So what first brought you to V-Mundi?

Hello all, VesperGhoul here. I usually lurk and post when appropriate, or where there are lulz to be had. I was thinking about how I first came to find out about this site, and later on to become a member of these forums, and I was wondering how some of you came to find your way here, and in the case of Alice, why did you start V-Mundi in the first place. Starting something like a dedicated blog and successful forum isn't something that you do on a whim, and yet you did and continue to do so.

I'll start: I first found out about this site via a google search when I was looking for a good build for my OTT deck. (A bit after BT02 at the time), and I happened upon a site that went into specific detail on how each card fit into the deck, actually citing card advantage, and offering clear explanations on preferences of certain cards. (whereas my previous searches had turned up the equivalent of just run the most expensive cards to have the best chance)

I since then have read every clan article on the blog that I have an interest in and use it as a guide on how to look at some cards. I then decided to join this community, because a certain friend of mine joined and told me that it was full of intellectual people who actually used proof and math (I thought he was exaggerating/blatantly lying at first since I used pojo as my baseline expectation for all forums), which to my large surprise was actually true when I saw some of the well thought out posts on this forums.

I was there for /tg/ discussions and bitching. Followed her into the creation of VMundi.

The occasional CFV thread on /tg/ fares better these days, but they're super slow.

I made it.

Edit: Crap, there goes me not reading.

Vanguardus is a blog that existed before I started playing. I stumbled on it because it was one of the only blogs with anything Vanguard related. So the first article I check out is his "grade ratio" article where he never even talks about ratio and just starts doing retarded fucking math that makes no sense. So bad in fact that he gets probabilities over 100% and 200% for certain shit. He's a dumbass and should stick to reporting. So a guy left him a comment saying that he did it wrong. The blog owner replied with something along the lines of it being fine since it "illustrates the point of it" and no one knows how to do it anyway. Hurr the fuck durr that made me mad. I left him a comment (now deleted) that said he was an idiot for not using hypergeometric cumulative distribution. I even explained it and provided a link to a calculator (this was shit I did long ago for Yugioh already). I was abhorrent that people accepted this guy as any kind of authority on Vanguard. Up until then I only frequented Pojo's trading threads and /tg/ making daily threads. This was before /tg/ shitposted them to oblivion instantly.

I showed them that article and someone suggested I make my own blog. I didn't want to because of how much work it would be, but I was steamed after a couple of hours and relented. I wrote my first article, the abusing chance one, and published it. From the get-go this blog was focused on empiricism because I had seen many places talking right out of their asshole in Vanguard. If YGO and MTG could have sites with competent math, why couldn't CFV? And it STILL fucking doesn't! I thought my example would create competition but it just made everyone turtle up and act more stupid. Now Pojo's CFV section is dying, NACFV is dying, Vanguard Rider is dead, multiple brazil forums died, and so forth. We're getting more popular when we should be getting more competition.


And here's the name origin:
V is short for Vanguard and Mundi can mean World or Universe. My particular meaning is Universe because the implication of the word Mundi for "world' actually has to do with what the people at the time thought all of existence was. So it's Vanguard Universe.

Fun story. Coming up with the name took forever. When I wrote a Yugioh blog, "Gameking League" just made sense to me. Yugioh translates as Gameking and I had a League of players in a group before I wrote that blog. V Mundi was very different because it was primarily a blog and at first I was against the idea of having a community. So without a communal intent, it couldn't have some sort of social representative word in it and I went with universe. The intention there was that it would be an Encyclopedia of Vanguard which was going to eventually be as all-encompassing as possible (hence universe). I didn't want to call it Encyclopaedia Vanguardia because I felt that was a bit complicated and pretentious.

One of the earliest names I started with was "Six Damage" which is the default and ideal win condition in the game. The idea came from the site "Six Prizes" which is for the Pokemon TCG. Ultimately, I decided on V-Mundi (with a critical symbol for an asterisk) instead but I still have plans to use Six Damage for the name of a podcast or something similar if I can ever find the time and equipment to do it.

Found it mentioned on sup/tg/ archives, had informations about ALL the clans and a IRC chat, so i went right in, it was a lot of fun seeing it grow, but i hope it gets bigger and better in the future.

Having it recognized would give me the biggest BR smile on my face.

Before I get into any card game, I like to research it heavily. I hate going into a game, investing time and money, only to get stomped and potentially having shitty trades done to me.

This was the first, and really still only, good Vanguard blog out there. It was later I found Her0's blog, which was also nice, but not as in depth as here.

Since Her0 is bailing, this makes the only good source of VG information out there, as far as I know.Which is good in some ways, but bad in others. It's always good to have different sources of info, different opinions, new insights, and such.

Hell, there's more freaking pokemon blogs out there with solid info then there are VG blogs. Granted, Pokemon has been out for far longer, but still.

Nevertheless, I'm glad there's a spot here where I can learn how to be a better player.

Fun story.

A friend linked me the custom cards thread laughing at Alice's crossrides. I laughed hard since I hated crossrides from the start. I loved how well the cards were made too.

Weeks later, searching about Megacolony, I found the blog. I spent an entire day reading all the deep clans there were. When I entered the forum, I found the anticrossride letter to bushiroad and automatically fell in love.

I didn't realize it was the same forum until I found the custom cards thread.

Around the end of January I started wanting to know more about the game. Had watched the anime in the weeks prior and found wikia to be... well, wikia. Within an hour of poking around Pojo I saw a link going here (to Bermuda article, I believe). Spent the whole day reading everything. Going by the date of my first blog post and my forum regdate, only took me a couple days to notice forums.

The overall atmosphere here greatly reminds me of those of communities I do like: don't be a dick, don't make baseless claims, and just want to be here.

This blog was the most informative one I found while googling about Vanguard and I decided to stay.

I wanted to find a decent deck for Kagero since it was what I was using at the time, being new and shit. Then I discovered that the good hard maths and science was fantastic and convinced me to stick around and learn more through a reliable medium.

That and I was VEEEEEEERY skeptical regarding the other blogs, which was just decklists with no rhyme or reason for anything.

Found V*Mundi via a friend Googling Alice's Narukami symbol. Then I fell in love with the blog, including the other symbols, the decklists, and Alice's sense of humor plus superior math skills. The overall effort involved really impressed me, so here I am.

Dark5ide wrote:

Since Her0 is bailing, this makes the only good source of VG information out there, as far as I know. Which is good in some ways, but bad in others. It's always good to have different sources of info, different opinions, new insights, and such.

THIS THIS THIS THIS. It's never never bad to have more than one place to get proper facts. There have been plenty of times I was wrong, made an error in logic, made a typographical error that changes gameplay, or made a mistake in judgment. And usually only the smallest insignificant stuff gets caught by the actual readerbase, with only TehNACHO having ever caught big flubs. I'm not capable of catching every error I might make and if some other blog out there existed that does what I do, then I could have a check in place. Better if there were multiple, especially since it makes my blog less onerous and pillar-like. People can look at this blog I worked so hard on, say "It's just an outlier" and move on or degrade me publicly. If this was like Yugioh were TONS of blogs use probability calculations and proper math, then it would be the accepted norm instead of some freak sideshow to the masses. Only good could come of that.

Plus no one person should have a monopoly on information, whether intentional or accidental.

Lich_Lord_Fortissimo wrote:

That and I was VEEEEEEERY skeptical regarding the other blogs, which was just decklists with no rhyme or reason for anything.

I personally find it insulting when a blog does this. It's like saying "Just take my word for it. You don't need to think or use your brain because mine is better"

Alice wrote:

I personally find it insulting when a blog does this. It's like saying "Just take my word for it. You don't need to think or use your brain because mine is better"

Oh come now Alice, how many people have written articles that tell people what to think without some kind of solid fa-*Cough*BrandonSmith*Cough*, sorry something in my throat, solid facts to back up their statements.

I would also love for more legitimate CFV blogs to arise, since a second informed opinion may offer new insights and ideas on certain deck/card combinations, alas it's not yet to be.

Back in July, I was looking from various sites for a deck list I could model my Kagero deck after. Found Alice's blogs, and was amazed at the depths of information it gave compared to all of the other sources I looked at (ie the wiki, pojo). I later found the Nubatama article, which interested me even more seeing as how despite not being a full clan, the deck Alice made was able to function well (and smash my cousin's Narukami deck countless times). I started to read other articles to see what else I could learn from them seeing how I was a complete retard back then (thought JI Endo was crap and extremely conditional plays were good :x). About 2~3 months later, I revisited Alice's blog to see the heading on it regarding the cross ride petition. That was what took me to the forums (sent in an email regarding cross rides first :I). Though I didn't make an account, I lurked around to see environment of this community. The discussions were as insightful as Alice's blog and it just seemed like a nice place to drop in and read up on every now and then.
Then Alice made the elevation thing which kind of forced me to make an account :T

Pretty glad I found this community. Otherwise I probably would've been rotting my brain in the wiki, agreeing with the fucking obvious / extremely conditional and most likely retarded rulings and tips on cards. Such as the 93% Blockade Overlord combo thing.

And to this day, I still consider this place the only good source of Vanguard information. Reading anything anywhere else kills off some of my brain cells.

Traesive wrote:

And to this day, I still consider this place the only good source of Vanguard information. Reading anything anywhere else kills off some of my brain cells.

Before I could consider myself a major player in the VG community, like back in April-May, I still looked for other blogs to read on vanguard. I was just hoping that someone could give me intellectual stimulation. I love reading the kinds of shit I publish on my blog, but it loses the magic if I have to do all the work for it. Instead it's just proof-reading.

I'm partially glad that I had the opportunity to work in solitude and get a lot of the kinks of this game ironed out. But now I want another blogger to step up to the plate and get stuff I missed as well as repeat stuff I said that's true so they can become more accepted and established.

I'm a bit worried for a second blogger, mainly due to the amount of time there will be from the creation of V Mundi and blog B. I find it possible for blog B to be accused of copying ideas from V Mundi, only to decline after. For other games I played, pairs of blogs were fine since both blogs were established in about a weeks time, and therefore could pump out similar content simultaneously without being shot down from accusations.
Just a prediction, but yeah.

And in popular games, bloggers can do that because what are the odds two of thousands of blogs are similar? Pretty goddamn high. In Vanguard, what are the odds that the only two competent blogs are similar? Fucking low.

I wouldn't mind if someone copied my ideas so long as they re-did all of the involved math instead of copying that part. That would make me mad as fuck. I didn't make a blog so other people can coast by without doing any work and get hits off of my hard work. Any stuff that's up there is freely scrutable, but people need to check it from the ground up.

I do get kinda prickly when I see blogs blatantly copy my own unique ideas and terminology though. It's nice to see them catch on, but it feels embarrassing to read someone who writes as if they came up with stages, and all this other stuff without even once mentioning my blog. When I talked about grade ratios, I didn't just pastebin a dump of Nacho's work. I gave my own work that only I did and linked to Nacho's blog for the remaining work that he did.

A friend brought me here, rather insistent that I would read the blog.

It took me about 2-3 months before I actually started reading and getting immersed by the content, and only 3 months ago getting involve with the community, rather happy that I did though. This place has pretty much changed my daily life.

<3

I vaguely remember seeing Alice/Brunhild/Whatever Alice was using at the time on Pojo and seeing some of the things she posted to, generally sounding smart in the topics she took part in.

After really coming to a liking to this game, I decided to try my hand at light game theory again, and eventually came to the chance article on Alice's blog. This came to that, and I often referred to her blog for all sorts of things to help kickstart my more in depth reading of this game.

Eventually as my own abilities grew/regrew, and if I remember right, I apparently caught the attention of some members of Vmundi. After a sort of invitation, I joined the chatroom, and eventually came onto the forums some time later on.

I was brought here Google search as well. I was looking for a forum to help me better understand my knowledge of the game (still relatively new at the time), and also a place to share ideas with other like-minded people as interested in the game as I was. I was pleasantly suprised when I first clicked the link that brought me here. It was a link to the Deep Clan for Granblue. About halfway through the article I realized "hey, this person really seems to know what they're talking about". I'm a good eye for recognising a person with good sense, I think. Anyway, feeling like I could learn a thing or two here about how to be a more competent player, I read a few articles and was pleasantly suprised to find out I was right.

I used to hang out over on Vanguard Rider, and then someone posted a link to the article on Custom Card Template. I went and checked out the rest of the articles, and it's honestly what inspired me to do more Vanguard stuff on YouTube. :P

-Serge

Another Leather Lung wrote:

I was brought here Google search as well. I was looking for a forum to help me better understand my knowledge of the game (still relatively new at the time), and also a place to share ideas with other like-minded people as interested in the game as I was. I was pleasantly suprised when I first clicked the link that brought me here. It was a link to the Deep Clan for Granblue. About halfway through the article I realized "hey, this person really seems to know what they're talking about". I'm a good eye for recognising a person with good sense, I think. Anyway, feeling like I could learn a thing or two here about how to be a more competent player, I read a few articles and was pleasantly suprised to find out I was right.

Surprised you never joined the IRC then

Hunter Serge wrote:

I used to hang out over on Vanguard Rider, and then someone posted a link to the article on Custom Card Template. I went and checked out the rest of the articles, and it's honestly what inspired me to do more Vanguard stuff on YouTube. :P

-Serge

Awesome. Glad to be an inspirer.

Goggled around, then the Pojo CFV blogger site referred me here.

Jesus Soul where have you been?