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MonsieurChoc posted:Spirit island is great. Steam version is ok but I think it needs more time in the oven, simplifies actually playing sure, but it makes the experience clunky more than the board game in a lot of ways. You got to check the map to see if the section your in has power rather than the area you're in having different lighting. (it's also impossible to play multiple characters in single player) Hoping that by 1.0 it'll be the superior way to playing it over the net than the official prototype on the TTS workshop.
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Jul 18, 2022 21:34
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GetDunked posted:I was pretty excited to try out TotAN after enjoying a lot of nominally similar story generators like Eldritch Horror and Arkham 2/3e but goddamn was that a miserable slog of a game when I finally played it. I can’t even imagine playing this in modern days. It barely held up when it was new.
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Jul 18, 2022 22:05
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i bought its last print run a year or so ago before i read about how it’s uhhhh not in tune with the sensibilities of 2022. sold it for a pretty decent profit and donated the money.
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Jul 18, 2022 22:13
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I like Arabian Nights, but I reduce the number of points to win (or set a hard time limit) and cycle the time of day whenever someone completes a quest. The default rules for cycling the time of day make it really difficult to see huge chunks of stuff. Also get out of jail free after 3 turns. But then I like Talisman and Western Legends for the same reason: it's fun to just bumble around and have stupid random poo poo happen and not really care that much about the 'game'. Outer Rim is a much tighter experience and a better game, but a worse storytelling experience. Really needs the expansion though; can't imagine going back to vanilla because it's a pretty huge improvement.
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Jul 18, 2022 22:16
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Quote-Unquote posted:I like Arabian Nights, but I reduce the number of points to win (or set a hard time limit) and cycle the time of day whenever someone completes a quest. The default rules for cycling the time of day make it really difficult to see huge chunks of stuff. Also get out of jail free after 3 turns. Every time I play, we just play until we’ve had enough, I don’t think there’s any real reason to “finish” a game of it.
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Jul 18, 2022 23:01
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inferis posted:Every time I play, we just play until we’ve had enough, I don’t think there’s any real reason to “finish” a game of it. Yeah that's not a bad shout. Provided I get an opportunity to shout "drink!" when I encounter a fire or a landslide, I'm probably satisfied. That and randomly assault people for no reason.
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Jul 18, 2022 23:08
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inferis posted:Every time I play, we just play until we’ve had enough, I don’t think there’s any real reason to “finish” a game of it. We set a hard time limit of two hours.
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Jul 19, 2022 00:46
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OmegaGoo posted:We set a hard time limit of two hours. Yeah I usually do 15 points or two hours. I also really enjoy The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which has about as little gameplay as possible. But it depends on who is in the group as not everyone likes storytelling, some people like hard mechanics and no imagination etc. Then I've got one regular who hates storytelling games but likes imagining things for himself, so he prefers Arkham Horror card game to Mansions of Madness because the latter shows too much for his liking.
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Jul 19, 2022 01:05
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Use these rules for tales: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/195712/abridged-totan-house-rules
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Jul 19, 2022 04:22
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I had to order it from a toy shop in Spain, but Whale Riders is fantastic! Lightning quick to play, and a nice balance of buying stuff and rushing ahead.
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Jul 19, 2022 09:19
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What's the thread hindsight on Beyond The Sun? It still looks like it's a unique kind of game that I'd be willing to sell some stuff in my collection for. I'm also considering Ark Nova solely for the theme because I volunteer in animal conservation and have friends who work in zoos.
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Jul 19, 2022 20:26
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Back Alley Borks posted:What's the thread hindsight on Beyond The Sun? It still looks like it's a unique kind of game that I'd be willing to sell some stuff in my collection for. I'm also considering Ark Nova solely for the theme because I volunteer in animal conservation and have friends who work in zoos. Both of these games are very high on my list of games I like right now. BtS is a fun take on worker placement mixed with a 4x style tech tree. I enjoy it every time. Ark Nova is a no brainer in my opinion for anyone who enjoys the subject.
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Jul 19, 2022 20:31
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Back Alley Borks posted:What's the thread hindsight on Beyond The Sun? It still looks like it's a unique kind of game that I'd be willing to sell some stuff in my collection for. I'm also considering Ark Nova solely for the theme because I volunteer in animal conservation and have friends who work in zoos. I've played Beyond the Suna 51 times, mostly online. It's got atleast 20-25 plays in, it I reckon. it plays pretty smoothly, the rules burden isn't high, and the decision space is decent. If the core idea of the tech tree appeals to you, you will probably like it.
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Jul 19, 2022 22:40
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My dad was a CPA but I tried to take up My Father's Work anyway (the iOS app is out, Android and web not yet). The tl;dr version is that it's a middleweight scenario-based role selection game with extravagant production values. It's attached to an app that provides a branching narrative and that tracks a few elements of the game state for you. I've only played it once but here are assorted thoughts in no particular order: * We played one scenario (one box out of the four that come with the game), and at the end it announced that we'd unlocked one of the eight endings for that scenario. I suspect that once you've played a scenario all the ways you'd "want" to play it, you decide whether to grind out the others or just look up the other endings for a scenario, and possibly not want to play it anymore. * The app is okay. No crashes or bugs. * The manual is pretty good. Some clever parts and a pretty good apology for the tropes of the genre appears at the back ("the culture to be most afraid of is, as always, your own"). A few rules are a little buried. * The writing in the app is occasionally clever and more generally not great to read (and there is a lot of reading). They're going for overblown and atmospheric horror. Definitely hit the target with overblown. * The parts that are narrated aloud by the app are read quite quickly. They are also read without much emphasis or pauses that would make the wordy text easier to take in at that speed. * The overall look of each mini within the genre predisposes it for one of the game's four roles (mad scientist self, your spouse, an oblivious servant, or a weird caretaker of the grounds) but it's the bases that snap onto the minis that set the role. This means that you pick the look for your scientist self, and you and your spouse can be a same-sex couple with no extra setup. * The "journal" through which each generation passes on knowledge is a pretty good mechanic. Few/no resources and statuses carry over between generations otherwise. This means you can't push your luck that much within a generation, but can also become so mentally unstable that you drive away your spouse and so creepy that the townsfolk bar you from entry in one generation without it sinking your whole game. * I sometimes felt we were spending more time messing with the app stuff (reading, selecting things that branch the narrative, still more reading) than we were playing the game. * The game takes a long time because of the app. The game says you can save your progress (manually, on paper!). Ideally, this would happen between generations, since so much is reset.
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Jul 20, 2022 19:30
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Played the new Marvel Dice Throne tonight and really enjoyed it. Some minor confusion about when certain effects are resolved but otherwise pretty seamless; pick a character's box, follow the simple setup instructions within and go. Match 1: Thor Vs Black Panther Both fairly low complexity characters. Thor hits a lot, sometimes multiple times per turn, but BP gains buff tokens every time he gets hit. This worked out poorly for Thor as he was only doing one damage at a time, several times per round, but his main attacks hit hard and he has really good defence. BP has very little damage prevention but does a lot of retaliation damage. Result: Black Panther won with 6 health left. Pretty close! Match 2: Loki Vs Dr Strange Two of the most complicated characters here! Loki had a lot of shenanigans going on to prevent attacks, and many that happened were negated or reduced by his illusion ability. Strange has no cards to upgrade his abilities, but has a LOT of cards to just change or reroll dice. He can also draw extra cards a lot. Result: Strange won with 23 health left. This might make him sound overpowered but Loki had some seriously bad luck on a couple of turns where he ended up doing literally nothing during his attack, even without Strange changing any of his dice. This is seriously crippling because Loki not only didn't hurt his opponent, but also didn't gain any of his very useful status powers. Anyway, very fun game. Not very quick to play the first time because you have to learn and remember all of your powers (some are forced, like Thor must throw mjolnir sometimes) but I think repeated playthroughs will be pretty fast.
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Jul 21, 2022 00:06
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Playing the new Into the Breach expansion has made me realise that it's basically the same game as Spirit Island. Both are ostensibly strategy games where the player knows most of what the enemy is going to do this turn, BUT you can't be certain about the next Explore/the next set of bugs to emerge. Both are more like puzzle games, in that true long-term planning is very difficult, and really the strategy overlay is a mechanism to create a series of puzzles, where you use your expanding toolkit to beat a seemingly impossible enemy that's trying to destroy the world. Both have a somewhat-disconnected health pool that the player is trying to protect, and while you can lose due to player pieces getting directly eliminated, running out of Blight/Grid is the main way (also in both games, if you're not taking damage, you're probably not playing at the right difficulty). Both give the player a few basic powers at the start, and expect them to use these creatively while also acquiring new tools from a random deck, and both ask players to commit energy to actually use all these tools. oh, and both have four types of land
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Jul 21, 2022 00:23
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Kazzah posted:Playing the new Into the Breach expansion has made me realise that it's basically the same game as Spirit Island. Both are ostensibly strategy games where the player knows most of what the enemy is going to do this turn, BUT you can't be certain about the next Explore/the next set of bugs to emerge. Both are more like puzzle games, in that true long-term planning is very difficult, and really the strategy overlay is a mechanism to create a series of puzzles, where you use your expanding toolkit to beat a seemingly impossible enemy that's trying to destroy the world. Both have a somewhat-disconnected health pool that the player is trying to protect, and while you can lose due to player pieces getting directly eliminated, running out of Blight/Grid is the main way (also in both games, if you're not taking damage, you're probably not playing at the right difficulty). Both give the player a few basic powers at the start, and expect them to use these creatively while also acquiring new tools from a random deck, and both ask players to commit energy to actually use all these tools. Oh, I guess I should get Spirit Island, then.
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Jul 21, 2022 00:44
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[quote="Quote-Unquote" post="524980064" Anyway, very fun game. Not very quick to play the first time because you have to learn and remember all of your powers (some are forced, like Thor must throw mjolnir sometimes) but I think repeated playthroughs will be pretty fast. [/quote] Hell yeah goon. Dice Throne is the game that gets to our table probably 10x more than any other.
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Jul 21, 2022 02:44
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Horizons of Spirit Island has been announced. It's a Target (US-only it seems) exclusive game releasing in October 2022. Target approached them about making a lighter standalone version of the game for their stores. Features a double-sided board for quick setup and punch-out components. The five new spirits are all simpler, and have reminder text on them, but they're compatible with the main game     I see a few changes in that image of the game set up, but of course it's probably not a finalized version. It looks like there's no event or blight cards. Some of the city tokens have yellow on them in the top left, so maybe one side of them shows damage? There appears to be rocky coastlines, which probably doesn't count for explore actions. There's clear separations on the board where the various island pieces would line up for a spirit's starting board, and I'm guessing one side is for two players and one for three. The announcement lists 2-3 players, but it's not clear if that's a hard min-max limit. I think it is, because it says there are three new presence token colors. Two of these new lower complexity spirits would probably be easy to handle solo, but I doubt they're going to market it as a solo-able game on the Target website. Full announcement here: https://greaterthangames.com/announcing-horizons-of-spirit-island/ but it's being hammered right now.
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Jul 21, 2022 21:20
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Oh my god I am not prepared for new Spirit Island.
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Jul 21, 2022 21:46
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Very weird value proposition. Why didn’t they just print a new version of the base game with a simplified rule set and some even simpler spirits? This feels like a really weird appendage.
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Jul 21, 2022 21:48
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Jewmanji posted:Very weird value proposition. Why didn’t they just print a new version of the base game with a simplified rule set and some even simpler spirits? This feels like a really weird appendage. I bet they have to get the price point down to get it into stores like Target edit: thus things like the square boards instead of the die-cut geomorphic island boards, cardboard Dahan, etc.
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Jul 21, 2022 21:53
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Jewmanji posted:Very weird value proposition. Why didn’t they just print a new version of the base game with a simplified rule set and some even simpler spirits? This feels like a really weird appendage. One could say the same about Jaws of the Lion, but that turned out fine.
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Jul 21, 2022 21:53
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The streamlined spirits in the Target-exclusive game are: Store Brands Gain Market Share Blind Corporate Loyalty Seeks Host Ambiguous Cost Savings in Self-Checkout Loss Leader Drives Sales
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Jul 21, 2022 22:02
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Jewmanji posted:Very weird value proposition. Why didn’t they just print a new version of the base game with a simplified rule set and some even simpler spirits? This feels like a really weird appendage. That's basically what this is. I'm glad it's not a Spirit Island, Jr., it looks almost comparable to playing base Spirit Island with low complexity spirits but some quality of life improvements. The Discord is going a mile a minute, but someone close to the game said the invader deck is the same as the base game, so anyone whose cards are worn-out can replace theirs. The escalation symbols are there, even if they might not do anything in Horizons.
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Jul 21, 2022 22:05
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Played Siege of Runedar today. Bad name, good game. Co op deck builder where you're all dwarves trying to tunnel through a mountain to escape your crumbling fort with as much gold as possible while an army of orcs and trolls besieges you. Also there are goblins in the mountain that you need to fight or bribe. Really enjoyed this. The box is the board: you have a 3d fort with three storeys (ground, fort walls and the towers to shoot approaching enemies), and it just looks really cool. Basic gameplay is to use your multi purpose cards to generate resources to craft upgraded cards, fight off enemies in melee or ranged combat or - most importantly - dig. The enemy spawns get progressively more difficult to deal with as the game goes on, so it's vital to keep the momentum up with the digging but also fighting in key areas to stop you getting overwhelmed. Every spawn also has a chance of moving the orcs further into the fort. You can't make resources if they're invading the workshop areas. Whenever an orc teaches the middle, they vanish but they steal one of your 20 pieces of gold. Losing all your gold is one of many loss conditions (the only win condition is digging through the mountain and defeating all 10 goblins therein). We played four players on normal difficulty and finished with 15 gold, which is a great score but we were very close to two of the loss conditions. It was also only like £35 which is pretty cheap for games of this size. All the players and enemies have double sided cardboard standees (nice touch that you can see the front and back of everything) but the box/board is the highlight of the presentation. Super tempted to buy some orc, troll, goblin and dwarf minis to replace the standees. There's also a catapult and a siege tower, so if I get a nice Christmas bonus I'll visit games workshop and have a browse. I can see this getting played a lot with my friends, because we love co op but some find things like Spirit Island a bit overwhelming. This is simple enough for most people that aren't totally new to the hobby, I think, but difficult enough to be satisfying.
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Jul 21, 2022 22:16
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LifeLynx posted:That's basically what this is. Not really though. One of the best things about SI is it’s sold at a great price point, and has so much stuff in it that you can play it forever without getting bored. This game has half as many spirits as the base game, no adversaries, no scenarios etc. I totally get that the purpose is to be entry-level, but I just feel like you can find ways to package “entry level” SI into the original game so that when people inevitably graduate from “entry level” they’ve got everything they need to keep playing without having to buy a whole new game.
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Jul 21, 2022 22:21
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Jewmanji posted:Very weird value proposition. Why didn’t they just print a new version of the base game with a simplified rule set and some even simpler spirits? This feels like a really weird appendage. Looks like a similar model.
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Jul 21, 2022 22:31
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dwarf74 posted:Because Jaws of the Lion sold like hot cakes and was wildly successful. I’m completely ignorant about that game, so I will cede the argument!
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Jul 21, 2022 22:37
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This will be like $20 all the time at Target, probably even dipping down to like $12 on clearances. And they said that Target specifically asked them for this. I’m cool with having some beginner spirits to use in the full game and will probably replace the invader pieces with those tokens too, they look great and will be easier to store.
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Jul 21, 2022 22:42
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Looks like a great thing to buy for portable spirit island tokens to take on a holiday
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Jul 21, 2022 22:43
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Yeah I might buy it just for the cardboard invader tokens, I love the plastic ones most of the time but when playing against some adversaries the map gets pretty cluttered. I've stopped playing against England entirely partly because of the bookkeeping but also because I frequently run out of pieces in the midgame.
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Jul 21, 2022 22:57
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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If this gets more people into Spirit Island,great. If Target then helps get For Science into shelves even better.
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Jul 21, 2022 23:37
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Are they gonna sell the spirits separately as a promo or something? I can always use more spirits. Also holy poo poo is Oathsworn fun and really thoughtfully designed. I wonder if their second print run is gonna end up like Gloomhaven's second.
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Jul 21, 2022 23:51
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I forgot how much of an insane value regular Spirit Island is so I was expecting Smol Spirit Island to be $50, but it's $30 so pretty much worth the price even just for the 5 spirits plus a version of the game that might be quicker and easier to get to the table.
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Jul 22, 2022 00:20
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Kerro posted:Are they gonna sell the spirits separately as a promo or something? I can always use more spirits. It's a Target release so it'll be <$15 often just like small Terraforming Mars is.
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Jul 22, 2022 01:17
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I think a lot of the Target releases and things like that can be quite hard to get outside of the US so unfortunately that price may not be relevant for me.
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Jul 22, 2022 01:25
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I'm hoping it'll show up on amazon canada or something, because I could get my family to play a simpelr spirit island.
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Jul 22, 2022 01:30
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Those spirit mats look like they're just printed on cardstock, so if you do them as a print-and-play you won't really be missing much.
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Jul 22, 2022 01:31
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Stoked for Spirit Island Junior myself. I will mail some copies to goons at cost if you want it.
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Jul 22, 2022 01:52
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