Smooth Transitions

I'm breaking a drinking habit. It's a pretty innocuous one, for something labeled "drinking habit". Not alcohol, not even lattes. Currently I drink roughly 4-5 "Zevias" per day; a soda sweetened with stevia rather than sugar. I rarely drink anything else; occasionally decaf coffee or sparkling water with cranberry juice, but that's about it. We purchase them at a discount, usually, so this runs us 4.5x$0.70x365 = $1150/yr.

I've been playing a lot of Storybook Brawl in the last couple of weeks. The basic concept is that you purchase minions for a small army (max size 7) that fights other people's small armies. Every turn, you get a bit more gold to purchase minions (starting with 2, up to 12), and every three turns, some of the minions available for purchase are substantially stronger. The shops are very random, though; you could have a shop with only early-game minions in it, even at the end of the game! So also always available is the option to reroll your shop for 1 gold. The way to win is to have good enough early minions to not lose many fights, find a strong composition or a couple just very strong minions to carry you through the midgame, and get some of the strongest minions (and strongest whole-army-buffing treasures) in the late game.

My plan to drink more water and decaf coffee, both of which are far cheaper, is instituting for myself this rule: every day, I must drink one can of sparkling water. This doesn't prevent me from having any of the Zevias to which I've become accustomed. But it does increase my fluid intake (good) with cheaper liquids (good) in a way that I have in the past found plenty delicious (good) and get me into the habit of drinking a different thing regularly (good), without really any chance of triggering a resentful reaction (great).

The most tempting way to lose at Storybook Brawl is to roll up into midgame with a powerful army of minions and just keep trying to do more of that until the end. This loses because someone will build a more powerful army out of endgame minions, and then your great midgame comp will roll over. Instead, you have to accept that your midgame was just your midgame and begin replacing pieces of it with powerful endgame minions. You'll probably become weaker for a fight or two, as your synergies get reduced. That's okay. You're building to something strong. Replace a synergistic minion with an endgame-potential minion this fight, and then two the next, and then another after that, and you'll be okayish during your transition and then suddenly have most of an endgame comp with the best of your midgame to round it out.

I rejected the temptation to say that since once upon a time I drank almost nothing but sparkling water, I should just ("should just") switch outright to sparkling waters with the occasional Zevia, or even switch out half of my consumption or even switch out just one Zevia for a sparkling water. Why take the risk? Just make the transition as smooth as possible.

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