The first rule of headline writing is that if you can make a rhyme then you should run with it. So here we are in week four where had not just one score, but three titles with scores, setting the season in motion.
Fantasy Critic League – Like Fantasy Football, but for Video Games
We were off to the races on Monday when enough reviews had already come in for the first title of the season.
- Mio: Memories in Orbit
- [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
- Now has a score of 79.2
That actually led to a message from Ula asking about dropping games that have a score already. I guess she wasn’t thrilled with kicking off with a score under 80.
Mio: Memories in Orbit
However, while I could set up a league where you could drop titles with scores… the rules have a lot of options and you can make a league that is a lot different than we have now… that is not an option for us. In the TAGN league once it has a score it is yours to keep.
And that wasn’t an awful score. The average score for last year was just shy of 82.
So the game released when the day rolled over to Tuesday and the first big shuffle of the rankings hit.
- Publisher Score Updates
- Anthania Interactive (Ula)
- Score has gone UP from 0 to 9.6
- Moved from 12th place to 1st place
- Anthania Interactive (Ula)
The Discord bot actually riffled through the entire list, but since everybody else still had no points, I decided that was a lot of noise for a very specific piece of information.
After that a host of additional reviews came in which pushed the score for Mio up some.
- Mio: Memories in Orbit
- [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
- Score has gone UP from 80.0 to 81.1
- Mio: Memories in Orbit
- [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
- Score has gone UP from 80.4 to 81.6
- Mio: Memories in Orbit
- [Picked by Anthania Interactive (Ula)]
- Score has gone UP from 81.9 to 83.0
That pushed Ula up to a score of 13 before another title launched.
However, it wasn’t long before we got a second score as reviews were already starting to come in for Arknights: Endfield.
Arknights: Endfield
That also started out as a fairly “mid” score.
- Arknights: Endfield
- [Picked by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)]
- Now has a score of 80
Again, kind of in the mid zone where scores land when there isn’t a reviewer consensus on a title. That too got some updates as we approached the release date.
- Arknights: Endfield
- [Picked by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)]
- Score has gone UP from 80.0 to 81.2
- Arknights: Endfield
- [Picked by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)]
- Score has gone DOWN from 81.2 to 79.6
Come Thursday morning we had two more titles hit their release date,
- Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven has released!
- Arknights: Endfield has released!
That gave us another update to the scoreboard, pushing Nimgimli into second place.
- Publisher Score Updates
- Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)
- Score has gone UP from 0 to 9.6
- Moved from 10th place to 2nd place
- Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)
However, the second title, Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven, had no score yet.
Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven
There was not even a review listed, making me wonder if it was going to succumb to the sheep curse. Last year, the one title that shipped but did not get a score… and still does not have enough reviews for a score… was Ultimate Sheep Raccoon. Wool. Sheep. It is all coming together!
But Woolhaven launched on every console as well as PC, so reviews eventually started to show up. There was no curse, and in fact it kicked off very well.
- Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven
- [Picked by Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)]
- Now has a score of 89.3
That, of course, stirred up the rankings, such that they are at this point in the year.
- Publisher Score Updates
- Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
- Score has gone UP from 0 to 19.3
- Moved from 9th place to 1st place
- Anthania Interactive (Ula)
- Moved from 1st place to 2nd place
- Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)
- Moved from 2nd place to 3rd place
- Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
However, while that score is pretty good… it is based on just FOUR reviews as of my writing this. I expect that we will see fluctuation in that score next week.
All of which left us with this scoreboard at the end of week four.
Week 4 Scores
Not only did Shintar pop up into first place, but the strength of her one live pick was enough for the league to decide that she is destined for first place.
Then there were bids. We had more bids this week.
Week 4 Bids
When everything was resolved last night, these were the results.
- Drops in TAGN League
- TAGN HQ (Wilhelm): Highguard (Drop Successful)
I actually looked up Highguard last week and… the previews were not great. I am kind of surprised nobody counter picked it. But I put it on the drop list and away it went. It launches this week, so I’ll soon know if that was a mistake or not.
- Bids in TAGN League
- Mariachi Legends
Won by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm) with a bid of $1 - Enter the Gungeon 2
- Won by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli) with a bid of $1
- Unannounced Witcher 3 DLC
- Won by Anthania Interactive (Ula) with a bid of $11
- Esoteric Ebb
- Won by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm) with a bid of $1
- Beast of Reincarnation
- Won by Anthania Interactive (Ula) with a bid of $26
- Corr’s Creative Collective (Corr)’s bid of $11 did not succeed: Publisher was outbid.
- Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)’s bid of $8 did not succeed: Publisher was outbid.
- Won by Anthania Interactive (Ula) with a bid of $26
- High on Life 2
- Won by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli) with a bid of $1
- Planet of Lana II – Children of the Leaf
- Won by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli) with a bid of $2
- Pokémon Generation 10 (Unannounced)
- Won by Anthania Interactive (Ula) with a bid of $1
- Unannounced Mainline Half-Life Game
- Won by Green River Gaming (Nimgimli) with a bid of $2 (🎯 Counter Pick)
- Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II
- Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)’s bid of $2 did not succeed: No roster spots available.
- Ananta
- Green River Gaming (Nimgimli)’s bid of $1 did not succeed: No roster spots available.
- Mariachi Legends
Nimgimli had a total of seven bids in play this week and won four, got in the counter pick against Half Life 3, which seems like a safe bet here in January, and had two fail as there was no space left on their roster. But, you never know when you’re going to be out bid.
Ula was in on three bids, included the contested bid over Beast of Reincarnation, where she threw in $26 of her budget to secure the win.
And then I got in there with two uncontested one dollar bids.
Then, with coming titles, we got a few updates:
- Marathon
- [Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)]
- Release date changed from ‘March 2026’ to ‘Thursday, March 05, 2026’.
- Fable
- [Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)]
- Estimated release date changed from ‘2026’ to ‘Fall 2026’.
- Forza Horizon 6
- [Picked by TAGN HQ (Wilhelm)]
- Release date changed from ‘2026’ to ‘Tuesday, May 19, 2026’.
Marathon got a hard date, Fable got a season (though they’ll need more than that to convince some), and Forza Horizon 6 confirmed on Thursday the date that leaked last week. It is up for pre-order on Steam and XBox now.
We also got something about Prince of Persia… that set a date as well… if “never” is a date.
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake
- [Picked by Hidalgo Trading Company (Pallais)]
- Estimated release date changed from ‘By March 2026’ to ‘Cancelled’.
- Tags changed from Remake to Cancelled, Remake.
Ubisoft is being Ubisoft and following the industry trend of cancellations and delays because they don’t want to pay anybody to do the work.
You cannot grab it as a counter pick either. Cancelled items are out of bounds unless you picked them before they were cancelled. So Pallais has a title to drop and a new slot on their roster to fill.
All of that left the coming up list looking like this:
Coming Up for Week 5
With Highguard out of the running, that leaves us two releases next week, with both Shintar and Nimgimli looking to get their second titles on the board. We will have to wait until week six to get anybody new with a score on the board, but then week seven, Valentine’s week, will see seven titles launch, which should shake things up a bit.
And there are still 48 weeks left to go from here.
Related:
The Ancient Gaming Noob 