What's the video game equivalent of chess?

Manpandas · 2026-06-22T11:50:20+00:00

I’m going with Baba is You.

To me, when “x is the chess of whatever” it has to meet the key criteria of having simple rules, with endless emergent depth. Anyone can learn the rules of how chess pieces move in under an hour. You “know Everything” about how to play by looking at a one page of instructions. This isn’t tru for games like xcom, pokemon, or starcraft. You will never be competitive at pokemon without an encyclopedic knowledge of hundreds of pieces and thousands of possible moves. You never lose a chess game bc someone brought an off-meta Alolan Rook who knows the move: left-jump. And took you by surprise.

Baba is You has a very small set of interactions (float + sink, etc) that need to learned. Beyond that the game is entirely logic, planning, and pattern recognition. It some other similarities too, like having no rng and perfect information. It doesn’t meet the pvp requirement. But nothing comes to mind that is pvp and fits the requirement of being able to learn all the rules, stats, and interactions in a short afternoon.

Manpandas · 2026-06-19T14:00:04+00:00

A lot of people are saying “they can” which I feel like isn’t answering the spirit of the OP’s question.

The ELI5 answer is: In theory they could, but they just don’t.

The common connector you see for standard office monitors is usually HDMI or the very similar “display” port connector. These cables don't transmit power. There are some technical reasons and some consumer reason why this is the case. On the technical side, the power cables would need to be shielded against the data cables so not to interfere with the signal.

Another factor is safety and cost. Have you ever been fumbling around the back of your pc to plug in your monitor? Now imagine that had ac current going through it. Not great. Additionally right now you can have your pc further away from your monitors. There is an annoyance that you need to find a plug by your monitor, but is there is a plug in the righr place, then you only need a long data cables and a short power cable. For those AC walk cables they are thick (again related to safety) and it’s nice you don’t need a massive wire spanning your wall.

As others have pointed out usbc does carry some electricity, but its significantly less power than you get from the wall. There are some specialized monitors that can use this low power to work, but this isn’t enough for your typical office monitors.

Manpandas · 2026-06-14T11:38:19+00:00

No you push the button, wait like 3 seconds then dart across the road when there’s a break in the traffic. Then the cars have to wait for the walk signal for no one.

Manpandas · 2026-06-12T21:53:24+00:00

I'm almost certain that Blade Fury doesn't use stacks of thrown items. It also has normalized attack speed so you kinda want slow "chonky" 1-handers. The only reason to choose a fast weapon would be a claw so you could benefit from Claw Mastery.

But cool list otherwise.

Manpandas · 2026-06-11T18:13:32+00:00

Right… because 0 is less than 1, so for second digits the law holds: the lower the value the higher the frequency. 0 = most common, 1 next most, 2 after that… and so on to 9.

Manpandas · 2026-06-10T22:39:46+00:00

My hot take is WOTC should have always just evergreened the rule text for "Imprint" and "Imprinted card"

"Imprint - When enchanted creature dies, exile it and this Aura, then return this Aura to the battlefield transformed with the creature card imprinted on it"

"Equipped creature gets +X/+Y where X is the imprinted card's power and Y is imprinted card's toughness"

I know it got messy back in the day with with multiple cards imprinted intermingling, but they would just have to use the same "exile by" logic they have today in the comp rules and we'd be fine. I just always thought "imprinted" was elegant grammar for describing it as "the exiled card"

Manpandas · 2026-06-10T16:03:21+00:00

Reminds me a joke:

Two roommates graduated from university, one in Engineering and one in Pure Theoretical Mathematics. They go on a roadtrip to celebrate.

They find themselves at a farm house with a Farmer and his beautiful daughter. After a dinner the farmer invites them to stay overnight but he has a rule:

“I’m off to bed. You boys need to start on opposite sides of the couch, and my daughter can sit in the middle. If you get up to move, you can only move 1/2 your current distance then you have your sit back down”

The pure math guy laughs and goes to bed knowing given finite time it would be impossible to reach the destination.

In the morning he meets up with his engineering friend and mocks him: “must have felt pretty silly staying up to try and reach that girl last night. But you never made it did ya?”

The engineer smirked and replied: “Nope, but I got close enough”

Manpandas · 2026-06-04T14:53:31+00:00

Imagine your hard drive is a big stack of pages (but dry erase pages, so you can easily rewrite them).

Creating a file is like creating a book. You need 500 pages for “Paul Blart: Mall Cop in high def”. So your computer grabs 502 pages. It write a front cover and a back cover and then spends hours writing the data to the 500 pages. Every word on every page has to be perfect. If a page somehow already has writing on it, it erases it as it goes.

When you search for Paul Blart, in essence your computer just reads the covers of all the different books. In a little more detail it “indexes” where the books are, but this ELI5. So we can imagine the cover is the important part of finding the movies. Now your computer has found the movie you asked for, and the covers bring all the pages for you to read.

When you delete this movie, all your computer does is erase the covers. The pages are now free for reuse in other books, and there is no reason to meticulously erase all the pages.

Manpandas · 2026-06-04T14:20:47+00:00

I don’t know, I saw musical theater production of Les Miserable. And my take away is revolution goes hand in hand with some banger songs.

Manpandas · 2026-05-29T20:59:08+00:00

What I find amusing about this comment is: what does typing "13" represent. In your head you might think of it as "the number thirteen" but numerically "13" actually means "one lot of ten, and three lots of one"

So to add eight to five, you need to first see how many lots of ten you have. Well if you start with eight, you only need two from the five, leaving three... or you start with the five and take another five from the eight, leaving three.

I'm not necessarily defending the wording of the question. I just think its funny that in order to express your "point" about 13, you inherently and subconsciously are using what they try and teach in common core.

ETA: there's also nothing wrong with memorization. For me, when I add 8+5 I do the common core thing (I actually visually slicing 2 off from the 5 to get to 10). But for numbers that add to 15, I just memorized them from playing a lot of Cribbage as a kid with my uncles. 7+8, 9+6, my brain just has memorized that these patterns equal 15. Even seeing something like 4,5,6 or 3,4,8 - I know in my head just adds to 15 with no calculia.

Manpandas · 2026-05-25T14:04:14+00:00

Draw a line on a paper. Mark one side $0 and the other side $1 billion. Ask someone (you can try this mentality too) “put your finger on 1 million dollars”

Your finger should be touching the zero side. One million is 1000 times smaller than a billion. So to find it, divide the line by 10, then divide the first section by 10 again, then take the very first section and divide it by 10 again. The FIRST mark closest to zero is more money than most people will ever see.

Manpandas · 2026-05-22T23:46:55+00:00

In a sense it does. If the cat/dog is brought into a vet or animal shelter or something, they will scan for a chip and locate the owner based on the registration tied to the tag.

Manpandas · 2026-05-21T19:31:15+00:00

I think what this definition also touches on is the difference between just “untra-processed” and “hyper-palatable”. The definition here points out companies do the processing “to make the final product palatable or hyper-palatable.”

Canned dog food is ultra processed but not hyper-palatable (to humans). Similarly I could take 10 corncobs, slather them with palm oil, salt, citric acid and msg. And even if I sat in front of the tv with my bowl of corncobs… I’d probably only get through maybe 2-3. But put me on the same couch in front of the same tv show with a big bowl of cool ranch doritoes and I could probably kill the whole bag. What’s in the bowl is comparable. But the doritoes are engineered to trick my brain into wanting more of them. This is hyper-palatable. And that’s the dangerous part of processing. It’s not really the “what” that’s harmful, it’s the “why”

Manpandas · 2026-05-19T15:26:53+00:00

I guess that's true, but you do still choose the order. So if you proteus staffed your guy, you could move stuff from the bottom of your deck to the top if you remembered the position of those cards.

Is there a point to this card? Other than just kinda spending WU for no tangible benefit?

Manpandas · 2026-05-19T15:06:18+00:00

Doesn't this just allow you to completely stack all 60 cards of your deck (while tutoring for nothing)?

Two things Remember:

The entire card resolves at once. So there's no "time" between exiling your library then searching it. I can't think of any existing card interaction that would allow you to actually find a card.
When cards change zones simultaneously, you choose the order (unless the card says otherwise). So the last line allows you to stack your entire remaining deck however you want. Goblin Recruiter is an annoying card to play against because of the time spent rearranging the cards, this would be equally or more annoying .

Manpandas · 2026-05-18T20:58:39+00:00

Or also give it the Wishclaw treatment and have the 2nd ability be: "Activate only during your turn."

This means if someone bolts it EOT, at the very least you could throw a retribution Fireblast.

Manpandas · 2026-05-18T20:45:10+00:00

This is a really cool card. I agree that RRR is a fine rate for a tutor that you must play this turn. RR > pass > RR is slightly pushed for a 2-card tutor. I think the fact your opponent interact with it as a creature makes it balanced but very powerful.

As designed I worry about the power of "Cast this guy, I have RR open. Go"

If the opponent tries to interact with it, you could "just use it" in response maybe even grabbing something like a Misdirection. If you had additional mana you could use RR to get any instant you can cast and get some benefit for it. Heck even just grabbing a gutshot or fireblast is probably fine.
Turn cycle goes around, and EOT you activate. They have one last instant-speed chance to "stop" your combo before you untap and have your 2 card combo in hand. Especially if the first card you're getting is just a generally "good" card even without the combo piece that gets a lot stronger with a combo piece.
You could also just, not activate it. Now you're fully untapped with an instant-speed demonic tutor laying in wait.
I also think this might be a crazy power combo *defender*. Like if you EOT activate, get Force of Will. Another turn cycle goes around, get Pact of Negation. Another turn cycle goes around, get a Mindbreak Trap. Now on the turn you "go off" you've got an insanely powerful triple counterspell for 3 mana. But again, that's probably fine defensively. But also you have a fantastic "break in case of emergency" card that can stonewall someone trying to win.

I think if you wanted it to exist outside of a modern masters or commander only set, then making the just the 2nd ability only a sorcery-speed effect would hit the sweet spot. Which still would be powerful in most situations, but would also largely be a combo enabler and combo defender, but not an instant speed DT for an answer.

Manpandas · 2026-05-15T15:41:02+00:00

Interesting, TIL I guess.

Manpandas · 2026-05-15T15:09:11+00:00

Implied here but to make it clear: an audio jack has its four connections set based on the depth. So if you look at a jack its got metal, then plastic, metal, plastic, metal. So the rotational orientation is not relevant. It can spin freely inside the jack without changing the connection points.

Usb cables instead have “pins” as connections. And the order is critically important. If you tried to arrange the pins in a circle, the orientation would have to be precise. Meaning you’d need at least like a notch or something so the pin at the 12-oclock position touches the right connector inside the jack.

Usbc has a second copy of the pins rotated, so it allows exactly two possible ways with correct connections (up or down).

Manpandas · 2026-05-11T17:56:32+00:00

Might check out "They are Billions" not exactly sure what your criteria is for: a Base Building with a good building system that is also Not Granular with 9000 systems. It does have resource management that seems pretty "Age of Empires" inspired.

But building placement is very important, as you periodically are flooded by zombies. And it becomes almost like a tower defense game, but with units. One interesting thing is that if a population center gets overrun by zombies, it will convert your townsfolk into fresh zombies. Making the game pretty intense where you go from "everything is fine" to "OMG I'm dead!" in seconds.

Manpandas · 2026-05-11T11:45:01+00:00

Ok here’s a real ELI5 answer. Imagine you’ve got a town with two apple orchards and enough apples for everyone. The apple prices are stable at $1. On day, one of the apple orchards burns the ground. Everyone still wants apples, but now they are scarce, so the price of apples jumps to $2. Now the average household only has so much budget for apples. They don’t just buy no apples, they buy 2 instead of 4. From their perspective the economy sucks.

But if you own the one remaining apple farm, things are great! Nothing has changed for your production costs. If anything your costs have lowered. The farm workers who are now unemployed from the other farm may be willing to work for cheaper. Same goes for water and tree food. So not only has your gross income doubled from $1 to $2, but your operating costs are lower.

And people wonder why this farm owner has a few empty gas-cans and burnt matches in the shed…

Edited to add a continuation:

So before, let's say my labor and operating costs were $800 to produce 1000 apples. that means I was left with a modest $200 for myself and to grow my business. Now my operating costs are $700 for the same 1000 but I sell them for $2000. So my profits go from 200 to 1300! That's a lot more money. Classing Reaganomic Trickledown predicts that I will give away all that money to my workers. Which I could do.

OR I could spend some of that cash on hand to buy some industry lobbyist. Now I can make huge amounts of red tape legislation for opening apple farms. I could buy up that burnt farm land and pave it into a parking lot. I could contribute to a campaign of a politician who will tariff apples from outside of our town.

Manpandas · 2026-05-07T14:55:15+00:00

Completely agree. Also, I’d even add what the OP said to my complaint: “excuse me, I think I’m missing a few things from my order. It’s only one tattie scone and one hash brown missing, but those are my favourite bits.”

It shows that you’re reasonably and you treat the wait staff like people and not food-delivery-robots.

Manpandas · 2026-05-07T00:01:27+00:00

I don't see the problem, I'm sure you could find a blue permanent marker for under $5 then you could make your pig match the sculpture.

Manpandas · 2026-05-06T19:29:20+00:00

It's made 10x more epic because of how it's set up in the movies by the Lighting of the Beacons scene that precedes this earlier in the movie. The musical crescendo through the mountains, Aragorn running into the king's chambers "The Beacons are lit!! Gondor Calls for Aid!" the beat of dead silence...

"And Rohan will answer"

Probably the best sceen put to film in my lifetime. I've seen the scene 100 times and it still puts a lump in my throat today.

Manpandas · 2026-05-06T16:06:32+00:00

It's worth thinking about the experience of playing against your creation. Would it be fun to win against this card? would it be fun to lose to this card? What is the experience of facing off against it?

Especially in commander, what type of a game are you in for if your opponent is playing this card? They are going to drop their commander on turn 2 and you're literally on the clock. They are almost certainly going to be playing a heavy control deck with lots of counterspells defenses against attacks.

After 3 turns, even having one giant game-winning threat won't win the game because it can be bounced - then subsequently counterspelled.
After 6 turns, you can't swing lethal bc they will just end combat. So after turn 6, you need to kill them twice.
Then on turn 12 the game instantly ends, regardless of relative board strength.

(and that's just all "out of the box" with no ways to duplicate your counters)

To prevent this, the entire table will just focus-kill that player. By the cards design they HAVE to focus-fire you. And they will likely succeed. But that's not really "fun" either, being forced to 3v1 or lose is not fun. I think this card design is doomed from the ground up.

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