@Admin - is thread pinning a thing here?
Thanks to the following users for contributing to the original thread:
OldSchoolRPGs IvanLR l-o-o-o-o-l Fellhuhn SonyCedar Rhinoar passthepass2 bob101910 mjselvig SidFishGames ACalmGorilla Xyrd pinkythereddog masterdude Dravvhen ijoshea Red_Gyarados88 flyingcloud11 Hugmesoftly MysticalKittyHerder Kinghtmare_2002 poopskins Yumeito vtrickzv Ceona puuhs_mama RowThree MrKupka ferallknight2 ZoopaJr SepticGnome DashieKin BreakingInReverse CageBearsBottoms Skypeh DarkBlueMullet UndeadAura Skooller mynery Neeyt stony419 Deurstopper kecup10 drowsy_damad kagrenzel27
Special thanks to Yumeito for instructions on how to make any game run in portrait mode.

User descriptions are favoured over the author's descriptions from the app store (only games which didn't leave their description have a copy-paste of the description from the app store).

THE LIST (alphabetical):

10000000 - A Dungeon Crawling Puzzle RPG Matching Game. Run the dungeon, match tiles and run for as long as you can
Achikaps - A simple economic strategy
AFK Arena - Sit back and relax in a beautiful world full of epic tales, exciting adventures and an abundance of rewards. Rediscover the fun of mobile gaming again!
Alluris - It's basically Choose Your Own Adventure with good graphics and a ton of content/unlockables. Paid offline with a demo.
Almost a Hero - Is this idle RPG clicker game Almost A Hero actually any good? (LAUGH) Do chickens fly south in the winter? Of course it is. We have stacks of flawed and slightly brave characters for you to evolve and train. Epic battles where you can get killed as many times as you wish. Beguiling magic to be leaned. Dark secrets to uncover. Lurking evil to be defeated. Look, we’re not going to lie to you, only losers and oddballs fit into our family. A blindfolded archer, a shape shifter who never gets it right, an explosives expert who’s blown himself up more times than he can remember. They’re all here. So if you don’t think you’ve got what it takes to be a hero - this is the game for you! Almost A Hero! There’s never a dull moment with these nutters! They put the ‘ooh’ in kooky!
Antiyoy - excellent strategic & conquest game, completely free, updates with user content, just great !
Arena Allstars - A turn-based strategy game where you compete with up to seven opponents in an epic real-time battle. If you are looking for a quick matchup, choose Team Co-Op Mode and take down your opponents in less than 10 minutes. Draft your team, execute top-level strategies and strive to be the last person standing! Compete in the monthly tournaments to earn rewards and ascend the ranks in Arena Allstars.
Bleentoro - A simple logic game. It has no advertisements or microtransactions. Features: Easy to learn, Campaign and sandbox modes, Simple UI, Smooth animations
Buriedbornes - Great turn based old-school RPG where you proceed through a dungeon generally with 100 or more floors. You choose your path between left and right and can face monsters, or get new equipment/skills and experience different events with curses or boons. Many character classes to choose from if you spend a decent amount of time playing and unlocking them. A large part of the game is deciding which equipment or skills to take when looting to replace what you currently have, with some pretty crazy abilities on both.
Cado - Rotate the world to fall to the goal in an infinite amount of random generated levels. Find and collect fun and crazy gamemodes and try them out in the extras menu. But don´t touch these red obstacles or you will die a slow and painful death and burn in hell for eternity (and respawn after that). Maybe.
Card Crawl - A solitaire-style dungeon crawler game played with a modified deck of standard cards. Clear the dungeon of 54 cards by using item-cards, slaying monsters and managing your limited inventory. On each run, you can use five ability-cards (mini deck building) to gain unique skills. By collecting gold, you can unlock 35 more ability-cards to access new tactics and even higher scores.
Card Thief - Move through a deck of cards as a stealthy thief. Sneak in the shadows, extinguish torches, pickpocket guards and steal valuable treasures without getting caught. In your thief hideout you can use your stolen goods to unlock powerful equipment cards. Each heist you can use 3 equipment cards to become a skillful master thief.
Cards Keeper - Challenge yourself in a brand new adventure to become the ultimate Keeper of Cards! Write your own legend playing by different characters with unique skills. Fight against dangerous monsters and mystical bosses, upgrade Heroes equipment, power up abilities, find rare artifacts and complete quests. Be sure, there're more indescribable mysteries waiting to be found...
Chessplode - Chessplode is modern chess for everyone, it makes chess fun even if you're bad ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, one simply move... can change all game.
Clash Royale - Enter the Arena! From the creators of Clash of Clans comes a real-time multiplayer game starring the Royales, your favorite Clash characters and much, much more. Collect and upgrade dozens of cards featuring the Clash of Clans troops, spells and defenses you know and love, as well as the Royales: Princes, Knights, Baby Dragons and more. Knock the enemy King and Princesses from their towers to defeat your opponents and win Trophies, Crowns and glory in the Arena. Form a Clan to share cards and build your very own battle community.
CLICK-POCALYPSE II - CLICKPOCALYPSE II is an incremental/idle RPG. Create a party to bravely explore terrible dungeons and mercilessly exterminate every monster in the world. Find items, go up levels, learn spells, upgrade abilities, and earn achievements.
Clicker Heroes - The massive hit game from Steam and PC browsers comes to mobile with new features! Clicker Heroes is the idle RPG that started the subgenre! Embark on your quest and begin a simple, yet incredibly fun adventure. Tap to attack monsters, hire and level up heroes to unlock their unique abilities. Slay monsters for gold, find treasure, and explore new worlds.
Cookie Clicker - The original idle game where you bake cookies to rule the universe! This is the official Cookie Clicker app by Orteil & Opti. Accept no substitutes!
Cryptogram - Decipher the hidden text to reveal the motivational quote! Can you figure out the pattern in each puzzle? You'll be rewarded with a thoughtful message by one of hundreds of different poets, preachers and prophets!
Deep Town: Mining Factory - DIG DEEP and uncover the hidden story behind Deep Town and along the way dig deeper and build higher to produce more resources! 🔨🔧⛏
Destiny Child RPG - about collecting girls and create the best decks to fight in ragna raids, worldboss, pve or pvp.
Digfender - Beneath your castle an enemy lies waiting. Grab your shovel and prepare your defenses!
DOKU - Minimal Material Sudoku - A Sudoku Puzzle app for clean and casual gameplay. Master the classic puzzle game in the comfort of Android's native Material Design language.
Doodle Jump - Journey up a sheet of graph paper, perpetually jumping from one platform to the next, picking up jet packs, avoiding black holes, and blasting baddies with nose balls along the way. Laugh with delight as you blow past other players' actual score markers scribbled in the margins. And be warned: this game is insanely addictive!
Downwell - Its retro art style is really nice to look at, and the gameplay keeps you coming back. Definitely worth the 3 bucks. It's also available on the Switch for the same price too.
Dragalia Lost - The only gacha I'll even consider playing at this point. Even with their generosity I still debate playing because of the addictive nature of gachas. I play very casually now. But this is the best gacha, bar none. And it's portrait when 99% of the rest are landscape.
Dragon Ball Legends - Get ready for the all-new Dragon Ball smartphone game that fans around the world have been waiting for! Battle it out in high quality 3D stages with character voicing! Enjoy 1 on 1 action against rival players from across the globe!
Dragon Quest V1 - V2 - V3 - V4 - V5 - V6 - V8 - The game that started the legend of DRAGON QUEST is here at last for mobile devices! Discover the RPG that won the hearts of two generations! Enter a fantasy world of sword, magic, and monsters in one standalone package!
Enframe - portrait puzzle game (shameless self plug as I am the developer)
Farm Punks - Grow hilarious fruit and shoot them down a mountain with your giant cannon! How far can you roll? Take control of each fruit as it rolls down the mountain and try and earn as much cash as you can before it turns to mulch!
Feud - Feud is a turn-based strategy game made by some guys you haven't heard of yet. Originally a board game designed by Dave Cordell, it's been polished and tweaked and generally mucked about with to bring it to the glowing screen you're reading this description on. Unless you printed it out? Think of the trees. Please.
Fire Emblem Heroes - Nintendo's hit strategy-RPG Fire Emblem series, which has been going strong for more than 25 years, continues its journey on smart devices. Fight battles customized for touch screens and on-the-go play. Summon characters from across the Fire Emblem universe. Develop your Heroes' skills, and take them to new heights. This is your adventure—a Fire Emblem that's like nothing you've seen before!
Galaxy Warrior: Alien Attack - Guide your spaceship through the vastness of space destroying menacing aliens and powerful bosses. It would seem that there is nothing to discover in the Solar System. But in the most remote corners of the Universe mankind has come up against cruel resistance. You are the only one who can save the galaxy from an alien race of invaders!
Golf Blitz - Great PVP golf game made by the same guys who made Super Stickman Golf 3. Though I wish they'd release a 4th installment, this is a good alternative.
Hidden Folks - Search for hidden folks in hand-drawn, interactive, miniature landscapes. Unfurl tent flaps, cut through bushes, slam doors, and poke some crocodiles! Rooooaaaarrrr!!!!! A strip of targets shows you what to look for. Tap a target for a hint, and find enough to unlock the next area.
Holedown - Dig deep underground by shooting balls and breaking blocks, traversing your way to the planet cores. With limited shots per round and some blocks fixed firmly to the wall, thoughtfully strategize and aim for maximum impact. Knock down as many blocks as possible while collecting crystals for upgrades and getting deeper beneath the surface.
Hoplite - A turn-based strategy game focusing on tactical movement around small maps. Enjoyable if you like roguelikes that require tactical movement and almost puzzle-like combat. Upgrade your abilities or stats as you progress through each floor.
Hyper Heroes - TAP, SWIPE & SLING your heroes to send them smashing towards hordes of monsters, unleashing explosive power on impact and looting epic treasures!
Just Change Color - it's arcade title, every level takes less than minute to complete (but may depend on skill and level of character you play with). It was designed to kill few minutes on bus, toilet, in bed and similar situations
Kittens Game - Kittens Game is a village simulation text game. You manage a village of kittens as they acquire resources and unlock new technologies. Over 30 different buildings, 50+ resources, hundreds of technologies and upgrades. No ads or micro-transactions!
Lichess - Chess. Nice turn based game where you can select the speed of games and also have the option for correspondence play/asynchronous play. I also just enjoy trying to solve the puzzles built into the app as they really get you thinking. There's also plenty of stuff in game to help learn in the Study section and being able to analyze your games/openings.
Magic The Gathering Puzzle Quest - Magic: The Gathering and the original Match 3 RPG are re-imagined in Magic: The Gathering – Puzzle Quest, an epic deck building, strategy and deep leveling role playing game!
Mario Kart - Mario and friends go global in this new Mario Kart as they race around courses inspired by real-world cities in addition to classic Mario Kart courses! These destinations will be featured in tours that rotate every two weeks! In addition to courses based on iconic locales, some of your favorite Mario Kart characters will get variations that incorporate the local flavor of cities featured in the game!
Meteorfall: Journeys - Extremely polished card-based roguelike. Classes are each fairly unique, and each run feels great.
Mighty Heroes - It's nice to have a card game that can be played in portrait mode. I just grabbed this off the play store myself so I'm not sure how balanced or nuanced the play is yet but I've enjoyed the 2-3 hours I've put into it so far. If you play you'll get serious Hearthstone vibes, but the combat is a bit different as your monsters only attack straight ahead, and don't generally take damage when they attack.
Miracle Merchant - In Miracle Merchant you become the apprentice of a master alchemist who creates potions for thirsty customers. By mixing and combining different ingredient cards you create powerful potions based on the needs of your customers.
Night of the Full Moon - A stand-alone card game. There is no mandatory beginners guide, no internet connection, no brush map, no ten strokes. The plot will be played in the card battle. Each NPC and BOSS are given a mission and a temperament. Different choices will bring different endings.
NYTimes Crossword - Solve and enjoy the same puzzles printed in the daily newspaper in this app built by The New York Times.
OK Golf - NEW COURSE! - Llyncapel Ruins, Wales. It's not real golf, but it's OK! OK Golf is the essence of golf, refined to a tee. Play a quick round anywhere, anytime on stylish dioramas inspired by classic golfing destinations. Easy to play, hard to put down, perfect for all ages and handicaps!
Onitama - Immerse yourself in an ancient Japanese setting and discover Onitama, an exciting, fast-paced strategy game! Onitama is somewhat reminiscent of chess and rather addictive with its dynamic game mechanic in which warriors face off so their master may win the game. Concentration and luck are the only weapons you'll have at your disposal! You'll need to fully master mind and body to defeat your opponents.
Ordia - A one-finger platformer where you play as a new life form taking its first leaps into a strange and hazardous world.
Piczle Lines DX - The follow-up to the highly praised prequel Piczle Lines DX offers hours of addictive, mind-bending logic-puzzle fun! Create pictures (PICture puzZLE) by connecting the right dots. With an ever-expanding puzzle mode, as well as a gripping story mode Piczle Lines DX will keep you entertained for hours and hours!
Ping Pong King - "I'm Ping Pong King" is a very fun and exciting table tennis game. The goal of this game is to beat 16 rivals and win the crown; these funny stickmen can be world’s best champion, your boss or super grandma. It’s an easy finger-tapping game, simply tap right or left of the screen to control your stickman. Be careful not to miss any ball, or you'll fail this contest!
Pizza Boy GBA Pro - **This is Game Boy Advance emulator.... NOT a Game Boy Classic/Color emulator!** The finest emulator of Nintendo Game Boy Advance is here!
Pocket City - Build your own city as mayor. Create residential, commercial, and industrial zones. Build parks and recreation spots. Respond to crime and disasters. Watch your city come alive! This is the FREE version of Pocket City. The full version contains more features, including a sandbox mode where everything is unlocked! Get the full version for the best experience!
The Battle of Polytopia - An Epic Civilization War - The Battle of Polytopia has begun. Lead your civilization into war in this low poly turn-based strategy game. Adventure into this world of blocks: explore, gather resources, farm, mine ore... Build an empire of epic proportions, train your warriors and send them to fight with armies of other civilizations. A new take on the classic strategy 4X game with beautiful low poly art.
Puzzle & Dragons - A gacha based puzzle game, where you build your team of monsters and try to overcome enemies with different abilities in dungeons. There's quite a lot of depth to the game but it can get super grindy if you are trying to keep up with the collaborations and events in game. Think bejeweled but where you can make multiple matches of 3 or more gems in one turn. Each of your monsters has one or more special abilities that can be used, and you have one "leader" with passive abilities and a friend's monster you can bring along that also provides a leader ability. I still come back to this but when I was first into it I couldn't put it down for the longest time until I burned out. It's nice that there is a coop mode as well.
Really Bad Chess - Really Bad Chess is just like chess, but with totally random pieces. Try 8 Knights, 4 Bishops, and 3 pawns — why not?
Reigns - Sit on the throne as a benevolent (or malevolent) medieval monarch of the modern age and swipe your royal fingers either left or right to impose your will upon the kingdom. Survive the seemingly never-ending gauntlet of requests from your advisors, peasants, allies, and enemies while maintaining balance between the influential factions of your kingdom. But beware; each decision you make might have implications and unfortunate consequences down the road that could put your reign and family’s dynasty at risk!
Rising Empires 2 - 4X fantasy strategy - Rising Empires 2 is an epic 4X turn-based strategy game in a fantasy setting, where six races strive to build the strongest civilization and lay claim to all the land on the Surface and in the Netherworld.
Rogue adventure - Rogue Adventure is an incredible fusion of turn-based deckbuilder card game, rpg and roguelike, with an old style game pixel graphic. Discover different worlds, each with unique enemies and dangers, defeat all the bosses to become a hero. Find hundreds of different cards and powerful skills to create your perfect deck. Unlock new classes to try different strategies and have unlimited fun. Each run is unique, choose your path, find enemies, elites, bosses, merchants and treasures, and build your perfect strategy.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon - Best roguelike on the phone IMO and one of my favorites. Been playing since '15.
ShooMachi - Is It Wrong to Try to Strike a Bonanza by a Shoot 'em up game? Retro JRPG style Bullet hell Shoot'em up game ShooMachi
Shop Titans: Epic Idle Crafter, Build & Trade RPG - YOU are the new craftsman in town. Help the heroes in epic battles against fearsome monsters that lurk in the dungeons. Personalize and design your store, build epic armor, swords and gear for the heroes to defend your village. Team up with blacksmiths, tailors, priestesses, carpenters and herbalists to make your business prosper. Trade, sell or auction your products to the highest bidders from other shops. Sell your goods to warriors and even add a surcharge!
Siege: Titan Wars - Similar to Clash Royale but much faster based and rather unique as well. I dropped most of my other games besides this one and COD.
Skyforce Reloaded - The spirit of the retro arcade shoot‘em ups, captured with modern visuals and design. New entry in the series will keep you entertained with all the things you’ve came to love in scrolling shooters. Meaty explosions, incinerating lasers, collosal bosses and diverse aircrafts to pilot.
Star Traders RPG - Play this free RPG before you upgrade to Elite and enjoy hours of turn-based strategy for free! The Trese Brothers never run ads in our games -- enjoy an ad free, permission free experience! Command your officers and crew from the bridge of your star ship to travel, trade, and battle across the immense Star Traders Quadrant. Employ a wide variety of strategies as an Assassin, Bounty Hunter, Trader, Pirate or Smuggler. Can you manage your resources, crew and officers well enough to turn a profit in the complex economy that’s sprawling across the on-going interstellar conflict?
Sudoku - The Clean One - Basic Sudoku game. Don't play it all that much anymore, but it was the best of the bunch when I did.
Super Fowlst - Great little roguelike that can get quite intense. I usually play more chill games but this one scratches that Action-game itch when I get it.
Tap Healer - Healing Touch - A great game that gives you the feeling of playing a healer in an MMO. You'll have npc allies that will tick damage on the enemy as you use your different abilities/talents to keep them alive. If you enjoy playing as a healer in RPGs this game is worth checking out, there's not really a story but as you progress you can actually see what it's like to play a healer in small dungeons or eventually large raids.
Tap Titans - The world has been overrun by terrible monsters and titans - It needs a hero to bring peace to the land, and that hero is you! As our leader, you must grab your blade and vanquish the terror. With the help of other warriors you can summon along the way, collect artifacts to make yourself stronger and destroy the dark forces to bring peace to the land.
Tap Titans 2 - The battle continues! Grab your sword and gather your heroes to battle mighty Titans in more than 70,000 levels. Enter tournaments, collect pets and become the ultimate sword master. An immersive Idle clicker RPG experience for all. The Titans are back, so join the adventure and tap tap tap to victory!
The Greedy Cave - In a land far, far away there once was a vast continent called Milton. It was a land where the power of rule came by the sword and the arcane, where Men who devoted themselves to the blade or to magecraft, could become the finest warriors, wisest wizards or the greatest adventurers. In this land, there are several kingdoms divided by borders but united through history. Countless stories of alliances, upheaval, and moments of peace bedeck this tapestry, but that is a tale for another day.
The Quarry - Great resource management game. Where you mine and transport resources to build and mine more. Just like factorio!
The Sequence 1 - A unique puzzle game. Build a sequence using special modules to transfer binary cell. Find solutions to solve 72 levels with simple and complex structure. Are you ready for a challenge?
The Sequence 2 - This is the next chapter of successful puzzle game [the Sequence]. It features new modules and introduces new game mechanics. Create moving sequences to bring "Binary Unit" to the destination point. Many levels could be solved in different ways, which allows to improve one's results and get into a higher position in leaderboard. Think out of the box to get to the next level! Create unique mind-blowing sequences!
Tower Fortress - A mysterious tower has risen! It emits plumes of noxious green smoke from its summit making people sick. Strange creatures infest the tower but if nobody tries to ascend it we will all be doomed! Are you that hero?.....
Triple Town - An original puzzle game in which you try to grow the greatest possible city. The larger the city you build, the more points you score. You build your city by matching three or more game-pieces: combine three grasses to make a bush, three bushes to make a tree... until you've filled the board with houses, cathedrals and castles. Along the way, you'll have to outwit giant bears who will try to block your progress.
Troll Patrol (Early Access) - A puzzle game which combines the tile-matching and RPG genres by offering a unique experience: Play as the last defender of the threatened troll den where vicious village people and heroes from far away castles and kingdoms knock down your door. Stand firm, take whatever weapon is close and fight them off to get your family and friends to safety. Protect what is rightfully yours, your home, your heritage. They come for blood, for revenge, to still their blood thirst. But you won't allow it.
Trueskate - The ultimate skateboarding sim.
Twinfold - Twinfold delves into the duplicity of duplication. A roguelike about merging golden idols and squashing angry faces. Manipulate a labyrinthine tableau with the swipe of a finger. Merge and munch on golden idols level up and gain game-changing abilities.
Ulala Idle Adventure - Whether you’re sleeping, eating, or taking the subway - come play Ulala: Idle Adventure! Ulala is an idle MMORPG, which brings to life the excitement and adventures of the Stone Age in a fun and social way!
Void Tyrant - Build a deck as you battle across the galaxy, gathering powerful cards along the way. With strategy and a bit of luck, you might be able to reclaim the Eyes of Chronos. A single-player adventure, play with 500+ cards and three unique classes to engineer a custom deck to your own design. Rooted in the simple hit-or-stand mechanics of blackjack, Void Tyrant is an easy to understand roguelike with engrossing depth. Battle quirky aliens, disarm traps, upgrade your spaceport, and face off with the sinister Wruut.
Ware Wolf Online - Defend your village from the forces of evil or become a werewolf and hunt your friends! Join the mystery game, fight for your team and find the liars among your ranks. Werewolf Online is a multiplayer game for up to 16 players. Each game has different teams such as villagers or werewolves all fighting to be the last team standing. Use special abilities to uncover the roles of other players and convince your fellow players to work with you.
You Must Build a Boat - Travel the world in your boat, from the top of the Mage Tower to the bottom of Hell

Hey guys, it's SuraF and today I'll be sharing the Control Citron deck I've been using with great success over the current and last season, as well as presenting an in-depth guide on its pros and cons and how to play it.

Contents:

• Why Play Citron
• Deck & Explanations
• Replacable Cards
• Mulligan
• Sample Mulligans
• Gameplay

Why Play Citron?

Because it's not Cancer Flare, A Heal Deck, Pineclone, or Clique Peas
The biggest reason is Citron's two classes, Smarty and Guardian. I strongly believe that these two classes are the best plant classes at the moment due to there versatility as well as their access to amazing cards. These include:

• Strong Early, Mid and Late Game cards
• Cheap, Excellent Environments
• Anti-Meta Cards such as Brainana, Cool Beans, Galacta-Cactus, Doom-Shroom

Smarty and Guardian also have some of the best cards the game at the moment, and they are all very "independent". Between the two classes, there is almost no zombie decks that has a clear advantage over well-build citron deck.

Why not Beta-Carrotina?

The difference between Beta-Carrotina and Citron is the superpowers, and I consistently find that Citron's superpowers are better, Invulnerable is such a strong ability and can fuck with deadly as well as crazy direct damage AND bonus attacks. Carrotina's super powers are fun but they are unreliable. Conjuring takes up the bigger portion of three powers, while the last super-power is kinda weird. Going to quote GiantShyGuy from his(her?) post

Carrotina finds herself being less about living through the early game and more so trying to win by the early and mid game.

Also on a standalone, I find that citron's superpowers are just better. Nut signal is Card Draw (Not Conjuring), Transmogrify is insane after the buff, Root Wall is decent and Peel Shield can win you the game by itself.
Also Control Citron "feels" like it as endless potential, whenever you lose, you almost always know that you misplayed somewhere, and you feel like you can get better instead of being salty about a bad draw.

Deck & Explanations

Decklist: http://imgur.com/bVan7Jd

Card Explanations

*Note: I don't recommend you reading all of this, you should just look at the ones that you have questions about.8

• Galacta-Cactus: Staple card for guardian class. Insanely helpful at clearing out imp rush decks as well as exerting heavy pressure on the zombie hero due to it's bulls-eye ability, and can also trade up to Arm Wrestler on turn 1. Also GC is on of the only AoE's in the game, which is MASSIVELY helpful when helping our midrange minions clear the board of stronger ones. You can easily combo two together to wipe out 2 health minions. It's effect may have a little repercussions since it can blow up your own Spyris.
  
• Spyris: Spyris isn't just a card that can peek under graves, its also a handy counter to Toxic Waste Imp and Octo-Pet, especially since guardian and smarty doesn't have direct removal to TWI. Later on its also a pretty hand way to isolate and track the Pogo Bouncers after MuG so that you can Spikeweed them.
  
• Planet of the Grapes: Honestly I have this just because I love its combo potential with Sportacus and Galacta-Cactus. It's still a good card for cycling but mostly it's used to win environment wars as well as trigger leaf blowers ability.
  
• Sow Magic Beans: Buffs to this card (it now draws a card), makes it insanely strong. It is (or was) a good response to T2 Medulla Nebulla. It gives the deck is strong turn 2 play which both Guardian and Smarty lacks. Later on the 4/4 minions are great for trading the board or pressuring the opponent. Pro Tip: Always use Sow Magic Beans on the Zombie Hero's Face
  
• Spikeweed Sector: Amazing card, it does so much for you, it can allow your Zucchini to hit face, lets you facecheck gravestones (clears out electrician, pogo-bouncer and stealthy imp), as well as being a great counter to Arm Wrestler + Sumo Wrestler. Mostly importantly, you can easily kill the pogo-bouncer to disrupt the Pogo+MuG combo.
  
• Cool Beans: If you haven't read PvZTryHard Freeze Rose guide, I highly suggest you do, and especially, look at the Vanilla section. tl;dr 3/3 is a magic body because 3 attack is prefect for dodging most zombie removal, and 3 health is so that it can almost always go even with all zombie 1,2 and 3 drops. It's a good body and its effect is just devastating against MuG, (it's even better because if it's the only minion on the board the zombie player is forced to bounce it so you can re-freeze). Not only is it good against MuG, since graves are prominent in almost every deck now, its also a tempo play since it can potential save some minions (Especially those people that use Electrician as removal).
  
• Shamrocket: Surprisingly this card felt really hit or miss, sometimes you get to Sham a Nurse Garg and Defensive End, but sometimes you end up with 2 in your hand. However since we already have a lot of anti-aggro elements, (Galacta-Cactus, Spikeweed), it's helpful for dealing with big threats later on.
  
• Sportacus: Just like Cool Bean, its a 3/3 body with a 3 drop. The ability is also quite useful at chipping at the zombie hero's health or triggering Planet of the Grapes. Keep in might that Control doesn't mean 20 to 0 in one turn, even though our late game cards can deal a lot of damage, these midrange cards helps us chip down at the zombie hero.
  
• Leaf Blower: After a lot of testing I realized that this deck was really weak to Space Cowboy, and double DEnds from Rampbolt can lock me out of Shamrocketing. Enter Leaf Blower. It's 3/4 body is also quite sturdy when trading against smaller minions and the bouncing ability can snag you some tempo. Due to the prevalence of environments in the current meta (especially medulla nebula which is why you need bounces anyways) you can get it's effect off consistently. It also has amphibious which can occasionally be helpful in killing water lane stuff early if you didn't draw spyris, but that's really it's secondary tertiary role.
  
• Doom-Shroom: Good counter to Pet Decks, Sports Deck, Swimmer Decks, King Decks, etc. Rarely do I see people playing around this card, they all go full overboard with their gargs and their zookeeper buffs. Unfortunately, the Brainana "buff" made it so that it's vulnerable to Doom-Shroom now, but nevertheless its still a handy tool in the Guardian kit and one of the only "board-flips".
  
• Brainana: Brainana is just such a good card in general, especially since Brainy classes have pretty much always been some of the best decks and Brainana is great at shutting down their strategies. It's also a good tempo play against Hearty and Beastly at times too, since they will run out of the brains to Camel Cross/Maniacal/Vita Z, which will often turn the trade in your favor.
  
• Poppin' Poppies: PP does two things in the deck, 1) protect our midrange/late-game minions from deadly 2) heal our hero up against the constant strikethrough spam. Turn 7+ you can also combo Poppin' Poppies with Citron's Superpower, basically giving you 3 lanes of defense. It has been super helpful at healing up the recoil from Galata-Cactus and Anti-Hero spam early on.
  
• Dark Matter Dragonfruit: Don't know why there is so much hate directed at this card. The only weakness is its vulnerability to bouncing, but thanks to spikeweed sector and maybe spyris, most pogos should be rooted out by now. It functions as an insanely strong board clear, since without Cut Down to Size, the zombie player doesn't have any tricks that can remove it, AND EVEN IF THEY DO, it's still worth since they will spend more brains removing it than you spent casting it. It's amphibious ability is no slouch either, you can often drop it in the water lane for lethal since its 6 attack is devastating. Its ability and Splash Damage 6 is so amazing, its basically a pseudo brainana + bigger cherry bomb.
  
• The Great Zucchini: Mostly play testing with this card since it got a minor buff, at the moment it has preformed quite well. Zucchini combos well with Spikeweed Sector, since you can often deal 7 damage to the face, you can also use it to clog the lanes especially since you have the healing from Poppin' Poppies. When Full Moon Rising comes out I'll probably replace it with another DMD or Wall-Nut Bowling.
  
• Wall-Nut Bowling: The Premier Guardian finisher, can potential deal 18 damage in one turn. It's pretty versatile, and you can also use it to clear the ground lanes since 6 damage is enough to kill big threats such as TricksteDEnd/Nurse/Plankwalker.
  

Why Not...

• Gravebuster: Just hate how hit/miss this card is. It's even worse than Shamrocket, while most if not all Zombie Decks have minions with more than 3 attack, not every deck has graves. What's worse the niche that Shamrocket fills is indispensable, while I don't find much problems dealing with graves at the moment with Spikeweed and Cool Bean. Maybe if I start see more Binary Stars/Teleportation Zombies I might start including more.
  
• Plantern: Just don't have enough space for this card, the 3 sun slot is already pretty packed. Even though it has a good ability, it not as good as Sportacus or Cool Beans.
  
• Soul Patch: 7 Sun is just too much of an invest without instant impact (Before you say it, DMD has an instant impact, removing 6 brains from the zombie hero). Although Soul Patch does have good synergy with Citron's invulnerable powers, I didn't run into much cases where I lost due to being rushed down.
  

Replaceable Cards

I'm going to rank the cards by how important that card is in the deck, from easily replaceable to unreplaceable. I'm not going to include any uncommons/rares.

Low Priority

• Spyris: Something that can kill TWI/Octopet, ex. Sea Shroom
• Dark Matter Dragonfruit: Another late game Control Card ex. Soul Patch
• Great Zucchini: Another late game Control Card ex. Soul Patch

Medium Priority

• Sow Magic Beans: A good T2 Tempo Play or Card Cycle/Draw ex. Corn Doge, Jugger-nut, Mayflower
• Sportacus: A T3 Tempo Play ex. Plantern, Mayflower
• Doom-Shroom: Removal/Bounce ex. Jumping Bean/Leaf Blowers Guac
• Poppin' Poppies: T5-6 Tempo Play, preferably if it can protect your hero ex. Gravitree, Body Gourd, Sapfling (maybe?)

High Priority

• Cool Beans: Gravebusters
• Shamrocket: Removal/Bounce ex. Jumping Bean/Leaf Blowers Guac
• Wall-Nut Bowling: A finisher.

Irreplaceable

• Galacta-Cactus: It's AoE, ability to pressure the opponent and ability to trade with all T1 drops makes it irreplaceable.
• Brainana: Brainy + Tricks is just too prevalent in this meta to not have at least 3.

Mulligan

Will talk more about mulliganing in each specific matchup

Cards you should always aim to have:

• Galacta-Cactus: Keep up to 2
• Spikeweed Sector Keep 1 if you feel that the zombie hero is unlikely to use environments (Sneaky, Hearty) 2 if you feel like you need to engage in environment wars against Medulla Nebulla users.

These cards are your core early game control cards. Galacta-Cactus, as stated before, can trade up against all T1 drops as well as potentially check Impfinity's Superpower. Spikeweed Sector can kill almost every zombie two drop, Vengeful Cyborg, Cosmic Scientist etc.. If you have these two cards you are almost guaranteed a smooth start. In fact, you can pressure the opponenet really heavily if you have 2 Galacta-Cactus, I once won on turn 4 when I got an insane draw and the opponent was ran 16 and used Hot-Dog Imps.
NEVER trade these away unless you already have two copies of Galacta-Cactus or Spikeweed Sector.

Cards you should aim/keep for in specific matchups

• Spyris: Keep Sypris against sneaky heroes (especially neptuna) to counter Octo-Pult, if you are not against a Sneaky hero and you HAVE Galacta-Cactus, mulligan it away.
• Sow Magic Beans: Great against players that you except to pass/trick turn two, these include Medulla Ramp, and Beam me Uppers.

However if the rest of your cards are 3 cost or more, I would still keep them since at least you are guaranteed a T1/2 play.

Conditional Keeps

Keep if you have a combo card or already a really strong start, if you don't have Galacta-Cactus/Spikeweed Sector Mulligan these, if you do keep these.

• Planet of the Grapes: Only keep if you have Galacta-Cactus or Sportacus, if you don't mulligan it away. Never keep more than one.
• Cool Bean: Only keep if you are against sneaky, you can also keep it if you have a really good hand and you anticipate a Kite FlyeElectrician. Never keep more than one, we have 4 in the deck, drawing one before the opponent starts MuGing is pretty decent.
• Sportacus: Keep this if you have Spikeweed Sector or Galacta-Cactus. Only keep one.

If you have to choose between Sportacus and Cool Bean, keep Sportacus if you have Planet of the Grapes, Cool Bean against Gravestone users, then Sportacus.
Never keep anything else unless in very sketchy situations. Which will be talked about in the matchups sections below.

Sample Mulligans

I didn't record any game play vods so I just mulliganed against the AI

Excellent Mulligan

• My starting hand is really good, I have one Galata-Cactus, two Spikeweed Sectors. I decide to mulligan on of the Spikeweed sectors to (hopefully) smooth out the curve and get more pressure early game.
  
• I ended up getting another Galata-Cactus! This is a near perfect hand, good pressure early game, one environment to overwrite early game nebullas, and a good curve into T3 with the Sportacus, it's already really good, so I'm just going to leave it
  

Good Mulligan

• Instant Mulligan the Brainana
  
• Gets Wall-Nut Bowling -_-, but the rest of the hand is still good, we have a cool beans, sportacus and most importantly, a Galacta Cactus, I decide to mulligan the Sportacus (rather than the Cool Beans since we are against sneaky hero and don't have Grapes) and hope for a 1/2 Sun card for tempo card
  
• Hooray! I got another Galacta Cactus! At this point there is no point in mulliganing the cool bean since I have turn 1, 2 play and a vanilla 3/3 on T3 isn't bad at all.
  

Decent Mulligan

• Instant Mulligan the Brainana
  
• Got another Spyris, since I don't have any environments at the moment and I don't think that the opponent is Medulla Ramp, I get rid of the Leaf Blower
  
• Got a Doom-Shroom, bleh, I decide to mulligan another the original spyris since two spyris are kind of pointless and it also has negative synergy with Galata-Cactus
  
• Got a Sportacus! At the moment my only option is whether or not to mulligan the Galata Cactus, ಠ_ಠ easy decision keep the Galata Cactus since we have a strong curve (T1 Galacta-Cactus, T2 Spyris + Super, T3 Sportacus)
  

Bad Mulligan

• I start off with two three drops, Cool Beans and Sportacus, since I don't have Planet of the Grapes and we are against a Gravestone (Sneaky) Hero, I mulligan a Sportacus Away
  
• Unlucky, I just happen to get a Planet of the Grapes, at this point I'm mulliganing the Cool Beans since I really want a Galacta-Cactus because it can combo with Grape Planet and check a T1 Cheese Cutter.
  
• FML I got a Great Zuhcinni from that mulligan, at this point my only option is whether or not to mulligan the Sow Magic Beans, since T2 naked spikeweed is garbage I wanted to make sure I have a good T2 play so I just keep the Sow Beans
  

Gameplay

Turn 1

Galacta Cactus
Hopefully you have a Galacta-Cactus in your hand. If they don't play a minion, great! Play Galacta-Cactus in lane 2 (this is so that you can potentially put down a Planet of the Grapes). However if they play a minion, you have to decide whether or not you want to front the minion with Galacta-Cactus.
If it's a high priority threat like Arm WrestleCheese CutteDisconaut/Cat Lady front it and they'll trade. However if you're playing against immortica, ALWAYS TRADE, this is to prevent Secret Agent + Swimmers shenanigans. (You can apply this to other beastly heroes as well but Immortica does this the most, especially with Lep Imp)
Spyris
Generally don't Spyris turn 1. The point of Spyris is to trade against t2 octo-pet and TWI, if you play it turn 1 they wouldn't play TWI/use Octoput, wait for them to use/play it. And then do it on Turn 2.
However if you are against brainstorm/immortica and you don't have Galacta-Cactus, I would still drop it because you can start pressuring them with chip damage.
Others
Generally Nut-Signal always because if you don't have Galacta-Cactus you really need to draw an early game card. Transmogrify can be used if you're really scared of a mini-ninja.

Turn 2

Planet of the Grapes
Generally you can just play this on the same lane as Galacta Cactus since it guarantee a card draw, however you shouldn't play it if you don't have a three drop since it can easily be replace and you lose a card.
Spikeweed Sector
If you have a Spikeweed Sector thats great! But don't play it if the zombie hero doesn't play any minions on the ground, this is because it can be easily replaced (essentially losing you a card) and the zombie hero can just avoid playing zombies in that lane. Use spikeweed sector to kill most zombie minions like Cyborg or use it to facecheck graves.
Sow Magic Beans
If you happen to have Sow Magic Beans and it's your only play/the zombie hero didn't spend any brains you can Sow your beans for card cycling and the potential to draw a Beanstalk later on.

The Mid-Game

Turn 3-4 is where you fall back on the back foot and play the response game. You can't really pressure the opponent but your 3/3 can contest the board fairly well. You should also start trying to spam cycle cards so that you can thin your deck so that you can draw your appropriate response cards.
Turn 5 is where you are the most vulnerable, at this point zombie minions can easily overpower your 3/3's so you have to play smartly so you don't make too many two for one trades, this can't really be described too well but you will get the feel for it after a few games.
After Turn 6 and the zombie hero doesn't have too big of an advantage, you should be in good shape. However if you fucked up/got unlucky, you can a) hit the panic button and use Doom-Shroom b) try to stall with Poppin' Poppies and your superpower so you can Zucchini and Wall-Nut Bowling c) stomach the hits and use leaf blower + shamrocket to take out a few high priority threats (Imp Mascot, DEnd, etc.).
However don't think that this deck is purely control, if you manage to get a few Beanstalks and Well Timed Cool Beans/Brainanas, you can easily wrest control the board, and use Poppin' Poppies to keep your minions alive. Winning off tempo is something that this deck can easily do as well.

The Late-Game

At this point you should be hoping to clear the ground lanes so that you can use wall-knight bowling.
You should also be more greedy with your Shamrokcets if you still have them at this moment.
Most of the time the zombie hero wants to use the tricks phase to close out the game, but then you can just spring your Braianana's and DMD and cuck them. Brainana and DMD are 70% of the time your win cons, and Wall-Nut Bowling is the other 20%.

Final Thoughts:

Obviously this deck is not perfect, at the moment I'm looking at whether or not Spyris is pulling its weight, and if you find success with Soul Patch/Gravebuster that's great!
I'll add the Matchups in the comments soon, as well as some gameplay pics!
And also... my AT2020 Finally arrived in the mail today! I have to move over the weekend but next week I can probably start streaming/starting a Youtube channel! Setup

• In the long run the aggregate market value tends to track productivity. Rapid increases over aggregate productivity are bubbles.
  
• Prices in the short run tend to follow 'random walk theory', however this is only when looking into the future, not the past. We don't know if a 10% drop is going to occur in stock X because the CEO will be found dancing drunk in his underwear. Prices are inherently dependent on human nature, catastrophe, and the inherent chaos of the universe. In the short run stock prices are just a layer of abstraction over chaos. Only when we look at the values in hindsight we can attribute correctly why the changes happened.
  
• Strategy can either be mechanical or or statistical: Statistical strategy is when we find a statistical edge in the market. For example if we had to bet what the price of a stock, commodity, or future was going to be in the next week. Despite the price basically looking random in the short run future we can create a probability distribution and say that is more likely to be within 1-3% (depending on historical standard deviation) of it's current price etc. We can than use statistics to do something like sell or purchase an option. We can find probabilities of trades that occur to give us that 51% chance of winning. Mechanical strategies on the other hand tend to be longe medium term. We understand the underlying mechanics and we make trades or investments based on that. We know that say for example gamestop is following a certian pattern because of the nature of the industry, or we can say that the mechanical nature of Retail is changing and use that to adjust our bets. Another example would be to try and figure out debt ratios of the whole economy and use the understanding of the market cycle to decide weather prices are currently above the level of productivity or below and then place our bets based on that. Statistical strategy = studying numbers and probability distributions. Mechanical strategy = studying human and operational systems.
  
• Statistical strategy tends to work best when a person is working a minimum of one level deeper than the Aha! moment. To arrive at a perfect strategy one must find and address problems with that strategy with more Aha moments until one arrives at a sound strategy: Example: Strategy to buy two stocks that are inversely correlated and put trailing stops on both. In theory this could work with one stock moving upwards and the other moving downwards. This reveals a problem: Reason this doesn't work is because of inherent volatility blowing both stops. The level deeper would be to follow some sort of formula based on past standard deviations in order to assert volatility. Then place stops based on those deviations. Creates another problem: If one is trying to exploit daily deviation then that strategy doesn't work because then both stops are beyond and both stocks will move in opposite directions and swing back before any hits the stops. Then the strategy morphs into only playing binary events based on that strategy. Problem with binary events is that once the market knows they're coming uncertainty modifies the deviation values. So one needs more AHA moments to solve those. And so on and so on.
  
• Mechanical strategy on the other hand requires careful analysis and understanding of the underlying company, industry and environmental parameters. Mechanical strategy can take time to both build and see returns from. one could try and play mechanical strategy in the short run but one still needs to build enough of a knowledge base to beat the other players in the market. Potentially people that have dedicated their lives to studying, and living in that aspect of the market.
  
• Theoretically the market could operate at peak efficiency. In practice however, it doesn't. The reasons it doesn't include the nature of subjectivity in the market, asymmetrical information, and bureaucratic issues. Subjectivity in the market: We may thing that a price is undervalued because we have a subjective sweet spot for it: The security may have given use good returns in the past. The good produced by the security may play a big part in our lives and so we hold it dear. We may understand the industry and mechanics of that good better, so despite there being logically better alternatives for trades we are willing to compromise and realize that we will never know it all. This leads us to asymmetric information. There is a vast amount of information available to the public, different people know different parts of it. The asymmetry doesn't just come from insider knowledge, experience, or financial edge. I.e paying for Level 2 quotes. It comes from a semi-conscious decision to specialize in a certain industry, security etc. It is a result of the inability of a single human or even a group of humans working together to parse through all the information given to us. Given the nature of technology and the current level of understanding that technology can give us, even with algorithmic trading we can use algorithms to reduce, summarize and understand the large scale of the data to some degree but never to an extent that will completely let us have perfect prediction of the market. With summation we loose detail and without human subjectivity considering every little peace of detail in the summary we risk painting an inaccurate picture. Finally, Bureaucratic issues like an employee stock program that forces employees to hold the stock for a certain period of time, T+2, pattern day trader rules, Limits on large players buying and selling stocks, all result in bureaucratic inefficiencies that can both be exploited and also increase complexity in the markets. It is ultimately to the traders benefit that the market doesn't operate at perfect efficiency due to the manner the market rules are constructed, that players exploitation of the inefficiency creates a more efficient result in the aggregate. As we see more people attempting to 'game' and play the market, we will see the market become more efficient in the long run. On the financially bright but philosophically sad side humans tend not to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. History does repeat itself and so one can assume that advantages in the market appear cyclically. After all the long term market cycle that leads to deleveraging is the length of the average human lifespan. It is because others refuse to listen to their parents that we get opportunities to exploit the market for our gain.
  

Edit: Casting pearls before swine.

As I'm sure you can all relate, the 10^th Witcher Games Anniversary video brought a lot of feels. And with them came the itch to do yet another playthrough of my favourite video game. This time, to freshen up the experience, I decided to break from my tradition of only installing visual enhancement mods and look into the gameplay overhauls recommended on the sub.
To my surprise in-depth assessments of these mods were nowhere to be found. True you can look up detailed descriptions of what they change, but that won't give you an impression of how the changes work in practice nor an objective look at how they impact the overall experience. Thus the goal of this thread is to help you decide if you would enjoy using "Ghost Mode" for your next playthrough and to serve as a resource for posterity.
Note: the title of this post is no misnomer. This is a long read. If you already have an idea of what the mod is about and are just wondering "if it's any good", then feel free to skip to the TLDR rating section at the bottom.
 

Setup

First thing first, all the changes introduced by the mod remain true to the vanilla feel, flow and story of the game. There is no need to worry that the game you know and love will suddenly be unrecognisable, that you won't know your arse from your elbow. Secondly, I do not plan to rehash the full changelog in this review. Changes from Vanilla will only be mentioned if they are relevant to the point I am making.

• "Ghost Mode" (GM) by wghost81. Quick links: description, full changelog, author's website
  
• Started playthrough on version 2.6, updated to 2.7 when it was released and finished the game on it. No other gameplay altering mods installed
  
• All mod configuration options left at author intended, default, values
  
• Full 148 hour run including all DLC, side quests & question marks (minus Skellige smugglers' of course)
  
• Death March difficulty throughout with a light armour sword & alchemy build
  

Dsiclaimer: this review is written with the above in mind. I do not claim my experience to be completely exhaustive. For example, things which were difficult or annoying for my setup might be trivial for others and vice versa. Your mileage may vary.
 

General Gameplay

The mod has been implemented in a competent way. I did not notice any performance decrease compared to Vanilla and encountered no game breaking bugs. There was only a single major issue in 2.6 which was repeatable and highly annoying, but thankfully it seems to be fully fixed with version 2.7.
Immersion has been improved and the game world is more believable. Some examples:

• You are more likely to find regional alcohol in its respective area, such as Redanian Herbal in Novigrad and Oxenfurt or Temerian Rye in Velen.
  
• Bucketfuls of Alcohest are no longer found in every crate, nook and cranny. There is a new type of strong alcohol - "homemade pepper vodka", which is reasonably cheap and perfect for potion replenishment. It is sold by all innkeepers which gives you an actual reason to stop by your roadside tavern, aside from buying gwent cards of course.
  
• You no longer find rare crafting materials such as dimeritium bars, runes & glyphs in peasant hovels.
  
• Geralt can now actually perform normal daily activities in game, which would be quite useful on the Path, such as cooking food or shaving himself with a razor. The latter is especially great because it also solves the issue of enchanted beard sprouting during cutscenes.
  
• You now get new books and notes during certain quests which enrich the stories and are lore friendly. If you've always wanted to read the letter Vlodimir penned for Olgierd now you can! The writing quality is a bit inconsistent in some of them, but overall they are a good addition.
  
• The amount of coin you naturally accrue is a lot more reasonable. For example the Taxman Cometh at 15 000 crowns, instead of 35 000. Previously it felt a bit weird to run around with more wealth than Hierarch Hemmelfart in your pockets without even trying.
  

Quests and Experience

• Quest level requirements have been reworked. No longer do you get quests which are of a lower level requirement compared to their predecessor. Some quests are moved later in the story to fit better with the narrative. One example of this is "Following the Thread". In the vanilla game this is a required level 11 quest, when sailing to Skellige requires level 16. In GM its level requirement has been increased to 17.
  
• Quest rewards have been rebalanced. Experience rewards are more evenly distributed among main quests and "main secondary" quests (e.g. contracts), so you no longer feel like you get nearly nothing in terms of character progression by doing them. Gold rewards are also more appropriate to the task and the social status of the quest giver. Haggling has a much bigger impact on your final reward.
  
• The stats on all monster trophies have been reworked to be more unique and have a greater impact on your character. This is a good change which will see you tailor your trophy choice according to your build and/or according to the enemy you are about to face, rather than all of them being practically useless homogeneous stuffed heads.
  

The way the experience penalty works has also been changed. Previously you would get 100% of quest experience if you were at most 5 levels above the quest level, and basically 0% if you were 6 levels above or more. Now for every level you are above a quest the experience reward is reduced by 16%. This also works the other way around, you will receive an experience bonus for doing quests which are higher level than you.

• Experience rewards no longer vary with combat difficulty, which is a nice change. Total amount of experience seems to be slightly reduced overall. I would finish my Vanilla DM runs at level 52 and, playing the same quest order, finished GM at level 49.
  
• Overall, I don't believe the new experience penalty system is an improvement over the original for one simple reason: it encourages more meta-gaming. Previously you could delay the main quest for a while because you knew you had a 5 level cushion before you would get punished. Now you are pushed to do the main quests as soon as possible because every single level difference brings significant experience penalties. Given that the main quest is where you obtain the bulk of your XP, GM tries to force you into a specific quest order which never feels good. Not to mention that losing 16% of the experience for gaining a single level is questionable, when very often that level brings an insignificant increase to Geralt's power.
  
• The best experience system in my opinion would consist of:
  
  • GM's total experience amount, distribution and reworked quest level requirements
  • No experience penalty for overlevelling quests and no bonus for being underlevelled

This way you get the best of both worlds. You get to tailor the quest order to your liking, without having to suffer meta-gaming pressure, and at the same time Geralt will not end up overlevelled.
 

Combat

This is usually the number one reason why people recommend this mod and it is clear to see why. The author has implemented a great number of improvements to nearly all of the vanilla systems. Combat is more challenging and rewards players for their skill and preparation better. Geralt's overpowered traits and abilities have been toned down and your specialisation makes a much bigger difference to how you approach fights.
Overall, most battles are more fun with GM compared to vanilla. However this comes at a cost: namely the "realism", feel and flow of combat have all decreased to facilitate the above. Let's examine the 4 main areas where GM changes combat and evaluate them in detail.

Enemy behaviour

The first thing you will probably notice is that "all enemies have a reduced reaction time". The reason I put quotes around that phrase is because I don't know the actual inner workings of the mod and precisely how it has modified the AI scripts. Therefore I am just calling the effect as I saw and experienced it during my playthrough. The easiest way to describe it is: the time frame between you being in range of an enemy and the enemy starting their action is now much lower.
The primary effect of this change is an increase in difficulty. You now have to have faster reflexes in order to be able to dodge enemy attacks. Additionally, enemies will spend significantly less time in a hit recovery state after you land a blow. Which means that you won't be able to chain as many attacks as you could before, since your enemy will dodge/retaliate much more rapidly.
This change really shines when it comes to boss fights. The faster enemy reaction time forces you to play by the boss' rules and pay attention to their mechanics, rather than treating them as a higher health & damage generic enemy. To give a concrete example, let us look at the Olgierd fight at the burning manor.
In Vanilla you can easily beat him on Death March by ignoring the fight's mechanics. You simply position yourself slightly outside of his melee range and start a rend which he walks into. Then you follow this up with a quick dodge to the side to avoid the sand in the eyes and immediately start another rend. The boss gets locked in the above AI loop and you win pretty easily. The reduced reaction time in Ghost Mode counters this perfectly. By the time you are winding up your rend the boss, instead of walking into your sword, starts his own attack which targets where you will be after you swing and hits you before you can deal any damage.
So to beat him I had to actually play by the rules, which means conventional sword swinging is out of the question, especially as you also leave yourself open to a quick counter attack which kills you in 2-3 hits. The rules in this case are: counter his attack, swing once and go on the defensive. There are three different attacks he throws at you:

• The red charge: when you are far away from him, it is the easiest to counter and the bare minimum required to win. If you can only counter this then you will win, but it will take ages.
  
• The phase charge: is when he turns semi transparent and steps side to side. He only does this if your are slightly outside of melee range, so you have much less margin of error on your counter. If you are quick enough you can counter this type of attack with a close to 100% success rate, which means that a better player can defeat him much more rapidly.
  
• Finally we have the slash combo, which he does when you are in melee range. This one is also counterable, but the reaction time is so small I didn't feel it was worth the risk. Especially because if you fail it and only parry you will be locked in that stance for a few of his hits which will drain your stamina significantly (and you cannot counter without stamina, but more on this topic later).
  

So as you can see from the above GM makes you pay attention to the intended mechanics and rewards skilled play.
The change to reaction time also has its downsides however, and they are major ones. Most notably, enemies which have extremely fast attack animations by default become unfair in melee combat. Especially if they are in a group. The best example of this problem are all of the insectoid type enemies like the endregas and the kikimores. Their attack animation is fast and when you pair it with an increased aggression and run speed it means that you literally cannot attack them preemptively. If you start any type of attack (without dodging one of their attacks or parrying first) they will strike you first, even if you were outside of their melee range when you initiated your swing. As you can probably tell fighting groups of these enemies is extremely annoying especially early on. Later you can cheese them by unloading your entire reserve of Dancing Stars & Northern wind bombs for some semblance of crowd control, but even that is like putting a plaster on an amputated leg. What's strange is that looking at past feedback numerous people have complained about these enemies, throughout the mod's life cycle. Yet the author has failed to address the problem, which is that they shouldn't have reduced reaction time in the first place. Such empty difficulty, only for its own sake is never good.
Another downside is that early on you cannot take on groups of certain enemies, like wraiths, nekkers or insectoids for example, without resorting to AI abuse. This probably only applies to the higher difficulties, but when the best way of beating groups in the early game is dragging enemies one by one to the edge of their AI leash it doesn't feel good. No matter how skilled you are in melee combat you cannot defeat such packs head on without numerous deaths, which doesn't make you feel like a witcher at all in those encounters.
Finally, GM also implements monster "dodge" with a much more heavy handed approach compared to Vanilla. All sorts of enemies will now dodge your attacks more frequently. This is yet another example of where combat quality was sacrificed in order to increase combat difficulty. I write "dodge" in quotation marks because normally the word implies that the enemy sees your attack and reacts to it by getting out of the way. This mod makes the enemies which "dodge" the most feel like blatant AI bots with rigid if-then logic in their script, which harms immersion. Some examples:

• Enemies dodging mid attack, when it makes no sense for them to do so
• Werewolves dodging while airborne in the middle of their lunge
• Humans dodging attacks that come from behind them and they cannot see
• Shrieker glitching into its "on the ground" dodge animation while flying, after being shot with a crossbow
• Occasionally enemies dodging attacks while burning, sirens dodging when knocked down etc.

Skill Balance changes

A lot of adjustments have been made to the skill tree in order to improve how balanced Geralt is in combat. The changes can mostly be summed up by saying "baseline Geralt was nerfed". What that means in practice is that witchering aspects you do not invest points into will be significantly worse compared to vanilla. For example the signs, crossbow and damage bombs are a lot less useful for my mainly sword focused build. This is a good thing as specialisation encourages more diversity in your playstyle. Here are some examples:

• Quen no longer always blocks at least 1 attack, regardless of how much damage it's supposed to absorb. Now it's no longer the combat crutch it used to be in Vanilla as it will only absorb the value of the shield and the rest of the damage will go through.
  
• Poison and bleed effects are no longer extremely overpowered boss monster killers. Their duration and damage are significantly reduced to the point where 1 poison application is equal to about 2 additional sword attacks. Still good, but now balanced.
  
• Crossbow & Bombs now only deal half damage if they were auto aimed. And of course manual aiming during combat is way too slow unless you have invested into the related skills. There seem to be a few minor bugs related to these items. For example manual crossbow shots sometimes don't bring big flyers down despite hitting them successfully. Superior Samum, manually aimed, dealing 5 (yes five) damage on kikimores.
  
• In general overpowered skills have been nerfed (rend, whirl, euphoria etc.) while underpowered abilities have been buffed (crippling strikes, undying, counter attack etc.).
  

Overall the skill tree feels significantly more polished and we now have a lot more viable choices to pick from.

Defensive techniques (dodge, roll, counter, parry)

The way dodging and rolling worked in Vanilla was a simple binary check. Did you press the appropriate button before the attack connected with your character? If yes then avoid all damage, regardless of where your character ended up going (for attacks which can be dodged). And while this was still a big improvement from the second game, the i-frames were way too generous and the moves lacked any stamina cost. Which made it all to easy to just spam the dodge button and be invulnerable. GM changes this behaviour by also taking into account the direction Geralt moves in when dodging/rolling with respect to the enemy attack. Now if you dodge in time but still end up connecting with the attack, depending on the angle, you will take partial damage and debuffs based on what direction you were going in.
Parrying and countering have been significantly enhanced compared to the base game. Essentially now you can parry/counter nearly all attacks, those coming from monsters included. Taking counters as an example, you may counter light attacks just like before - by reducing all incoming damage - but now you retaliate against monsters with a "counter slash". This also applies to heavy attacks (including hammer and spear wielding humans) except that damage is reduced only by 50%. Both parry and counter now have a stamina cost depending on the attack you have deflected. This is a great addition to the game in my opinion. It plays perfectly with the risk and reward scale. Countering carries a greater reward because you spend your time negating the monster attack and dealing damage on your own, instead of just negating as you would with a dodge. However the risk is also greater because you confusing monster light and heavy attacks means you will take significant damage, especially if your build is not prepared for it. Yet another gameplay element where skill is rewarded.

Armour, stamina and different playstyles

Stamina management is now a big part of combat, rather than a mere afterthought with Tawny oil. The base regeneration rate is significantly reduced, all combat actions pause this regeneration for a short while and counter and parry stamina costs are increased. The armour you are wearing now also affects your stamina more than the Vanilla regeneration penalties. Light armour has no penalties and increases stamina regen, medium armour introduces a stamina cost for rolling & sprinting and heavy armour has stamina costs associated with rolling, dodging and sprinting.
Armour now plays a much bigger role in the game thanks to its significantly increased damage absorption capabilities. Plenty of enemies now have high armour values which also makes the armour penetration stat on swords better. To help with this, your heavy attacks now have a significant amount of armour penetration by default. This means that quick attack spam is no longer maximum dps against all enemy types and you will have to mix in heavy attacks much more frequently. Some enemies like golems are so heavily armoured that using quick attacks against them is basically pointless. Similarly, high armour values on your gear now make a big dent in the incoming damage whereas in Vanilla they were useless and the only thing that mattered were the resistances on the gear.
Both of these changes together translate into very distinct melee combat playstyles depending on which Witcher set you are wearing, which is one of the best features of GM for me.

• Light Armour: the Cat set provides the combat experience which is closest to Vanilla DM, with a few important tweaks. Firstly, because you have very little damage reduction, Quen is practically useless. It won't even fully absorb a light attack from a drowner. This combined with the change to the defensive techniques means that you actually have to be quick on your feet and good at dodging, you can only rely on your own skill. Secondly you can also mix in counters for increased dps once you are familiar with the attack patterns of the enemies. However you still have to dodge heavy attacks due to your lack of defence. This makes the Feline armour playstyle a skillful dance combining counters & dodging which is extremely fun, especially against bosses and small enemy groups.
  
• Medium Armour: the Wolf set is a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none. It has less damage compared to the Cat but more defensive stats and armour. This essentially means that your playstyle is similar to the Cat but you reduce some of the risk and settle for a lesser reward. You still can't afford to counter heavy attacks, but at the same time the stamina penalties for sprinting and rolling are mostly irrelevant as the latter is only necessary to get out of the way of enemy AoE attacks. As a result you will be safer against large groups compared to the cat but will have to settle for reduced offensive capabilities.
  
• Heavy Armour: the Bear set in GM presents a markedly different combat experience compared to vanilla. The quickest way to describe it is as an "immovable object". The stamina cost for dodging means that you will spend all of your time holding your ground and countering ALL enemy attacks (apart from AoE). The high armour value and damage resists mean that you can shrug off heavy attacks with ease. Combine this with talents that use adrenaline to heal you and an Ekkimara decoction to create a true tank build. However, due to the slow stamina regeneration signs are pretty much out of the question because every sign costs 10+ counter attacks leading to a big dps loss. This playstyle is extremely fun against groups of enemies because it allows you to combine defense with offense and simultaneously negate enemy damage. It also has its weaknesses - namely big enemies and bosses who make heavy use of area effect attacks, such as Griffins and Imlerith for example. Overall I didn't spend much time testing this playstyle in my run, but I found it very satisfying and fun. Definitely keen on using it for a complete playthrough in the future.
  

 
Another highlight of the GM combat enhancements are the 1v1 fist fights (seriously). They are much more challenging, fun and skill intensive due to the reworked stamina system. In Vanilla these were pretty formulaic - keep your distance from the opponent so that they only lunge with a heavy attack, which is easier to counter compared to the fast jabs. Counter it, throw a one-two and then rinse and repeat. In Ghost Mode you no longer have the stamina to consecutively counter all attacks and must spend some time in between counters to recover, which introduces a great deal of tension and makes the fights more skillful. Remember, dodging pauses your stamina regeneration so you don't have an easy way around this. Especially as many arenas are quite small which make this process challenging. Furthermore blocking jabs costs significantly less stamina, so if you're confident in countering the opponent's fast attacks you have a great opportunity to skill display. In addition group fist fights are a lot easier compared to Vanilla, because the opponents aren't health sponges. This is another great change in my book as those were pretty tedious and the fist fight system doesn't really work great for group combat.
 
Finally, to finish off this section, I would like to spend some time looking at enemy balance in the Blood & Wine expansion. There were several problems with it in my opinion, which overall decrease the quality of the experience.

• Giant centipedes deal too much damage. Yes they are generally easy to avoid, however them one shotting a character in master crafted Feline Gear + Quen + Superior Insect Oil + Protective Coating + 600 hp green mutagen at full life seems excessive. I'd suggest a 30% damage nerf. For comparison, level appropriate Giant Centipedes hit harder than red skull cyclopses and werewolves.
• High concentration of monsters which work badly with the reduced reaction times due to their instant attacks.
• Arachnomorph damage seems to be balanced against them hitting you once when most of the time they double tap you, which enables 1 small spider to pretty much instantly kill you from full life if you make a mistake. Damage should be reduced by at least 40%.
• The two Guardian Panthers in the Professor Moreau quest are extremely overtuned for when you face them and, as a consequence, require extremely cheesy strategies to beat.
• Alps are probably the hardest enemies in the whole game. Thankfully you only have to fight them twice. The first one's alone and she's manageable, but the second involves you getting tag-teamed by a Bruxa as well and that one is quite painful. It's a good thing Dettlaff can mind control other "lesser" vampires, because otherwise one of those ginger vamps would easily wipe the floor with both him & Regis at the same time.

 

Items and crafting

• Witcher set bonuses now scale with the number of pieces equipped rather than being binary. Bonuses also apply from the lowest set tier and not just Grandmaster level. This is a good change in my book as they diversify your combat style from an earlier stage of the game. Set swords are no longer the best weapons for their level requirement, so exploring the world and doing contracts for relics feels much more rewarding.
  
• The weapon & armour upgrade kits, sold by master craftsmen, are a great addition to the game. They allow you to increase the base damage/armour of your equipment by increasing its level requirement by 1 (i.e. the Aerondight effect). This enables you to make use of those special relic swords like: Hjalmar's Steel Sword, Pang of Conscience, Blade of the Bits, Winter's Blade etc. from the moment you obtain them to as long as you wish. This means that you must only pick a weapon based on if its secondary stats have synergy with your build, and this opens up a lot of choices and min-maxing.
  
• Speaking of special relic swords, these now have significantly improved secondary stats which makes them stand out from the generic random relics. Depending on your build you will probably end up using one of these for most of your playthrough. It feels great to get a "special" sword reward for a quest which is actually useful and not vendor fodder like in Vanilla.
  
• Equipment crafting now requires significantly less materials, so you are no longer forced to dismantle an entire army's worth of arsenal to craft something. Unfortunately the craftsmen will now rip you off much harder, comparatively to Vanilla, with their fees. So if you want to unlock all the levels of the Runewright and deck out Corvo Bianco in the various Witcher sets you will still have to pick up and vendor massive amounts of loot.
  
• Crafting costs of random weapons in the early game, before you can access sets and contract relics, are prohibitively expensive.
  
• White Gull isn't so difficult to produce anymore as it doesn't require Redanian Herbal and you can craft the Mandrake Cordial yourself, white honey now comes with more charges - both are nice QoL changes.
  
• Potions and bombs require significantly less ingredients, so theoretically you would need to spend less time picking flowers. However considering that you could buy most of these cheaply from herbalists in the vanilla game (and still can) this change is more or less irrelevant in practice.
  

Cooking recipes are a good addition to the immersion in my experience. A witcher on the path should be able to cook himself a meal while squatting in some untamed wilderness. Unfortunately, in practice I did not use these recipes at all after leaving White Orchard. There are a few problems with the current implementation:

• Food & drink healing is not balanced according to the amount of ingredients required to produce. For example, right at the start of the game you can learn how to make apple juice which is in the top tier of drink healing and costs next to nothing to make, in contrast with other much more expensive drink recipes which very often heal for less. Food recipes require way too many ingredients (the vast majority of which must be bought) and offer sub par healing in comparison.
  
• Human enemies in Velen and onwards drop way too much food, often between 2-3 pieces each. Why should I waste money buying ingredients and cooking when I could obtain something nearly as good for free?
  
• Coking recipes are too expensive for what they offer. They could use a 50% coin cost reduction across the board. Food recipes should require less ingredients. There should be more distinct healing "tiers" for different food & drink, less total recipes and bandits should drop less grub to incentivise people to interact with the system.
  

 

Nitpicking

• Enemies focusing more on NPCs during combat (if present) makes certain escort quests significantly more annoying on Death March: namely the Black Pearl and the Skellige mine clearing duo. Those NPCs could use a buff to their survivability.
  
• All wolves/dogs & boars are significantly weaker compared to the vanilla game. Probably a design decision, but it feels out of place since all other enemies are harder. Wolves in the Land of a Thousand Fables do have level appropriate stats unlike all their siblings for some reason.
  
• Kinks to the extra books/notes feature: fist fight quests keep giving you the same note after a brawl for every brawl, many texts are given out at weird times. For example, right at the beginning of some action sequence.
  
• Early game bosses and contract monsters (level req < 15) could use a modest health reduction to prevent boredom. Later on the only enemy that felt too "health spongy" was Iris' nightmare. Those Olgierds could use a health reduction because at the moment the fight is quite repetitive, lacks the atmosphere of the burning manor fight and so becomes a bit tedious.
  
• The base Yrden duration is too short and makes fighting Wraith bosses extremely tedious early on, until you get Enhanced or preferably Superior Moon Dust.
  
• Superior Cursed Oil now requires berserker skin which is not obtainable in Skellige if you investigate the massacre with Ceris. Previously there was a bug where berserkers spawned near Kaer Morhen, but this seems to be fixed in the newest version. The only place I found berserker skin in the whole game was in the Borsodi vault (?), dropped by one of his guardsmen (??). Either put a copy of the ingredient somewhere in the Vildkaarls' village, or change it to some other more lore appropriate place. The current location makes no sense.
  
• The inventory weight system is at best a sidegrade to Vanilla. Yes, it is unrealistic that Geralt is able to hold all these weightless ingredients in Roach's saddlebags. So this mod now gives them weight and forces you to regularly deposit all your ingredients in the stash. Then to access them more conveniently every time you are at an appropriate vendor (alchemist/blacksmith/armourer) Geralt is able to telepathically access said stash to obtain the ingredients. To me it seems like one unrealistic element was simply replaced with a different one equally as unrealistic, so what's the point?
  
  • In all fairness you can reduce the weight of all items from the mod options, but that slider leads to even more immersion problems. Because if you wish to compensate for the weight on all the ingredients you have to turn up the slider so much that all the swords and armour now weigh practically nothing as well. A better solution would be keeping the weight slider and adding a check box for "Zero ingredient weight", or just using the vanilla weight system because the current implementation isn't a clear improvement.
• I find the name of the mod to be a bit unfortunate, since it has nothing to do with any of the content. Makes you wonder if it's one of the reasons why it is not more popular.
  
• Grapeshot seems to deal insignificant damage to higher level enemies. Superior version of it hits arachas for 5 damage with an aimed shot for example. Even without bomb talents it shouldn't be this weak.
  
• Aerondight has lost a great deal of its unique flavour (all items can now be upgraded) and the nerf to its secondary stats was too great. Before it would give 10% attack power per stack, up to 10 stacks, now this has been reduced to 5% crit damage. For comparison, random relic swords can spawn with 60%+ critical damage and have 4 other secondary stats as well. Not to mention free sockets, which cost ~8000 gold for Aerondight. Finally, while the bonus at maximum stacks is still great it's now harder to maintain due to the decreased enemy reaction time, is basically non-existent against all the instant attack foes (and for heavy armour builds) and has overlap with several consumables (thunderbolt potion & oils now give crit chance) and talents which reduces its effectiveness even further. Overall the sword feels underwhelming and not worth using.
  
• Olgierd's sabre, Iris, no longer gains charges when enemies block your attacks and doesn't buff the damage of the fast attacks. To compensate it now deals 10% of target's maximum life in addition to the other bonus damage when charged. I was very excited to use this sword with the new item upgrade kits and was left moderately disappointed. The life loss penalty is still too big and basically forces you into using Katakan decoction which doesn't feel great. Furthermore, to charge the sword you must deliver 3 successful fast attacks in succession. Against armoured enemies this feels horrible as you're effectively whacking them with a wet noodle until you can charge the finisher. In addition, humans are much more likely to dodge your attacks compared to before causing you to often whiff on the charged strong attack while still paying the health cost. Overall the sword is still worth using and feels satisfying with the Severance runeword, however I would like to see some quality of life change: for example halving the health penalty.
  
• This mod breaks the following achievements: equipping a full witcher set (Armed and Dangerous), equipping all the grandmaster set pieces (Dressed to Kill), equipping Aerondight (Embodiment of the Five Virtues). Tested on GoG. Probably irrelevant for 99% of people, but worth mentioning.
  
• The Undvik set has less armour than the basic Feline set, despite having a higher level requirement and being heavy armour.
  
• Superior Full Moon heal, based on current toxicity, either does not work or heals a minuscule amount.
  
• Kill count bestiary section feels a bit too arcade-y and gimmicky for my tastes. Would prefer it hidden at the bottom of the list and collapsed by default or, better yet, an optional toggle in the mod options if possible.
  

 

Scoring (TLDR)

I will now attempt to rate this mod based on an arbitrary scale I just made up. A score of 5/10 means that overall the mod neither improves nor deteriorates the experience when compared to the original game. A higher score than that is good, lower is bad.

• -1 for the fast reaction times on enemies with instantaneous attack animations (and the fact that this hasn't been fixed for so long) and the balancing issues of Blood & Wine.
  
• -0.5 for the overall lowered quality of the combat experience: namely its feel, flow & realism.
  
• -0.5 for all the points listed in the Nitpick section.
  
• -0.5 for the experience penalty system which promotes meta-gaming and for the subpar support of the NG+ mode
  

Overall: 7.5/10. Despite the occasional hiccups I thoroughly enjoyed my playthrough with Ghost Mode. I found the mod to be an overall improvement to the base game and definitely recommend it.
 

Never Asked Questions

Q: What difficulty should I play on?
A:

• You are looking for a similar challenge to vanilla Death March or early game B&BB, to see if you like the other gameplay changes? Story & Sword. If you don't care about the combat then I would suggest that you also reduce monster damage from the mod options.
  
• You played on Death March from level 1 and found it too easy? Blood and Broken Bones.
  
• You played on Death March from level 1 with self-imposed limitations such as: no Quen, not using set swords, deliberately skipping some of the best talents and found it too easy? Death March.
  

 
Q: What build did you use?
A: Combat/Alchemy - GM Death March
I went for delusion & poisoned blades first. Muscle memory & strength training second, then back to alchemy for protective coating, afterwards filled out the combat tree. Undying was only equipped once the first B&W skill slot was unlocked and I could move an alchemy skill there, on lower difficulty levels I would replace it with Razor Focus. Delusion is optional. I pick it mostly for RP reasons although the extra stamina regen is nice, especially early on. If you don't want to use it then replace it with the Synergy skill from the alchemy tree.
 
Q: Any other interesting stats/tidbits from your run?
A:

• Hardest 1v1 fight: werewolf outside of the Whispering Hillock, ~10 deaths.
  
• Other boss fights with number of deaths in parenthesis: WO Griffin (1), Imlerith (2), Toad Prince (0), Olgierd (3), Caretaker (1), Olgierds (2), Caranthir (0), Eredin (1), Dettlaff (0)
  
• Hardest group fight: arachas cave south west of Harviken on Faroe, 8 deaths.
  
• Found the "Tor Zirael" sword for the first time ever in 4 playthroughs, not sure if finally lucky or spawn chance increased in the mod. Unfortunately, stats wise it's still rubbish.
  

TL;DR There's lots more to the story. But the code is all open source now. Have at it. I'm too exhausted to continue with this. If you'd like more details, feel free to message me. If you happen to carry on with this project or use any ideas from it, I would greatly appreciate it if you could keep in touch on your findings. If anyone has any insights, please feel free to comment or message me.
I've spent the last nine months working furiously on this. I started a project for backtesting strategies against data I exported from MetaTrader. I had a very powerful computer crunching numbers constantly, trying to find the most optimal configuration of strategy indicator inputs that would results in the highest win rate and profit possible.
Eventually, after talking with a data scientist, I realized my backtesting optimizer was suffering from something called overfitting. He then recommend using the k-fold cross-validation technique. So, I modified things (in the "k-fold" forex-backtesting branch), and in fact it provided very optimistic results when backtested against MetaTrader data (60 - 70% win rate for 3 years). However, I had collected 3 months of data from a trading site (by intercepting their Web Socket data), and when I performed validation tests against that data using the k-fold results created from the MetaTrader data, I only got a ~57% win rate or so. In order to break even with Binary Options trading, you need at least a 58% win rate. So in short, the k-fold optimization results produce a good result when validation tested against data exported from MetaTrader, but they do not produce a good result when validation tested against the trading site's data.
I have two theories on why this ended up not working with the trading site's data:

• The trading site I collected data from uses Reuters data. The prices in the MetaTrader data I used are different from the prices in the the trading site's data. Basically the the trading site's data is offset and is slightly higher than the MetaTrader data (and there may be other differences). I suspect that the k-fold optimization may have produced a predictor that is tailored to the data exported from MetaTrader (data available here), but it does not work as well on the the trading site's data.
• The script I used to collect data from the trading site disconnects from the trading site periodically for maybe 10 minutes every, and so when it does, the strategy indicator calculations used when validating against the collected data have to start all over due to gaps, and so potential trades are lost.
• JavaScript floating point errors.

For the strategy I use the following indicators: SMA (Simple Moving Average), EMA (Exponential Moving Average), RSI (Relative Strength Index), Stochastic Oscillator, and Polynomial Regression Channel. forex-backtesting has an optimizer which tries hundreds of thousands of combinations of values for each of these indicators, combined, and saves the results to a MongoDB database. It can take days to run depending on how many configurations there are.
Basically the strategy tries to detect price reversals and trade with those. So if it "thinks" the price is going to go down within the next five minutes, it places a 5 minutes PUT trade. The Polynomial Regression Channel indicator is the most important indicator; if the price deviates outside the upper or lower value for this indicator (and other indicators meet their criteria for the strategy), then a trade is initiated. The optimizer tries to find the best values for the upper and lower values (standard deviations from the middle regression line).
Additionally, I think it might be best to enter trades at the 59th or 00th second of each minute. So I have used minute tick data for backtesting.
Also, I apologize that some of the code is messy. I tried to keep it clean but ended up hacking some of it in desperation toward the end :)
gulpfile.js is a good place to start as far as figuring out how to use the tools available. Look through the available tasks, and see how various "classes" are used ("classes" in quotes because ES5 doesn't have real class support).
The best branches to look at are "k-fold" and "master", and "validation".
One word of advice: never, ever create an account with Tradorax. They will call you every other day, provide very bad customer support, hang up the phone on you, and they will make it almost impossible to withdraw your money.