My take echoes this. If one puts any stock in streamer recommendations, Baalorlord who has at various times held spire world record winstreaks, has recently cited Monster Train as his current favorite spirelike (other than spire itself), and also cited Griftlands as a playthrough a highlight.

Baalor probably doesn’t have an opinion on Inscryption as he tends to avoid things with even a slight horror theme. I enjoyed what I played of Inscryption a lot, but very little about playing it evoked the vibe of playing spire. Monster Train is quite adjacent though, the mechanics are different enough to feel fresh but it slots into the same gameplay mood for me whereas Inscryption is just a different (and still very good) thing.

Neither has the tight balance of Spire or feels quite as deep strategically to me (though in all honesty I’m probably not a strong enough player to be trusted in this regard), but both are fun.

I haven’t been playing any quake recently, but am glad to learn about the championship from this post… thanks for making it.

Any advice on where to catch up on the scene and who the favorites and rivalries are? Or are the commentators doing a good job setting context to for noobs like me?

I think this is the context I was missing. I haven’t followed hardware developments closely enough to know that the 4060 series had a history of poor price/performance, or to extrapolate that to the likely implications here. Thanks for catching me up.

Is there a deeper meaning behind this? Is it likely to imply that stock is low/late? Or do manufacturers sometimes scuttle review programs when the card underperforms expectations? Does anyone have a sense of how unusual this is and what it’s likely to mean? The article does a good job reporting the facts, but doesn’t offer much analysis of them.

Tooth and Tail works well on a controller. It’s a simplified RTS and may or may not tickle your fancy, but it will play well. See some competitive play at https://youtu.be/CMGaSlUOX-0