Here in week six of the TAGN Fantasy Critic League we had a couple of new actions occur.

The first was one I mentioned last week, the removal of Football Manager 2025 by myself due to the game being cancelled and the league mechanics requiring something to be done.  So, the following was logged:

• League Manager Action
  • Publisher Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane) has had the game Football Manager 2025 manually REMOVED by the League Manager.

One thing I like about the Discord bot is that it does record activity for all to see.  But the Football Manager 2025 thing leaves me wondering what will happen with Wonder Woman, which now has the following warning with it:

There are very credible reports that this game has been delayed and therefore will not release this year. The game is still counted as a “will release” game for drop purposes, but it cannot be counter picked, just like a “will not release” game cannot be counter picked

For now I won’t do anything… I don’t like to use the manager powers to change things.  But we will have to see how it plays out.  I might have to remove the counter pick since it says it can now not be counter picked.  We’ll see.

Finally, I had to act in my role as league manager again due to a trade that was offered, which surprised me.

During the week a trade was proposed.  This was exciting because it was something new!

• The following trade has been PROPOSED
  • Trade Details
    • Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta) will receive: Dave the Diver – In the Jungle
    • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn) will receive: $4 of budget
  • Message from Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta):
    • Greetings, fellow Publisher! Let us find profit together.
      This trade proposition has two purposes:
      I would indeed like that game, and you are almost out of money.
      Let everyone see how trades work.

Four bucks seems a bit cheap for a sequel for a critical success, but there is always a risk in sequels… also, it doesn’t have a ship date set yet.  But the trade was accepted, so there we go.

• The following trade has been ACCEPTED
  • Trade Details
    • Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta) will receive: Dave the Diver – In the Jungle
    • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn) will receive: $4 of budget

Great!  Trade success.

But then I went to look at the league this morning as I wrote this and there was still a banner about a trade proposal in progress.  Apparently trades don’t just happen but need approval and people in the league can for for or against the. (Bhagpuss, the only voter, voted in favor.)

However, the votes are just endorsements or suggestions, the final approval lays with the league manager.

It is all up to you league manager!

Trying to be the laissez-faire league manager, I clicked the “execute trade” button and it was done.  So that happened at last.

• Trade Update
• The following trade has been EXECUTED
  • Trade Details
    • Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta) will receive: Dave the Diver – In the Jungle
    • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn) will receive: $4 of budget

Anyway, we left off after week five with the following scores.

The standings for Week 5

Over the course of the week we had some news on release dates from the league.

• The Alters [Picked by Pretty Blue Fox Games (Bhagpuss)]
  • Estimated release date changed from ‘Q1 2025’ to ‘2025’.
• Elden Ring Nightreign [Picked by Slightly Scuffed Studios (Kluwes)]
  • Release date changed from ‘2025’ to ‘Friday, May 30, 2025’.
• Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater [Picked by Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)]
  • Release date changed from ‘2025’ to ‘Thursday, August 28, 2025’.
• Borderlands 4 [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Release date changed from ‘2025’ to ‘Tuesday, September 23, 2025’.

Changes that go from less specific to more specific tend to be good… those that go the other way… not so much.

There were also some updates to scoring, including an early score for a title releases this coming week.

• Rift of the NecroDancer [Picked by Slightly Scuffed Studios (Kluwes)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 81.7 to 80.6
• Avowed [Picked by Frabjous Day Enterprises (Archey)]

Along with that, Civilization VII, which went into “advanced access” the week before, released for real this past week, which meant its score of 82 went on the board.  The score remains pretty good considering that the player reviews remain mixed, with only 51% recommending the game, at least in its current state.  There was even a protest setup to play older versions of the game.  SteamDB had more people playing Civ V and Civ VI than Civ VII during the protest.

The protest in action

Civ VII still remains shy of the all-time peaks set by Civ VI and Civ V, no doubt due to the controversial state of the game and the very aggressive DLC plan.

Anyway, all of that led to the scores looking like this at the end of week six.

The standings for Week 6

Having two scoring titles on the board vaulted me up to… third place.  And I am still projected to fall into 9th position in the end.  We shall see.

We did have three bids this week, two for picks and one for a counter pick.

• Ultimate Sheep Raccoon
  • Won by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm) with a bid of $1
• Dune: Awakening
  • Won by Slightly Scuffed Studios (Kluwes) with a bid of $3 (🎯 Counter Pick)
• Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter
  • Won by Slightly Scuffed Studios (Kluwes) with a bid of $10

I figure Ultimate Sheep Raccoon is going to be the Untitled Goose Game of 2025 and get me to first place or something.

Finally, we have a couple more titles set to launch in week seven.

Coming up for week 7

Avowed, as noted above, already has reviews and was available on XBox game pass early, while Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will test my theory that any game with “Hawaii,” “Dragon,” “pirate,” and “Yakuza” in the title has to be a winner.

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