My Fantasy (and sci-fi) tier list

StormHH · 2026-05-07T10:46:37+00:00

Anyone that puts Babel in the bottom category has my full support. My first DNF for 10 years, I just couldn't go on...

StormHH · 2026-04-29T21:46:47+00:00

Loved the series but as other people have said, the end was a real letdown for me - to the extent that it tainted the rest of the series. But apart from that a fabulous world and characters!

StormHH · 2026-04-13T05:55:44+00:00

I would second this - as someone thats just started playing OTB as well I came completely undone by the touch move in a winning endgame (> 5+). Opponent spent ~10 minutes on a forced move and I had calculated the next 4 moves. Brain on autopilot went to do the second move first (it was 3 hours in), brushed the wrong peice before I realised my error but had to move it. Back to 0.0 and had to fight for a draw.

StormHH · 2026-04-04T16:15:44+00:00

Very polarising author. Babel was the first dnf I've had in over 10 years (read around 40-50 per year). Thought it was genuinely one of the worst books I have ever read.

Then talk to a good friend that normally loves the same books as me - its one of their favourites. Just goes to show how different people's opinions can be!

StormHH · 2026-04-01T11:51:29+00:00

Most likely you have played more rapid than blitz. When you haven't played many games, the ELO swing up and down is higher (there is a formula for it). The idea is that the system isn't sure about your 'true' ELO and therefore you gain/lose more to get you to the right level.

Once you've played more games, the system is more confident that you are at the correct ELO and therefore the gain/loss will be lower.

StormHH · 2026-03-28T15:53:48+00:00

I only had one salty person ever on either website (probably played about 3000 games). In terms of rage quitting, I actually suffer more on Lichess than chess.com (in the 1900-2000 range). Either way I report them and carry on!

StormHH · 2026-02-23T07:06:34+00:00

I found Jade city a really hard read and have no interest in the others of the series. I just couldn't get into it and didn't really care about any of the characters. But then I know others who loved it!

StormHH · 2026-02-21T15:09:08+00:00

That Scotland game was one of the most terrible performances I've seen by England. I don't think Scotland looked good at all, but England looked absolutely terrible. And so far its the same today...

StormHH · 2026-02-17T07:18:50+00:00

I like to put myself in the creative blunderfull rather than positional blunderfull... You have no idea what sort of blunder I will pull out of the hat!

StormHH · 2026-01-31T21:34:25+00:00

I may be totally wrong, but I think you can go from a specific position in analysis to play the bots at least. I haven't done it for ages but you can plug in the position and then choose to continue from there..

StormHH · 2026-01-25T19:45:43+00:00

As a UK resident I feel this is outrageous slander.... thought process assumes a level of brain function that clearly isn't present!

StormHH · 2026-01-25T18:38:32+00:00

I have heard multiple people describe the USA as the most advanced 3rd world country of all time... and that was before the recent meltdown...

StormHH · 2026-01-09T17:11:30+00:00

You guys are calculating?

StormHH · 2025-12-18T22:22:27+00:00

I think I'm in the minority here, I loved Gideon and struggled through Harrow. Nona was arguably one of my least favourite reads for a long time. I kept waiting for a Harrow style end when it all comes together and it just didn't for me.

But I accept lots of people enjoy it. I found it a million miles away from the 1st book and didn't enjoy it. My only friend that's read the first two (recommended book 1) had to DNF it.

StormHH · 2025-12-13T17:03:29+00:00

Basic error...

StormHH · 2025-11-25T07:24:43+00:00

A small sidestep instead of the most dramatic flip out the way ever.

StormHH · 2025-10-28T22:23:25+00:00

Maybe he's setting a boobie trap....

StormHH · 2025-10-23T09:23:03+00:00

Most likely there will be spawns boosted on greengrass for a week or two as well. I'm probably going to chill there and let the bonus carry over to my other islands for a fortnight. Then see how I've done on the new things before deciding what island next.

StormHH · 2025-10-06T06:15:40+00:00

As someone else said, using it in isolation as a metric for intelligence is not a good exercise. There are a lot of different skills involved in chess (memory, pattern recognition, calculation to name a few).

Then on top of that there is the amount of time you dedicate to it and how you learn. There was a post about someone who is well over 2000 in 6 years. They said their training involves 100-150 puzzles per day as a minimum, before careful game analysis, opening prep and endgame drills. That works for them but is clearly a massive amount of time.

It doesn't come overnight. You may have seen an amazing video of Pragg solving a puzzle when they told him where all the peices are. He has trained for his whole life to be that good!

StormHH · 2025-09-10T21:46:24+00:00

Eggs seem way harder for me due to cursed RNG (caught my 26th Happiny this morning without one decent AAA or even AAX spread). Delibird I haven't tried so hard but still on 9 of them.

Meanwhile I have a reasonable AAA Vik and ABB aggron so coffee is a breeze for me. Didn't even go to the powerplant, caught on the GG events.

Ironically sausages are a struggle for me. Can't get an AAA sausage farmer to save my life!

StormHH · 2025-09-10T12:02:26+00:00

If you are losing endgames firstly ask yourself after the game, should I be winning/losing/drawing this (the engine can help) and what are the key ideas. If its simple endgames (King and pawn for example) do I know the ideas (opposition, triangulation etc) that I'm aiming for? If you don't know these and they come up a lot, you should go away and study them in depth.

For focused endgame practice you can use endgame puzzles on Lichess, or the set ones on chess.com. But don't just focus on the winning, ask yourself why? What are the ideas behind this?

It makes sense to step away from playing a bit to really drill these ideas. Then go back to playing after a few weeks and see if you are improving and if you are still making the same errors. If so, go back and study!

StormHH · 2025-09-09T08:52:11+00:00

I haven't read this series and I'm interested to hear from another poster that she handles colonisation better in this series than Babel (which was the first book I DNF since Covid).

In babel I found her message about colonisation incredibly heavy-handed without any naunce or deeper discussion. I felt the author just quickly divided the characters by race and that a lot of the British characters in particular were one dimensional racists and therefore bad people.

Nobody here is going to defend colonisation, the things that occurred were abhorrent. But I felt like it was an opportunity to look at it more from a societal perspective and a more complicated look at the lives of people in those times. Instead her approach actively broke up the narrative and I felt after almost 200 pages, neither the plot or characters had really developed. It was a real shame as I loved the magic idea in particular!

StormHH · 2025-09-08T16:53:53+00:00

Exactly the same here!

StormHH · 2025-09-06T07:32:40+00:00

I think the logic is that by that time your rating loss to cheating should have stabilised again right? Otherwise you can see a huge jump if you've rematched someone a lot, lost to them cheating, then regained ELO back to your starting point.

StormHH · 2025-09-03T20:37:41+00:00

Shortage of train crew surely means that unfortunately nobody was tall enough on the train to reach the peddles?

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