In the tournament before last, I made the unfortunate social gaffe of picking Mini-T for one match, and man did I feel bad when I found out that that was going against all our pop-pop traditions (in my defense, it was my first tournament...). Then yesterday I was a little surprised when Cougar picked Mini-T for a match against me (he beat me good, too!).
Well I think it's time to remove this stigma surrounding our poor neglected purple friend! In the tournament yesterday, every single person I played used bombs; that gets kind of boring! Does anyone else think it would be fun to develop more nuanced styles of play?
Of course, there's also the question of politeness: Lumisa graciously thanked SHOES for not picking a pop he knew she didn't like. But on the other hand, those of us not blessed with SHOES' phenomenal skills sometimes need all the help we can get! And the fun of games is, we can feel free to compete seriously and even bitterly to win, while still not caring tremendously about the outcome: cause really there isn't much consequence to winning or losing in pop-pop (Cave Dig excepted, of course!). Texas Girl found out that I stink against a well-used Ducky, so how can I object if she then chooses to use him against me?! All I can do is practice, and try and figure out what I'm doing wrong.
I remember that in the early days of pop-pop the biggest complaint was about bomb spammers; now we're all bomb spammers, but the difference is that we've largely learned to cope with bombs, and only the largest attacks in conjunction with all sorts of other misfortune can have any effect. If we played against Mini-T for just a bit I think the same would come to be true of his wind.
Of course, I won't unilaterally start using Mini-T against people; that would be rude! But I welcome anyone (alright, not anyone... but most folks ;)) to use him against me; and then I'll do likewise. And then, only then, will all the pops be truly equal!
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