The Four Wards Podcast - Episode 516: Goals

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Four Wards Podcast. Hey, what's up? [00:00:08] Speaker B: It's Eric Bra, voice of Draven Jerks and Velkoz. And you're listening to the Four Wards podcast here to help you move forward in league. Hello and welcome to episode 516 of the Four Wards podcast. I'm your host, as usual. I'm Jack Soman and I've got with me two other wards to help you move forward in League of Legends. Mike of many names is here. [00:00:48] Speaker C: Hello. [00:00:49] Speaker B: And we've got Pillow Pet. [00:00:51] Speaker A: Hello. I'm back. [00:00:53] Speaker C: He does exist. [00:00:54] Speaker B: He got a reprieve from baby duties long enough to chat with us for a bit. [00:00:58] Speaker A: Yes. [00:00:59] Speaker B: So all praise to Pillow Pet's wife for making that possible. [00:01:03] Speaker A: Baby's finally just sleeping at night, which is nice. [00:01:06] Speaker B: Huzzah. Guys. We are the Four Words Podcast. We have a discord. Come join the Discord. Come hang out. Come play games with us. Come chat with us. The link is in the episode description. We look forward to seeing you there. We also stream on Twitch. I can be found at Twitch tv. Jacksoman Mike can be found at Twitch tv mikeofmanynames. As soon as he gets over this permanent sickness and whenever Pillow Pet has time to stream again, he'll be at Twitch tv. Pillowpet Someday, maybe when it comes to school. Yeah. We also want to give a shout out to Codex Ninja, Pillow Pet, Skippy as Esquire, Labana, and Uncle Chrisco for supporting us at the shout out tier on Patreon. Thank you guys. And if you want to support the podcast, head on over to patreon.com theforwards podcast $1 a month just tells us that you love us. $5 a month gets you an exclusive feed and some behind the scenes audio of our prep workbook for each show. And $10 a month gets that same exclusive feed. And we'll shout your name out at the top of every episode during the intro. And all of those perks do also apply to our general gaming podcast. Check out From 8 Bit to 4K on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Got an episode coming out literally two days from when this one drops. We had one of Pillow's friends on and it was a fun time, so check it out. Last but not least, listeners, y' all are getting carried by Discord Again. We didn't get any new questions in the email inbox, but write in to the4wordspodcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show or drop it in question submission in the Discord, but I'd prefer if you email. It's easier for me. Now, that being said, we're gonna flip things around a little bit today. We liked one of the questions the Discord submitted and we're gonna make it a topic. So we're gonna start with answering listener questions and we'll do our topic after. Our first question tonight comes from Reigns, who writes, I have a Mord problem in that I've been good at him, but otherwise don't play like him unless I'm ahead. If I need an AP Bruiser, am I bound to him? Or can I play Gragas Echo? Diana in top lane and still solo carry games in a similar way to how Mord and Darius can. [00:03:17] Speaker C: You're missing one of the obvious names up there, and that's Gwen. Gwen is. [00:03:21] Speaker B: Gwen is not a bruiser. [00:03:23] Speaker C: Gwen is played like a bruiser, though, in that she goes into fights, she kicks the crap out of people and heals the fuck ton of her health because she has a surprisingly large amount of healing. [00:03:33] Speaker B: Gwen is a master Yi. She's. She's a light fighter that just deletes people and has a tool to stay alive in fights. [00:03:41] Speaker C: She really is. But like she plays in a similar feeling, like she'll go on a new a brawler thing. [00:03:47] Speaker B: That being said, no, you can't play other AP Bruisers the way you would play Mord or Darius because Mord and Darius are a very specific niche and Mord is the only AP champion that really fills that niche. [00:03:59] Speaker C: They are a brand called Juggernauts and that is a specific type of champion. And I think there are five of. [00:04:06] Speaker B: Them, unless they created new Garen, Darius Mordekaiser, Dr. Mundo. [00:04:13] Speaker C: Set is Sion. [00:04:17] Speaker B: I don't know. I don't. I wouldn't classify Scion or Urgot in the same class. [00:04:22] Speaker C: Five Scions are Attack. [00:04:24] Speaker A: He doesn't really. You don't really build armor on him. [00:04:26] Speaker C: No, but he's meant to be a damage sponge as opposed. And he doesn't do as much damage as any of the Jugs do. [00:04:33] Speaker B: That's. [00:04:34] Speaker C: The Juggernauts have an inherent damage point to them in that they are building damaging items whilst making themselves tankier, which is why I think Ergot might qualify. He is a surprisingly tanky damage dealer. Maybe, but he's also someone who's gotten a rework since that classification became a thing, so we don't know what. He never got a new qualification. [00:04:57] Speaker A: I was trying to come up with some, not just specifically bruisers. But mostly bruiser AP top laners that can also carry. Based on your question, and I came up with a couple that just came to my mind. You can take Swain up there. He does go right into the middle of a team fight, and he is a sponge while also doing pumping out lots of damage. [00:05:25] Speaker B: So according to the League of Legends official Wiki, Aatrox, Darius, Dr. Mundo, Garen, Illaoi, Mordekaiser, Nasus, Sett, Shyvana, Skarner, Trundle, Udyr, Urgot, Volibear, and Yorick. That's all of the juggernauts. Of those, Mordekaiser, Volibear, and Shyvana are the only ones and Udyr that do magic damage and can be built. [00:05:48] Speaker C: Magic damage. Like you can build specifically magic damage to do that. You said one that actually probably works pretty well on there. The last one, Udyr. [00:05:58] Speaker B: He Udyr tops a thing, but it's AD right now. [00:06:02] Speaker C: AD just does more raw damage. The AP one can work. It's a team fight monster. You do a lot more AoE damage. [00:06:10] Speaker B: AP is more of a jungle thing. That's the difference. Jungle can do either. Top pretty much has to be AD because you need the dueling power. [00:06:19] Speaker C: So what do we want to call an AP Bruiser like this? Because in a not so, like, simple one, I'm starting to think Rise is top lane all the time now. And he builds really healthy ap. [00:06:30] Speaker A: I wouldn't really call him a bruiser, even though, like, he builds health items till, like. Till, like, late game. Then he's just an absolute carry and a monster if he makes it that way. I mean, his first two items, in my mind, I'm thinking like, Vladimir. I'm thinking Rumble. [00:06:48] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:06:49] Speaker A: Vlad counts Rumble, Singed, Swain. I mean, even Chogoth, if you build him ap, like, you can go tanky, and he's just got infinite health scaling, and he does a lot of damage with his E into Tanks Rise. I put him on my list. I even googled some just trying to see if I missed any more. You had Gragas on there, and somebody even said, like, Morgana, But I don't feel like Morgana's bruisery at all. But, like, to me, like, I would. [00:07:21] Speaker C: Rather have AP or not AP Tank Karma as that than Morgana. [00:07:29] Speaker A: To me, like, Vlad Rumble and singed, like, just in swain to me or. [00:07:34] Speaker B: Just agree with those. But he. Here's the thing that all of those have in common that is different than specifically Mordekaiser and Darius. Mordekaiser and Darius are Hey, you in particular. Fuck you. [00:07:48] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:07:49] Speaker B: Champions in a way that almost everyone else is not. [00:07:53] Speaker A: None of these champions on this list are going to be 1v1. You know, like Mordekaiser, fill that role specifically. But they will all have, like, team fight. Like, Vlad wants to be in there. You know, Rumble wants to be in there. Chow guys wants to be in there. Swain 100% wants to be in there. [00:08:13] Speaker C: Swain, definitely. [00:08:14] Speaker B: Yep. [00:08:16] Speaker C: Of the ones that you've mentioned, singed is probably the most off pick there. Because singed plays like nothing else. [00:08:24] Speaker A: No, no, he's got a very unique, like, playstyle, but he does fill, like, the build role. [00:08:29] Speaker B: Now, here's the key. You're playing any kind of bruiser champion in the top lane. Your role to carry a game, period, is use your experience, lead to grind the enemy carries into dust. That is the reason you play champions like this. In the top lane, you're level 16 Mordekaiser against a level 13 mage in the mid lane. They're fucked if you ult them. You're a level 16 Mordekaiser against a level 13 AD carry. Unless they're vayne, they're probably fucked if you ult them. And even if it's a vein, she has to be ahead to be able to deal with you. [00:09:07] Speaker C: For Mordekaiser, like, specifically, if you're not landing your spells, you're dead. [00:09:11] Speaker B: Yep. [00:09:13] Speaker C: But if you're talking about, like, other ap bruisers to carry a game, Diana is one of the best at that, but we've mentioned him a few times now. Volibear there and Vladimir, both of those two, I think, are the best at carrying a game from ahead. [00:09:30] Speaker B: Volibeard creates so much pressure, he's near unkillable in a 1v1, whether you build a flicker blade or not. Because if you're choosing not to, you still go pretty heavy on ability. Haste. [00:09:42] Speaker C: You still go dusk and dawn in there. That's now his new core item. Yup. [00:09:46] Speaker B: And then he just becomes a problem that they. They have to figure out their answer for. I've literally won games on Volibear in top lane just by split pushing. And they have to send two people because I'll turret dive one person and kill him with my ability to disable his turret. [00:10:03] Speaker C: And Vladimir is one of the hardest scaling mages in the game. And he gets so much health that, like, by the end of the game, he can be at a point like Aatrox where health gone back, gone back, gone back. [00:10:18] Speaker B: I have literally had fights on Vladimir where I have taken about 10 to 15,000 damage by the time I died. [00:10:27] Speaker A: I mean, there's one more that while I was going through trying to research that you don't really see often because not a lot of you people even play him. [00:10:34] Speaker C: But Silas, Silas can. He's not usually put in the top lane, but he is. Can be plays an AP bruiser. [00:10:41] Speaker B: He's a great counterpick to Malphite. [00:10:43] Speaker C: He's a great counterpick to Malfight. [00:10:45] Speaker B: But yeah, the, the big thing is just you need to play the games in the way that the champion wants to carry. If you're playing Mord, your job is a, try to get ahead and then B, once you are ahead, remove someone else from the enemy team. Turn every teamfight into a 4v4 where their strongest person isn't there because you're killing them. Remember, his ult steals their stats, so if you are even with them overall, you are ahead of them during the ultimate. [00:11:14] Speaker C: And it's always worth it to take their strongest member, even if he will kill you. Yep, that means your team has a chance. [00:11:21] Speaker B: That was going to be the other thing I was going to say is if you fall behind on Mordekaiser, your build and plan now changes. You need to build more defensive and specifically you need to build a Zhonyas. Because your job if you are super behind on Mordekaiser is pick their most Fed person and ult them and hit Zhonya's so that they are removed from their ability to kill your team for several seconds. That's. That's literally your job now. And fights you can win that way. [00:11:54] Speaker C: You can't get out of Mordault anymore. There's no way out. There's no Zhonyas. You. You can't. Well, it's taking Zhonya's inside it with you, but that's not doing them any good. They're still out of the fight. You can't qss it anymore. You can't cleanse it. Mordault is a CC that is unstoppable. [00:12:11] Speaker B: They have to kill you to stop it, which is why you build Zhonyas and build defensive. [00:12:15] Speaker C: Or they have to unstoppable it. They can unstoppable. [00:12:18] Speaker B: Or they have to block it from going through in the first place. Yes, unfortunately, if the Olaf is the one who's super Fed, you probably can't do much about it. So yeah, that's. That's our thoughts on Mordekaiser. Let's go on to our next listener question. This one comes from Yeet the dab who writes I'm setting a target this year to improve my skill from silver level average to platinum level average and get ripped, lose 5kg and have strong enough abs that they're visible. My question is, do these sound like reasonable goals to you or am I overreaching? Do you feel it's possible to balance league goals with IRL goals? [00:12:54] Speaker C: We're going to talk about that one in a moment. There's a bit on there that I want to mention there and that it is Just because you have strong abs and you've lost weight doesn't mean they're going to be visible abs. To do that you're doing something very very very specific body wise and you have to train a specific way. Don't reach for that as your goal. Reach for the strength goal first. The visible thing is something you have to explicitly work towards and that can actually be slightly detrimental to whatever other diet or plan you're doing. I know this because when I was much much younger and much more in shape that was one of those things that we were told not to work for because that warps how you have to do your workouts now for the real stuff that we're actually going to be talking about in here. [00:13:40] Speaker B: Now I think that's a good thing to start with is remember the the goal of personal fitness and health can be to look good or it can be to get in better shape. It those two are often at odds and I think that's important to keep in mind because the same thing is true in League of Legends. Your goal can be to get better at League of Legends or your goal can be to climb in rank. Those two seemingly synergistic goals can often be at odds with each other. The best way to gain rank is to one trick. One tricking limits your ability to learn different aspects of the game and become a more well rounded player. A one trick who gets auto filled is a useless player in their game. A well rounded player who gets autofilled is going to be close enough to as good as a regular player that they have a good chance of winning that game and you get bonus LP for winning when you're auto filled. [00:14:43] Speaker C: Now it's not a small amount either. [00:14:46] Speaker B: So that's why I'm drawing the analog of make sure you are setting the right goal for what you actually want to achieve and not setting your goal for something that is a superficial effect that you think represents what you want to achieve. It's a good life advice in general, not just on these two topics. [00:15:06] Speaker C: Yes. And specifically for your goal here, you will have a hard time finding out your skill average without seeing a rank difference. So you may actually want to adjust what your rank goal is as a ranked player versus what you're going to be doing as a skill goal. Because your skill goal can still be the exact same, but you won't know if you've achieved it because you can't tell on the back end where your, your skill is. It's not easy. [00:15:37] Speaker B: MMR is hidden and rank lags MMR in both directions. When you're, when you're going up, your rank will lag behind wherever your MMR is. And on the way back down, your rank will be higher than what your MMR is, which makes it really hard to know where you're currently at for real. [00:15:57] Speaker A: There are resources out there that, where you can be like, okay, what is a platinum level player getting wise like CS and vision score and all these stats that show like a platinum level. And what you can do is try to go to that site and be like, okay, this is where I need to be. This is what I need to do. And I would try to consistently get to that point. Okay, so a typical cs, you know, for a platinum player, and I don't know it off the top of my head, it's probably like what, a 8 to 7 to 8 CS per minute? Yes, something like that. [00:16:33] Speaker B: I think it's higher now because they've increased spawn rates of everything. [00:16:37] Speaker A: So yeah, so permanent you would need to find out what. Because you need to find out what the skill like the, what your average player is doing in your lane and then go compete with that. Don't yet. Like if you're wanting to just read the skill level, that's going to be different than reaching the actual rank. So I would agree with that. So I would. If you're wanting to go skill, look up what you need to compare yourself to and get to that point. Work on one at a time or work on all of them at the same time, but you can get there. It's not hard. Just you got to focus and train yourself to like, if you're going to focus on cs, take your game and just focus on cs. Don't worry about the trading patterns, don't worry about that. Just worry about the cs because having the gold, it's going to be way more beneficial than trying to figure out how you should be fighting. And then there's also going to be like comparing what is a platinum level player, how many even like on your specific character. If you're in a top lane or mordecaiser or something, you can compare platinum mordecaisers, how many kills are they getting, how many assists, how much damage are they doing? And you can kind of look at that and gauge that at your post game stats, you know, and kind of be like, okay, if you're going a whole game, most of your games and you're way under damage compared to what every platinum players do and you'd be like, okay, I'm not participating enough in more team fights. It's a very obscure stat, but it is out there. [00:18:11] Speaker B: See, I was thinking more in the sense of if your goal is just to reach a certain rank, you just want to grind ranked. That's what I tend to do. If your goal is to get better at League of Legends, you need to figure out ways to do like practice drills, you need to do CS practice. You can find someone to play opposite you, to try to teach you. Someone who's better than you to teach you and like they can point out the mistakes you're making in real time and like play a learning game with you. Like those are things you can do to get better at League of Legends. But that's time not spent grinding. You're not gaining rank. [00:18:46] Speaker C: Now we get there is an option on this one. You have been someone who has put a lot of effort into talking to us and talking to us on a bunch of things. If you want to have someone backseat a couple of your games to help temper like, hey, this is what we think you should be doing. This is where we think you should be going from here. This is where I think you've. You've done something wrong. As we watch you from the background, maybe we won't say anything in game. We'll tell you about things afterwards so we're not distracting you a ton. We're around a lot. I'm around a lot randomly. We can sit there and watch what you're doing in your gameplay or we can do versus matches and we can figure things out that way. We are a resource here to help if we're around. You want to ask us these things? Yeah. Most of us will probably be happy if we're around. Right now it's mostly me because Jax and Pillow are away. [00:19:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm sorry. Path of Exile's got its talons into me again. It happens. [00:19:37] Speaker A: I do want to put a little bit. I'm sorry, go ahead. [00:19:41] Speaker B: Well, I was going to segue us so go on. [00:19:43] Speaker A: Oh, I want to talk A little bit more about your like fitness goals. You ask like is it possible to balance league with your IRL goals? Like 100%. But like that's on you. You have to make the time. Like it is very is a lot easier to come up with an excuse to not go spend an hour in the gym than it is for you to drive yourself to do the workout that you have to do, whether it's at a home gym or you can. It's way easier, like I said, to come up with an excuse. Like I allocate an hour and a half a day to do some kind of physical exercise. Whether it be go to the gym or go out and run, do push ups, do sit ups, like an hour and a half a day. That's what I allocate. Like that's one and that's two games of league. So you can close down league and play two less games if that's what you have to do. But you can make the time. [00:20:36] Speaker B: Here's a way to think about it. There's 168 hours in a week. Assuming you sleep eight hours a day and work 40 hours a week, that leaves you 72 hours for your commute time, eating, personal hygiene and recreation. Recreation can sometimes mean going out with friends, to the bar or whatever. It can mean playing League of Legends. It can mean time spent at the gym. Your goal is to balance those. Do you need to play League of legends for 60 hours a week to get better? No, obviously not. So you're going to have time to do both as long as you allot your time in an intelligent manner. [00:21:19] Speaker C: There's a second portion of this specific thing and that is prioritize specifically what you want to happen more. If your goal is fitness more, that is now your more important goal. Of the two, this one is your I need to have this done. I want to have this done. Need versus want Here your your priority on what your goals become is going to be a big shift in how you're going to be doing things. I've been really bad at health for the past month, so one of my new priorities is going out and doing more things because I've been stuck at home for a month straight. I'm not going to have as many league priorities now because I want to go out and do things. You may have that as your new high priority. I want to have my fitness first and then my league and then whatever else. Or I want to have recreation first with friends and then fitness and then league etc. Prioritizing your goals is going to be the absolute first thing you need to do. Pick whichever priorities have highest. This can change throughout the week, the month, the year. [00:22:20] Speaker A: It takes like three weeks to build a habit and it takes like two days to break it. So just stick with it. And eventually it'll just become second nature and you'll be like, all right, well, I'm going to the gym. You won't have to think about like pushing yourself to go. You'll just do it because it's a habit. I was a personal trainer once when I came out of high school and it just, it becomes fun, it becomes addicting and you'll find yourself wanting to be like, all right, I'm going to go to the gym twice a day. It just, it comes really fun. If you make it fun, don't make it a job or a chore. Make it fun. [00:22:55] Speaker B: That, I think is the biggest one. I've. I've told this before, but when I was in college, I picked up Dance Dance Revolution. I had a lot of fun doing that game and didn't care about the exercise part. I was just having fun. And with no dietary change at all, I went from being a fat ass to being fairly in shape in about a year. I lost literally 80 pounds because I was having fun. Make it fun. Okay, that being said, why don't we talk about our own goals for 2026, both in league and in our personal lives. I'll kick it off because mine is really straightforward. If you've been listening to this podcast at all, you know that I have been struggling when it comes to rank. My goal is to get back to Emerald where I frickin belong and then try to push beyond. I would love to make diamond once. I've never made diamond, so that's my goal. What about you guys? [00:23:49] Speaker C: Mine is a little simpler in that respect. I don't play a lot of ranked, but I do enjoy ranked. I do enjoy playing ranked with people. So my base goal is I want to play like 50 games at least this year. And I want to actually like, I don't do it normally, but I would like to at least finish placements in solo duo so that I have the ability to potentially work on that. I much prefer flex. It's my preferred play style. But I want to have. [00:24:18] Speaker B: You need to get ranked in solo duo so we can duo. [00:24:21] Speaker C: Yeah. Which is something that I haven't done in so long that that solo duo rank is not good. [00:24:29] Speaker B: Just get your placements done so that once you're. Once you've Gotten your mojo back. We can do oq. [00:24:34] Speaker C: Probably need to work on a Smurf for that one because I'm pretty sure that things degraded to bronze. Silver. [00:24:40] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe I have a Smurf. [00:24:42] Speaker A: Go climb that pact fast. Doesn't take long for Riot to put you where you need to be. My goals, my goal's pretty simple. Maintain plat slash emerald. Depending on where I decide to stop, it's one of those two usually. Like last season it was plat. The season before it was emerald. I just, if I have time to play it. I haven't even played a game yet. I haven't even done my placements. At first it was because I don't like doing the rank grind within the first few weeks of season release because it can usually be pretty toxic. But now it's just for other reasons like having kids in the house and no time. And the time that I do have, I'd rather play with friends and people. [00:25:24] Speaker B: Makes sense. Or record a podcast. [00:25:26] Speaker A: Or record a podcast. After this, I'll probably go play some league with people and not go to solo duo because it can be. It can be a shit fest and ruin someone's night. [00:25:38] Speaker C: Yup. [00:25:39] Speaker B: So that's our league goals. They're pretty straightforward. What about personal goals? What are you guys personal goals for 20, 26? Let's balance it out. Show that we are actually well rounded people and not the gremlins that we sometimes come across as. [00:25:53] Speaker A: So like mine, you know, it's pretty similar to like eat the dabs. So I'm, I, I like to maintain going to the gym consistently. It's been kind of hard recently to find the, the time of the day. Still building and working and building a house. And I will have a home gym. Then winter came, so we put everything. [00:26:13] Speaker C: God, you're still building a house. Jesus, I forgot about it. [00:26:17] Speaker A: Like we haven't, well, it hasn't even broke ground. Like we decided to change our minds on stuff that we wanted, that their prices went up because we changed our minds. We said, nevermind, we're not going with you. So I guess life goals this year will be get the house built, maintain my gym and health and I want to get under back under 16% body fat, which is ideally 10 to 15% is where I want to be because that's when all your true definitions start showing up. So that's where I'd like to go to make myself feel better health wise. So to do that, I'd have to lose like another £40 to get to like 195, which. That's a. That is a steep goal for someone like me who loves food. [00:27:06] Speaker C: I have not been under 200 in 20 years. [00:27:10] Speaker A: It's been about five years. [00:27:11] Speaker B: I haven't been under 200 since I was a kid. I'm tall. Even when I was in shape playing DDR 18 years, I was about 200 pounds. [00:27:20] Speaker A: I was up to about five years ago. Like, I'm six two and I was at a 185. Like, I was just stout and I was like, oh, food league married. Like, I'm comfortable and it just food every night and not going to the gym every day like I used to and got some injuries tied up in there and it's a lot easier to not go to the gym right now. [00:27:48] Speaker B: Yep. Mike, what about you? What are your personal goals? [00:27:52] Speaker C: All over the place in this one. So, as I've said, I've been sick for a full fucking month. I need to go an entire month without taking any days off work because I've had some health issues going back for a while. I broke my hand a while ago. I had this massive fucking bout of pneumonia which came back. And then I was sick again for another five days. So, like, my. I need a full month where I don't take off any time, where I can actually just build the habit of going through work again properly. I also, like, I need to actually, I'm. I play games as my main hobby. I need to actually finish some games. I want to finish five games this year. I finished two last year. Two. [00:28:37] Speaker B: We're gonna hold you to that one on eight bit. [00:28:40] Speaker C: Yeah, this. This may be something we talk about on 8bit. And that I'm gonna be talking about games that I have finished playing. I did not finish a lot of games because they're either not finishable or I just bounced to a new game. And again and again. [00:28:54] Speaker A: That's what happens to me. [00:28:55] Speaker C: Because so many things happen. [00:28:58] Speaker B: Even some of the games that are not finishable. You can count it if you get to a point that is a, like, reasonable finishing point. Like, I would not consider you finished Hades or Hades 2 by making it to the credits. But I would consider it if you do enough runs after the credits that you're like, I'm satisfied with playing this game. And those are infinite games. [00:29:19] Speaker C: Yeah. So, like, that's. That's one of those. Someone I want to finish five games. One of those has to be one of my major games that I've been putting off. So those are games like Clair Obscure, Ghost of Tsushima these style of large format games, Cyberpunk. I need to finish one of them. [00:29:38] Speaker B: I'm. I'm literally 90 hours into cyberpunk and haven't finished it yet. I have been playing more and more. [00:29:44] Speaker C: Of it bit by bit. [00:29:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that's next when I finish cyberpunk. That's the problem. [00:29:49] Speaker C: Yeah. And then this last one is something that is a goal because of my other copies is I play Warhammer. And by play Warhammer I don't just mean the games. I mean I build the models, I paint the models. I do tabletop gaming. Worth it. So I have a problem in that I really enjoy building and I don't do much painting. So I have a lot of bland gray plastic Mike. [00:30:15] Speaker B: You should stream painting your Warhammer minis. [00:30:19] Speaker C: I My biggest problem is I don't like painting painting alone. So usually when I go painting I go to the store to do painting. [00:30:27] Speaker B: But if you stream then you're not alone. You can talk to chat while you're doing it. [00:30:32] Speaker C: Also possible not quite the same. [00:30:34] Speaker B: Schedule it so that you have like time and people know it's gonna happen. [00:30:39] Speaker C: I will do something like that. That's how I did one Mini. I specifically was working on last year that I actually enjoyed making it done was the one Mini I did here. But most of the time when I do painting I'm not at home in my desk area because it's hard to get light in position and everything else. So like painting is annoying for me. I really enjoy the times that I've done it correctly but I haven't done a lot of it and that's really my problem. I need to get it done more because I want my stuff to look good. [00:31:10] Speaker B: Fair enough. I guess that means it's my turn. My first one's kind of like what Pillow was saying. My first goal is I want to lose at least 50 pounds in 2026. That would still leave me as fairly fat, but it would be a much more like can get around the world without needing accommodation level of fat. So that's one of my goals. I've been trying to eat better and I need to start working more exercise into my life. Which also means I'm going to try to stream some more Beat Saber. Something I haven't done in a long time because that way I can combine my video game habit with fitness. So maybe there will be some of those on Twitch tv. Jacksonman in the future. I also want to actually finally fix my Super Nintendo. I have had a super Nintendo. This is literally the One I've had for like 20 something years. And it has an audio issue, as in there is no audio. I don't know why. So I want to take it apart, figure out how to fix it and fix it because I'd rather fix my existing Super Nintendo than buy a new one. But I would like to be able to actually play my cartridges again. I own some really killer Super Nintendo games. I literally own a copy of Chrono Trigger. Probably need to change the battery in this. Yeah, exactly. I probably need to change the battery in the cartridge at this point. But like I own great games. I own a physical copy of Secret of Mana and a bunch of other great stuff. I would love to be able to just play them on actual hardware. So I need to fix the damn thing. So that's one of my goals for 2026. That's going to take some research. I need to figure out how to diagnose what's causing the audio issues so that I can then figure out, okay, how do I fix them? I may have to learn to solder and I want to. So that'll be a goal too. Kind of side effect to that. [00:33:00] Speaker C: I'm going to have a weird plug on this one if you want like tools for that. There is a company called Fantic. Fantic makes powered stuff. One of their things is a soldering iron. I really like Fantic. They're relative. I'm aware of them to a lot of stuff. [00:33:13] Speaker B: And then my last goal, it's a little bit inside baseball. I want to get more guests on 8bit to 4k. More guests here too. If we have people who would be interested in guesting on four words. But 8 bit to 4k, I feel like we can get guests from all sorts of parts of the Internet and talk about whatever the hell kind of video games people want to talk about. It's a much more open ended podcast than this one is. Or we can have an anime episode or something like that and invite a guest on who's a huge weeb, maybe more than me. Like there's things we can do and I want to build up that podcast a bit more. So that's my other goal is I want to get more guests on 8bit and expand that podcast to be more than just a little side project. I want it to be as much of a main project as four wards is. [00:34:01] Speaker C: If, if you haven't gone and listened to it. 8bit to 4k, like right now this is a passion project. You can tell all three of us adore what we're talking about when we do this because we love games. That allows us the chance to talk about more than just league. We all like league. We all like playing league. Yep. But there's only so much we can talk about loving League and not talking about other projects on it. Whereas with 8bit to 4k, you can actually like hear where we're passionate about other things and start going into. We talked last week about games that we thought are severely underrated, essentially. [00:34:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:35] Speaker A: Actually last week when we were talking was Cult classics. [00:34:38] Speaker C: Yeah, we. [00:34:39] Speaker A: Yeah, cult classics. And that came from a lister. Like they brought us the topic and we were like, hey, you know what, that sounds really cool. We got really excited about doing it. Like, we got really, like, we love talking video games. Like that's weird sometimes. We used to. What started all this is we would spend time after podcasting and we would just talk for like an hour about video games and we're like, why don't we just do this in a pod? [00:35:05] Speaker C: That or the pre show. Yeah. [00:35:06] Speaker A: Or. Yeah, in the pre show. [00:35:08] Speaker B: Yep. But also like, I put a lot of time into League of legends. I played 674 ranked games in 2025. I still spent more time playing non League of Legends games than I played League of Legends. I like video games a lot. So you. The. The question that prompted us to have this as our topic tonight was can you balance league goals with IRL goals? Absolutely. There's no way in hell I'd be able to com complete as many crazy RPGs and other bullshit that I played in 2025 and play League if it wasn't possible to balance league with other goals. [00:35:50] Speaker C: Yeah. Being able to. Yes. Forcing yourself to is the difficult part. [00:35:55] Speaker B: Yep. [00:35:55] Speaker C: Keeping balance is the most difficult thing. And keeping yourself to the goals is a difficult thing. As you may have found out from one of our earliest 8bit to 4k episodes where I was the only one who was capable of doing my thing in early. One of that was a tech issue. I understand that one. [00:36:12] Speaker B: I tried, but I still would like to play that game at some point. [00:36:16] Speaker C: So like even, even back then, like the ability to. To balance what we wanted to have versus what we could get was quite right. [00:36:26] Speaker B: Yep. You figure things out, you try, you fail. And that's how you grow and progress in your goals is by failure. If you succeeded at everything the first try, then what the hell would the point be of making goals of them in the first place? Of course, you could also just play Lucian in the top lane and you'll just win every game and then it's completely not an issue. Right? [00:36:47] Speaker C: You'll be able to reach out. [00:36:48] Speaker A: Who needs an AP bruiser? [00:36:51] Speaker B: There you go, guys. I hope you've enjoyed this shorter, slightly weird episode of the Four Wards podcast. Write in to theforwards podcastmail.com so we can answer your questions on the show. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled patch episode next week. [00:37:07] Speaker C: Please give us some feedback on how you thought about this episode. I want to hear at least something about whether or not, hey, we prefer not to have this or, yeah, I'm enjoying this if you'd prefer not to have it, we'll switch up and not do something like this again if we have to. But give us something so that we know whether or not this is up the alley of everyone. [00:37:25] Speaker B: Feedback is valuable, guys. We want to make a show that you want to listen to. Tell us what you want us to do. [00:37:32] Speaker C: All right? [00:37:33] Speaker B: I've been Jack Soman from Mike and many names for Pillow Pet. Have a great night. [00:37:37] Speaker A: Good night. [00:37:39] Speaker C: Good night, everybody. [00:37:41] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Four Wards Podcast. If you want to support the show directly, consider checking out our [email protected] the Four Wards Podcast. And of course, send your questions to the Four Wards podcastmail.com so we can answer them live on the show. That's the Four Wards podcastmail.com.