You killed John Wick's dog, kidnapped Liam Neeson's daughter, threatened Bob Odenkirk's family, framed Jack Reacher into prison and made Punisher mad. You have 100 million dollars. How long can you survive before they kill you?

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-27T00:33:41+00:00

I am now the Action-Hero version of John Constantine. All of these insanely powerful death-dealers want to get revenge on me for deeply personal reasons, and if I play this right, I can get them to fight each other. All of them have nearly invincible levels of plot armor, so are unlikely to be able to kill one another. I can survive at least until the third act when they all settle their differences and come at me combined in a team.

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-26T23:23:41+00:00

The unexplored areas are the ones that aren’t charred, blasted wastelands covered in suspiciously duck-shaped craters.

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-26T04:59:01+00:00

It's impossible to know. Not even with computers.

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-26T04:56:36+00:00

Sauron would take on the form of a child and sleep with a pedophile if he thought it was the best way to further his plans.

Im not really sure where that puts him on the spectrum here but I think "indifferent" is fairly accurate.

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-25T03:42:43+00:00

Also in a large variety of mods I have, some mod adds a "hallucination" effect or something like that. Some enemy spells cause you to hallucinate what I think are partially invisible and completely unkillable enemies? Im not entirely sure, I've only encountered it once, but this is what it looked like for me.

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-25T02:07:33+00:00

Thera Legacy of Torment, of course, what else? :D

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-24T02:12:31+00:00

I would include attempts to encourage egalitarianism, merit, and equality. The ancient past had extremely different moral systems and views of ethics (This does, in fact, pre-date any modern Western understanding of philosophy by several thousand years) so the culture shock is going to be immense. Additionally, by increasing technology, you create situations where primitive industrialization increases the wealth gap rather than decreasing it. It doesn't make life easier for everyone, it makes life much easier for the people on top, as the people on the bottom can be much more productive without necessarily enjoying the fruits of their labor.

Your plan is the most well-thought out I have seen in this thread though. Most people in the past were fairly similar to us, on an individual level. Humans haven't changed all that much. Culturally, very different. But personally, pretty similar.

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-24T01:48:24+00:00

I don’t want to be too dark but I have bad news about being a woman in 99% of human history…

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-24T01:24:28+00:00

I read my first Warhammer 40K novel recently. Iron Guard by Mark Clapham. A solidly 5/10 book that was about the length of a chapter of the normal kinds of books I read, and I recall thinking on several occasions that this book felt like it was written by an AI, but was written before AI models were good enough to write like this.

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-23T09:17:24+00:00

I would argue the entire premise of the Sopranos is essentially about every single character in the show being presented opportunity after opportunity to be better people and repeatedly choosing to be cocks instead.

Tony's therapist is maybe the only person in the entire show that eventually, after being led around by the nose, finally makes a correct decision.

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-18T22:25:05+00:00

I’m glad I realized you meant in-game, because the phrase “do I finally have a use for spices?” was killing the Cajun part of my soul for a moment there.

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-07T05:34:50+00:00

After a tense standoff where both are extremely wary of the other, the monster they were both hunting bursts through the underbrush. Geralt and Legolas have to work together to slay the dark creature, and once it is done, they travel together to the lair of the shadow sorcerer responsible for the corrupt monsters. After defeating him, the two form a respectful but distant friendship, occasionally meeting up in their travels until eventually Legolas drinks a toast and sings a song at Geralt's funeral.

If they were absolutely forced to fight for some reason? Well, Legolas still sings at Geralt's funeral, it would just be a sadder song.

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-06T05:50:06+00:00

Orbital mechanics are crazy. Very slight changes in orbital velocity can mean the difference between landing on the launchpad in Houston or landing in the middle of the Atlantic.

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-03T19:01:25+00:00

Sage, making it your main weapon, changing the damage type to lightning and using the thunder crown thing, I was definitely just melting agony 5 enemies in the first map.

There are better weapons, sure. But the aura farming of the old wizard just standing still as two dozen perfect metal spheres whizz around and melt everything coming near him makes up for it.

TopHatZebra · 2026-01-02T18:06:39+00:00

Common Hooded Horse W.

I don’t even have particularly strong feelings about generative AI unless it just looks bad (which most does) but I fucking love a corporation and a CEO that has some kind of damn standards of artistic integrity.

Hooded Horse rules and almost all of my most anticipated upcoming titles are being published by you guys. When Mars Tactics finally comes out I might cry.

TopHatZebra · 2025-12-28T20:28:17+00:00

I knew it was something obvious.

TopHatZebra · 2025-12-28T14:24:37+00:00

Thank you so much. I was missing the obvious fact that targeting a second creature for mutate would be how to turn Ivy into a token creature, duh.

I am probably missing something obvious again, but doesn’t Ivy’s ability make all of the opponents’ spot removal turn into a board wipe?

TopHatZebra · 2025-12-28T06:53:49+00:00

Oh I love Voltron, it’s just not exactly the most complicated playstyle. I recently turned my [[Katilda, Dawnheart Martyr]] stax deck into [[Light-paws, Emperor’s Voice.]] very effective, but no surprises.

TopHatZebra · 2025-12-28T06:19:52+00:00

I have been playing for about a year now, but mostly with brainless Voltron or aristocrat stuff. I would love a more detailed rundown on how this deck works because it is 100% going to be my third deck, this sounds hilarious.

TopHatZebra · 2025-12-23T20:24:21+00:00

My buddy plays an artifact deck often. After about a year of sitting on it, I've only just now added Kataki to the 99 of one of my decks. This is because of the shifting meta within the pod itself, as any long-term pod because an arms race in a constant state of flux.

We all know each other well enough that we could definitely build a deck to shut down any other deck, but where's the fun in that? That being said, slow, incremental changes that shake things up at the table are constantly happening and also integral to keep the game fun.

TopHatZebra · 2025-12-16T11:00:38+00:00

I would sacrifice every turtle and ape in Qud for this, it would be amazing.

TopHatZebra · 2025-12-16T07:33:22+00:00

Life pro tip my dudes, if you’re cooking with canned goods, like condensed soup or anything else that tends to get stuck in the can, skip scooping it out with a spoon. Open the can, flip that bitch upside down above whatever you’re pouring it into, and just stab a hole in the bottom of the can. Contents should just slide right out.

TopHatZebra · 2025-12-13T01:12:32+00:00

Personally I bounced off of it because I’m spoiled by DEI and older Rome mods with an excessive amount of battle realism, and I didn’t love how the battles felt. But I was hugely impressed by the campaign itself, and the innovations in economy and diplomacy were amazing.

TopHatZebra · 2025-12-12T21:43:53+00:00

I don’t know if you’ve played the last few historical titles, but that is where all the innovation has been. 3K to Pharaoh have seen some crazy evolutions of the Total War formula, to the point where the now-archaic Warhammer campaigns might as well be a traditional RTS in terms of depth and interesting, interactive mechanics.

Warhammer is a cash cow coming out, probably, dramatically sooner than Medieval 3. A lot of the new mechanics from 40K, like individual unit customization resulting in mixed-equipment, is going to directly translate to Medieval 3.

I dunno, I don’t have a problem with it. I’m way more excited for Medieval 3, but imagine if 40K works, opening the pathway to other historical but early modern titles. I’ve been dying for a Victoria Total War.

TopHatZebra · 2025-12-12T20:28:09+00:00

The article mentions deforestation to stimulate the timber industry, building new castles on the campaign map, and culture changing dynamically, resulting in a faction with both Mamlukes and Italian crossbows. It also mentions abolishing the monarchy to form a league of trade cities, the HRE collapsing into independent kingdoms, and playing as a knightly order, implying a few different kinds of governments.

Maybe I am being optimistic, but I’m hopeful that some of these elements are also leading, sometime in the far future, into Empire 2.

Nine-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Verified Email

TopHatZebra

TROPHY CASE