"What are you going to teach me today, Gwokster?"
"Today's an easy lesson on how to Play Quadra Master!"

First, you have to have cards. If you don't have cards you have to play with imaginary cards, and when VIVI is playing this can become confusing. Once you have five cards, you find an opponent. This is not hard since everyone in the universe is a slave to QM. Begin a game and select "money" "potions" or "clothing" on the "Gamble" menu. Once you've figured out what you're willing to lay on the line, and selected those five cards I just mentioned, you're ready to play QM.

Strategy is as follows: On the cards are arrows. You must align the arrows so that they make a pretty pattern. The preferred method is to line them up in a neat row, which requires all five of your cards to have an arrow in the same direction (tesselation). You must then line the edges of the grid with the cards so that the enemy cards cannot leak out. Sometimes there are stones slammed down on the grid so that you cannot place a card there. You can remedy this by using a "supersoft" in the item menu. Then you can drop Mother Minku on an enemy card if you equipped your all materia like I told you to do in the last chapter. This method is called "Hypertext Linking." If you do this right, you will win an enemy card, or even *all* cards if you used the carob nut instead of the cheap gysahl greens. You can easily capture the enemy cards you've just won by using a "poke'ball", but remember that stealing cards before the end of a card battle is against the rules and leads to reduction of IQ points. Just look at Mushashi and Kojiro of Rocket. If you win, you obviously followed my instructions. If not, you probably forgot to EQUIP YOUR GF before the game. We told you to do that a million times in FF8, kiddo. Nobody to blame but yourself. Another method is to box in an enemy card so that your own cards can surround and mock it. You do this by adding a ".com" after every command. Be sure you do this or else the coral-eating chest will GET you. If the enemy card turns your cards into Negaverse Cards, you will recieve an error message from MailerDaemon ("The following email message had permanent fatal errors"). This usually means you did not add enough salt, and the enemy Oglop now tastes like a boot lace <gwok gwok>. You must then start over and hope that you did not gamble away your "clothing," as you will end up naked and shivering in the middle of Lindblum, where the locals are notoriously dirty-minded. If you're playing as Zidane this will not be a problem. Just get into Trance mode and the fur will cover everything nicely. If you follow my easy techniques exactly as followed, and simmer at an even 450* for exactly thirty minutes in a black-mage powered oven, you too can breed, hatch and race your very own black chocobo.

Hope this clears things up. I know Quadra Master may seem tough, but I got the hang of it using these methods, and with any luck so will you.

Here's a song to help you along:

(sung by drunken Tantalus members about Miss Ruby)
Oh, I wish I were an oglop <gwok gwok>
I'd hop onto the trollop, <gwok gwok>
I'd slime 'er up real nice till she took <gwok> my advice
And gave up on the night-life <gwok gwok>

Good luck at the jump rope races
LORD ITLAN

(Who is currently playing FF7, FF8, FF9, Musashiden, SoM, CT, CC, and OU812 at the same time and forgetting which plotlines exactly are supposed to go to where)

Wow.

I went to www.gamefaqs.com, nothing of note on tetra master. Tried a google search and came up with one site, and that was only a review. Went to www.playonline.com (square's official tip site.) and it was up and down through the day, so no help there.

I believe I can come to the final conclusion that the card game was so pointless, nobody bothered to figure it out. Due to square's inability to create a site that can stay up under any kind of load, I have no way to confirm this suspicion. But I'm pretty sure.

Just ignore it, you'll feel better.

Trifthen

Tetra Master annoyed the crap out of me until I realized a few very important things, which I will enumerate here to the edification of all. I will not go into the meaning of card power markings or structural rules of the game, because everybody has already gotten annoyed with the game and looked them up.

One of the biggest differences between this new card game and the old one is that card powers alone will not give you absolute power over your opponent. Your bad-ass Power based card will get eaten by a wussy Magic card, and the reverse. Sometimes it will get eaten by a wussy power card. It isn't completely random, but it's random enough that if all you're looking at are the numbers, you're screwed. So, rule #1: Don't obsess about the numbers.

What is important if not numbers? Well, lots of stuff. Arrows, mostly. If the card only has one arrow, it'll be an easy safe play (it will restrict the game's ability to combo you), but it won't be able to take enemy cards. On the other hand, if it has eight arrows, it will be able to take a card in any direction, but the computer is going to combo the living hell out of you. So, rule #2: Cards with 3 - 4 arrows are usually best.

Like Triad, you don't always know in advance what cards your opponent will have, so it is best to prepare for everything. Also, since you'll often be in a situation where you need to take your own cards back (for some good combos), never choose all power or all magic cards. So, rule #3a: Have at least two cards with an arrow pointing in any given direction. And, rule #3b: Don't use all Power or all Magic based cards.

Plan for what you can. You don't know what the cards the game has or what they can do--big deal. Plan around your own cards. Make sure that your Magic cards will be able to battle (and take back) your Power cards, and the reverse. This should just be a matter of having arrows that point in the same direction, because in battles between M and P cards, the attacker has a huge advantage. This way, it's not a huge deal if the game captures your cards. You can capture them right back. So, rule #4: Make sure your cards work well together.

Watch what's going on. Be aware of which of your cards is vulnerable to being battled, and what cards will be lost with it. If there's one arrow left--plug it with your own card. If there's two left, let the game flip it first (assuming you can flip it back, afterward). Basically, the combos rule the game. So, rule #5: Your combo good, his combo bad. (uh... duh.)

Now you have good grasp of game, numbers are being next importance. As you use cards to battle opponent cards, they will get better. Your 1P01 with perfect arrow placement, if you use it and don't lose it, can become a 2P01, 1P02, or even a 1X01 (and so, presumably, a 2X02). It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Obviously nothing is going to improve that 0P00 Frog card much, but the difference between a 2P20 and a 3X21 is significant. So, rule #6: Don't have good cards? Make them.

Last, one really good way to get practice, and new cards, and weed out your card collection while giving your cards a chance to develop, is to take all those crappy first row multiples and use them to play, even against an opponent with numerically huge cards. It is more than possible to win great cards just on the strength of your ability to pay attention to the arrows. And even if you lose, you'll be losing some crappy cards that you'll probably just have to discard later--no big woop.

DarkLao

I am going to eat a great deal of pumpkin pie! ( I thought I should tell everyone.)

-Nick Herman

Hey, uh.. letter guy,

It's always cool when something like this happens, with a different letter guy nearly every day. It kind of gives us a varied break from the usual boring dry comedy (just kidding). Anyways, people have been talking about Vagrant Story again recently, and this has inspired me to replay it. I'm wondering if anyone knows how to get that kickin' weapon that Romeo had at the end, I think someone said how in the column awhile ago, but I don't feel like reading through that much amature comedy (just kidding).

Bad Mistah Hoo Ha, A.K.A. Gilberts alternate email account

P.S. By the way, yesterday an old letter and response was accidentally printed, but it was one of my favorites, so it's like watching that I Love Lucy episode where Malcolm X and Hitler get locked in a safe and work out their differences... Of course I also remember that one starring Corey Haim and Feldman as wise-cracking college kids, so I don't know whether that was a very accurate memory.

If the Presidential election had to be decided by a video game tournament between Gore and Bush, what game should they play?

~Ian P.

Hey, Nich!

How's the diet going? As a fellow unfit gamer, I'm profoundly interested in the ability of video games to help reduce my weight.

-Stephen Dedalus

Hi,

I have to ask a little question here of the GIA staffers and the people who have commented in letters about FFXI: Have any of you guys actually played large online RPGs like Everquest and Diablo 2?

Beyond all the ranting and raving about "plot" and "character development" etc., no one seems to be mentioning that there is likley going to be a huge problem in their server capacity? I mean, think about all the Evercrap problems, and they have peak usages at 100,000+, and think about Blizzard, they were *preparing* for over a million players online, and anyone who has played D2 online knows how that worked out (servers down large periods of time, waiting up to several hours to join a game, etc.).

Beyond all the bitching and griping about the cost of the monthly fees (I bet Square never gets enough subscribers in the U.S. to support PlayOnline here) and the change of format, I really don't believe Square is going to be able to maintain an online FF to anyone's satisfaction. And while (like in other MMRPGs) most of the people that would subscribe will keep paying, they won't be able to pull in the masses, and they will lose money.

-Abazagaroth