends Bryan Rafanelli and Mark Walsh at their home in Provincetown.” Read his Playbook Plus Q&A:http://politi.co/2udIRHv
BIRTHDAYS: Courtney Geduldig, EVP of public affairs of S&P Global ... Brad Todd, founding partner of On Message … David Lopez, director of special projects and advisor to the president and CEO at the Kaiser Family Foundation and an Obama WH alum ... Luci Baines Johnson is 7-0 -- she was recognized in a bipartisan Congressional Record tribute by Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) and Joe Barton (R-Texas): http://politi.co/2uykAv0 (hat tip: Lyndon Boozer) ... Katherine Lehr ... Politico’s Victoria Adeniji and Maria Rivero ... DCCC deputy research director Sammi McClain, an HFA alum … former White House chief of staff and former N.H. Gov John H. Sununu is 78 (h/t Ryan Williams) ... former Mexican President Vicente Fox is 75 (h/t Mexican Amb. to the U.S. Geronimo Gutiérrez, Fox’s former undersecretary of foreign affairs) ... Larry David is 7-0 (h/t Dick Keil) ... former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos is 88 ... Scott McGee of Kelley Drye & Warren ... Matthew Dybwad, senior sales account manager at Adobe ... Fenton CEO Ben Wyskida is 4-0 ... Gus Ericson is 27 … Kara Rowland, Fox News Capitol Hill producer ... CNN Politics’ Alysha Love ... Berrin Tunçel ... Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) is 33 (h/t Nala) ... Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) is 56 ... Rep. Randy Weber (R-Tex.) is 64 ... former Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) is 78 ... Collin Davenport is 31 ... RSLC’s Devon Gallagher ... WaPo’s Jessie Niewold ...
... Gina Woodworth, SVP of public policy and gov’t affairs at the Internet Association ... Derek Gianino, director of international policy at the U.S. Chamber … U.S. Army Captain Chuck Nadd, founder of nonprofit Operation American Dream ... Sara Roberts ... NFL’s Caroline Keyes ... Arkadi Gerney, executive director of the Hub Project and SVP of campaigns and strategies at CAP Action ... Ethan Oberman, co-founder and CEO of SpiderOak, is 41 ... Trevor Neilson ... Jean Cecil Frick ... Marie Formica, delivery manager at Benefitfocus and FamousDC alum ... Reuters’ Michele Gershberg ... Sam Nitz ... Jonathan Woods … Brooke Oberwetter Coon … Emily Stanitz … Lily Velasquez … Lyndsey (Hamilton) Fifield ... Hannah Rosenthal … Sam Hutchison … Michael Matthews … John Brown ... Susan Vilmain (h/ts Teresa Vilmain) ... Ali Chishti ... Ashley Zohn ... Mike Chapman ... Josh Cahan ... figure skater Johnny Weir is 33 ... Lindsay Lohan is 31 ... actress Margot Robbie is 27 (h/ts AP)