Category: Iron Waifu

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Iron Waifu 2021 Review

Hey everyone, Conash here! Sorry for the delay on the blog post, I’ve been taking the past few days to rest now that Iron Waifu has past. It ended up just slipping my mind that I should talk about how things went. Sorry about that!

I first wanted to take a moment to thank everyone on staff for helping out with the tournament. It was a lot to cover and I know that I couldn’t have gotten by without the help and support from all of those involved ranging from the more apparent things like Omni’s constant vigilance against cheaters to the more background jobs like Romeo taking basically all of the image duties for the entirety of the month. Being able to lean on Nekochan and Moomabelle to help handle the blog posts was also a huge help and while it was an immense help, though I wouldn’t hold my breathe for weekly blog posts given how quickly those can burn people out. I think that we’ll try to have more regular blog posts again but we’ll see how things will go.

Now as for the tournament itself, this was my first time being the driving force for any sort of event like this and all things considered I’m very happy with how things turned out! While the absence of NoMoshing’s creative touch was felt at least by me, a big reason why me and Romeo tried to lean so heavily on last year’s format and quips. It was definitely a new experience having to get the word out and organizing things with people. Still, it was great seeing both a lot of returning and new faces around for this years tournaments, which certainly had it’s own fill of excitement and twists all throughout! Getting to be there and doing what I could to give you all as great of a time with Iron Waifu made it all worth it!

Personally though, I was really happy to see Brigandine win this year. See, I’m not sure how many of you were there back during the original Iron Waifu 2016, but back then I was basically the face of the Brigandine fanbase. I wasn’t part of the team yet and had recently done a screenshot Let’s Play of Harem Collector where she just really clicked with me immensely, she scratched an itch that I had felt was sorely missing in the game. So come the first ever Iron Waifu tournament I did as much campaigning as I could to try to help push her as far as she would go. Now, I know that people voting for her both back then and now are doing so because of their own reasons, but as the biggest vocal fan of hers at the time I was shocked to see her do better against Therese in that tournament then any of the other girls, including her finals match against Alina. A lot of people slept on her but I was hopeful that she had a powerful following behind her, which 2017 proved to be the case. From there she kept coming so close to winning every year, but she was always a strong contender every year. So it just made me happy to see that my favorite girl, who I fought so hard to build good will for back when I was just a fan finally get a victory. I know that a lot of you out there have your reasons for disliking Brigandine, including just not getting her or feeling like her presence “stole” any hopes for your favorite girl to win, and I can certainly get that. This year’s tournament, while it certainly took a lot out of me did not leave me blind to how I noticed that this year especially has had a bit more of a sombre vibe to it, which is something that I’m hoping we’ll be able to address a bit more in future years.

Speaking of future years, I wanted to take a second to talk a bit about next year’s Iron Waifu. There is still a lot that we will be figuring out over the next year, but there are a few things that I can clear up. First of all, this year was the final ‘Iron Waifu’ tournament for Harem Collector 1. While we’ve had a lot of fun with the tournaments here and there’s still plenty more for that could be done with the girls here, we want to pivot towards our next project “I Live To Serve Dungeon King!!” for next year, and at this point we feel that Harem Collector 1 has had a good six years of Iron Waifu. This isn’t to say that your Waifu won’t ever be able to be crowned Iron Waifu though, as when we get around to Harem Collector 2 and future games in the franchise, your favorite HC girls will be looking to get their shot for the crown once again! That said, we probably won’t be sticking to the same format that we’ve used for previous years for Iron Waifu 2022, while we’ve got some ideas in the works trying to fill out a roster for a full 32 characters would probably run into issues similar to what Iron Waifu 2016 had. Just know that we’re looking over everyone’s feedback and thoughts over the prior few years and will be using this shift in game to try to improve the format of Iron Waifu as a whole!

That’s about it from me. Looking forward to an announcement from NoMoshing himself in the next couple of weeks, while we’re still ironing out some of the finer pointsit looks to me that we’ll be taking Bad Kitty Games in a better direction overall.

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Iron Waifu Interview with BKG staff

Hey everyone! Conash here! I don’t know about you but I’ve found this year’s Iron Waifu to be quite intense! So I thought that it’d be good to take some time and talk with some of our staff members, and I’ve put together a few questions to ask some of them! Today’s stars will be our musical mistress Moomabelle, our pixel professor Kumiho, and our new hire for this month Romeo Papa! Without further ado, let’s get to what they all have to say!

1. Have you enjoyed your time working with Bad Kitty Games and interacting with our fans and community?

Moomabelle: If I didn’t I would have to call my sanity into question. Of course I have! What kind of question is that? The staff are super lovely and super talented folks and always have been as far as I’m aware. The fans are the right flavor of weird. The community is super supportive and they feed me pictures of cows. What more could I want?

Kumiho: Oh yeah, absolutely. I could gush for a while about how much I’ve enjoyed making pixel art and character designs for BKG; it’s a fun fulfilling time~
I’ve gotten to meet a lot of wonderful people thanks to BKG too, both in work and in the community. I tend to be shyer in interacting beyond gushing about pixel artsy details or technical bits, but thanks to everyone in the BKG staff and community, I’m starting to open up more, slowly but surely. It’s been good for me, I think.

Romeo Papa: Well to preface this section, my actual experience with working “for” BKG is limited. However I’ve been a tester for them as well as a moderator and wiki admin for a while. With all that said BKG is a very forthcoming company, it’s rare to see such transparency and desire to interact with their fanbase, and I believe this is one of the key factors for the very supportive and nice community BKG fosters. 

My own experience with them has been really great, for example both Conash and NoMoshing can attest to the fact that when I join testing phases I tend to work for too long and neglect my own sleeping schedule, they are both ready to tell me to put things down and go to bed. Also whenever I’ve asked for information about HC for the wiki I couldn’t easily come across they’ve always been more than ready to provide it. They have also gone out of their to make official mod support for HC, I can’t recall any RPG Maker with “real” mod support anywhere, this shows just how far they are willing to go for their fans.

But one of the biggest examples of my own interaction with them, that shows how community and fan interaction is important to them, has been this month. Without getting into it too much NoMoshing had to take a sabbatical for his own reasons, however it was very important Iron Waifu still went on as usual so he asked me to officially join the team for the month of May, so that his own sabbatical wouldn’t hurt Iron Waifu by being a man down. And having been working on Iron Waifu I can fully understand why he did that now, it’s a lot more work than I ever imagined.

2. How involved have you been in previous Iron Waifu tournaments, and how do you feel about this year’s tournament?

Moomabelle: This would be the first year that I’ve been more than passively engaged. For some reason, it just sucked me right the frick in this year. It might be the cute propaganda I’ve been seeing. Advertisement is mind control, after all, and I’m impressionable. Whatever the reason, I’m having fun watching number go up. Also keep making cute propaganda, please.

Kumiho: I’ve been lurking in previous tournaments since about 2019, and this is my first time actively voting and keeping up with the day by day. I’m seeing a lot of surprise upsets this year, and it’s really fun to see! A lot of difficult matchups to vote on too. I can’t wait to see who ends up in the final bracket. It’s already shaping up differently than I thought it would.

Romeo Papa: I first started voting in Iron Waifu for the 2018 tournament, meaning I missed the first two, I have however been fully engaged ever since then. Now admittedly I haven’t been voting every day this year, but as mentioned before I’ve arguably been more involved this year than previous years.

As for this year’s tournament? I’ve been pleasantly surprised, there was some drama last year that kinda made me a little wary of this year. But the community and tournament as a whole have been very peaceful this year, so good on us! *Pats our collective heads*

3. Have the results of one or more of this year’s matches stood out to you in particular and why?

Moomabelle: There have been a lot of close calls this year and a lot of surprising victories. Never thought I’d see Eulania take victory over Yamamaya. Definitely didn’t see Natya’s victory coming. Miri’s close call got me pretty pumped. Lilac got some well-deserved revenge on Florine. And well, Elaiya is still upping her K/D at the time of writing. Let’s do more of that. I like that.

Kumiho: Oh yeah, quite a few. The ties so early in round 1 surprised me, particularly Yeon vs Miri. I voted Miri thinking she’d be crushed, but she held her own! Followed by Yeon losing in round 2, I honestly expected her to be in the finals.

Then there was Brigandine vs Clementine–I did expect Brig to win, but what I didn’t expect was the crushing defeat on Clementine’s part, oof. I voted Brig, but I still felt bad for Clementine losing by that much.

And lastly, Lilac vs Chimei. This was such a hard one for me to vote on, I really love them both; but I’m a sucker for the maid and shopkeeper girls, so I gave it to Lilac thinking she’d probably be eliminated. And I was totally wrong, she crushed it! This year of Iron Waifu has shown me you really can’t assume who’s the strongest contestant. These girls will surprise you!

Romeo Papa: I think that May 6th Miri VS Yeon came as a surprise to all of us.  Everyone expected Yeon to be the favourite of Q2, but our sleepy bunny girl showed that just because you are lazy doesn’t mean you can’t fight, she put up a valiant fight and fought our white mage to a draw. This made it clear that maybe Yeon’s path to victory wouldn’t be as unopposed as we all thought, a fact Natya later proved, which again came as a surprise to me.

Lilac also surprises me, the Maids have never been the most popular ones in Iron Waifu, however she made it to the Quarter Finals, is this another example of how a little extra content for a girl can shoot up their popularity that Quinta so elegantly displayed back in 2019? Who knows. Also as a Brigandine fan I have to mention May 13th, that Clemstomp was something else.

4. Of the remaining contestants who do you hope wins and why?

Moomabelle: Well of course I hope Elaiya wins. I always hope Elaiya wins. Even if Elaiya doesn’t win, she still wins in my headcanon. Because she’s just nice, because I like melodrama, because vengeance is virtue, because gunpowder smells nice and is tied to more childhood memories than I care to admit. I would like very much to sit quietly with Elaiya at separate workbenches in the same room. Since that would be insane to attempt, I’ll settle for a trail of smoke to the top!

Kumiho: Oh no, don’t make me pick only one!…Well if I had to go with a single favorite waifu vote, Elaiya. Cutie gunslinger waifu will always have my heart. I love her 110%. I need a poster of this super cutie, okay–

My inner pixel artist vote would go to Eulania. Ghost girls are fun, and additional Phantom Knight content means I get to make fancy Phantom Knight armor that much sooner…and I’d like that very, very much.

As for who I really believe deserves the IW win? Brigadine, easily. She’s been cursed with coming so close to victory–semi finals or finals–only to be just out of reach of the crown. I learned of Brig through IW before I got to know her in-game, and I have a soft spot for her as a result. I would be thrilled if on this last Harem Collector Iron Waifu, Brigadine got the crown. She deserves it after all these years.

Romeo Papa: Well I’m sure it comes as no surprise I’m rooting for Brigandine again this year. First let’s go over a more practical reason for it. She offers the most content for a win. She is the most lacking girl in terms of actual content, she offers recruitment, a new party member, all the chat dialogue every other girl would get, and a Love Quest, but previous years one of her prizes has been a quest into Inferireux the Dwarven Nation, so there’s no reason to believe this won’t be the case this year either. So not only does she offer a lot of characterisation she also offers world building

As for my own personal reason why Brigandine is my waifu? I like what she promises and her attitude. You can see it in how she interacts with Hero, she knows what Hero wants from her yet she helps him get stronger, why? She knows she’s stronger than him and can take him if she was so inclined, so what harm would there be with training him? But still why do it? She could just as easily turn him away and be done with it, she lives in the noble district and gets invited to noble parties, she’s clearly not hurting for the cash. No Brigandine wants to join us, but she doesn’t plan on going easy; she wants Hero to show her how strong he really is first and take her.

There’s also her “archetype”, I am not a fan of cookie cutter archetypes but Brigandine doesn’t slot easily into her archetypes. She’s a noble but isn’t pampered and unsure of how the world works. She’s a highly accomplished warrior, yet she spends her time in a small house in the noble district instead of out adventuring or fighting wars, why? There is a rich backstory there, and it’s a backstory I want to learn, and her ability to stand out in her archetypes speaks to me

5. Is there anything you want to say to the fans, community, or voters?

Moomabelle: To the fans, you’re pretty much what makes it worth it to me. Hearing that my creative input makes a difference to y’all it’s just.. I can’t even really explain it. So I won’t! To the community, you’re what makes this possible, makes this grow. You’re super important and your support is so essential! Plus y’all are a bunch of goofballs and I’m into it. To the voters, vote with your hearts! It is the only way! Brains can be dumb but hearts can’t!

Kumiho: Thanks for supporting us all this time! Seeing everyone all excited for their favorite waifus gets me that much more psyched to make the cutest sprites and designs I can. You’re all beautiful people, and I hope to do the chatting thing with you more~
Get out there and vote for your favorite lovelies!

Romeo Papa: First I just want to say that this community is probably one of the most peaceful and welcoming porn communities I’ve ever met. I have nothing to follow up with this, but it bears repeating ^^

I do have a small ramble about the votes so far. This Iron Waifu have been weird, with so many close calls and upsets. It’s really hard to tell whether this is a result of a shifting fanbase or the fact that a lot of the heavy hitters are now gone and so people’s votes goes to girls that wouldn’t normally get them? Whatever it is, I am really happy to see less popular girls getting attention this year. Oh and also as of the moment of writing this our highest vote total is 81 on day 23, which is the highest votes total of any year. The highest voted girl is Brigandine with 57 votes on day 13, which is also the highest voted girl out of any year. So keep up the good work everyone! Let’s set even higher records!

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Music, Mooing, and Other Such Nonsense

Hello guys, gals, and other pals! I’m moomabelle, also known as Clara (with or without the aditional “-ara”). I’m the songstress behind the original music in this lovely game and your local dairy-dere cow! I’m proud to be talking to you during this magical time of year where we all sit down and put aside our differences to viciously argue about who best girl is. Yep, you know it. I’m talking about…

Iron Waifu.

For those that haven’t already, you should check out the main topic here and let your voice be heard! Your favorite harem gal will thank you!

I have it on good authority that fans sometimes wonder who the staff picks are. Like most things I do, I vote purely with my mushy-wushy heart, for better or for worse. Because I can’t just say “Felix, Felix, Felix,” here are my top three picks!

1. Elayia, the tragic and vengeful gunslinger. From the very beginning, she has always been my favoritest. Grit, resolve and moxie are some wonderful things. They’re made even more delicious when served with melodramatic backstories. The scandal, tragedy, and brutality of her journey really pulled me in and really made me think, “Wow, this game is really something special.” In fact, this gunsmoke avenger was the catalyst that put me in touch with NoMoshing in the first place.

2. Florine, the cruel and scheming opportunist. A contentious pick to be sure, but one I stand by nonetheless. Until I recently replayed the game, I had written her off as the person I dumped all of my various slime jars onto. But then she broke bad and jumped to number two on my list. Again, moxie and hustle are my main reasoning here even if they’re used for evil. Actually, especially if they’re used for evil.

3. Alina, the reliable tsundere steward. And in my headcanon, the OneTruePairing™. What can I say? I like her snark, and let’s face it, Hero would be in prison or living under a rock if she wasn’t making sure bills got paid. The future runs on Alina. This is my heart’s belief.

I’m giving a special mention to Gargan, whose story strikes a personal chord with me. The themes represented in their arc are things that I have an intimate experience with. To see them reflected in this project is something that, not gonna lie, gets me a little choked up.

So there you have it! Moomabelle’s staff picks! If you happen to be curious about the gal behind them, please do continue reading.

It’s strange to think about it, but I’ve been playing music for two decades now. I started on one of those Casios with the light-up keys and have moved up to other things with more expensive lights on them. I’ve done a lot with music in real life, and it’s been pretty great. But little me always wanted to make video game music, and adult me still wants to. So I do. And it’s pretty great.

Why this particular game? I love the characters, I love their stories, and well.. asexuals can like lewd stuff too! I wanted to support it and I wanted to help. The game was impressive to me when I joined and it’s even more impressive now. A lot of things have happened between then and now, — and I’ve missed a lot — but I’m no less happy to be a part of the team and no less proud that my work has been appreciated. I’m notoriously bad at accepting compliments and praise, so I just wanna take a second to say that it means very, very much to me.

For those curious about what my favorite track is, that is a really tough question for me. I have a hard time listening to my songs after they’re done. Unless I’m intoxicated. Then I am very enthusiastic about showing them to anyone who will listen. But I digress. If I had to pick, I would probably go with Demimensch because I like the way it sounds, or Hard Like Diamonds because it straddles that frail line between goofy and badass. Both of those songs worked themselves out very quickly, taking a few hours each from start to finish. It’s a very satisfying thing to have happen. It makes you feel super confident!

When I’m composing, there are a lot of little technical things to think about. Those things are detailed and complicated in their own right, but for me the more interesting challenge comes with setting the right tone for individual tracks while keeping a coherent common thread between them. With Harem Collector being as eclectic as it is, it can be rather daunting at times!

The game’s use of parody gives me a lot of freedom in that arena. Harem Collector makes a lot of references, and I try to do the same with the soundtrack. A lot of the tracks are shout-outs to songs that I like or that NoMoshing shows me, or amalgams of a particular genre. Demimensch was heavily inspired by Mystic Mysidida from Final Fantasy IV, while Hard Like Diamonds stems from my impression of what classic rock sounds like. Going about it like this yields a lot of variety!

One thing I try to do is set a general theme for important moments. I’m sure a lot of you have noticed the common hook from the sex scene songs To The Victor, TLR, and Thinking About You (for Once). I put a high priority on the association between that motif and “sex is happening now”. It sounds like this in its most basic form!

One that’s a bit harder to find is what I call the “Spoopy Boogie”. It’s four notes I use in varying configurations whenever something is creepy or unsure. You can hear it in Ancient Puzzleboxxx and Shiver

Neat, right? I think it is, anyway.

Okie, I think there’s one more weird thing about my soundtrack process. Sometimes when I’m getting stuck — which happens a lot on heavier tracks — I take it down to basics. Normally people would do four-part writing on a musical stave, but I’m really bad at reading sheet music. So I make a chiptune version instead! They don’t always sound great but some I really like. Like this chiptune version of Heterovania!

Anyway, that’s a little about me, my process, and my feelings about the project. I hope I didn’t ramble too much for you. I don’t really talk about myself much, but it was kinda fun for a change. Thank you for reading! Stay safe and remember to give headpats to your loved ones! Mō! Mō! Mō!

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Bad Kitty Games Current Affairs

Hey everyone, Conash here. Since NoMoshing has taken a much needed sabbatical, (which all of us at BKG support him in), we thought that it would be good to give all our fans an idea what everyone is working on and our current goals for the near future.

First, as many of you probably know, we are currently in the middle of Iron Waifu 2021 which has been progressing well! We’re still in the early stages and it always blows us away to see our fans’ enthusiasm! I know I was surprised to see our first tie of the year not even a week into things! Making sure this year’s Iron Waifu runs smoothly is our top priority right now, as it means a lot to us to interact with our fans, get your feedback on how you feel the girls are doing, and deliver some greatly anticipated content! We really hope that you’re excited too and, if you can, check in daily to vote and participate!

On that note, it would probably be best to start with what I’ve been focusing on. My primary focus has been on Iron Waifu. I’ve taken over a bunch of stuff NoMoshing would usually handle, but I have also been getting help from several others. I expect that there will come a point where one of those helpers will take over making the match threads. That said I am still taking the time to check in with the other members of staff to keep things moving forward. To that end, I’m hoping to be able to get out a 0.50.4 release out sometime this month as well as make significant strides towards the ILTSDK tech demo.

As for our esteemed Spokesneko, Nekochan, I suggest you keep your eyes on NoMoshing’s twitch channel as it looks like she may have taken over! Don’t let the increase in gaming fool you as Neko has also been handling a lot of the administrative duties as well, like making sure my rambling nonsense is coherent (Neko edit – Conash do you only write in run on sentences??), and working on new concept art for the remaining harem girls, so look forward to seeing more of her amazing character work in the future!

Speaking of character work, let’s take a second to talk about the Pixel Professor, Kumiho! Recently she completed her own concept art for Penelope’s redesign, and if staff and backer opinions are anything to go by she did a really awesome job. She hasn’t forgotten her standard pixel work and has been hard at work getting new sprites for the Sunnyshore Islanders and the pirate ghosts ready for all of you. We hope you’ll enjoy the HC vacation updates soon! If you’ve been following our discord you may have also seen a few previews of some of the other sprite work she’s finished for a few notable characters and also some very impressive statues. On the ILTSDK side of things she’s also been experimenting and working on various character and tileset sprites. Look forward to seeing Kumiho without the constraints of RPG Maker in the future!

While on the subject of art, let’s talk about our resident Porn-Drawing Raccoon, Hilent! Recently, Hilent has been hard at work making a few wallpapers and –gasp– putting clothes on the HC girls! Don’t worry though, as she’s currently now finds herself working on a bunch of girls in various states of undress. Some of these girls might even be in the middle of having sex! Hilent may even be starting work on the Harem Collector finale soon, but don’t let her know that I told you that.

To help keep you all quiet how about we pay a visit over to our Musical Mistress, Moomabelle! I’ve got it on good authority that her upcoming weekend is going to involve a lot of gambling and chivalry… Or at the very least, that she’ll be working on some rather amazing music with a ‘casino’ theme and a ‘knightly’ theme! There’s still a fair amount of work to be done with both compositions and she’s very confident about the work to come on both tracks. Given her “record” with amazing tracks she has every right to be in my book.

Finishing off our roster we’ve got our Community Manager and Professional Hype-man, Omnius! On top of his normal duties of making sure everyone plays nice, he has been working getting the word out about Iron Waifu to the far reaches of the fanbase! This helps ensure this year’s Iron Waifu will be a great success! Iron Waifu is an especially busy time for Omni. On top of doing what he can to spread to spread the word, he’s also our main support helping fans who are having trouble getting their forum accounts verified or their passwords reset. He’s also been our expert to maintain an even playing field and to make sure that the staff aren’t missing any fan feedback .

I hope that all of this helps reassure you that that while the 1.0 release of HC and tech demo of ILTSDK will be delayed until NoMoshing is ready to return, our team is doing our very best to keep things running and focusing on getting what we can do done in the meantime.

Cheers and happy fapping!

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Well that was a dumpster fire….

So 2020 was like a whole thing.

But, for Harem Collector, it wasn’t as bad as it could be. My depression and the general malaise of just… everything… did affect development to a degree, but I think despite everything we managed to get some good work done, and I’m looking forward to story-complete Harem Collector in 2021. We accomplished a lot last year- more new CG, more quests, pages and pages of new dialogue, as well as the promised cosplay photoshoot, and of the triumphant return of Clara Middleton to the team as our composer, cranking awesome new music again and again.

Unfortunately, that also came with a lot of hardships. Nekochan and I lost a member of our family in November, and it’s been busy settling their affairs ever since. Still, we’ve struggled on, and it looks like we’re on track to close out the main story of Harem Collector this summer!

So how does this look going forward? Well…

Quests: This upcoming update, which we’re naming RELIC, is going to cover the last two quests of the final plotline, Ancient Mysteries. Finally get to the bottom of the mystery of who left all these ruins dotting the Middle Kingdom, and what secrets they might be hiding. Following that will come the real end game content, so get ready. The end of the game is going to change the map to such a degree that we’ll be cooking up a separate instance of the world map to account for all the changes that are going to flying at you.

Hentai: Porn gnome Hilent is currently working on the new stuff for Kyrie, and when she is done we’re doing the once scene with the dark elf antagonist of Save the Elves, then Florine (as determined by backers), then it’s on to the end game orgy involving all 34 eligible harem girls!

Sprites: While it’s perhaps not as flashy as straight up porn, Kumiho has done some incredible sprite work this year, really giving her special something to a lot of the characters you know and love. As you can tell if you’ve seen the ARCANE update, we’ve started the process of adding NPC sprites to the game. I’m not sure to what degree we’re going to end up revising the NPC sprites in the game, but at the bare minimum we’re going to finish new sprites for all the major harem girls and named characters in the game, as well as make NPC sprites for all the elves, orcs, the Sunnyshore Islanders, the Kellosians, and a new suite of unit looking adventurers that fit in with the kind of people you’d expect to be doing that kind of work. As well, we’re going to get some enemy sprites done that better fit the different enemy themes.

Music: Clara’s still trucking along, focused mainly on dungeon tracks. In terms of BGM, we’re about halfway done in total, and I’m hoping that by the end of 2021 the BGM will be completely done. Clara’s also exploring the idea of doing different leitmotifs for each of the harem girls for when they level up their relationships.

Other Stuff: This May will be the final Iron Waifu for Harem Collector, so it will be your last chance to get your favourite character to win the coveted crown. Also, we have an exciting, and mysterious new way of connecting with fans of HC coming this February. What will it be…?

I think that’s it for now. Obviously, there’s a lot of specifics still to be determined, but we hope you’ll agree that 2021 will be the best year yet for Harem Collector. See you again soon!

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Big News

Those of you who have been paying attention to the Discord, my Twitter, or Patreon lately have already heard this, but as promised in this year’s Iron Waifu, Bad Kitty Games is teaming up with ero-cosplayer Mikomi Hokina for a sexy photoshoot of Kyrie this November! Everyone at Bad Kitty Games is really excited to be working with Mikomi, who you might know her work from cosplaying for fellow erotic game Future Fragments earlier this year. We’d also like to give a big shout-out to our friend ArchitectofDystopia for helping make this happen, so please when you’re done checking out Mikomi’s work, please take a look at ArchitectofDystopia’s first full-length game, Overgrown: Genesis!

Things are looking pretty good up here at Bad Kitty Games HQ, so here’s a few other updates for you:

The latest patch to Harem Collector contains a couple extra goodies more than we usually put in a patch. First of all, Elaiya’s skill trainer can be encountered a few time ahead of when he unlocks for good, in case you wanted to get her new skills in earlier. Also the Florine text-only dungeon scenes are finally fixed, and Chimei’s new face set is in the game.

Meline and Chimei’s solo scenes are going to be done very soon, as well as the threesome with Alina and Therese and Miri’s random scene. All of these sex scenes are being worked on by Hilent, and while things have been a little rocky due to the unusually high proportion of threesomes she’s had to deal with, it’s looking good for all of that getting into the v0.48 release. She’s been working hard as hell lately, so if you’re on Discord please take the time to tag her and give her some thanks.

On the music front, there was a small delay on Clara’s end but she now has all the equipment and software she needs to get working, and we will have a new track to share with our Patrons very shortly!

Also, Jalila’s character design is done, so the last 100% brand new harem girl is going to be in the game for next update as well!

Please, if you’d like, take the time to check out the Harem Collector Manor Invasion Grand Prix speedrunning contest currently happening in the forum. The prize for the top 3 finishers is an alternate outfit of your choice for your favourite Harem Collector waifu, no overly-complex voting process involved!

I think that covers everything, so I’m heading out for now. Thanks as always for all the support, and please look forward to lots of new content to come!

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Iron Waifu Updates

I’m going to have to go back to weekly blog posts, doing them every other week makes it way too easy to forget.

And before you say “why don’t you just set an alarm or a calendar alert or something NoMoshing?” I’ll have you know that I can’t remember dick fucking all and I get through the day thanks to no less than five alarms and multiple calendar appointments per week already, so I’m not having my smartphone chirp at me *even more* thank you very much.

So anyway, it’s May and that means that Iron Waifu is on! In fact, today’s match up between Lilac and Apple Kid is really close right now so please take the time to vote if you haven’t already! And as we draw closer to the end of Round One, it’s really starting to heat up, so let’s take a look at where some of our past heavy hitters are.

Yamamaya looks like this this year she’ll be able to cruise into the quarterfinals thanks to lucky placement. The only other party member in her quarter has already been eliminated, and while she’s sharing her quarter with several girls who have made the quarterfinals in the past, none of them have reached Round Three nearly as consistently as the catgirl berserker.

Meline has had a checkered history with Iron Waifu, and either seems to do very well or incredibly poorly. Half the time she makes the quarterfinals, overcoming some mid tier characters on the way, the other half the time she gets knocked out early by low tier characters. This year on the 18th we will be seeing no less than the third faceoff between Renfeld and Meline, both girls are 1-1 with one another. It’s hard not to see a future where Meline gets taken out by Brigandine or maybe even Bronwyn, who are also in her quarter, but at least she’ll have a notable rematch along the way.

Speaking of whom, Bronwyn is also staring down the barrel of a rematch with Brigandine, provided the elven ranger beats Ino tomorrow. While Brigandine has triumphed each other thing the two have faced off in Iron Waifu, don’t count Bronwyn out yet- Bron has an impressive kill count including Chimei, Yeon, and an incredible early win against Raina in 2018. Bronwyn also has only even been defeated by top-tier contenders Kyrie, Brigandine, and eventual Iron Waifus Larelle and Alina. Her record might not be that impressive, but Bronwyn is always a girl to watch.

Fan favourite Raina is looking at a rocky road to the finals this year. She has a tough match-up in round one against Florine, a strong mid-tier performer with a dedicated fanbase and exactly the kind of character that Raina seems to be weak to. If Raina can overcome that, she’s up against Meiriona, who hasn’t performed super well but has only ever been defeated by solid contenders Bronwyn and Florine, and managed to chalk up a devastating upset against fan favourite Yamamaya in her debut match. And if she can get through that odds are good that Raina is looking at a quarterfinal against Kyrie and a semifinal against Brigandine. Raina is the underdog contender this year, with difficult match-ups the whole way, but a strong contingent of supporters out lobbying for her. My advice: No matter who you vote for, do. Not. Miss. One. Single. Raina. Match. This. Year.

To give the southwest quarter a little love, everyone still in the race there has been at least a quarterfinalist in the past, lots of strong mid-tier girls in general. My personal favourite to make the semis is Elaiya- she has a strong fan following, people know that her lesbian sex scene with Doll is in the works, and while she has never finished strong, except for one embarrassing defeat against Doralice, she has her own impressive kill count and usually loses to strong contenders. My dark horse for this quarter is Chimei, who is fresh off a new love quest, has finally been able to communicate with the Hero, and will have her redesign concept art shared to backers before her next match against Yeon. I don’t think anyone here is going to take the crown in the end, but it’ll be an interest run as the mid-tiers duke it out for the semifinal.

Finally have have the two remaining top tiers, the two titans who are the real contenders to watch this year. Brigandine, the only girl in all of Iron Waifu to have only been defeated by Iron Waifus, who has never done worse than the quarterfinals. Only one half step behind is Kyrie, who except for a single loss against Raina in 2016 can say the exact same thing, and has been to the finals more than any other character save 2017 Iron Waifu winner Alina. Both characters had passionate fanbases, but while Kyrie is coming off the strength of a lot of new content in the last year, Brigandine is by far the most consistent performer. For a lot of fans, the real finals will be happening on the 30th, where unless there is an upset these two S-rank contenders will have their first head to head match-up ever. DO NOT MISS THAT MATCH!

That’s how things are shaping up so far. We have four more matches left in Round One, and after that the reward lists for every girl who has made it to Round Two will be revealed- including some new developments that are sure to excite! For now, this is NoMoshing signing off.

EDIT: Correction, Bronwyn has only faced Brigandine once before.

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The Most Wonderful (Waifu) Time of the Year!

It’s May! Spring is (mostly) here, nature is blooming, birds are singing…and it’s the perfect time to pit the lovely ladies of HC is a no-holds barred tournament to the (sticky?) finish. That’s right, it’s Iron Waifu!

I, Nekochan, shall be your ever so humble guide to this year’s edition of Iron Waifu!

For those who are new or those just would like a refresher, during the month of May, everyday there will be a poll on the forum, featuring two of the ladies in HC. Anyone registered for said forum may vote once each day. The girl who gets the most votes moves on while the girl who loses is likely tortured in some sexy fashion by Hero for her failure. (Personal headcanon, may not actually happen)

If any ties occur, I get the the completely impartial and in no way biased tiebreaker vote. Does a match-up look like it’s going to the wire? May be time to sell me on the virtues of the fair maiden you want to see win!

Today’s (almost over match-up) is Brigadine vs Evanie. If you haven’t already please take the time to vote! Tomorrow`s will be a battle of the newbies Miri and Pandora! Who shall win? Nap-time waifu or the waifu who may be literally made of iron? (I dunno, NoMoshing won’t commit to what Pandora is made of)

The remaining match-ups for the preliminary rounds can also be found on the forum. They were selected at random via a RPG maker script that was viewed live at the last backer stream! (Plug plug)

Speaking of backer streams, the dates for the next ones have been confirmed:

  • May 4th from 3 to 6 pm EST
  • May 19th from 3 to 6pm EST

As always the first hour will be NoMoshing playing a PC game while our noble viewers get the giggles out of their system. The remaining time will be NoMoshing working on HC while the chat tries their damnedest to distract him by discussing the minutiae of Middle Kingdom economics or absurd fan theories (like Natya is the third secret sister of Therese and Alina! They all have brown hair in this technicolour harem – it must be true!).

I assume that for the month of May, the backer stream will be the best way to get the real-time thoughts and feelings about how Iron Waifu is progressing. (Fair warning, I may be the poutiest of Nekoes if too many of my cinnamon rolls get voted out) That, or the HC discord.

Anyhoo, thanks one and all and we hope to see you on the forums as you, the fans, determine who is the (4th) best waifu!

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Iron Waifu Post-Mortem feat. Orifalcon!

So, it’s been a week, and now that the dust has settled after the latest Iron Waifu, Conash and I are here with guest commentator Orifalcon the discuss the contest and what conclusions we can draw from it!

Larelle’s Victory
NoMoshing: I’m a little surprised that Larelle managed to make it this far. If you had asked me a month ago who I thought would have had enough gas in the thank to defeat Brigandine, I would have been hard pressed to pick someone out. I had been cheering on Chimei as she was the best shot (I thought) of taking out Brig ahead of the finals. Yet, here we are.
That said, Larelle absolutely deserves the throne for a year. As one of the earliest characters added to the game, she’s been idling for new content for awhile. Not 100% sure yet what her Love Quest will entail, though I imaginee it will require a return to the Mourning Wood and fighting some undead.
Conash: I’m not surprised by the result, even before the tournament I was predicting that if the bracket allowed we’d see Larelle make it to the finals, and after seeing Brig get weighed down by some prize apathy it makes sense.
Orifalcon: Tsundere + Early Introduction + Outstanding Love Quest = Iron Waifu is a formula that has now withstood three years of testing.
We entered IW18 with a group of seven (Brigandine, Larelle, Kyrie, Bronwyn, Yamamaya, Doll, and Raina) who had only ever lost to past champs or each other, so Tier 1 seemed clear. Three got swept away in the first round and the other four made up the semifinals, which reflects that this was a tournament with a weird start and a standard finish. Larelle strapped on her rhinestone glove and danced her way through a sleepy quarter before holding up under pressure when the matches started getting less predictable. Her prizes were good, her fans were loud, and her wins were convincing. A worthy Iron Waifu indeed.

Impact of Rewards
NoMoshing: I’ll be honest: it was a huge relief to me to have it all out there and not having people ask me about who gets what reward. It also kept the speculation down, meaning that the voting wasn’t moved by things like “maybe if Evanie wins, she’ll become a party member” and that sort of thing, which might produce unrealistic expectations….
I think some people are confused over why the Iron Waifu tournament is structured the way it is. It’s not simply supposed to be a popularity contest- if that was my intention, I’d throw up all the characters in the game on a big ol’ list and ask everyone to pick their favourites. The way Iron Waifu is laid out, it gets every player to consider every character in the game, maybe rethinking their opinions based on another player’s opinions. It gets people talking and engaged in the future of Harem Collector. And it provides me with important data about how people feel about the characters in the game!
Conash: Here we saw several interesting developments I think. Some characters who typically get ignored got more of a push than usual, characters who already had love quests in the game got a fairer shake as people had something tangible to latch onto other than pure speculation, and there were less people assuming that if a character won they’d join the harem this fall meaning that less people were setup for disappointment if their waifu did win. That said, I did also find it interesting that despite that, a lot of the round 1 matches seemed to have a few incorrect assumption about a given character’s prize with some round 2 matches indicating to me some surprise when people saw their potential prizes posted in the actual thread. All in all, I feel that it helped level the playing field than just having a prize that people didn’t know what it would be for many of the people.
Orifalcon: The “storyline bump” and “#savetheelves” accounted for several of the tournament’s early surprises but didn’t quite have the momentum to withstand rising vote totals and the more concentrated strength of Round 2 competitors. Still, they helped give us the tournament’s craziest foursome (Meiriona/Florine in Round 2? Said no one ever), and relegated the poor maids to the spot normally kept by non-harem girls without French accents.
The “love quest blues” was seemingly the only unwritten rule that didn’t get a bit banged up this year. The added consideration of updated art didn’t seem to help Meline, Penelope, or Elaiya, and having it may have even booked the normally resistant Yamamaya an early trip to the green room for eliminated waifus. One shouldn’t get too upset about their #1 having received enough special attention that she already has what most girls are fighting for, but we still do because (insert waifu here) is amazing and logic be damned!

Maids Performing Poorly
NoMoshing:The people have spoken, and the maids need work. Well, everything in the game needs work, but the maids really stood out to me as the losers this year- usually at least one maid manages to stand out as performaing really well. So expect more to be done with them in the future- not, perhaps, a unique collection sidequest (as much as I love putting those in the game…) but at least chat dialogue and some character development.
Conash: Seeing all of the maids aside from Nerys knocked out in round 1 was surprising to me. While they’ve never really been heavy-weights, you typically see 2-3 of them making it to round 2 at least. Hopefully a few plans that we have in the works will help put up a bit of a stronger ‘Maid presence’ next year.
Orifalcon: Speaking of the green room for eliminated waifus, I hear it was especially bumping this year since all the maids arrived early and organized one heck of a party. I’m honestly not too surprised here, as they’ve never been powerhouses. Prior to this year they had a not terrible record of 7-9, but those wins include victims like Lola the Axe, the Genie, Queen Regal, and apathy!Meline. This year their matchups allowed the rise of the storyline bump to coincide with the fall of the maids.
A big issue facing them is inherent in the topic; voters with a tendency to think of them as “the maids” rather than unique personalities. This also explains why Renfeld and Nerys have been the better performers, as it’s easy to forget they’re maids at all. Hopefully more voters will explore Randi the masochist and the interesting dichotomy of Violet/Lilac (I’ll always do my best for you/my current owner, respectively) and give them a bit of a closer look next year.

Quinta’s Comeback
NoMoshing: I was very gratified to see Quinta do much better this year. I love princesses, especially when I get to H them, so I’m excited by the eventuality of adding in Quinta. I’m also happy to see so many people get engaged with the storyline and are looking forward to see the next steps unfold in the Kellos invasion quest. Other than that, there isn’t much else to say.
I don’t mind the River Nymph taking over as poorest performer, although she is a good candidate for getting a redo soon.
Conash: This was VERY encouraging to see, both for how it expressed people’s growing interest in the story-quests (which sometimes even surpassed their desire for a love quest) but also given how back in 2016 she scored a lot worse than I feel she should have due to an unlucky round 1 match. She still has a lot of room to grow in people’s hearts, but I’m glad to see that people are still generally interested in her, especially after a lot of people were disapointed that she didn’t make an appearance in 2017.
Orifalcon: A 1550% vote increase is rather impressive, even more so considering that Quinta only received one additional in-game scene in the two years since her 2016 face plant. The comments seemed split between “Kellos Invasion” and “Princess Fetish” as far as causes go, but it was certainly an exciting kickoff.
Unfortunately, Quinta’s awesome comeback story dovetailed right into the least awesome story of the tournament: f-ing cheater(s). With the benefit of hindsight, Quinta has the strongest (though by no means an ironclad) case to be made about being tagged with a dirty L, and it would have been nice to see how far she could go on her merits.
With Quinta redeemed, the River Nymph takes over as most embarrassing performer, as Larelle only surrendered 5 votes to her in their 2016 match. So stay tuned for the Nymph Reclamation Campaign in IW19.

Chopping Block
NoMoshing: Nothing is set in stone about next year, but we’re planning to have at least one new candidate who might get added in the mix, plus Hanelore, who was introduced in the latest backer update. So, we have a guaranteed replacement for Larelle, and another new girl coming up, for which I could comfortably axe either Shally, Doralice or Evanie.
Maybe the situation will change in a year’s time, but we’re almost at a locked, all-harem roster for Iron Waifu.
Conash: I’ve got a few names that I’ve got my eyes on in particular, but I imagine that NoMoshing is already thinking them too. Knowing who to cut for 2019 will be pretty hard as we continue to sure up the weak ends of Iron Waifu every year. That said, my general philosophy is that of the lower end of characters we should chop the characters who we, as the developers, don’t have as good of a prize to offer to. The June poll of the month seems to starkly agree that continuing to offer a prize, in some form at least, is preferred and so I want to make it so that if your preferred girl wins that we give you the best possibility of feeling satisfied with the prize, though popular girls who already have their love quests won’t be looking at the chopping block because their ability to do well despite prize apathy speaks highly of them.
Orifalcon: I suppose it depends on how many characters you need added next year. If it’s three newbies, like this year, then I’d probably bench Shally and Evanie. They’ve had three shots, we’ve seen them get a win, but their ceilings probably lie under the “surprise quarterfinalist if she draws the right foursome” level (the Dora-line, if you will). With an eventual harem count of 35, 2019 is also unique in that it could feature only current or future haremettes, if they’ve all been introduced by then, which would be an easy way to go. If you need to add a lot, then maybe it’s time for legitimate consideration about retiring the fully complete characters: Nerys, Yamamaya, and Clementine, if your homes are up to date on pitchfork insurance.

Other Surprises
NoMoshing: I was happy to see Doralice do so well. And I’m always happy to see people get so engaged with the story, since that’s my main contribution to the game at this point. I was also pretty pleased to see Kyrie get so far, despite having been a controversial character in the game so far.
In unpleasant surprises, I was dismayed to see Chimei get crushed by Brig right at the beginning of the game. I like Chimei a lot, and as I’ve said elsewhere, I’m very excited to doing more with her when I get the opportunity.
Conash: There were two big surprises that stood out to me that might not have stood out to many others. The first being Florine’s growth in popularity, while Orifalcon had pointed out that Florine has actually done pretty well, Florine does carry her share of anti-voters and a few parts of her personality can rub people the wrong way, but her winning pretty thoroughly over both Doll and the elf Orgy had left me pretty confused and wondering if she might make it to the finals… Only for Kyrie to overcome her once again bucking my expectations. The other big surprise for me was how Yamamaya has seemed to earn a bit more apathy this year. Originally I had thought that her loss to Meiriona was elf orgy hype, but the round 2 results for Meiriona and Nerys seem to suggest that hype wasn’t too big to begin with, what really drove it home though was Yamamaya coming in 3rd in the tie-breaker she was in. In past years Yama’s been a pretty strong competitor despite already having her love quest for all three tournaments, which has shown a pretty strong following behind her beyond just Zera, but losing in a tie-breaker where prizes are off the table tells a very different tale for this year…
Orifalcon: It’s surprising to see that no competitor is carrying a record of 0-2, as all four girls who were at risk won their opening matchup. Natya and Bell join 8 past competitors at 0-1, and Serade and Gargan are the unlucky duo at 0-3.
I’m surprised, for the second year, with Raina’s downward trajectory in Iron Waifu. Not from a trends standpoint, as she had to face Bronwyn, but more regarding Raina herself. She ticks off 2 of the boxes on the winning formula and has the same “need to be conquered” factor that dominated this year’s semifinals. She faces no prize apathy, and yet her descent is even steeper than Yamamaya’s. Maybe she isn’t quite tsundere enough, but I’d expect her to have a bigger following, particularly amongst the lurkers. Perhaps Nekochan was right, and there’s an anti-cinnamon roll agenda in play.

Predictions for 2019
NoMoshing: I’m hesitant to outright saw who I think will win Iron Waifu, but I will predict this: I think, because the body of work leading up to IW 2019 will be digging through Larelle and Therese’s immense backlogs of H, that people will be hungry for someone truly unique and different getting the crown. This will affect the polling by having even more upsets and surprises, with a strong showing by girls like Florine and Jonagold.
Conash: While I’m sure that Brigandine is the expected winner, and I imagine we’ll see her making it to at least the semi-finals once more, honestly I don’t see her winning 2019 if her prizes are the same as they were this year. Perhaps she could get to the finals and give her opponent a good run for their money but prize based voting tends to play a big part in these things, and the closer you approach the 31st the more it does as fence sitters start seeing less of, “Which girl do I like more?” and more “What do I want added to the game first?” As such, I’m certainly going to make an effort to try to get us to the point where we might be able to promise a bit more for her prize but only time will tell if that will happen or even if that’s even needed.
Orifalcon: Just like this year, IW19 will be partly ruled by the dueling Brigandine questions. Is there anyone left who can beat Brig? Can Brig win “the big one” when facing the most popular, long established girl with a love quest on offer? A year is a good amount of time for more in-game characterization and memorable moments to help win over a few more lurkers, which is all she would have needed this year, so I see no reason not to remove her #1 overall seed label now.
Unless she rolls a top-6 competitor, I’d predict Serade gets her first win next year. She gave eventual-finalist Kyrie a good match, and could receive a push for sympathy votes as she’s 0-3. Unfortunately, Gargan’s niche kink is still probably too heavy, so I’d predict my personal #4 drops to 0-4.
If the winning formula holds up again, I predict a Bronwyn victory, followed by a concerted push to ban all tsunderes from future Iron Waifus.

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Iron Waifu- End of Round One

Conveniently enough, today is the final match of Round One of Iron Waifu 2018, so, we figured for today we’d look forward to round two, and post some insights about the previous round. Okay? Okay!

May 17th- Princess Quinta vs Yeon Ewona
NoMoshing: For most of the previous Iron Waifus, there have been a few truisms that emerged- Characters with completed love quests tended to perform poorly, characters who represented a niche taste did even worse, and most especially, unless your name started with “A” or ended in “Gandine”, harem girl trumped non-harem girls and party members trumped non-party harem girls. But this year isn’t like those previous years, and whoever is represented by these new voting blocs, all previous wisdom is rapidly getting chucked out the window.
Case in point, Princess Quinta, who lost so badly in her first appearance that we passed over her for IW 2017 in favour of her mother, managing a stunning turnaround on Violet. Now, Quinta will eventually make it to the harem, but she isn’t there yet, and that is usually a negative mark.
Will she be able to keep it up against a full-on party member though? While Evanie tends to perform well, Yeon winning out against her isn’t an upset, and I know Yeon has her haters. But the potential rewards might also weigh in Yeon’s favour- Quinta is only getting a single sex scene out of the crown, while Yeon is getting quite a bit more. It’s going to be a tossup for me, but an interestingly asymmetrical tossup.
Conash: Quinta’s match was a REAL head-turner to start off the tournament for me. I expected Quinta to do better since “Circle of Strife” and “Dude where’s my Sword” left people hungry for more storyline quests, but I was blown away not just by how Quinta won but how she won by a pretty healthy lead (7 votes). Violet hasn’t exactly given us incredible preformances in the past, but she hasn’t exactly been a push-over so this match took me by surprise and had me making a brand new bracket even because storyline quests might be able to even take on party members with this… And then Yeon managed to win out over Evanie who also offered progression on the Kellos storyline in one way or another as did Quinta. The matches that lead to this defied my expectations, new and old.
Nekochan: Hmmm legit princess vs wannabe princess…I’ve been a bit surprised by the Yeon-dislike given the fanbase around her fellow dungeon-mates, and it seems like players tend to be happy for a chance to coerce the girls to accept the hero. I was happy to see her win since that may indicate the tide is turning for her (or are people just tired of be teased with Evanie?). If Quinta wins, I suppose it’s not so much that she has her fans but the Yeon-dislike remains stronger than the first round indicated.

May 18th- Ser Brigandine De Mont-Fleur vs Eulania
NoMoshing: Brigadine’s popularity has always been a sore tooth with me. I mean, I’m glad that people love a character from my game so much, but look at it from my perspective- a skill trainer whose design I had no hand in routinely turns out to be more popular than characters I created and actively tried to make attractive, and has only lost to the event Iron Waifu herself the previous two years. On top of that, this year she won out over Chimei, whose redesign and love quest I’m actually really looking forward to. But this contest isn’t about what I want, it’s about what you all want, and I’m willing to roll with it no matter the outcome. Interestingly enough, she is not the top-voted non-harem girl this year… a possible crack in her support base?
I am pleased with Eulania making it to the second round, though. As a character routinely underserved with regard to content, I’m glad she’s managed to wrangle a few fans who want to see more of her. Will it be enough to stop the freight train that is Brigandine? Maybe there’s a slim chance. We’ll see what everyone thinks in a couple days.
Conash: Brigandine is my waifu, I’ve made this clear even back in 2016 before I was on the team. While I do feel sorry for NoMoshing that it might be a bit of a sore thumb for him, I’m sorry but just how some of the minor dailogues that come up with her paint a character that’s pretty open to what Hero’s doing and seems so unphased by it and then seems to look to have an implied, “Take me, if you can” feeling to her just lights a fire in me. Eulania’s win is nice to see as well, while I’m not exactly her biggest fan (call me a heretic if you must but I don’t particularly care for glasses >.>) it’s very nice to see people wanting to see more of her because hey, I want to see more of her and learn about her! Though with the few scenes that she’ll be getting added to the game with the 0.34 release hopefully people who votes for her will get a nice taste of her soon! Still rooting for Brig personally but I’ll make sure to keep my write-up on point.
Nekochan: Why do ghosts need glasses? Yes that is seriously all I have to say about this matchup. The outcome has already been decided.

May 19th- Kyrie the Burning Blizzard vs Jonagold Apple (Apple Kid)
NoMoshing: I really like writing for Kyrie. She’s smart, she’s flirty, she has more adventuring experience than the Hero, and she likes getting under his skin sometimes. I understand why she has her haters, though. It was something of a disappointment to see Serade get the boot so early, but I feel she had a strong showing and the improvements to her characterization are winning her a few fans. No regrets from this match in round one.
Even though I like Renfeld (And she’s one of the few characters who I have a pretty good idea of what I want for her LQ), it’s really nice to see Apple Kid get a victory. I think it’s pretty well deserved after washing out the previous two contests. It’ll be interesting to see what happens- Kyrie may be controversial, but she got to the semifinals last year, but this year Jonagold has the power of ShadowCluster’s lobbying behind her… I’m interested to see what happens here.
Conash: While I enjoy Kyrie myself, was sad to see Serade lose especially after all that Awiiabu stuff as it makes her the first competitor to ever go 0 and 3 in Iron Waifu. Maybe next year she’ll manage to break out against someone but yeah. As for Kyrie, I never really got all the hate she tends to get, I mean sure she played a part in our capture but I’ve always figured that she didn’t exactly have room to refuse, the Queen isn’t going to just use the carrot and stick method on the Hero, EVERYONE is under her thumb, something that Shally even confirms, so if Kyrie threw her life away for some guy she mildly flirted with to rot in a dungeon the Queen would have just found some other pretty woman to flirt with us, but hey never nice to feel betrayed I just don’t think Kyrie had a lot of room to not betray us personally. Apple Kid’s win was a bit of a shock for me, Renfeld tends to do the best ouf of all of the maids as she’s never lost a round 1 before, even making a turn-around and defeating Meline in 2017 after losing to her in 2016, but this was Apple Kid’s first time ever making it past round 1. I’m not Renfeld’s biggest fan but I get some of the appeal, still I like that Apple Kid scored her first win.
Nekochan: It’ll be okay Apple Kid. Your rival is just hotter. Just be a good sport about it ok?

May 20th- Elaiya the Relentless vs Lady Doralice
NoMoshing: Elaiya has has the disadvantage of being up against fan favourite characters like Raina and Larelle her previous two matches, and that combined with an already-completed love quest, I was not expecting Elaiya to go far this year. But for her to claim the narrowest victory from Gargan shows that she does have her fans, and it certainly was a deserved victory for the game’s second implemented harem girl.
Meanwhile, Doralice beating Randi gives me some hope that people are actually really engaged with the story this year and are interested in seeing where everything goes. Although, Randi has a bad habit of unlucky matchups against big time characters, so it was actually pretty hard to gauge fan interest in her, so I guess this isn’t 100% just yet. Elaiya vs Doralice is really going to be a test of story progress vs waifu-ism, and I’m looking forward to seeing it!
Conash: I’m personally more of a fan of Gargan than Elaiya, but it’s good to see both of them getting support and all! Elaiya’s win gives her first win of Iron Waifu, but it also marks Gargan as the only other person to go 0 and 3 which is sad to see. I was really torn up about Elaiya vs Gargan as I wanted them both to get to round 2. Doralice’s victory seemed pretty clear to me by the time we got there, the maids had been doing uncharacteristically bad the tournament, while story quests were doing pretty well. While we haven’t exactly gotten a super thrilling edition to the Harem Drama arc, it’s generally speaking been a fan favorite most of the time, the fact that it gives us Therese in the first quest (and only quest for many years) probably helped solidify it as offering one of the nicest rewards. I’m really looking forward to seeing how well Doralice does, as she could easily become an unexpected powerhouse here.
Nekochan: I consider Elaiya to be one of my cinnamon rolls. I have a lot but they all need love and hugs and to be told it’ll be ok. She’s the only one I have left in the competition since my other cinnamon rolls have already been eliminated *sniffle*

May 21st- Bronwyn vs Nerys Rainbreeze
NoMoshing: Holy cow, is the pro-elf voting bloc ever out in force this year! But this specific matchup is pretty exciting to me for two reasons- one, Nerys had a really strong debut last year, being one of the few non-party girls who have beaten out a fully-fledged party member (The only other girls who can claim that achievement are Alina, Ino and Renfeld) and Nerys managed it literally on the first try! However, this year, Nerys is the one character who I had to reach to come up with something for- which is why none of her rewards for being crowned the victor have anything to do with her. Bronwyn has a lot more to personally gain, but people seem to really want that elf orgy that was alluded to at the end of “Elf Half-Empty”. Look forward to this match, because with the pro-elf bloc split, it’s going to be a dramatic one.
Conash: Here we’re truly going to be putting the elf orgy to the test in probably one of the most fair shakes it will get. With all the talk of #savetheelves I imagine that the elves might be benefitting a bit from a more general positive attitude that they’re cultivating around the idea of being elves, though maybe I’m just overthinking things. Either way we’ve got a strong elf party member with a lot of personal rewards to offer, and a fair amount of support behind her (heck, I personally dislike Bronwyn currently as she is, but I tend to vote for her as I know that I won’t dislike her by the end) against Nerys who’s prize package is far from lacking if you ask me. This match will be deciding a lot of my round 3 and up predictions.
Nekochan: Bronwyn you bitch! Give me back my other cinnamon roll! Her hair is nice and swirly like one and all she wants is her fairy tale romance but the hero is a butt. #fucktheelves #yesImawareofthedoubleentendre #vengenceforRaina

May 22nd- Shally vs Clementine D’Orange (Orange Kid)
NoMoshing: It’s nice to see Shally get a victory in- I know a lot of players really like her, and are looking forward to her sex scene getting art soon. Up until this time she’s been a pretty consistent round one punching bag, but she finally managed to earn a win for herself and I think that’s pretty great. But she’s up against Orange Kid, a solid mid-tier waifu who is no stranger to the second round. That said Orange Kid is up next in terms of getting art redone, so her listed rewards are almost like a second entry for Apple Kid.
I don’t think either of these characters are getting to the finals based on their rewards alone, but this year has been nothing if not chock full of upsets and odd victories. I have great expectations for whoever wins this match!
Conash: Funny story, Shally scooted into victory at the absolute last minute. I had confirmed with NoMoshing how our tie-breaker was going to vote in advance and we were watching the clock very closely. If I recall the final vote that pushed Shally from losing a tie to winning her match came in the last 5 minutes. I had to redo both of my bracket images as I had assumed it would end in a tie as a result. Orange Kid’s wide margin for victory did surprise me a bit as I figured there would have been a bit more prize apathy holding her back against Ino, but I understand her winning as it’s not ALL about prizes afterall. I know who I think will win, but my gut tells me to not count this match over quite so soon so I’ll be watching this match for another potential upset.
Nekochan: Shally is grumpy and nevers like anything I do. Or laughs at me. Give me back my new cinnamon roll! I want sassy revenge orange. #vengenceforNatya

May 23rd- Meiriona vs Florine
NoMoshing: Talk about an explosive debut! In a powerful victory that *nobody* saw coming, newcomer elven MILF Meiriona scores the biggest wins of the year against perennial fan favourite Yamamaya! For everyone’s favourite berserker catgirl to go from semi- and quarterfinal finishes to lose to an absolute newb is probably the biggest upset of the year. While a lot of people are saying “ELF ORGY! ELF ORGY!” I’m honestly thinking that character fatigue might have more to do with Yamamaya’s loss. We’ve been doing Yamamaya’s art redesign for a long time now, people are just kind of tired of the catgirl. We’ll see if I’m right next year, I suppose, because if I am Yama should bounce back.
As for Florine, her victory is a bit of a surprise as Doll made it all the way to the semifinals last year, but I’m happy to see Florine end up doing so well. I’m looking forward to doing more content for her, so I hope she goes far! Will she be able to beat the pro-elf bloc, though? I wonder….
Conash: Meiriona, the girl who would turn fans into a parliament of owls, won over Yamamaya who’s been the exception to the typical prize apathy rules (making it to the semi-finals in 2016 and into round 3 in 2017). After that powerful of a victory round 1, I’d say that the elf orgy itself has a good chance of taking this entire contest. Florine winning against Doll was a bit surprising, though after the great commentary we got by orifalcon where it was pointed out that Florine has never lost a match by more than 1 vote in the past two years, I certainly wasn’t willing to count her out. Doll’s popularity however has become even more difficult to grasp though as last year she made it to the semi-finals… I will certainly say though, these two girls completely ruined my predictions of Q3 as a whole, I had Doll pegged as making it to the Semi-finals with Yamamaya being her biggest competition, turns out both my #1 and #2 pick for this quarter lost in the first round.
Nekochan: Florine takes away everything I love. Like cinnamon rolls. #savetheelves #yesIknowImcontradictingmyselfshutup #vengenceforDoll

May 24th- Diadira vs Larelle/Penelope
NoMoshing: I was going to do a writeup for both Larelle and Penelope, but at this point Larelle is leading by 21 votes, so I’m just going to go ahead and talk about it like Larelle has already won. Though that may change and this will look hilarious in hindsight. This is actually going to be a pretty exciting matchup from my perspective. These two characters represent the only girls getting into round two where a) they don’t have their LQ yet and b) I have a very strong idea fo what I want to do for them. Literally every other character I know what I want their LQ to be- Chimei, Gargan, Renfeld, Doll- are all gone. I’m really surprised that Meline and Penelope are both eliminated so decisively, though. Meline is a longtime fan favourite and Penelope did quite well for herself in Iron Waifu 2016. But so it goes, I guess. Either way, looking forward to this matchup, I have no complaints if either of these girls make it to the crown.
Conash: Before the tournament, I fully expected the finals of Iron Waifu to come down to Brigandine vs Larelle, given that Penelope also has her first love quest done I fully expected this match to be the biggest landslide of round 1, though Nerys vs Bell definately set a high bar so who knows if that prediction would come true. I certainly have my criticisms about Larelle but I recognize that she’s got her audience and I’m glad you all enjoy her. Diadira’s victory over Meline makes sense to me as well. While Meline is one of my personal favorites prize apathy tends to hit girls other than Yama pretty hard, meanwhile some of the reasons people have trouble getting invested in Diadira would be solved if she wins, which helps undercut some of the potential anti-voters out there.
Nekochan: Larelle is the harem girl I get the most requests to draw so I have a soft spot for her since I find drawing a character gives me more of a sense of the character (you wouldn’t believe how much I think about what kind of underwear each girl wears and what that says about them…). Rescue Me is also catchy. Good matchup and I won’t be bitter. #liesyesIwill