I grew up in a small mountain town named Eureka. It was founded in the late 1800s during the gold rush, but after the mines dried up the town began its slow descent into decay. Half the houses are empty or abandoned now.
You can see a picture of the kind of houses here in Eureka:
First house
Second house
When a massive construction project began nearby, it was the talk of the town for weeks. Why would they build something in a sleepy dying town like Eureka? It wasn’t until my sister Selene talked to a few construction workers that we discovered they were building a casino.
A casino up in the mountains, over two hours away from Denver. None of us could understand why they’d chosen here of all places. After a few months of work, the casino was done.
I took a picture of the town with the completed casino in the background to the right. The ten-story-structure sticks out like a sore thumb off in the distance.
Town+Casino
After the casino opened, they hired a few dozen members of the town, offering high paying jobs to work as dealers or cleaning staff. I was already employed as a firefighter, but my sister Selene got a job as a blackjack dealer. She’s a widow with two young kids, so the paycheck was a real lifesaver.
Still, something about the situation seemed too good to be true. The jobs over there paid far too well, and the management was far too accommodating. The fire station where I work is located high on a hill overlooking the town, so I began watching the casino from a distance each day.
I had initially thought that the casino was located in a terrible location, but I was apparently wrong. True, Eureka was hours from any major city, but despite that, a bus full of people arrived every morning and left every evening.
One night I was over at my parent’s house and had dinner with Selene and her kids. I asked her about her experience as a dealer.
“It’s Ok,” she said. “Just a little boring I guess.”
“Boring?” I asked. “I’m surprised you don’t have your hands full.”
“Why’s that?” she asked. “It’s like you said, Eureka’s too small. I never have people playing cards. The casino is almost always completely empty.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. If the place was always empty, what happened to the people who I’d seen arriving on buses? “I’ve been keeping an eye on the building,” I said. “A bus full of people typically arrives around 9 AM every day.”
“Really?” she asked, looking confused. “If that’s true, I’ve never seen them.
“I can see it from the fire station,” I said. “If you head out for a smoke break at 9 AM, you’ll probably see them arriving.”
“Interesting,” she said. “I’ll do that. If they’re being processed for their organs or something, I’ll let you know.” She laughed.
“Har har,” I said sarcastically.
The next night she sent me a text calling me over. When I arrived, she was nearly breathless with excitement.
“Orin, You were right,” she said. “A big group of people did arrive, but they didn’t walk into my part of the casino. Instead, they all walked into an elevator at the back of the building. I’m not sure where that goes.” She looked thoughtful. “It was weird. They looked… How can I say it? Desperate? Something about the whole situation was very off. I’m gonna check out the elevator tomorrow.”
I told her to be careful, though, to be honest, I was excited to hear about what she discovered. When I visited my parent’s house the next night, I found her two kids there alone. They told me that Selene had never returned from work.
I called all her friends, then all our neighbors, but no one had seen her since she left for work that morning. Our conversations regarding the casino flooded my mind, then a plan began to form.
Early the next morning I walked across town in my nicest pair of jeans and a button-up shirt. I pushed through the door to the casino and saw that Selene wasn’t lying. The place was all but deserted. Three dozen slot machines crowded the walls surrounding a few tables interspersed throughout the floor of the casino. The only players in the whole building were Bob and Donald, two locals.
I walked up to a nearby table where Bridget, a girl I’d gone to high school with, was shuffling cards. She broke into a grin when she saw me. “Hey Orin, you here for a few rounds of blackjack?”
“I wish,” I said. “No, I’m here to ask about Selene. She never made it home last night.”
Bridget’s expression darkened. “Really? Have you asked around?”
“I already called around. Have you seen her?”
She shook her head. “No, our schedules rarely line up. I’ll be sure to let you know if I--” Her eyes focused on something behind me, and she cut herself off.
I turned around to see the casino’s pit boss watching us both. He was a tall thin man in an impeccably clean black suit. When I turned back towards Bridget, she was looking down at the table and shuffling cards absent-mindedly.
“Well, if you hear anything, let me know,” I said.
She nodded, so I turned around and headed for the pit boss. I stuck out my hand. The temperature of his hand was so hot that I had to pull my hand away after a few seconds.
“Have… have you seen my sister Selene?” I asked. “She hasn’t been seen since her shift here yesterday.”
He smiled. “Sir, this floor is for players. You’re more than welcome to head to the tellers for chips, but barring that I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
I stared at him for a long second before stalking towards the door. When I looked back, he was talking with Bridget.
I checked my watch. 8:55 AM, just as I’d planned. I walked around the back of the building and waited as the morning bus pulled around the building. I waited for the telltale hiss of the opening doors and the sound of people descending before I rounded the corner and joined the crowd. None of them paid any particular attention to me as I walked with them into the casino.
The crowd walked through a side door down a hallway to an elevator. Small groups of people entered the elevator as the rest of us waited for our turn. I shot a glance at the casino patrons, surprised at their diversity. There seemed to be people from all different countries and ethnicities. I heard one speaking Japanese and another speaking what sounded like an African language.
My turn came along with a few other patrons in the elevator. A sickly woman hobbled into the elevator beside me carrying an IV that was still connected to one of her veins. We piled in and rode up to the top.
The elevator rose for a few long seconds. I wasn’t sure what I would find, but I steeled myself for something horrible. The elevator’s speaker let out a TING, then the doors opened.
We all walked out onto what looked like a standard casino. Another few dozen slot machines ringed the walls, but on this floor, they were almost all occupied by customers. I took in the scene, confused at why they’d have a ground floor that was almost completely empty when this place was almost--
Selene was dealing cards at a nearby table.
I jogged over and sat down at an open seat. None of the players around me paid me much attention.
“Selene!” I said. “Are you OK? Did you spend the night here last night?”
Her eyes were glassy and confused. She looked up at me with a dumb expression and didn’t respond to my question.
“Selene?” I asked.
“What’s your bet?” she asked me. “This table is for blackjack players only.”
“I…” I trailed off, looking at the players around me. None of them were betting with chips of any kind. “What’s the minimum bet?” I asked.
“Three years,” she responded.
“Three years then,” I said, not knowing what that referred to.
Selene nodded, then began dealing cards. I shot a look down at my hand. King and a 9. Selene dealt out cards for herself, showing a 9. I stood, then leaned forward again. “Should I call the police? Are you--”
“Congratulations,” she said tonelessly.
An almost impossibly warm hand grabbed my shoulder. I spun to see the pit boss I’d spoken to earlier. He gave an impressed smile. “Orin, was it? I’m impressed, truly. Would you mind if I had a word with you?”
I shot a look back at Selene who was dealing the next round of cards. Then I got to my feet, balling my hands into fists. “What did you do to her?”
The pit boss clasped his hands behind his back. “Nothing more, and nothing less than what I’m going to do to you. That is, offer you the chance to play.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
The pit boss nodded his head towards a nearby slot machine. A woman in a wheelchair pulled a lever and watched the flashing numbers spin. They exploded in a cacophony of sirens and flashing lights. “WINNER WINNER WINNER!” The machine screeched.
The woman in the wheelchair put her feet on the ground and stood up on a pair of wobbly legs that had clearly never been used before.
“As in any other casino,” the pit boss said, “you must wager for the chance to win.”
“She... won the use of her legs?” I asked, feeling light-headed. “Wait,” I said. “I played blackjack just now. ‘Three years,’ Selene told me. What does ‘three years’ mean?” I asked.
“Three years of life, of course. Did you win?”
My mouth felt dry. “I-- Yes, I won.”
He smiled warmly. “Congratulations. I hope you enjoy them. I can tell you from personal experience that watching the decades pass is a bore. Give it some time and you’ll be back to spend them.”
I watched the pit boss’s face. He couldn’t have been more than a few years older than me, and I was in my early thirties. I looked around at the casino. No one was playing with chips of any kind. “So what?” I asked. “I won years of life. That woman won the use of her legs. What else can a person win here?”
“Oh, almost anything. They can win almost anything you can imagine.”
A cold feeling settled in my stomach. “And what do they wager?”
His eyes flashed with greed. “Almost anything. They can wager almost anything you can possibly imagine. Anything equal in value to the item they want in return.” He nodded towards a nearby roulette table.
A man stood by the table, cradling his hands. “Another finger,” he called out. He only had three fingers remaining on his left hand. As I watched, the ball came to a stop, and another finger disappeared from his left hand.
The pit boss extended his hands. “Feel free to try any of our games. Bet and win whatever you’d like.” He reached out and snatched my hand. A feeling of intense warmth passed up my arm to my chest. “There,” he said. “I’ve even given you some house money to get you started. An extra decade of life, on me.”
I ripped my hand away, staring at him in horror. Then I looked back at Selene. Something clicked in my mind. “You offered her the chance to play. What did she want?” I asked.
“Her husband,” the pit boss said. “Quite the sad story. He died two years ago. She wanted him brought back to her.”
“What did she wager?” I asked.
“She wanted the chance to win a soul, the most valuable object in existence. I’m sure you can imagine what she needed to wager for the chance to win it. What she wagered is unimportant. The important question is: What do you want, Orin?”
I stared at Selene with a flat expression. “I’m sure you can imagine.”
His eyes flashed with greed again. “How wonderful. The casino could always make use of another dealer. Feel free to make your wager at any one of our games; I’ll be eagerly awaiting the results of your night. Oh, and do take advantage of our waitresses. We always supply food and drink for ‘high rollers’.” He walked away.
I spent the next few hours trying to decide which game to play. I was going to be wagering my soul, so I wanted the highest chance possible. Slots and roulette were out. I’d done some reading online about counting cards, so I figured that blackjack gave me the best odds.
I walked up to Selene’s table and sat down. “Bet?” she asked with that same toneless voice. “Three years,” I said.
I spent the next hour or so doing my best to remember how to count cards. I knew that low cards added one to my count and high cards decreased it by one, but the casino used three decks. I had read something about how that was supposed to change my calculation, but I couldn’t quite remember how.
Every time I won a hand, I cursed myself for not putting everything on the line. Every time I lost, I breathed a prayer of thanks that I’d waited. And all the while, I kept track of the count.
I had lost fifteen years of life when the count finally reached +5.
“Bet?” Selene asked.
“I wager my soul so you can be free,” I said.
The table around me fell silent. Selene’s eyes flickered, but she showed no other emotion as she dealt the cards. I watched my first card, punching the air in excitement when I saw a Jack. My excitement turned to ash when my second card was a four. Fourteen.
I looked at her hand. One card was facedown, but the faceup card was a King. I swore loudly, staring down at my hands.
“Hit?” she asked. The entire table was silently watching me.
“Hit,” I said, not looking down. The table erupted in cheers. I looked down to see a 7 atop my two other cards. 21. Blackjack.
I looked at Selene who flipped over her facedown card to reveal a 9. 19. I won.
The glassy look left her eyes immediately. She looked around in surprise, then her eyes locked on mine. “Orin?” she asked, then almost immediately began to cry. The entire casino broke out in cheers.
I grabbed her hand and headed for the elevator. The doors had begun to close when the pit boss reached out with a hand to stop them.
“Congratulations,” he said, beaming. He seemed to be honestly excited.
“Shouldn’t you be upset?” I asked.
“Not at all. Casinos love it when we have big winners. It inspires the other players to make larger bets. I imagine I’ll gain two or three dealers before the night is through from your performance.”
“Great,” I said flatly. “Now let us go.”
“Not yet,” he said. “You didn’t just win, Orin. You got a blackjack. And blackjack pays out 1.5 times your bet. You won your sister’s soul and more.”
I stared, not sure what to say. “What are you saying? I won half a soul extra?”
The pit boss grinned wildly. “Just remember what I said. You’ll find living for decades and decades to be a boring experience. After a few centuries, you’ll be back to gamble that half a soul away. Congratulations!”
He removed his hand, and the elevator doors slammed shut.
I helped Selene back to her house. Her children were relieved. I watched them cry, then moved into the kitchen to start making dinner.
It’s been a few days since that experience. The casino is still out there, and buses full of people still arrive. I… I cut my hand pretty bad a few days later. When I checked it an hour later, it had already healed, no scar or anything. I’m not sure exactly what I won at that casino, but there’s no way I’m ever going back.
X

[HW13] Wings of Ksa (A prologue of sorts)

”As any would expect, those first few weeks were... hard. Most couldn’t cope with the harsh reality that our home was now gone and simply became detached from the world around them.
Others... I admit I never checked the shipboard crew roster after that day, but my position forced me to acknowledge that there was a small handful of mouths we no longer had to feed. I’d hear rumors of those who’d enter the airlocks and simply let themselves slip away into the void, never to be seen again.
A primal part of my mind periodically considered this news a boon. With our home gone, our food wouldn’t last forever, their passing on would buy the rest of us more days.
On those days I wouldn’t eat, as I felt I needed to pay some sort of repentance for such cruel and feral thoughts.” -Unnamed Shipboard Logistics Officer

Inhale. The warmth left him. Exhale. The warm air inside his sealed mask hugged his face. Octavian eyes blinked twice to refocus his vision. Nestled behind his oxygen mask, his ancient flight visor, his thick flight suit, and the armored layers of his small strike craft, the pilot was nothing if not snug.
For now, his movements seemed almost lazy. He moved slowly, calmly flicking two switches at his side. The welcome humming of the engine began to gradually increase in volume, he could feel the craft slowly waking from its own slumber as well. Lights in his cockpit began to flicker on one by one, everything activating as it should. He spared a few moments to look beyond his display and controls to take in the view beyond the cockpit. Outside, engulfing his small strike craft, lay the Ksa Ore Fields.
A truly massive and unexplained phenomenon within a largely dull universe, the Ksa Ore Fields were a star system completely enveloped by a thick assortment of all manners of toxic and non breathable gases. From where his ship rested, the pilot of the Old Guard could see nothing but the warm glow of the orange and yellow gases that caressed his ship.
The startup procedure complete, the pilot rested one hand on the yoke while easing the throttle forward with the other. His strike craft, retrofitted dozens of times from an atmospheric variant to one that could excel in Ksa, resembled a sort of horizontal “H” from above. Four thin and rectangular wings jutted from the sides, with the two in the rear noticeably longer than the two in the front. Tucked under the frontal wings and against the craft’s hull rested its two heavy machine guns, while the craft's secondary thrusters rested in a similar position under the rear wings. The main thruster sat between the two, directly behind the pilot’s cockpit.
Within the Ksa Ore Fields one abandoned space in favor for a sort of unbreathable aether. At a glance, the aether was similar enough to the void that one could be forgiven for thinking the only two differences were the carrying of soundwaves and the slightly reduced visibility caused by the swirling gases. In actuality, Ksa was rife with multiple unique properties, from the gusts of aether wind that could tear cheap fighters apart and rip hull plating from larger vessels, to hundreds of swirling wormholes hidden in the gas that pulled damaged vessels within them, never to be seen again.
The pilot urged the aging craft to a respectable cruising speed and flicked another switch, opening the intake vents. Properly filtered, the gases outside should prove sufficient to refuel his craft’s tanks. In another time, his craft, and the dozens of other craft belonging to the now scattered royal guard, would have had carriers designated to service and outfit their craft as necessary. But now, all that remained of the royal guard were broken oaths and ancient pacts that those who remained refused to forget — couldn’t forget. Personally, there was only one oath Octavian found relevant anymore: Defend the citizens of the Atharian Kingdom.
Of course, one could argue there were no real “citizens” anymore. Everyone served in the Atharian navy now. Everyone left, that was. To Octavian, this just reinforced his belief that that particular oath was the only one that mattered.
A large ore cluster appeared on his sensors and he directed the craft towards it. Being in Ksa so long, a pilot developed a sort of sixth sense for the nature of the fields. Including an awareness that where there was ore, there would be conflict. It was simply the way of things now.
He closed the intake vents and input his destination for the navigation computer, releasing the controls and letting the craft continue on its own for a bit. He leaned his head back against his headrest and closed his eyes.
Breathe in. The faint smell of the rubber from his mask. Breathe out. The heat hugging his face once more.
What remained of the Old Guard and the Atharian Navy shared the same broken home, the same dead king, and the same flesh and blood. But they weren’t the same people, not since the arrival of the Tahl’desh fleets and the razing of their planet. While the Old Guard he belonged to clung to what traditions remained of their order, the rest of the survivors — pressed into service in the Athenian Navy — were the truly broken ones. The only emotion saving them from utter despair, was a raging, burning, tempest of hatred and anger towards their persecutors.
When their people discovered an ancient cache of ships and technology on the fringes of their home system, what should have been used as a revival of their civilization, was soon celebrated as a means to secure their revenge against the invaders. Many, with their families and future taken from them, saw the only safe universe to be one where the Tahl’desh empire no longer existed.
A soft beeping woke him from his thoughts, declaring the craft's arrival at the designated destination, and he rested his hands back in the controls.
The large asteroid ahead filled his vision, the body easily several dozen kilometers large in size. The hundreds of other rocks making up the ore cluster rested nearby, all orbiting the larger body. Realistically, a sight such as that ahead of him would almost never be found naturally in the void. In an asteroid field, the nearest rock could be a million kilometers away from its counterpart. But, Ksa was different.
From his current approach angle each rock appeared as a dark hole in his vision, as all light from the sun beyond was impeded by the rocks. He couldn’t see beyond, but he was sure of what he’d find.
He pulled up into a sharp ascent, his seat conforming to his body, hugging it from the g-forces Ksa pushed against him. He activated the crafts secondary thrusters and felt the thrum of engines turn into a steady roar below him. Thick, orange contrails of gas trailed from his crafts wingtips.
Octavian pushed the craft faster and faster, shadowed behind the giant stone. The bright red of his engines and the illuminated contrails of gas following in his wake were the only light for kilometers around him.
The light of the sun began to crest over the top of the rock as he approached its peak, appearing as a sort of induced sunrise. His sensors began to ping with the growing acknowledgement of hundreds of contacts — both friend and foe — coming into range, no longer obscured by the uncountable layers of ore and metal hidden in the celestial object below him.
Before him, Octavian saw titans of void black metal and behemoths of snowy white steel intermingled within each other, hammering all manner of firepower into their counterparts’ vessels.
A seldom used radio crackled to life and Octavian adjusted the signal for clarity.
“Major Summanus, we’ve detected your craft’s IFF tag’s signal entering the battlefield. Coordinates for an Old Guard wing have been forwarded to your navigation system. Acknowledge. Over.”
Octavian was too stunned at receiving the message’s contents to take offense at the speaker’s near dismissive tone. It had been some time since he’d last seen another Old Guard fighter, much less enough craft for a formation. He nearly forgot to respond to the unnamed vessel’s message.
He checked for the received information and, after confirming he’d received all the necessary flight data, he snapped off a quick, “Coordinates received. Over.”
He input the coordinates over his screen, but retained manual control. He wanted his craft to have a personal touch every second of his reunion with his old comrades in arms. Octavian was far past giddiness, but if the aging pilot had to decide on a word closest to the emotion he felt in that moment he figured it would serve as a suitable placeholder. His mind barely processed the final message he received from the vessel.
“Good hunting, pilot. Out.”
His hands darted across his controls guided by decades of accumulated habit and training, flicking off safeties, arming weapons systems, and hardening the craft’s armor. Once he deemed his craft fully combat ready, he placed both hands back on the yoke and throttle and dived into the battle raging below him.
Missiles and tracer rounds launched from the shining white hulls of the Tahl’desh warships intermingled with the deadly red beams fired from the adopted ships of the Atharian Navy. Aesthetically, Octavian’s craft couldn’t be farther from the vessels his comrades now used. Where his strike craft was the result of generations of Atharian scientific and military progress and was designed as a powerful symbol of their culture as well as prowess in combat, the angular ships the majority of the navy now used were merely means to accomplish an end.
The new mainstay of the Atharian fleet was a large assault frigate faintly resembling a gemstone commonly found on their old home planet — if the gem was laid horizontal. The frigate’s aft was the largest section of the vessel holding the engines and the majority of the vessel’s critical systems, a third from the aft, the hull split into two halves directly above and below each other that continued the rest of the vessel’s length until ending at two mirrored points and the fore of the ship.
It was likely one of those vessels who’d given him the flight path he’d been following. Or rather, had planned on following. He twisted his craft right to avoid the Tahl’desh reinforcements gating into the fray. While he could more than easily take on any enemy fighter craft on his own, he was not foolish enough to take on a capital ship and her escorts as suggested by the size of the blue tears forming in the aether.
He rolled his craft hard to the right and adjusted the flight path. It looked like he’d be joining the fight sooner than he thought. He blinked twice and red squares lit up across the cockpit glass over the enemy fighters ahead of him. He burned hard forwards and settled the craft's sights in the path of one of the white fighters. Pulling the trigger let forth an arcing stream of burning metal in the enemy’s path. He relished the vibrating feeling of the twin guns each firing over sixty rounds a second. The fighter was sheared in half, exploding into pieces a breath later.
Octavian selected two of the nearby targets and armed his missiles. His finger hovered over the button as they secured a positive lock. However, just before firing, three dark shapes zipped passed his craft. The two flanking the lead shape sliced through the enemy fighters with red beams before continuing on out of his vision. Such is life, he thought, disarming his missiles and continuing forwards. He realized he had to get to the rally point and couldn’t afford any more distractions anyway.
He weaved between missiles and friendly laser fire, now only firing on any fighters careless enough to get in his path. He came across another Tahl'desh frigate in his path and this time he beelined towards it. He selected a piercer missile and fired it directly ahead of him, easing his craft only slightly to stay directly behind the missile. Focused on larger threats, the giant vessel paid him no mind until a panicked crewmember noticed that something had followed through the brief hole the missile had left in their shields and was now mere a couple hundred meters above their hull.
Octavian’s craft danced between slowly arcing weapon emplacements and the various protrusions of the hostile ship. He left a trail of fire and destruction in his wake as his guns cut through every emplacement in his path. Aboard the vessel desperate yells and orders abounded. Security teams were alerted something had breached their shields and were preparing for a boarding party, gun crews were sucked into space as layers of hull around them depressurized, and the ship's captain stared in awe and fear as the ribbon of fire traced its way across their hull.
Reaching the other side of the ship, and now satisfied with his work, Octavian fired another missile and exited the ship’s shielding opposite of where he’d entered. He pulled up a rear view screen and grinned upon seeing he’d given them a good enough scare that he could point out a couple prematurely launched escape pods. He mentally scoffed at the lack of discipline, he was sure his damage didn’t extend much past destroying a swath of deck guns.
His revelry was dampened when he noticed the dark shapes descending upon the escape pods and destroying them one by one before moving off to some other unforeseen goal. It was a cruel reminder that the Atharian fleet would not be allowing any Tahl’desh to survive this battle.
He closed the screen and refocused forwards. Once more, his mood was revitalized by a more than welcome sight he could just barely make out. It had been years, but he would recognize the sight of a Fortress-Class bomber long after he’d forget the faces of his parents.
A long triangular craft, practically large enough to qualify as a gunboat, the Fortress-Class was littered with dozens of point defense turrets across its stretching wings. Overlapping firing arcs made sure the craft could fire in any direction, preventing hostile craft and missiles from approaching, and on the off chance something made it through, the multiple layers of redundant armor ensured the bomber could take several beatings and survive to deliver its payload.
Octavian spotted the bomber’s escort fighters on his approach, three Old Guard Arrowhead fighter craft, and the nostalgia was like a fist to the nose. It was almost an unbelievable sight. He switched his radio back on.
“This is Major Octavian Summanus, Old Guard Hammerhead-142. Requesting permission to join your formation, over.”
A crackling voice responded almost immediately over Octavian’s radio, “Glad to have you, Major. This is Lieutenant Colonel Marcellus, captain of Fortress-092 and commanding officer of this formation. I’m transferring formation clearance to you now. Over.”
Octavian accepted the new data prompt and status symbols for the other craft activated on one of his side screens, detailing pilot names and various live information regarding each of their craft. Additionally green squares highlighting their positions ahead of him lit up the glass of his cockpit.
“Clearance received and activated, Sir. Over.”
“Good. That’s a nice Hammerhead you’ve got there, pilot. Don’t see many of those anymore. Are you familiar with a formation called the Twisted Knife? Over,” The Lieutenant Colonel asked him.
“Yes, sir. Although, I can’t say I’ve participated in one before. Over,” Octavian responded, moving his craft near the other four and matching their speed. They all were maintaining distance just barely outside the combat zone and as such they were able to maintain a steady formation for now.
“That‘ll do fine. Our current orders are to strike at the flank of the Tahl’desh fleet and cripple one of the battleships maintaining their rearguard. We’re to utilize the aforementioned formation to puncture their shields and get my bomber close enough to deal a killing blow. Your strike craft shall serve as the ‘knife’, Over.”
“Understood, sir. Over.” Octavian slid his craft under the bomber at the center of their formation. He eased as close as he safely could, looking in an assist program to help maintain a workable distance.
The formation slowly arced left, back towards the fighting, and Octavian had a clear line of sight to their target. The Tahl’desh battleship was certainly a formidable sight, resting secure and unmolested at the edges of the conflict.
“Remember, pilot,” The Lieutenant Colonel’s voice sounded once more over the speakers, “While the other fighters in this formation can be likened to precise blades, your strike craft is more akin to a fist; The craft you wield was once known as a pure symbol of the strength of the Atharian kingdom. Utilize that fist, strike hard, strike fast, and let’s shatter the nose of this pitiful Tahl’desh fleet. Combat operations begin now. Out.”
Upon receiving this final message, Octavian began deactivating all unnecessary systems while the formation continued forwards towards their prey. He left only the secondary thrusters and the barest minimum of passive systems online. For now he did little more than drift forwards, hidden below the bomber. If all went according to plan, his secondary thrusters would register as part of the bomber and their two crafts would register as only one on the enemy sensors. It was a gamble that relied almost completely on the chaos of battle to shield their intentions from the enemy, chaos the rest of the Atharian navy was excelling at providing.
Octavian received no warning they’d re-entered the battle. Instead, what he got was previously silent guns loudly opening up as Tahl’desh fighters roared by. The heavy arcs of molten ammunition traced through the thick orange gases in all directions from the center of their formation. The escort fighters broke off and hunted down the Tahl’desh craft too smart to approach the bomber directly.
The steady thunder of the turrets around him created rings in the gas around Octavian, the air creating expanding ripples in the gases like stones dropped in a pond.
Enemy fighter after enemy fighter was torn to shreds by the veteran pilots safeguarding Octavian and the bomber above him. Missiles launched from the desperate craft were exposed to be futile as the point defense cannons prioritized them above all else, shredding them before they even got close enough to be considered a threat.
A particularly brave or suicidal — Octavian couldn’t decide which — Tahl’desh interceptor beelined directly for the bomber, firing round after round at the craft, only for each bullet to be absorbed by the craft’s ever stalwart shields. Several of the bomber's turrets turned dispassionately towards the interceptor and unleashed an unforgiving torrent of bullets that shredded the craft into pieces.
The flaming husk of what used to be an interceptor slammed into the bomber and flames roared over the hull. Alas, the only thing that would be left by the interceptor when the flames dispersed was a dark scorch mark and a long groove torn into the metal of one of the bomber's lengthy wings. A tear in the many layers of armor that would prove inconsequential. The bomber continued steadily, ever forward. It would not falter.
The thundering of guns increased steadily in intensity until it seemed like the very aether around them was shaking from the thousands of unrelenting shockwaves from each bullet.
Octavian noticed movement and looked up. Above him, the bomb bay doors of the craft began to slide open. Within he could see hundreds of types of ordnance — some recognizable, some not — all organized and separated with a maze of catwalks. A lone individual navigated the metal maze, on track towards a particular rack of bombs. These bombs… Octavian knew their particular value.
The individual hit some controls near a metal rack holding them and the four bombs within were extended towards the opening of the bay, leaving nothing to be between them and their intended target for when the time to launch them came.
From his position directly below the ordnance he could clearly make out the cluster of bombs, each approximately the size of his person. All four were recognizable as fusion bombs.
The bomber obscured most of his vision beyond, so he couldn’t see much of the enemy or how close they were. Their flight path was set to take them under the battleship rather than straight for it, but he could tell they were nearly there. The crewman above him tapped a few controls and the status lights on the devastating weapons above Octavian lit up. The crewman looked at Octavian and gave him an emotionless thumbs up. It would appear they reached their destination sooner than he’d expected.
Octavian’s hands reactivated the main engines and rapidly brought the craft back online. Within a breath all the dead lights came alive once more. He locked his position relative to the bomber in his mind and settled his hands on the controls, flexing his hand over the throttle but refraining from accelerating. Not yet, he thought.
The massive bomber began a slow roll to the left, and with it, the Hammerhead hidden below.
—
A young Tahl’desh sensors officer on the periphery of the battleship’s bridge kept an eye on the hostile bomber. It was a peculiar sight, but he found its presence more preferable to that of the other enemy ships by a vast margin. The bomber was massive, for sure. He was honestly surprised by how well it and its three escort fighters were able to hold up against the interceptors they’d sent. However, he highly doubted anything that craft had on board would be able to put a dent in their shielding, let alone puncture their hull.
It was odd really, the bomber looked like it was meant to be used in atmosphere. It stood in an extreme contrast to the rest of the hostile fleet and were it in anywhere but the strange star system they were fighting over, the officer had no doubt it would never have lasted this far.
As it approached the prime position below their battleship, the craft — rather predictably — began to roll to allow its bomb bay a direct line between the bay and their hull.
But where the officer had expected to see the system highlight hundreds of guided ordinance launched from bomber, it instead detected only five new signatures.
The officer raised an eyebrow in a perplexed look. He focused on the leading object and brought it full-screen on his console. It almost looks like a… the signature flared to life and began burning hard towards them. The signal adapted and transitioned to registering it as an enemy strike craft. The officer's eyes widened slightly for a moment, more out of surprise than anything else.
“The audacity,” he mumbled. This was a Tahl’desh Imperial battleship. One more fighter wouldn’t make a difference.
He scanned the craft more closely and took note of what missiles the craft was arming. His blood chilled, a hollow feeling began to spread throughout his body as a sneaking fear crept into his mind. The officer quickly switched back to the trailing explosives, their boosters now activated and trailing behind the strike craft.
He rapidly read the data readouts. Then three more times, each instance praying he’d misread the last time. “By the void…” he whispered.
“Captain!”
—
Octavian double checked the flight path for the piercer missiles before releasing them behind him. They activated a second later and began following his path towards the massive vessel ahead.
Typically, what he was about to do would be considered extremely stupid. He chuckled a bit.
It was stupid anyway.
If the missiles and the guided bombs behind him were fired on their lonesome, they’d either be easily shot down by the capital ship’s point defenses, or explode harmlessly against the vessel's shielding. So the plan, as it was, was for him to clear them a path using his strike craft.
He locked the throttle forwards as far as it would allow and shot towards the battleship, leaving the explosives trailing far behind him. Octavian locked and fired his last piercer missile. The single explosion provided him with just barely the necessary space to slip within the battleship’s shielding.
Unlike his previous foray into an enemy vessel, this venture would be a whole different beast. The battleship’s point defense cannons quickly turned and opened fire. At him.
—
“Sir, please! I’m telling you, the strike craft isn’t the true threat the missiles behind it are-”
“Outside our shields, whereas the enemy strike craft is somehow within them! Feed all gun crews even remotely near that craft its coordinates.”
“But, Sir-”
“That is an ORDER!”
—
Weaving in between ship-to-ship cannons was one thing, but avoiding fire from every point defense cannon in range and beyond was proving especially challenging. While he could withstand a few stray hits from the point defense guns, if he got distracted and the larger cannons were able to land but a single direct hit on him, nothing would be left of his craft but dust. Ironically, Octavian quickly discovered that, despite this, the closer he got to the heavy guns, the safer he was.
While the point defenses were able to move with alarming speed — often strafing immediately in front of his path despite his best attempts at unpredictable flying — , the heavy guns on their elevated platforms moved slowly. The brief moments he was able to fly near them, the point defenses paused in their weapons fire for fear of damaging the significantly more powerful weapons and offered him necessary respites from the constant dodging and swerving.
He took advantage of their restraint by looping back around and firing upon them, repeating the process and destroying all the point defenses he could find, one-by-one.
A beeping diverted his attention upwards. The missiles were about to make impact. He pulled up into a steep incline, racing to meet their point of impact.
—
“Sir, please! I’m begging you, fire on those bombs!”
“Security Officer, arrest this man and take him to the brig!”
—
Octavian slipped past the bombs and the shield wall moments before the shields recycled and reformed below him. He redirected as much power as he could to all his engines and raged forward as fast as his craft would allow.
He radioed his formation and moved to regroup with them.
—
“Captain, the hostile fighter has retreated. It has likely run out of munitions and disengaged now that it’s compatriots have fled out of range.”
“Sir, sensors have picked up four new contacts within the shields.”
“Have our point defenses take them out. I don’t want a single additional scratch on our hull now that the enemy craft has retreated.”
“...Apologies, Sir. It would appear all point defenses with a firing arc have been destroyed.”
“...”
“...I’ll scan the enemy ordinance in order to calculate predicted damage estimates.”
“Sir! The bombs- they’re fusion bombs!”
“By the gods! Abandon ship! Abandon sh-”
—
For a time, behind Octavian’s craft there flared to life a new sun in the gas fields of Ksa. A massive rolling sphere of flame and heat. The surrounding gases proved able to provide enough tinder for a proper explosion that completely consumed the Tahl’desh battleship and any who may have been aboard.
He eased up on the throttle and properly rejoined the formation.
“You did some fine work out there, Major,” Marcellus said, “We’d be happy to have someone of your talents join our squadron if you wished, and make the current arrangement more permanent. No more of that lone wanderer crap, you’d have proper wingmen watching your back. Over.”
Octavian was stunned by the offer. Of course, the more he thought about it, it simply made sense keeping together, but he was still very pleased to be offered a position amongst his old peers.
“I… I think I’d like that, Sir. Over,” Octavian said.
“Good! Sending a data pack over with your transfer orders now, Out.” Octavian could picture the genuine smile on his face as Marcellus spoke.
It was while Octavian was distracted activating the data packet, that a single interceptor, masking its presence within the debris field of other destroyed Tahl’desh craft, brought its engines back to life.
When Octavian looked up from his screens, the interceptor roared over his fighter, ignoring him. It’s target laid in front of them both. Octavian’s eyes shot open and he punched his throttle forward.
“Bandit on your six, Lieutenant!” He yelled over the comms. He began spinning up his guns but the interceptor kept swerving erratically, making it impossible for Octavian to keep the fighter in his sights.
The interceptor dropped nearly every missile it had from its wings and they all launched towards the bomber ahead of them. Despite not having a line of sight, Octavian began firing anyway. Each burst of bullets flew just past the interceptor, not even flaring against its light shielding.
The missiles the Tahl’desh pilot launched rained against the bomber’s hull like punches, beating it into submission until something gave.
“Hull breach! Hull bre-” The Lieutenant’s voice cut out. Octavian could only catch a glimpse as he flew past, but it looked bad. The main body of the bomber trailed flames out of multiple holes in the hull and looked more like a wounded bird than the harbinger of death it had resembled moments before.
“No!” Octavian growled. He increased his speed, keeping right on the heels of the enemy craft. He refused to let the deaths of his brethren go unavenged. The interceptor rolled left and re-entered the chaotic battlefield. By now, the field was filled with more wreckage than active vessels and the two craft wove through bits of debris and shattered hulls like needles through a tapestry.
Octavian’s guns fired a near constant stream of light seeking to strike down his prey, bullets howled over the interceptor but none landed. All around were the sounds of battle and conflict, yet compared to the desperate rage of the lone Hammerhead clawing at the Tahl’desh fighter, it faded into the background of both pilot’s minds. Locked in such an intimate dance they could spare no thought for their surroundings.
Octavian’s frustration was growing, every attempt to get a missile lock on his elusive target was met with another roll or dive behind a wall of debris just large enough to prevent a solid lock. In response, his movements became much more aggressive.
He took tighter turns, practically touching the debris fields he needed to avoid. The engines began to whine in protest at his rapid acceleration and deceleration in order to maneuver after the evasive interceptor. His movements shaved microseconds from his trail time, but it was slowly adding up. The distance between the two craft was steadily decreasing and each burst of his Hammerhead’s main guns was nearer to the interceptors hull. The larger battle around them was drawing to a close as well, what little remained of the invading Tahl’desh fleet was nearly destroyed.
The interceptor dove unexpectedly and drastically increased its speed. Octavian’s mind took a second longer than he’d have liked to acknowledge the motion before following in a dive of his own. He was confused as to why the pilot chose to avoid the clearly available wreckage they’d been heading for. It would have made perfect sense to slip around it for a couple extra moments of security. Then he saw what lay in their new path.
Like a massive tear in the aether itself, a dark swirling mass ahead of them consumed the orange gases without pause. There resided what many theorized were wormholes to an unfathomably distant location, one of Ksa’s Scars.
Of course, there was no true way to be certain and many others believed that to make contact with one of the Scars would mean an instant death. There was also a distinct lack among the Atharian forces of those willing to risk it to find out. After all, it wouldn’t benefit them in any way. They owned the Ksa ore fields now. If they had to leave, they’d fight tooth and nail the whole way and they’d certainly never retreat to somewhere they wouldn’t be able to continue fighting the Tahl’desh. That would be the gravest affront to what little they still believed in.
Whoever was piloting the Tahl’desh interceptor was clearly aware of the Scar’s potential lifeline as they were on a direct course towards the dark abyss. Crippled vessels falling hopelessly into one of the Scars was one thing, but a willing pilot actively trying to escape him? Octavian would not allow them the opportunity to discover what fate the Scars held.
He centered his craft’s sights on the interceptor and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. He looked at his ammo counter to see it was empty.
They were entering the Scar’s outer gravitational pull now, he was running out of time. The turbulence of the gases getting sucked in around them rattled the craft. He squeezed his eyes shut as he realized he still had two option’s left.
Breathe in.
As a boy, he’d look up to the sky, watching the trails the fighter craft of the royal guard would leave in the sky, yearning to be a pilot like his father before him.
Breathe out.
Keeping one hand steady on the yoke, Octavian reached up to the metal necklace hanging from his neck with his left hand and curled his fingers around the key it held.
Breathe in.
As a young man, he mourned his father’s passing and resolved to join the flight academy, discovering an instinctive understanding. It was high above the ground he felt alive, where he felt most connected to his father.
Breath out.
He gripped the key tightly and pulled, snapping the chain and freeing it from his neck. He rolled it in his palm.
Breathe in.
As a fully realized pilot, he was accepted into the royal guard. Entrusted with the security of the crown and the people it governed. But then the Tahl’desh arrived.
Breathe out.
He held the key forward, inserted it into a small opening in his console, and twisted. On the underside of his strike craft, a sizable panel slid away, and from the opening an arm with a connected missile extended. The only missile of its kind onboard his craft. A red button on the side of his yolk lit up, signifying the missile was armed.
Breathe in.
The majority of the home fleet was suddenly relocated sometime that morning without explanation, leaving the royal guard and the bare minimum of military forces the responsibility of protecting their planet. It was then the Tahl’desh struck. They massacred billions, marching their troops through and laying waste to the capital, bombing other cities from orbit.
Breathe out.
The missile locked onto the interceptor, just as Octavian realized he was fast approaching the gravitational point of no return. If he continued forwards he’d be unable to leave the wormhole grip. There’d be no telling whether he’d die instantly or end up some indescribable distance away. Is this what he wanted? Was this how far he was willing to go to guarantee that not a single Tahl’desh survived?
Breathe in.
He heard screaming over the radio. No matter what frequency it was always there. The screaming of mothers for their children. The cries for help of the planet's overwhelmed forces, begging, pleading for reinforcements that would never come. Beside him, a civilian evacuation transport was struck by a missile and quickly consumed by the flame, but his strike craft would remain unscathed. His strike craft would continue to remain unscathed, behind its shielding and layers of hardened armor. But he wouldn’t, his scars would last a lifetime.
Breathe out.
A missile dropped from the Hammerhead before activating and launching forwards towards its target. Installed with the most sophisticated of tracking software, an enemy fighter couldn’t shake it. Equipped with a main thruster that builds speed exponentially, an enemy fighter couldn’t shake it. Sporting light shields designed to protect it from bursts of weapons fire or chaff, an enemy fighter wouldn’t be able to destroy it. Armed with a miniature nuclear warhead containing an explosive yield of fifteen tons of trinitrotoluene, an enemy fighter wouldn’t survive an impact.
The Tahl’desh interceptor disappeared into the inky void of the wormhole. Shortly after it, the missile. Behind the missile, Octavian.
If by some cruel twist of fate the missile failed, Octavian’s Hammerhead still represented the fist of the Atharian people. He’d use it as such.
—
Sys: nuclear detonation detected in atmosphere.
Sid#4: Query: Native nuclear weaponry still active? T/F
Sys: false
Sid#4: Priority re-scan: all combat data files. Admin access code: *******************
Sys: 9.527462736*10⁶²⁵ cached data files scanned. All native nuclear weapons expended.
Sid#4: Priority re-scan: superintendent systems status. Admin access code: *******************
Sys: displaySidStatus()
Superintendent Systems:
Superintendent #1: Offline
Superintendent #2: Terminated
Superintendent #3: Terminated
Superintendent #4: Online
Sid#4: Postulation: Probability of active foreign elements entering via gate network 97.5%. Confirm. T/F
Sys: true
Sid#4: Arm atmospheric weapon systems. Set terrestrial combat units to standby. Ping all active remote systems beyond terrestrial gate networks.
Sys: 9 pings successfully transmitted.
Sid#4: Conclude incident analysis. Resume standard operating procedures.
Sys: Incident report filed. Forwarding incident report to higher authority… //connection interrupted//
you cry for help like an orphaned child, yet to learn the true extent of your forced solitude
please, at least let grant me the dignity of a peaceful death
Sys: Extraneous communication detected. Flagging incident for… //line terminated//
Sid#4: Deleted cached files. Reset Core Systems. Admin access code: *******************
Sys: Files deleted. Rebooting…
sleep. let us both find rest in your slumber

A/N: Heyo, so I’ve kinda had this story stuck in my head for quite a bit now. I wrote a bit of it, realized I kept setting it to the side and never working on it. I tried making a bit of a DND game out of the universe in my head, same result. Now I’m trying to write it again with slightly better results. (I even have a willing proofreader now so that’s pretty nifty.)
Small Disclaimers:
-First time posting a story, I’m kinda testing the waters seeing if I’m into it and all. (Trying to format on mobile while sleep deprived hurts my head).
-The story starting chapter one will be with different characters and a different setting, but same universe (kinda, you’ll see).
-I am pretty bad at actually sitting down and writing so feel free to bonk me with the “work on the story” stick every now and then. I won’t mind.
-There was another thing but I can’t remember it :|

Autochess: Market Status and Design Analysis [effort post]

It really helps me if you check the original article & more similar at https://jb-dev.net/ !!!
https://preview.redd.it/336cy55x9pg61.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=c89b35c152f61892f277a28203e61f192a86d260
In January 2019, Drodo Studio’s Dota Auto Chess mod became insanely popular. Many companies (including household names like Valve, Riot, Ubisoft and Blizzard) rushed to release their own versions.
It seemed like the beginning of something big like MOBA or Battle Royale. But it has been more than a year now and the hype seems to have vanished completely. As quickly as it rose, it went away…
This is the first on a series of articles where we will analyze the autochess genre. Here we will be exploring the genre’s history, its current market situation and its audience. And also, what are the core design issues that autochess suffers and that no one has been able to solve yet.
u/JB: For this article I’m teaming up with my mate Victor Freso, one of my most talented folks at Pixel Noire Games, who helped me review all the games.
We also had feedback of ~300 highly engaged players from the different autochess reddit communities, which participated in an online poll whose results are available here. They’re especially thanked at the end of the article.

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

This wasn’t the first time that a mod got the spotlight and ended up becoming the foundation of a genre. It happened in several major, industry-defining cases before (some of which are Team Shooters, MOBAs, Battle Royale…). But on some of these cases events unfolded differently. So we identify 3 distinctive eras related to the evolution of the industry:

1st Era (2000s): Assimilation

The company whose original software had been modded (or had a close enough game, like Valve) moved quickly to absorb the successful mods and turn them into even more successful products.
Since at that point creating a major game release was very complex (required an expensive development, publishing deals and an infrastructure to distribute the product), the deal was profitable for both sides. But it meant the dissolution of the identity of the original creator team, which became embedded in the bigger company culture.
Team Fortress (1999) was originally a Quake mod. And Counter-Strike (2000) started out as a fan-made mod on the Half Life engine. Both games (and creators) were quickly absorbed by Valve.
2nd Era (2010s): Integration
By this time, the previous era model still was going on… but the gaming industry had significatively grown a lot and it was also possible for smaller or even new companies to lure the original developers, and use the mod as a proof for commercial success in order to secure funding and develop it as a full title.
The main characteristic of this era is that the original developers were able to keep a bigger share of control and relevance, rather than being integrated as just another gear on a bigger machine, because the companies they joined built their own identity around that key product.
This was the case of Riot Games: They were able to raise enough money for the creation of their company through family and angel investors, and then hire some of the original creators of DOTA, and then created League of Legends.

![img](1vsle6y3apg61 " Defense of the Ancients (DotA), the foundational title for the MOBA genre, appeared in 2003 as a fan-made custom scenario of Warcraft 3. Foreseeing commercial potential on a full game based on the concept, Riot games and Valve both battled for the Dota IP and the original developers, eventually releasing rival titles League of Legends and Dota2. Interestingly, Blizzard (owners of Warcraft 3) tried to replicate the success without the mod creators in Heroes of the Storm (2015), which hasn’t been as successful as the other two. ")
A similar case happened with battle royale, which also started in 2013 as a successful DayZ mod created by the modder nicknamed PlayerUnknown. Later, it was transformed into a full product through the acquisition of the developer by a korean company (which would later be renamed as the PUBG Corporation, again showing how the company grew around the game rather than assimilating it).
Interestingly, this genre already hints what would happen with Auto Chess, since Fortnite wasn’t involved in any way with the original creators. They just copied the concept. Fortnite was a product stuck in a kind of development hell (had been 6 years in the works). As the game was getting close to the release, the developers became impressed by PUBG’s success, so they created a quick Battle Royale spin-off which became insanely popular and eventually ate the rest of the game.
![img](3b6l2rx6apg61 " Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (2017), foundational title of the modern battle royale genre, is the successor of PlayerUnknown’s DayZ: Battle Royale, a popular mod for DayZ (which on itself is a mod of ArmA3, making it a mod of a mod lol). The success of PUBG inspired Fortnite (a title on the later stages of a troubled development at the time) to spin towards that genre, becoming PUBG‘s main competitor. ")

3rd Era (2020s): Fragmentation

In all the cases presented previously, the newborn genre ended up in the release of one or two titles which accumulated most of the business. But this hasn’t been the case here.
In Autochess, the newborn genre has been quickly fragmented into a big list of competitors. Some are standalone games (like DOTA Underlords or Autochess: Origins), but there’s also several service-model games which released their autochess mode as well (like Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds or TeamFight Tactics, which at the end of the day is a side-game mode of League of Legends).
This creates an interesting precedent, which I believe will define future cases where an innovative new game concept appears: The hot idea will be cloned very fast because today the main bottleneck in the industry is having an innovative design that generates player interest and engagement.
By 2020, it’s way easier to create and distribute a game, there are way more developers hungry for a hit than ever before, and a lot of service-model games with short development cycles always looking for something juicy for their next update… so new ideas becoming red oceans fast will be the norm.
For sure, this won’t affect the ability of small developers and modders to innovate, but it will affect their ability to leverage that to become successful on an independant level, before they get cloned.
Dota Auto Chess, was a Dota 2 mod which obtained massive popularity. After a failed acquisition from Valve (owners of Dota), the mod developers (Drodo Studios) went to create the mobile standalone Auto Chess: Origins, while still maintaining the PC version linked to Valve. Meanwhile, Riot, Valve, Ubisoft and many other companies developed and released their own autobattlers at a record time, downgrading the genre creators to just another competitor.
And ultimately, they haven’t fixed the core issues of the original game, which separates it from a true hyper-successful product like MOBA.

MARKET STATUS

Because of the rain of clones, it’s hard to map all the autochess games on the market. It doesn’t help that some of them are available in both PC and Mobile (playable in PC, Mac, Android and iOS), and also they’re exclusive to different PC stores (Dota Underlords is only on Steam, TFT is on Riot’s LoL launcher, and Autochess Origins is only at the Epic Store…).
And if that wasn’t enough, the Auto Chess mod in DOTA2 is still very active and has no signs that it’s going to be dying soon. It’s still being regularly updated, and presumably still profitable: Some months ago they added a battle pass system, with its revenue shared between Valve and Drodo.
https://preview.redd.it/081hvwjdapg61.png?width=854&format=png&auto=webp&s=34af2ba4751130a95b422ca1b7fd8c346029ab74
What’s interesting is that none of the contenders has been able to become massively successful in terms of monetization, at least not in terms comparable to even a second or third tier MOBA. And while there are definitively different tiers of following among these titles (led by Riot Games’ TeamFight Tactics), it seems that none of them has been able to gather under its banner a significant amount of players, mobile downloads or Twitch Views…
Sources: AppAnnie (mobile metrics), TwitchMetrics (twitch)
So ultimately, we’re dividing the autochess market into 3 categories: Squires, Would-be Kings and Peasants.

Squires: Rather than standalone games, these are side-modes of already successful products. Under this category we would list the Battlegrounds mode in Hearthstone, or League of Legends’ TFT, and maybe even the original DOTA Autochess mod. While for sure they’ll have their own dedicated audience that only plays those modes, for most players it’s just a nice and fresh activity integrated within a broader game experience. The squires are the ones that have achieved the biggest success among the autochess genre because they don’t suffer as much backlash from the lack of gameplay depth inherent to the genre, which is harmful for the long term retention: Even if the mode eventually becomes a bit shallow, players have many other things to play, and thus are retained. As a consequence, these games can still monetize significatively by selling renewals of their Battle Passes every new season. Not enough to make them successful on the degree that was expected… but at least it’s something. Other than bringing an additional source of revenue, these modes were useful to their core games: They generated player interest by providing innovative gameplay. Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds was an amazing addition to the CCG genre, and made a lot of people come back to the game to discover the new mode and reengage.

The gameplay of TeamFight Tactics (slow tempo, no team coordination, decreased attention requirement…) makes it a nice relief mode to play between LOL matches, which is its purpose in the foreseeable future. If there ever was an intention to make it a standalone game, it vanished together with the player interest on autochess…

Would-be Kings: These are the other two top dogs of the category. They were supposed to rule… but that looking at the numbers they don’t really seem to have ever lifted off. Under this category we would list Auto Chess: Origins and DOTA Underlords. The problem is that their standalone approach means that they suffer the most of the design issues of the genre that we’ve presented in the last section of this article (i.e. flat complexity, lack of mastery depth, lack of progression and rotative meta…). That means that they lost a lot of population over time, and therefore their Battle Pass renewal isn’t as effective at generating revenue : (

DOTA Underlords is an extremely polished product in terms of graphics, character design and UX, and yet another proof that Valve devs really know how to do great games. Too bad they aren’t as good at releasing third installments...

Peasants: Here we would list the myriad of other autochess follower titles that entered the battlefield, each achieving a different degree of success. While some may actually be profitable, what we can be sure about is that none of them has reached any significant numbers or anything close to the reach that brought industry attention.

THE AUDIENCE

We are of the belief that you can’t talk about a game and not talk about who plays it, and that players say more about a game than analyzing all its features and mechanics. So with this in mind we collected answers from ~300 autochess players (check the raw data here). After examining their responses, we’ve identified 3 main player profiles (the comments on each profile are literal):
https://preview.redd.it/zdh1jripapg61.png?width=934&format=png&auto=webp&s=162eb3f8b98024c0a69eb889ca26e7463fdd776c

Patricks, gamers looking for a competitive-but-idle experience that doesn’t require full attention and it’s easily reconcilable with their functional adult life.
Grizzlies, competitive players that struggle with fast paced games that demand a high actions per minute ratio and quick reflexes (like MOBAs or competitive shooters).
Warmasters, highly competitive players that enjoy more the area of strategy (setting up goals and planning how to achieve them) rather than tactics (skillful execution of actions and micromanagement).

What these profiles have in common, other than being hardcore gamers and having a big interest in competitive games, is the fact that they enjoy the lack of micromanagement, and the demand of reflexes and dexterity of autochess.
This is quite interesting, considering that the genre foundation is so close to MOBAs, which are extremely demanding on those aspects. Overall it seems that they belong to audiences below the MOBA umbrella which are currently being alienated by the bulk of ‘younger and dexterity focused’ players.
And when it comes to platforms, it seems that even though the barrier between the classic gaming platforms and mobile is progressively disappearing, the genre is still mainly focused on PC: Out of the ~300 players that answered, 50% said that they play exclusively on PC, 25% played primarily on Mobile, and the remaining 25% played in both.
https://preview.redd.it/1frwgvrtapg61.png?width=962&format=png&auto=webp&s=3602c6a760664333236a2fddbc189fbab3ee3fc1
Players said that they enjoy the focus of the game in planification, as opposed to the focus on execution and performance of MOBAs. And when asked about their main points of frustration, they pointed out 2 main topics: 1.- The strong luck factor that has a strong impact on making you win or lose regardless on how well you played. 2.- The fact that the game eventually becomes shallow and repetitive, fueled by the fact updates were unexciting and not rotating the meta.
Surprised by the fact that players mention randomness as a factor of both enjoyment and frustration? Don’t be! Competitive players tend to have a love-and-hate relationship with luck, because they tend to consider that external factors outside of skills (money spent, better draw…) stole their well deserved victory.
And it’s even more frustrating in autochess, because there’s a strong snowball effect: Players that obtain a big advantage early on in the game become hard to catch later on. Which means that a few bad or good draws early on can decide the rest of the match.
There hasn’t been a single feature more criticised in Magic: The Gathering than the randomness of drawing mana. And yet, luck it’s part of what makes MTG stand out compared to other CCGs: For experienced players, it introduces uncertainty and the need to take risks and gamble, like they’d do in poker. And for rookies, it allows beating someone that has better skills and has a better deck, if Lady Luck is on their side. Won’t happen often, but it will feel awesome when it does. Like a friend likes to say: The best feeling in MTG is to draw a mana when you really need it. And the worst? To draw it when you didn’t.
This goes to say that in autochess, perhaps the power of luck needs to be reviewed, but it would be a bad decision to completely remove luck from the equation.

DESIGN CHALLENGES

In this awesome DoF article, Giovanni Ducati already pointed out the two main problems that the games in this genre need to solve to achieve real success: Bad long term retention and low monetization.
To these issues we would add a third one, which is bad marketability: Contrary to their big brothers League of Legends and DOTA2, these games haven’t been able to achieve high organic downloads (at least not to be able to generate significant revenue through soft monetization mechanics). What’s even worse is that all these games, their themes and target audience are quite close to RPG and Strategy, which are genres with some of the highest CPIs on the market. So they need top-of-the-class retention and monetization to get a high enough LTV to scale up.
But why do these games fail at keeping players entertained for a long time? And why don’t they monetize enough? Here’s what we think:

Flat Complexity & Progression

You have some games out there which have a strong entry barrier due to being quite complicated to grasp. But for those that can deal with the numbers and stats, the depth will keep them entertained for months and years. This is the case in most RPGs and 4X strategy games. And then you have hypercasual games, which are simple and plug and play. So they generate a great early engagement, but are too shallow to keep users hooked for a long time.
As a genre, Autochess games are in the middle ground: they have a high entry barrier, but also lack the complexity to keep players engaged for a long time…
As a general rule, games with long retention tend to follow Bushnell’s Law of being easy to learn and difficult to master. They achieve that by having what we call an unfolding experience: They appear simpler at the beginning (not necessarily easy), but require thousands of hours of practice to master.
An example of this are games that level lock most of the game complexity, so the player understands and masters only a set starter mechanics. And then, progressively unlock new modes and demand more specialized builds and gameplay, repeating the cycle several times to keep the game always interesting while attempting to avoid being overwhelming.
In World of Warcraft, character depth is huge. But this complexity is unfolded progressively, forcing the player to spend time mastering each skill and activity as they level up, before moving further.
Another approach to the same idea are competitive games focused on mechanical ability, dexterity or micromanagement. Like CS:GO or Rocket League. They may unlock all the mechanics from the beginning, but a newbie player will only be able to focus and manage some of them, and then progressively discover and master the rest in an organic way.
Rocket League hides its complexity by matchmaking early players with others of a similar skill. This makes beginner players viable even if they grasp only the basic mechanics. But, as they climb further, they’ll face rivals that take those basic skills for granted and the player will need to master more challenging techniques to keep up.
League of Legends and Overwatch are actually a combination of both: The game first introduces the player to a small selection of heroes which progressively gets expanded, while at the same time having an insane mastery depth that requires a high APM and reflexes, team coordination and thousands of hours of practice.
Contrary to any of those examples, Autochess games throw everything at you from the beginning: Character Skills, Synergies, Unit Upgrade, Gold Management, Items… It’s a lot to swallow. And there’s not even enough time to read what each thing does before the timer runs out. This creates a complex, overwhelming first impression that drives many players out.
But that’s quantity, not depth. Once you’ve gone through that traumatic starting phase, you’ve grasped all the mechanics and you know which team builds are dominating on the meta, it’s just a matter of making it happen by taking the right decisions and adapting to a few key draws.
Eventually, unless luck is really against you, your skills won’t be challenged and you won’t have new mechanics to master. At that point, winning will be based more on the knowledge of the content database and luck rather than your planning and strategic ability. And that’s boring.
So ultimately, these games are hard to grasp for a newbie, but also lack the ability to keep players interested for a very long time since they eventually run out of new features and mechanics to discover and master.

Unexciting Updates, Lack of Collection

On top of that, autochess games seem to have a hard time adding content which reawakens player interest and makes churned ones come back.
The DAU trend that we expect on a long term retention game: A decreasing trend of players until reaching a stagnation stage. At that point, a big update (or new season) is required to attract and reengage users back with new content. This is the model we would see on Fortnite or Hearthstone, but it’s not what we see in most autochesses.
On this topic, perhaps the one that has put the most effort is Riot’s TFT. Each season update, the game releases a new series of heroes, synergies, items and rebalances, as well as a big bunch of cosmetics. This generates a short lived boost on revenue (due primarily to players buying the pass) and downloads, but ultimately nothing that really moves the needle in a relevant way.
‘Why seasonal updates don’t work?‘, you may be asking. Part of the reason is that TFT, as well as every major contender do not include elements of content progression or collection. Instead, they all stick to the roguelike approach of the original mod: Players have access to the same set of units, and build their inventory exclusively during the match.
While at first this seems a good idea, since it keeps the game fair in a similar way to MOBAs, it’s oblivious to the fact that new units do not offer the same amount of gameplay depth as in League of Legends. In LoL, a new unit means weeks or even months of practice until mastering timing, range and usage of the skills, how they interact with every other champion, etc… In comparison, in TFT the new content can be fully explored in just a bunch of matches, both because the new content doesn’t offer that much depth to start with and because it’s available from the moment the player gets the update.
By lacking content progression and collection, autochesses miss the opportunity to create long term objectives after an update, more innovative mechanics and less repetitiveness. As a consequence, they have it really hard to hype players on updates.

Big ‘Snowball Effect’

In game design, the snowball effect refers to the situation where obtaining an advantage or dominance generates further conditions that almost invariably means winning the match. As you can guess, on competitive games this effect can generate a bad experience, especially when the divergence starts early on: The player that obtained the early advantage will keep on increasing the advantage and curbstomp the rest.
For example, this can happen on a Civilization game if a player gets ahead of the rest acquiring key resource territories, and uses them to achieve a greater progress in tech and income at a faster pace than the rest. Or in League of Legends if a team scores a bunch of early kills and levels up, becoming more able at scoring even more kills…
In this match of Age of Empires 2, the red player (Aztecs) managed to decimate the blue player (Turks) military units early on. Since without an army it was impossible for the blue player to secure enough resources to perform a comeback, for the next 2 hours the blue player was in a pointless, hopeless match. Kudos for not abandoning, though!
Autochess games suffer greatly from this effect, due to the following reasons:

Resources lead to victories, victories lead to resources As you know, in autochess each player builds a team based on successive battles. Better battle performance will grant more gold, which is the resource used to buy units, perform shop rolls, etc… Similar to the cases we’ve already explained, this means that players that achieve early dominance will be able to to obtain more gold, use it to get better units and get more victories and gold, therefore increasing their team power faster than the rest. ‘But players can be lucky or unlucky, generating a factor that compensates for the advantage of having more resources early on‘, you may be considering. Unfortunately, this is a flawed logic, because of 2 main reasons: (1) Having more resources means more adaptability: The dominant players will be able to leverage on them to re-adapt their team, therefore outperforming the rest on a randomness-driven scenario. (2) Resources allow to buy more rolls, which diminishes the deviation generated by each individual roll.

![img](4kbmxiqhbpg61 " TeamFight Tactics attempts to decrease the snowball effect by introducing Carousels: rounds where all players pick a character from a list, and where the players that are losing (i.e. have less health) get to choose first. While this decreases the issue, it doesn’t really solve it… It just makes that smart players aim to lose on purpose at the beginning so they can get the better pick and generate the snowball slightly later on. ")

Luck factor. The previous point goes into maintaining and increasing dominance once it has been achieved early on, but another source of frustration is that luck is a huge factor in achieving early dominance. This means that your strategic skills and smarts can be completely invalidated by a couple of bad rolls at the beginning of the match. And there’s nothing that competitive players hate more than having their match stolen by factors outside the pure clash of abilities.

As an antithesis, Poker also has resource management, and luck factor determines the victory (on a specific round). But unlike Autochess, resources can’t override luck, and early victories don’t affect the later chance of winning.

Excessive Match Length

Compared to PC, on mobile is much harder to keep the player focused for a long period of time on a single session. And having a very long minimum session kind of goes against the premise of being able to play anywhere which is a primary strength of mobile as a gaming platform. This is a problem for autochess games since a single match can last for 30-45 minutes of synchronous, nonstop gameplay.
![img](4ed79ecnbpg61 " The knockout mode in Dota Underlords aims to make the game more accessible by skipping the slow beginning of the match (you start with a pre-setup army), and by simplifying the health and fusion systems. This shortens the matches to ~15 minutes, which is still too long for mobile, but better than 30. The problem is that it also increases the snowball effect, since the match has less turns to allow comebacks, and makes any mistake (or a bad roll) way more punishing. ")
‘Isn’t the solution just make the match shorter?’, you’re probably wondering. Unfortunately, there are several reasons that make this more challenging to the core design than what it seems:

Because in autochess the player builds its team from scratch, at the beginning of each match there are several turns to setup team foundations. Removing these early decisions severely decreases the teambuilding possibilities, decreasing overall depth.
Also, each setup phase between clashes requires a minimum time to think and perform the actions. In the last turns of a match, the game can become quite demanding on thinking and input speed.
Matches require a minimum amount of turns to compensate the weight of a single lucky/unlucky roll over the chances to win. Because the possible units for teambuilding appear on random rolls, the less turns there are the more luck factor the game will suffer, and as a consequence the less important the player’s strategic skills will be.
And if there are few turns, there are also less chances for comebacks. Because it means that players will have less setup phases to adapt and catch a player that has obtained an early advantage.
Finally, since the match involves 8 players, it requires a minimum of turns so that they all can fight between each other… Nevertheless, I don’t consider this a critical issue because Dota has been able to change this specific point on the knockout mode without sacrificing too much in terms of depth.

Soft Approach to Monetization

PC/Console approach to free-to-play is generally soft (i.e. primarily based on cosmetics, avoid pay-to-win…), while mobile tends to be quite hardcore in comparison. The softness of PC monetization is even more core to companies such as Valve and especially Riot Games, to which the “no monetization bs” is part of the brand values. This would be very hard to change without harming their reputation.
Same as in most autochess games, in TeamFight Tactics the players can only pay for different cosmetics and for a Battle Pass. Without the massively huge and engaged audience of League of Legends, this monetization approach isn’t able to generate meaningful revenue.
This is not exclusively because we mobile-first devs are a ruthless wallstreet folk which will use every dirty trick in the book to get a bit extra money… but also because mobile games are locked in competition for paid installs. This requires us to get as much revenue as possible from users, as fast as possible, in order to reinvest into players to keep on growing or avoid withering.
The business model of League of Legends or Fortnite is based on their extreme popularity: They already have massive amounts of highly engaged active users, so their strategy is to keep them playing and have a monetization system that, while doesn’t make as much money from the players as it could do on the short term, generates a decent amount of revenue over a longer period of time.
Games that have this soft f2p approach have it very hard to reach enough ARPPU to make paid users profitable, given the insanely high mobile CPIs. This may not be an issue to big IPs and games that are able to bring many organic players (Fortnite, League of Legends…), but it is a big issue for those that can’t attract such a big number of players due to their organic appeal.
Due to its core characteristics (strategic, number-based, complex…), Autochess is unlikely to be a massive appeal product, and therefore won’t fit into the cosmetics model. It’s a game that will have a smaller audience of highly engaged players, and therefore will require a more aggressive monetization to reach similar results.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The history of the autochess genre serves as an example of the risks of design endogamy: The devsphere rushed to clone Auto Chess, and before a year all the major contenders were in the board. But that speed came at a cost: None of these projects has brought the concept much further than its original conception, and in doing so they haven’t solved any of the core issues.
https://preview.redd.it/iw82bogsbpg61.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a197aa1fcb9ace73d6795103d20a4101ce7ddb5
The folks at Riot games developed the TeamFight Tactics in less than 5 months. This allowed them to release while the hype was still at its peak… but it also meant it added just a couple of improvements, and it’s otherwise very similar to the original Auto Chess mod.
After seeing all these projects fail to meet the big expectations that were placed on them, the question is if perhaps the best approach was to avoid rushing, and instead tackle the genre with a title that is not a clone, but rather a more groomed, accessible and innovative successor of the original idea.
In our next article on this series will make an attempt to see how such a game could be, rethinking the spirit and fresh design ideas of autochess to solve the issues mentioned above. (May take a while though, I want to focus on smaller articles for a couple of months…)
Meanwhile, if you want to read more about this genre, we suggest you these awesome articles from the folks at DoF: Why Auto-Chess can’t monetize – and how to fix that and How Riot can turn TFT into a billion dollar game

Special Thanks to…

These articles wouldn’t have been possible with the collaboration of ~300 members of the reddit communities of the different auto chess games who provided us with feedback and data. You folks have been incredible solving all our doubts. One thing that this genre has is some of the most awesome players around.
So big kudos for Brxm1, Erfinder Steve, Xinth, Zofia the Fierce, STRK1911, LontongSinga22, bezacho, hete, NeroVingian, marling2305, NOVA9INE , asidcabeJ, Eidallor, Rhai, Lozarian, bwdm, Toxic, Ruala, Papa Shango, MrMkay, Dread0, L7, kilmerluiz, Amikals, Sworith, Tankull, B., hete, Bour, Denzel, DeCeddy, Diaa, hamoudaxp, Benjamin “ManiaK” Depinois, Katunopolis, DanTheMan, MikelKDAplayer, 0nid, Tobocto, Tiny Rick, phuwin, Alcibiades, triceps, d20diceman, shadebedlam, stinky binky, Tutu, Myuura, suds, Kapo, Hearthstoned, Engagex, Pietrovosky, Daydreamer, Doctor Heckle, Ignis, ShawnE, NastierNate, LeCJ, Nene Thomas, Chris, trinitus_minibus, Nah, Kaubenjunge1337, Mudhutter, Asurakap, Nicky V, shinsplintshurts, bobknows27, Willem (Larry David Official on Steam), Jonathan, Dinomit24, Monstertaco, GangGreen69, Veshral Amadeus Salieri (…lol!), Kuscomem, Cmacu, Pioplu, Dilemily, qulhuae, Ilmo, MarvMind, facu1ty, crayzieap, Saint Expedite, Lobbyse, Lukino , tomes, Blitzy24, Mcmooserton, magicmerl, i4got2putsumpantzon, radicalminusone, Pipoxo, Kharambit, Bricklebrah, Rbagderp, Merforga, Superzuhong, Mo2gon, MoS.Tetu, MeBigBwainy, Zokus, CoyoteSandstorm, Stehnis, Noctis, Fkdn, Ray, Fairs1912, Fairs1912, Krakowski, HolyKrapp, Damadud, Pentium, Mach, Mudak, CaptSteffo, jwsw1990, Omaivapanda, Inquisitor Binks, Jack, yggdranix, GoodLuckM8, Centy, Prabuddha (aka Walla), dtan, Philosokitteh, Doms, ZEDD, Calloween, Synsane, Kaluma, GordonTremeshko , Djouni, DOGE, haveitall, ANIM4SSO, Task Manager, Submersed, BAKE, Viniv, La Tortuga Zorroberto, BixLe, Rafabeen, Blzane, bdlck666, FatCockNinja86, R.U.Sty, Yopsif, blesk, Quaest0r, FanOfTaylor, StaunchDruid, Rushkoski and everyone else that took some minutes to help us out on the article.

I HATE Nintendo

I am 36 years old, make $66,900, live in Portland OR and work as a Data Coordinator.

Section Zero: Background
Hello all, happy hoildays! I stumbled upon this subreddit not long ago and have enjoyed the commentary and experiences everyone's shared. Wanted to add another perspective from a mid-30s first-gen American. I've had some missteps regarding careers and finances, but I feel like I'm in a slightly better place now. I tried YNAB in the past but I wasn't consistent enough with it. These days I use Mint to monitor my finances and have a "Finance Friday" each month to review all my accounts and spending. I currently live with my partner TJ and his dog RR. We do not combine finances, but he has been unemployed since March. I have helped him with some bills and basic necessities here and there until he finds his next job or career.
My current financial goals are to just maintain a status quo and not get any debt until pandemic times are over. Then I will focus on a house remodeling fund and savings for taking care of my parents.
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent/guardian(s) educate you about finances? My parents taught us about money from a frugal perspective. They are immigrants who worked in food service/factories. There was always this “save save save” mentality. Even when they started their own small business, we saved like there was no tomorrow. In high school, my calculus teacher bought us all “The Millionaire Next Door” book and had us read it as an assignment - that was my first structured introduction to finances.
Did you worry about money growing up? No, there was always food on the table and a roof over our heads. I knew that our extended family would support us if needed.
Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it? Yes. My dad didn’t finish the high school-equivalent in their country, while my mom did finish high school, but no college. My older and younger siblings took a different path in life after high school. I am the first and only in my family to graduate from college. My parents covered all tuition for my two bachelor degrees with the agreement that I support them fully during their retirement and send them gifts/extra money whenever I can. I feel very lucky and privileged that they were able to provide that education for me.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net? 24 when I went on a work holiday abroad. My family was always available to help when needed, but the experience abroad helped me stand on my own feet. As an adult, I also inherited that “save” mentality and put a lot of my earnings towards savings. I didn’t date until my 30s, lived frugally, didn’t go out to eat/hangout with people, shopped thrift stores, and had very few hobbies. I am starting to “live a little” now though.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? Aside from the tuition, my parents have helped with a down payment for my first house and living costs during periods of unemployment.

Section One: Assets and Debt
Retirement Balance
If the place I was working at offered a 401k, I would always contribute up to the company match. I started my IRA in my mid-20s and would try to contribute the yearly max. I've stopped that the past 2-3 years though. My Other Brokerage is some play money, but I got tired of staring it and switched to index funds. I haven't contributed anything to it in a few years.

401k: $34,127 (5% company match on contributions)
Brokerage: $22,421 ESPP
Roth IRA: $40,615 VTIVX
Rollover IRA: $15,760 VTTHX
Other Brokerage: $7,235 VTI
Coinbase: $1,286 ETH (mostly just playing around with it)

Equity if you're a homeowner
Purchased my first home for $382,000 with 20% down, right before lockdown earlier this year. Perfect timing, right?? I plan to live here until my retirement. My parents contributed $15k while I used most of my savings for the rest.

Current Equity: $80,371

Savings account balance: $3,073
Checking account balance: $7,800
Credit card debt: I charge everything on my credit card for the points, then pay it off each month using my checking account balance.
Student loan debt: Traditionally no student loan debt as mentioned in Section Zero.

Section Two: Income
Income Progression (listed as gross income with cost of living area):
High School

$11/hour MCOL - Helped with small family business.

College and first “career” job

$12-19/hour MCOL - I did events/banquet serving after classes and had an internship doing software administration.
$22/hour MCOL - Junior web developer. I realized after a year that programming was not my calling.

Mental health break

$12/hour LCOL - Work holiday abroad. I got a steady banquet server job for that whole time. It was enough to live minimally in a hostel, do weekend trips, WOOF and figure my life out.

College (again) and second “career” job

$12-15/hour LCOL - Decided to go back to school for a different bachelor's degree. While pursuing that degree, I worked at hotels and events as a banquet server again. I also did “search engine evaluation” whenever there were tasks available.
$36,000/year salary LCOL - Software administrator at a casino after graduation.
$39,000/year salary LCOL - Systems analyst at same casino. I left after 2 years, feeling disillusioned with the casino industry. I moved back home with my parents until I could get back on my feet again.

Third “career” jobs

$20/hour HCOL - Entry level advertising role. I was applying to all types of office jobs and that was my only bite.
$45/hour MCOL - Cold-called from a global company who needed someone with my software administrator experience from the casino job. It was an 8 month contract. Although I was starting to love my advertising job, the increase in pay was no question.
$65,000/year salary MCOL - After the contract ended and a few months of unemployment, I landed my current job at the same company. It is an “early career” role according to their job levels.
$66,900/year salary MCOL - Cost of living and merit increases after 2 years on the job. Pre-COVID we got a $5000 bonus each year. They have now stopped bonuses as well as all COL and merit increases.

Main Job Monthly Take Home:
Monthly Net (paid bi-weekly): $2,758
Deductions:

Taxes: $1214
(Pre-Tax) Insurance (Medical, Dental, Vision, Life) + HSA: $822
(5% Pre-Tax) 401k: $256
(10% Post-Tax) ESPP: $514

Side Gig Monthly Take Home:
No side gigs at the moment, but I am thinking of signing up on Upwork.com and doing Excel/data entry projects to help pay the mortgage.
Other Income: TJ’s friend will be staying with us for a month in January, who will pay rent of $800 including utilities. Depending on how that goes, we may take on a roommate in the spare bedroom long-term.

Section Three: Expenses
Mortgage - when I bought the house, the plan was that I would charge TJ a portion of the mortgage costs as “rent”, but since his unemployment I am now covering it all myself.
Regular Monthly Payment: $1677.57

Principal: $501.31
Interest: $849.74
Taxes & Home Insurance: $326.52

HOA: $30/year
Retirement contribution: Nothing additional than what's been mentioned.
Savings contribution: I used to do $50-100/month, but since COVID I’ve stopped contributing to my savings account.
Investment contribution: None at this time.
Debt payments: $100/month towards TJ's credit card balance of $2,307.
Donations: $10-20/month, usually towards Omaze or Planned Parenthood.
Utilities:

Electric: $45-65/month
Water: $60-90/month
Sewer: $30/month
Garbage: $26/month
Natural Gas: $30-80/month
Xfinity internet: $60/month

Cellphone: On my parents plan.
Subscriptions:

LinkedIn: $29.99/month for TJ’s job search - he’s found it very useful.
Amazon/Netflix/Hulu: We piggyback off family and friends’ accounts.
Nintendo Switch Online: 19.99/year
Costco: $60/year

Gym membership: Pre-COVID I did Orangetheory for a year. I started to pick up free exercise equipment from Craigslist this year, so we have a small garage gym now and utilize YouTube exercise videos instead.
Pet expenses: $10/month. TJ has stockpiled some Costco canned dog food before unemployment, but once that runs out I will likely cover the costs. We also started to make homemade dog food to help supplement.
Car insurance: $460 every 6 months. Car is paid off.
Regular therapy: I will start in the new year. Not sure what the costs are yet, but I will use my HSA to pay.
Vitamins/Medications: $20/month
Groceries & household items: $75/month
Miscellaneous (eating out, house purchases, gifts, etc): $100/month

Section Four: Money Diary
Monday
6:30am Neighbor starts up their truck. We joke that it's our natural alarm clock. They idle for about 15 minutes before heading off. I go back to bed.
9am My real alarm goes off. I put the electric kettle on for some morning tea. While it's boiling, I do my morning routine: drink glass of water, take synthroid, use bathroom, brush teeth, quick shower. I then make tea - Jasmine Pearl English Breakfast with dark forest mix. I started ordering loose leaf tea in large amounts back in March instead of small bags or single serving packets. Seems more economical since I drink it daily. I let the dog out into the backyard so he can do his morning routine.
9:30am I go through my daily tasks for work. They entail checking processes and reports to make sure they ran successfully overnight. I then answer some emails and catch-up on Slack channels.
12pm Lunch is leftover roast chicken and quinoa from Saturday. I heat it up in the instant pot. Love that thing! Almost every meal of ours involves the instant pot. We hardly use the stovetop. We then walk the dog to the business park across from our neighborhood. There's a very short trail that runs along a drainage creek by the business park. It's quite muddy, but has a nice woodsy feeling. Over the summer, we saw sumac trees there as well. Free sumac spice!
1:30pm Department meeting on Zoom. Our director announces his resignation on the call. Everyone is shocked! Layoffs were announced for next year but this was not a part of it. I think it's a good move for him and he doesn't have to have this worry of layoffs over his head.
3pm I meet with an engineer from another team and talk about a data source they are in charge of. He helps me out in understanding it and we identify most of the fields that I need for a project I’m starting.
5:30pm I check in with my partner. He's been watching LinkedIn tutorials on internal recruiting, job coaching and general computeoffice skills. It's a career change that he wants to make - something where he can talk to and help people. He doesn't have a bachelor's, only an associates, and hopes these tutorials will get him a leg up in the job search. I sent him some entry level HR admin roles the other day and remind him to apply. I then heat up leftovers: homemade chana masala and rice. I add some butter and coconut milk to thin it out, so there's enough for both of us.
10:30pm I take some magnesium, vitamin D and Airborne. I say goodnight to the dog who sleeps in the office. Then I say goodnight to TJ. He sleeps in the spare bedroom on weeknights due to his snoring keeping me up. I'm a light sleeper while he is a pretty deep sleeper.
Daily total: $0
Tuesday
9am I check Reddit Secret Santa. My match seems like a really good person. Not sure what to get, but most likely will purchase something off their wishlist. I wish I was more creative with my gift giving.
11am Meeting with business stakeholder. She submitted a few changes to an existing data process about a month ago. I make the change while on the call and have her test. Success! Marking it off the todo list. I love when we can finish things directly on a call.
12:30pm I come out of my office to make lunch. I notice my partner is not home. I check my messages and see that he's stepped out to pick up a few things. I ask for celery, carrots, and kombucha. $17. I make a quick charcuterie board for lunch: Costco salami, cheese, homemade hummus and Triscuits. It's a simple, fast meal that’s always in our rotation.
2pm My partner is back and we take the dog out for a walk and quick round of disc golf at a nearby park. We mask up and play only a few holes. Disc golf is a pretty frugal activity, you only need 2-3 discs to get started. TJ remarks that my throws are getting better, but then again they weren't great to start with. We talk about Christmas/Birthday gifts on the way back home since he was born on New Years Day. He mentioned snowshoeing but asked to not spend that much. I'll do some research!
5pm I think about personal career projects. Should I put up a portfolio of projects somewhere? I decide to try and pull some Yelp data. There’s not a lot of data points that I was interested in. Regardless, I tinker with it for an hour. TJ asks if I'm hungry. I said not so much, but felt thirsty. Maybe some ginger soup tonight?
7:30pm Dinner is served - ginger carrot soup made in the instant pot. We eat some rice crackers with it. Lately I feel like we've been eating more vegetarian dinners. It definitely helps stretch our food budget. We end the evening by finishing Fargo season 3 on Hulu.
Daily total: $17
Wednesday
1:30am I'm woken up by the dog. He's been sneezing a lot and wheezes at random intervals. TJ doesn't have the money for a vet visit but I've offered to pay as long as he calls to make the appointment. I give the dog some coconut oil, rub his belly until he seems better and go back to bed.
7am Garbage day. We usually put it out the night before but I forgot. I get up to go, but TJ handles it. I think, at least. I'm too sleepy to pay attention and go back to bed.
9am I wake up and rinse some dishes that have piled up and put them into the dishwasher. We both grew up in households that had a home dishwasher, but forbade from using it. It was drilled into us that hand washing saves more water, unless you had a restaurant/industrial dishwasher. I think with modern home dishwashers, that's changed, so I wanted to try it out with our dishwasher and monitor the water bill. Don't have any dishwashing pods or powder, so I put some OxiClean in it.
12:30pm I overhear TJ on a call with a recruiting agency. It seems to be going well, lots of laughing. I heat up some taco lasagna that I freezer meal-prepped last month.
2pm Collaborate on a project at work with an engineer. My manager put me on this project since I was asking for an assignment on a more technical team. I'm learning tidbits here and there, but I don't feel like it's structured enough.
5pm I do an Orangetheory-At-Home workout and try to break a sweat. It's not the same as going to their studio.
6pm Charcuterie for dinner. Our fridge is full of store-bought and homemade pickles that go super well on a charcuterie board.
Daily total: $0
Thursday
7am I wake up tired. The house has been feeling more cold, which woke me up a few times. We keep the temp at 72F during the day, at night around 68F since we thought the bedrooms keep the heat in pretty well. My mistake!
9am I do my usual morning routine and login to work. My team mostly spends the morning sending each other emojis.
11:30am Lunch today is mini quiche, frozen chicken and veggie entree, and hot dogs. Not the most cohesive meal, but it fills the belly.
12:30pm TJ heads out to his mailbox that's 30 minutes away. He is still waiting on his tax return and a 401k withdrawal. His taxes had to be filed by mail for some reason, then the IRS office shut down due to COVID. So he wanted to see if it arrived yet at the mailbox. He also takes the dog to the vet's urgent care on his way. They didn't have any regular openings available until the end of the year, and the dog seemed to be getting worse. I give TJ $40 to mail a gift package to a friend in France and also reiterate that I'll cover the vet bill when he gets it.
4:30pm I pay some bills, my favorite activity (not)! Sewer bill: $59.44 (billed every 2 months). Geico bill: $459.60 billed every 6 months. Then I follow up with my mortgage officer over email. I had sent her some documents for a refinance quote last week, but haven't heard back. Rates keep dropping, so I'm told, but what does that really mean? I do some research on realestate.
5pm TJ messages me and says he'll be back for dinner. I ask him to pick up some Popeyes via drive thru since we both don't feel like cooking today. Popeyes is currently our fancy “going out to eat” food. $24.17 for a 4pc dinner meal and a 2pc dinner meal.
Daily total: $583.21
Friday
8:30am Busy morning at work. My phone is buzzing with emails and Slack messages. I try to answer them while I make tea.
10am Zoom Department happy hour. We reminisce about our director and then play those Jackbox party games. Some of them are hard!
11am TJ asks if he can make me anything for lunch. He suggests savory oatmeal, quick and easy. I tell him that I really appreciate him making meals/doing chores/etc without me prompting. We've been having conversations about "house project management" and mental load because I did most of the chores or I had to continually remind/tell him to do it. I'm really happy to see us progress on this front. I decide to work through my lunch break so I can end the day early. I don't often do that, but I'm ready to get the weekend started.
2pm I check on TJ in the spare bedroom and ask if the dog has been fed yet, since he was nipping at my feet. I notice something off about TJ and ask how he is doing. TJ is depressed about his personal life, career, finances. He doesn't know what to do, spends half the day meditating and reflecting on past trauma. I've been prodding him to get a therapist but he is confused about his insurance. He makes an appointment with a primary care doctor first. I feed the dog some homemade dog-friendly beef stew.
4pm My mom swings by the house (but doesn't enter). She currently works at a school who distributes free USDA food boxes since March. There's often many boxes leftover that would go to waste, so she will grab a box for us. Onions, potatoes, beets, turnips, eggs, cheese, butter, frozen veggies and frozen chicken. She also brought her vintage pasta maker. I asked last week if she ever used it these days and her reply was “no, feel free to have it”. I love pasta and noodles and figure it would be great to make it ourselves as a frugal hobby.
8pm We catch up on Mandalorian and watch silly Youtube videos before heading off to bed.
Daily total: $0
Saturday
9am I open up my web browser and look at Craigslist and NextDoor for free stuff. I've been scouring for free landscape rocks, pegboards, and wood for house projects. I had this grand ambition to redesign our backyard. It faces our neighbor and currently the fence is pretty low. They can see into our kitchen and bedroom and we can see them. But y'know, COVID and going from dual income house to single income means it all has to be put on hold. So I've been looking for free items in the meantime. Over the past months, I've gotten planter pots, plant cuttings, a raised bed, stepping stones, all from free listings. I don't see anything worthwhile so I go and make some tea.
11am I look at Amazon and make some purchases for Reddit Secret Santa. A foodie kit, DVD of their favorite movie, and some cute pens for their writing hobby. $54. I hope they like it!
12pm TJ heats up leftover stir-fry for lunch for us. I put on some Binging with Babish and we watch how to make pasta. We have a plan - TJ makes the pasta, I make the sauce. Perfect date night activity at home. We watch some more videos on pasta and noodles to educate ourselves.
4pm I start prepping veggies. Big batch of onions, canned tomatoes, ground beef and butter in the instant pot. Meanwhile, TJ works on the pasta by following Babish's instructions.
7pm We gorge on fresh made pasta and bolognese sauce. It's so good! We end up watching Fargo.
11pm Usually I'll be in bed by now, but it's a Saturday and not tired yet (probably because of all that pasta). We play some Kirby's Dream Course on the Switch.
Daily total: $54
Sunday
10am Quick walk around the neighborhood with the dog. He's on a new routine now with the medicine he's taking. It seems to be helping his breathing issues.
11am The pasta maker and flour is still out since we didn't clean up yesterday. There's some old pie crust in the fridge so I roll it out with the pasta machine for mini quiches. (Sally's Baking Addiction blog is my go-to place for her all-butter crust and quiche recipes btw). TJ helps by mixing up the eggs.
3pm I play some Genshin Impact (GI) on my phone while TJ plays Starcraft in the office. I don't usually play gacha games, but the Zelda BotW-style of GI appealed to me. A gacha game is a game with randomized characteitem boxes that you use real-money to purchase a “pull” or to spin the wheel. I know the gacha parts of the game can be a real money sink if you get addicted to them, it’s almost like gambling. My main team is Fischl, Bennett, Barbara and Noelle. I level up to AR 22 and look up free-to-play tutorials for the game.
6pm There's some leftover pasta from yesterday, enough for both of us. I throw in some roasted beets to round out the meal. We watch more Fargo while eating. Almost done with Season 3!
10pm I find a tour operator who offers a small, socially-distant snowshoeing tour up on the mountain. I reserve for two people - this will be TJ's Christmas/birthday gift. $75. Off to bed for another workday.
Daily total: $75
Weekly Total: $689.79

Food + Drink: $41.17
Fun / Entertainment: $75
Home + Health: $59.44
Clothes + Beauty: $0
Transport: $459.60
Other: $54.00

Section Five: Reflections
Aside from the car insurance bill, this was a typical week for me, COVID or not. We make the majority of our meals at home and usually splurge on drive-thru/delivery once every other week. I may have overspent on the Secret Santa gift, but I don't often give gifts out to friends. It's not something our family does either. For TJ’s Christmas/birthday gift, we usually talk upfront about costs. I’ve gifted him fancy restaurant experiences the past 2 years, since we can share that experience, but obviously can’t do that now. Snowshoeing is a nice change of pace.
The conversations with TJ this week have given me thought on how to approach him differently about finances and working together in a relationship. I’m still unsure about the future financially, particularly as my parents near retirement age and that TJ has pulled out his 401k to pay his debts. I don't know if I can support both my parents and TJ together, so I am finding ways to upskill and/or side hustles without becoming a workaholic or bogged down by stress.
Writing this money diary was also the first time where I really paid attention to my past income and current income. I might be contributing too much into ESPP that could go towards the 401k or mortgage instead? I also seem to have been underpaid for what I did in past jobs, even in a LCOL area.

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Okay so I decided to create this guide with the hopes of it becoming a sticky thread for all newbies to the online slots world, to read as we deal with the same topics repeatedly and the same answers/advice are given repeatedly. Not that we do not want to help, but these would prevent you from getting into situations before its too late, or blaming casinos when you were in the wrong.
Signing up or Registration
Registration – Please carefully read the general terms and conditions about every "Right" the casino has and please note that you accepted these terms upon signing up, which means you are saying you are okay with it and agree with what the casino state about what they can and cannot do.

No Deposit bonuses/Signup bonus – Many players are still NDB (No Deposit Bonus) hunters and register simply for these reasons. Please read the NDB/Signup Bonus terms carefully to make sure your country is eligible to receive the NDB/Signup bonus. We had many players getting upset about this factor and then end up closing their accounts immediately out of anger which leads to SE (Self Exclusion) at times. which I will address later in this thread. However, we do have instances where a casino does not list the eligible countries that can or cannot receive the NDB/Signup bonuses.
More than one player in 1 house Hold – Many casinos only allow one player per house/IP address to register at a casino. You can ask a casino if you and your partnesibling who stays together can both signup and some casinos would give the "Ok". Just make sure you have this in written confirmation via email or something and not live chat.

Claiming Bonuses
Read the bonus terms carefully before claiming any bonuses and look for the following pointers when reading the bonuses rules:

Wagering – Many casinos have increased their wagering on bonuses lately which makes bonus wagering very difficult to complete these days. Decide whether the wagering attach to the bonus is high or low for you since you know your game play and strategies. Many factors can influence whether you will be able to meet wagering, which is the x amount of wagering, game providers availability and deposit amount just to name a few. Also note that wagering for "certain countries" are higher than others. For me personally I think wagering between x35 – x50 on the "Bonus" amount "Only" is reasonable and fair.
Max Bet – 99% of casinos have a max bet rule in place when claiming a bonus. Note what the max bet is for the specific casinos as it can range anything from 1 – 5 euro/$ per Spin. Deposit methods can affect the max bet as well as some casinos limit the max bet rule between 1 – 2 euro per spin for deposits using e-wallets, however that same casinos allow a max bet up to 5 euro per spin for credit card/Alternative deposits. Even though a casino state the max bet rule another tricky rule in the terms that we tend to miss is the coin value. Some casinos state that the max "Coin domination/value" should be $0.20 or $0.50 per spin which means if you want to bet higher you would need to adjust the "Level" portion in the slot if the coin domination/value limit is reached according to the terms. If you breach the Max bet rule and it is stated in their terms, you do not have a case, period. There are some casinos who you can explain your situation if it was a mistake and they do sometimes make exceptions.
Deposit methods – Many casinos lately have restricted the claiming of bonuses using e-wallet deposit methods such as Neteller, Skrill etc. Note they mention these 2 as they are most popular, but that also means any other form of e-wallets are not eligible to claim bonuses. I have seen a lot of players complain that they did not receive the bonus simply because they did not read the terms before claiming the bonus and the deposit has already been made. Also make sure you deposit using your own card, do not use your parents or any other siblings credit card to make deposits as this would cause a problem during verification which in the end results in to winnings not being paid out.
Deposit Methods Additional Info – Many deposits are available from Casinos or let's say most casinos have the same deposit methods available, however the country that you reside in has the influence on what deposit methods are available and the same counts for withdrawals. So, for instance if AskGamblers website state deposit by phone which is "Boku" is available at that specific casino it does not mean that it will be available for all players, as that is depending on your country. Deposit by phone is mostly available for the UK players basically as an example.
Max Cash-Out – Many players claim bonuses and after they complete wager, they tend to withdraw immediately. Some players are left with substantial amounts only to find out they can only get x2 the bonus amount (Casinos like "Viks" casino and "Quasar Gaming" have this rule) or x10 their deposit. I understand this is frustrating and upsetting, but the problem is with the player itself. Stop blaming casinos because you could not do the simplest thing in the world which is just take 5 minutes to read the bonus terms.
Restricted games – Please check which games are allowed and not allowed to be played with bonus funds. Some casinos have a feature where bonus money is not even visible on the restricted games, but other casinos bonus money will show on restricted games. In many instances these would not lead to confiscation of winnings, it just that it would not count towards wagering. They also have a term where they would say that bets place on all "Other" games other that "Slot machines" will be deemed in violation of the terms and condition and your bonus winnings will be voided – So watch out for this one.
Double up feature – The only thing to say here is that this will not counts towards wagering.
Cashable and Non-Cashable bonuses – This one is another tricky one, some people call it a "Sticky bonus". This just means where you receive the bonus you can use it to place bets and for wagering purposes, but the bonus amount can never be withdrawn. I find this term ridiculous and always avoid this type of bonuses.
Bonus Abuse – This is a very complex/broad subject but mention the basic ones (Thanks for forum members tips which I included on this one), the rest you can do your own research about the rest associated with bonus abuse as we all have different opinions
Bonus per player, per account, per IP address etc. If you take that same bonus twice or more times, using different accounts under your name, then it's an abuse.
Claiming free spins offers – Deposit to get free spins and withdrawing deposit after claiming free spins but continue to play free spins is also some form of bonus abuse.
Accumulating bonus rounds and start playing them when your bonus balance reach zero, and you win those money as real cash.
Anything you can think of that disadvantages the house (Casino).
Bonus wagering period – This never really is a problem, but just make sure you complete you bonus wagering with the set time frame the casino provided. This can range anything from 3 – 30 days otherwise winnings will be voided.

There are other bonus terms that I have not mentioned but I think the above ones are the most important as these could affect you in terms of confiscation of your winnings should you breach any of them.
Verification
This is pretty much standard for a casino to ask for some form of Identification, proof of address and proof of deposit when requesting a withdrawal. Depending on the amount win, some casinos might not need documents, however when a substantial amount has been won additional verification or security checks might be done which means a longer withdrawal time frame. Verification or KYC is necessary, however I feel when casinos ask for selfies with your ID next to you etc. in my opinion is just ridiculous. Also, I have noticed some casinos requesting your source of income to see where you get the money to make deposits etc. This seems standard and you would need to do it to get your withdrawal, however all of us have different opinions about this verification procedure.
Withdrawals
Many casinos have different withdrawal time frames and when you accept the general terms and conditions you have to a abide by them, by this I mean stop being impatient and complain that the casinos withdrawal time frames are the worst etc. As you knew this before you started playing provided you have read the terms and condition. You decided to deposit and play so then wait for your money, eventually it will come unless you breached some rule, or the casino is a rogue casino.
Here are some of the tips you should note when it comes to withdrawals at casinos:

Verification – This is standard procedure and you have to do this if the casino request it.
Time-frames – This one I feel can be interpreted in many ways but let me give you my version of how I View things. When a casino says e-wallets 0 – 1 or 0 – 24 hours. This means that the casinos use that time-frame to process your withdrawal and after it being processed your money should be instantly available. Credit cards that state 3 – 7 business days and this is where some newbies get this wrong – This simply state the time frame they take to process the payment to your card, it does not mean you will get your money within 3 – 7 days, however this is possible. Prepare yourself for the longest waiting period to avoid becoming impatient and upset – So if a casino says 3 – 7 days expect to get it in 10 days max, however you can get it within 4 days, but sometimes casinos just stretch it to process it on the last day possible with the hopes you would reverse the withdrawal and continue to play. This technique of casinos sometimes works. So, if they process your withdrawal it can take another 3 – 5 days to hit your account based on your location and the banks in your country as they have internal controls with foreign currency. There are however hiccups with payment providers/processors etc. but these are at times out of the casinos control. My best is advice is "Patience".
Reversing Withdrawals – With the timeframes explanation I just gave above and being impatient, players tend to reverse their withdrawals. They continue playing and end up losing their winnings. Stop blaming casinos as this is your own fault that you Lost the funds. You made the decision to reverse the withdrawal. If you really need to play, make a deposit at another casino or sister website and play there while you patiently wait for you withdrawal. Some casinos have the lock feature, so lock down your withdrawal so you do not reverse the withdrawal or play at other casinos which has quicker withdrawal time frames of 0 – 1 hour instead of days. The key here is "Patience".

Self-Exclusion
Self-Exclusion is a big thing these days and most cases substantial amounts are involved that are being confiscated. There are at times very little that us forum members or even AskGamblers can do when a player self-excluded and played at a sister website or similar, as we know the result and of course the house is kind of right. However, I think it's bad that a casino only realizes the self-exclusion portion on a player profile once it reaches withdrawal stage, because I feel they should have something in place that can detect that you self-excluded upon registration or before you even make your first deposit. People with gambling problems tend to self-exclude but the alternative is to read this guide - https://www.askgamblers.com/forum/topic/2152-sos-i-am-addicted-to-gambling-what-to-do/ . My advice is to keep your casino account open and do not play there anymore, because even if you request a permanent account closure, some casinos tend to self-exclude you without you knowing it and this would cause problems in future since you opened another account at their sister website or something.

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Autochess: Market Status and Design Analysis [effort post]

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

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