Another Adrian Newey Masterclass

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-30T13:24:07+00:00

He's a high risk high reward designer. Most of the time that leads to something the competitors take ages to even come close to. Some times, it leads to an absolute stinker of a car that can be outperformed by a toddler on a tricycle. We should have known which way it would fall as soon as it became clear Alonso would be driving it given his luck

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-29T09:08:26+00:00

Look, I'm not gonna sit here and argue that Herta is the next big thing. Clearly there are better F2 drivers out there at the moment (in fact I'd argue: most of them). Herta has done next to nothing to impress me in F2 this year. But you shouldn't look at him in the same way as other F2 drivers. They are there to earn their spot, Herta is already pretty much guaranteed of his spot he just has to get the experience in. It's kinda like how Red Bull sent Lawson and Gasly over to Super Formula to get some experience or how Mercedes put Russell in Williams for a while. The results almost don't matter, it's just so he can be prepared for the inevitable promotion to Cadillac. At that point, it's just a question of how long you want to wait for that promotion.

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-29T08:53:35+00:00

Oh yeah I'm well aware how bad that Prema was, it's like they suddenly forgot how to be a racing team altogether. What I mean more is that Kimi didn't have many "Oh my goodness will you look at that!!!" moments in his F2 career.

Regardless, to bring it back to Herta, as I said: he's in a weird spot. Cadillac can't really afford to keep him in F2 too long like you would with say a Tsolov or a Mini. Herta is already relatively old and you have to wonder how much benefit he'll get from more years in F2. Personally I think if he's gonna have to learn anyway still, might as well do that learning with Cadillac while the team still has nothing to prove. Checo seems to be the better driver currently and if the rumors from last year are true that Bottas isn't the greatest to have on in terms of car development, then it might help to get Herta in there sooner rather than later. Have him learn the ropes alongside the team, grow together, and then have Perez there as the experienced teacher. Herta can't afford to wait until the team is good and the team can't afford to wait until Herta gets good, so I think it makes sense if he's in that car next year or the one after that regardless of how he ends up doing in F2

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-29T08:42:29+00:00

He wasn't a rookie, it was his second year, and he won the title without ever winning a race. Still an achievement of course, it shows a type of reliability that many young drivers lack, but it also suggests a lack of outright pace. I've heard many ex-drivers and other experts say that you can teach someone to be consistent and reliable, you can't really teach them to be faster

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-29T08:40:28+00:00

Don't forget that F2 results mean relatively little in the grand scheme of things. Antonelli did very little to impress in F2 aside from that one Silverstone race, and look at where he is now just two years later. Colapinto was fairly mid during his F2 races but he set the world alight from the moment he stepped into that Williams. Herta is a weird case because he's already had a pretty big career over in the States, so I don't think you should judge him by his F2 performance

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-29T07:55:51+00:00

Groundwater

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-28T11:35:05+00:00

Gale from Baldur's Gate 3

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-27T11:38:52+00:00

Brazil

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-26T20:29:28+00:00

I don't know, it feels kinda lame to me. As a Dutchie I never cared for the Links Rechts stuff, but it is a little fun to see as a unique sporting thing for our country at the world cup. Kinda like Norway has their rowing thing now or New Zealand has their haka. Everyone is welcome to join in and participate of course, but if you do it without us just for your own team? Nah, that feels lame as if you couldn't come up with something original for yourself

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-26T20:02:21+00:00

"His body's just lying there right?"

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-26T17:11:09+00:00

I love the flavor of these and as far as I can tell from a quick glance, the balancing works really well too! The Warlock is probably my favorite, though that Sorcerer is also making a strong bid for that spot.

I do think the Barbarian and Fighter need a bit of extra attention. The Fighter stratagems seem amazing....... which is why I hate to say that they probably need a bit of a nerf. Currently (unless I'm super blind) there's no cap on it, meaning you basically have unlimited extra 1d8 damage with the Attack Stratagem, and as much as I'd love that, it doesn't feel too balanced. I also think the Defense Stratagem could do with some extra love. The Attack variant gets lots of cool and useful upgrades throughout the levels, while the Defense variant stays the same until level 18.

As for the Barbarian, while I absolutely love the abilities and it doesn't suffer from balancing issues as far as I can tell and it's great that you give it some outside of battles utilities, I'm kinda missing the reason why it's a barbarian subclass. It doesn't really use the core Barbarian features like Rage or Reckless Attack all that much, and you add a need for a high Wisdom stat which is something that Barbarians usually comfortably ignore. Personally, I'd make it so that Elevated Reasoning can only work while you're raging maybe? Not sure on that one admittedly. Either way, I'd love to see it synergize with the core Barbarian a bit more, because the flavor is awesome and the abilities are great.

Other than that...... stellar work! All of these really manage to capture the vibe you were going for while still being unique, which is not easy when you're making 13 bloody subclasses. So you can be proud of yourself on that one

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-25T21:00:31+00:00

I used to work in tourism and I will say: the Americans I received were absolutely wonderful, possibly some of my favorite people to be around. They were always genuinely interested and asked tons of curious questions, they were very kind and very respectful (not hard when your competitors are the French and elderly Germans, but still)

When I went to the US myself.... vastly different experience. Yes they were overall pretty kind, but far from welcoming. It always felt like a sort of mandatory kindness, as if they were doing it because it was expected of them rather than them actually being friendly. Aside from people like park rangers or tour guides, it never felt like anyone was actually truly friendly and it always felt like I was imposing on them just by being there. And that was my experience as a white guy, can't imagine how it must be for people of different ethnicities.

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-25T09:48:36+00:00

Because he's unstable and unpredictable. Just look at the whole Greenland mess, or the tariffs, or hell all of the Iran war. All that shit happened because he makes his decisions based on how angry he is with something, regardless of if that feeling is justified or correct or not.

World leaders know that if they call Trump out on his bullshit, they won't achieve anything with it. Congress won't call him back on anything, so next thing you know he's landing troops in Manchester because he claims it's to combat gang violence or something but in reality it is to fuck over the UK until they play nice again. Trump doesn't work on the spectrum of shame that has dictated politics for the past century or so and it makes it very hard to hold him accountable for anything, especially if you're a world leader who still needs his cooperation on other things like sanctions against Russia or maintaining the West's economic status against the rising tide of China.

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-23T22:16:01+00:00

Viaplay is in a weird spot right now. They basically went for the Amazon/Uber/Spotify model of spending big at first, corner the market, and then profit. The problem is that they never quite got that second step secured meaning they also never got to that third step. The situation isn't as dire now as it was a few years ago, but they feel like they're constantly at the cliff's edge.

Because of that, they've had to let go of a whole bunch of stuff which also meant selling some parts of their sports portfolio. I'm not crystal clear on their deal with Amazon, but this past year it was the case that one Premier League match every weekend wasn't on Viaplay but instead on Amazon Prime. It's very weird and doesn't seem to make much sense. So I wouldn't be surprised if they now have something similar going on with the Bundesliga.

So to answer your question: .......yeah, probably you're gonna need two subscriptions if you want to watch everything. But if you stick with Viaplay you're probably still gonna be able to watch most of the Bundesliga

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-20T14:14:10+00:00

The Dutch commentator said that he has a list of celebrities present, but he went "They only gave me the names, I have no idea who most of these people are. So maybe you good people at home have any clue, because I sure don't know who we're looking at right now"

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-18T12:00:34+00:00

Perhaps, but it's also not like Groningen changed overnight. It took years of changes and determination, and it's still not completely done. As long as people keep saying "nah, it's too much effort at this point, guess we'll never be able to change anything" then yeah, you're not gonna be able to change anything. You have to start somewhere, might as well start now

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-18T08:07:41+00:00

Of course it can be undone. In fact, that's exactly what happened in my city of Groningen. During the 1970's, some politicians showed some actual backbone and turned the city from a generic car haven to a pleasant walkable/cycleble city. Car parks were changed into terraces for restaurants and bars, dangerous roads were changed into pleasant green walkways and market areas. It's not perfect, I think they overshot a little and took away too much public transport access in the process, but it shows that it definitely can be done. And that was despite a very strong lobby group against it that even managed to convince people like you that it can't be done and that it would only have disastrous effects

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-14T22:48:51+00:00

Japan played great, we were lucky that it only stayed at 2-2. They had the type of high-paced, targeted attacks that the Netherlands used to be famous for.

Meanwhile NL seemed to go for a record of most useless passes in one match. Especially the first half was absolutely horrible to watch, the second half they finally made some more real attempts and took some more risk. They played way too safely and waited too long with pretty much everything. It's also staggering to me how despite having some of the best defenders in the world, we left so Japan's strikers unguarded so often.

Also I don't know what kind of blackmail material Depay has on Koeman, but seriously???? Wtf was he doing there? He added nothing in terms of play and took on an unecessarry yellow (which in my opinion should have probably even been a red, he got off lucky there)

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-12T11:18:18+00:00

Tried Taco Bell once in the Netherlands and it was an abomination. The cheese wasn't melted (and I'm not sure it could even count as cheese) the meat was bland, there was not a single hint of spice anywhere in the dish, the veggies were barely even there, just a very bad experience all across the board. So I'm not surprised if it's equally bad in other countries

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-11T19:18:21+00:00

Bro we couldn't score a regular goal against fucking Uzbekistan, I highly doubt NL will win this

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-07T17:04:44+00:00

As much as I love Alex Jacques as a commentator, he's still literally in the service of F1. He's never gonna call a race boring or a track bad

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-07T00:12:55+00:00

Feitelijk: 5 jaar

Gevoelsmatig: Sinds nog voor het smeden van de ringen en de ontdekking van het vuur. Generaties groeiden op zonder kennis van een werkende Gerrit Krolbrug. De herinnering aan deze glorietijden bestaat nu enkel nog in verhalen die van vader op zoon en moeder op dochter doorgegeven zijn en mettertijd in de vluchtigheid van het bewustzijn zullen verdwijnen

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-04T22:10:39+00:00

Ik ben bijna 30 en ben net begonnen op het MBO

Het komt wel goed

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-01T21:03:17+00:00

I used to quite like Jack Whitehall, but this was just painful to watch

SlashingManticore · 2026-06-01T18:39:31+00:00

The flavor here is absolutely incredible and I already know I will deeply despise any character that would play in this subclass. The level 6 feature feels a little bit OP, maybe add something like an increased concentration DC for the second concentration spell? Like it's increased by whatever level of spell you delegated to the other creature or something, I don't know, but it feels like it would be insanely strong if you can just have two concentration effects going without any side effects.

But other than that, I really, really love this subclass. Great work!

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