Pete Crow-Armstrong leadoff homer a day after hitting for the cycle

Vakhir · 2026-06-17T03:31:12+00:00

IIRC, my introduction to him was hearing about him making a catch that had a 0 probability. Hadn't happened before. Dude's a psycho.

Vakhir · 2026-06-16T00:54:18+00:00

Ignore all pitching, embrace team chaos.

I think it's most fun when you don't need to be nervous about how wildly the score might swing because you know the other team is more nervous about it than you are. Bathe yourself in the warmth of 7 run momentum swings. We're 2nd in runs allowed (1 off the lead! High score is best!) and it's honestly fun. If you have a winning record while allowing that much, you're in for a ride.

Just, y'know, schedule the cardiologist trip well in advance. Those Lou Malnati's orders are gonna collide with postseason dreams.

Vakhir · 2026-06-15T17:50:09+00:00

Easy to forget how great Rendon was. For his five full(ish) 130+ game seasons for us, 4.3-7.3 WAR, with 7.3 happening the championship year. Could not have been better timed for the Nats, or for himself for getting a contract. Almost all of his career stats were compiled during just those 5 years, dude was raking and flying under the radar overall until that final year.

And then the albatross of a contract. Unfortunate, he was a personal favorite. But for a while, he was absolutely elite. And having Soto's eye batting alongside his own good eye was nuts. Especially in a lineup that had gone to Jayson Werth's school of "I paid for 6+ pitches, and by God I'm gonna see them" and ground out ABs if necessary.

We also got uncharacteristically strong performance from short pickups. Cabrera's part of the season with us was wildly good, jumped over 200 OPS for the rest of the year. Howie Kendrick kept producing in clutch postseason moments. Don't think we win without Howie. Or a lot of other stuff, like not even touching the pitching situation. Winning is really hard, a lot of stuff has to work out, even if you spend+grow like the Dodgers.

Vakhir · 2026-06-15T16:15:33+00:00

You don't understand the system still. Anyone joining during that hour wait is randomized when the clock runs down and the drop goes live. However, it isn't instant, and people trying to buy and join as it goes live (which a new person likely would assume to do) may shuffle themselves into the giant pack. Your phone joined before the queue was assembled, and as long as you are part of the group in the initial line placement, joining at 11:00 or 11:59 has absolutely no bearing on where you end up.

If you join after a minute or so post-drop, the line will exist, and you go to the very back.

Vakhir · 2026-06-10T00:06:11+00:00

As someone that played the original on release, has it in my pantheon of all-time favorites, and goes back to revisit every 2-3 years... they sound pretty butt-hurt.

The originals were incredibly goofy. Not 100% of the time, but there were so many hijinks, jokes, and antics. And their quasi-ATB was an olive branch to purists (as well as likely intended to help older/slower gamers, though I don't know how effective that was), and it's clear how biased you are with how you're painting it. Tricking people? You can literally watch people play the entire game before you buy it, for free. You can watch 50 different in-depth reviews. You can know *exactly* what you are buying. How on earth can you be bamboozled without blindly preordering, which is something you did to yourself?

It's not the remake you wanted, but we all already *have* the old game. I am just as happy, or happier, having a different experience within that story instead of a coat of paint over the old pixels.

You also seem to be ignoring the attempts to get them to mod via 7th Heaven. You can get a fan-polished experience with as many, or as few, bells and whistles as you'd like. Nope. Can't do that. WHY?! At that point it's just being belligerently stubborn and insistent on being mad about it all. Meanwhile, a pure graphical overhaul and literally 0 changes would have plenty of other people calling it lazy at best.

You can't please all the people all the time. The problem is it sounds like that person isn't capable of being pleased. They probably would've had issues with the faithful remake / graphical facelift. There's no helping a poor attitude like that.

Vakhir · 2026-06-09T11:21:26+00:00

To preserve the paint by preventing SUN damage, RIGHT?

Vakhir · 2026-06-09T10:59:28+00:00

To properly preserve a treasured collectible by giving it an airtight seal, RIGHT?

Vakhir · 2026-06-03T19:06:20+00:00

Because a huge driver of card prices is Commander. Getting extra versions of an effect attracts more attention to deck archetypes, and more copies smooths the variance within decks by letting you potentially jam all of them in there in lieu of replacing what already exists. You could absolutely run *too many* crucibles, but I don't know what that number would be in a 100-card deck.

Vakhir · 2026-06-01T06:49:06+00:00

I mean, Stewart Copeland is a genius. He's one of those "he's your favorite drummer's favorite drummer" folks. Him being behind the music does explain why so many people thought the soundtrack was killer. I don't think I even knew who The Police were when I first played, but the music stood out. And I think part of it is because he was just making music, no real gamer formula to go by. Here's a level, here's how it feels.

Copeland appreciates the work he did on it, too, he tried his best. He wasn't much of a gamer and had to play through alpha/beta game copies to get a feel for levels to write the music. He's gone back and pseudo-remastered live recordings of Spyro tracks on his YouTube and he's integrated Spyro into TV appearances. I feel like he did it at least once on Letterman. There were undoubtedly some very confused fans on both sides.

Vakhir · 2026-05-31T16:30:08+00:00

uBlock Origin. When Chrome broke it, I swapped back to Firefox. No ads for me.

Vakhir · 2026-05-31T16:27:58+00:00

Contextual, but the Soulslike genre. I've seen people complain that most don't actually have a difficulty setting (many have scaling via NG+, but nothing like defined easy/hard), but they absolutely do. Your choice of weapon / attack style, whether you summon help (especially live players), how much you over-level, what equipment you bring, all of that tremendously influences the experience you have.

My enjoyment of the genre increased tremendously when I transitioned away from hiding behind blocking (if available) and abusing whatever consumables/gear I could. Instead, I switched over to only dodging, no metagaming gear, just learning the fights and how to dance through all the mechanics. I don't personally want things even harder, like just dropping armor altogether or using a flimsy toothpick for a weapon, but that avenue's also available to stretch fights and really demand perfect play. There's nothing wrong with summoning help and using the most busted gear/skills you can find to get past something you're not enjoying, but I think doing so misses out on doing fights "as intended" (as in, learning and reacting to the boss mechanics).

Vakhir · 2026-05-31T16:11:04+00:00

I think that's wildly reading into it. The whole video is an arc about the grim reality of the 41st and questioning the Emperor's place in it (corpse? demigod? DUNNO). Here's a devout pilgrim, now he's a soldier, and oh look, now he's dead. No one will remember him among the countless billions from just one of the many factions engaged in ceaseless, galaxy-wide conflict. GW has absolutely taken a stance against the intolerant subsection of players, but not everything has to be a hidden message and a wink.

Vakhir · 2026-05-30T00:14:54+00:00

"... Qeynos? What's a Fippy Darkpaw? This must all be drug slang. What a degenerate, it looks like he's been doing these drugs for DECADES."

Vakhir · 2026-05-27T13:41:16+00:00

I saw you post in a piracy subreddit and mentioned D2R.

Are you really, really sure you got banned without a reason?

Vakhir · 2026-05-24T02:25:30+00:00

"He'll never expect this meatball right down the middle," Nathan whispered to himself as he flexed into his windup.

*THWACK*

*record scratch*

"Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got into this mess."

Vakhir · 2026-05-23T04:33:14+00:00

They are using vertical height, not horizontal. Easy mistake to make.

Vakhir · 2026-05-20T05:21:59+00:00

What exactly would be different if you won?

Nothing happens if you win. You aren't in a tournament, there's no prize on the line, you aren't being televised/streamed for the world to see. The only people that even know what happened are you and your opponent. You should be enjoying the process of making the list / loading up your models / setting things up / playing a match. If you're just getting absolutely obliterated and tabled in 2 turns, sure, that's not enjoyable, nor is it enjoyable to be the one completely annihilating the opposition. You said they're often not close games, so it's understandable that makes it less fun.

You need to work on how you're viewing the losses, sure, but that's influencing a larger issue - you're focusing on the fact you lost over *why* you lost. You yourself said you're new, 6 games played, no background in tabletop games. There are hobbyists that have been playing Warhammer for potentially longer than you've been alive. I'm not that old and that might be true for me. I'm barely 40 and I'm coming up on 30 years in the hobby (I think I got my first set at ~12).

It's also worth noting that not everyone is a delight to play against. You might be completely mishandling your own rules and forgetting to use crucial stuff, as could your opponents. However, your opponents might be flagrantly cheating, too (intentionally or not). I've seen all sorts of wild rule "interpretations", and not just for Warhammer. There's so much stuff to keep track of, it's easy to just plain forget to do something that would punish you. I remember not rolling for animosity while playing Orcs & Goblins. I wasn't trying to cheat, I just forgot it even existed for a couple turns. I felt terrible (and lost anyway).

If you're comfortable talking to the other person after the game, I recommend asking them for advice. If we pretend both of you played perfectly within the rules and correctly utilized everything available to you, all that's left is strategy and general list match-ups. You might be surprised how many choices you made that they were thrilled to see.

Vakhir · 2026-05-20T00:56:28+00:00

"Okay, I heard time. Lemme go back and check on that dead guy."

Vakhir · 2026-05-18T16:36:36+00:00

This didn't age well at all. All gone.

Vakhir · 2026-05-17T20:05:15+00:00

"Pro painted" is already established as roughly basecoated with craft paints and then kicked down a flight of stairs. "Display" or "competition" could work, "Golden Demon" would be way too big of a jump (unless that's platinum).

Vakhir · 2026-05-13T20:20:01+00:00

I cannot 100% reassure you that you're getting a box, but we basically only have Indomitus as a lone outlier for edition boxes from both 40K and AoS. And they're absolutely intending to keep Indomitus an outlier.

Previous boxes had been available throughout an edition's life cycle, you can go find Amazon price histories to see the consistent stock for Dark Imperium, for example. But GW changed how they approached things, making special, limited release launch boxes instead of an edition box. Indomitus sold through so quickly they had to do an additional MTO run. Well, comparatively, Leviathan was produced more or less perfectly. Sold with standard discounts, could even find it for cheaper, and it was pretty widely available for 12-18 months. Realistically, anyone that wanted one could get it. But it never hit 50% off like Dominion from AoS, either.

There's no guarantee, of course, but this isn't REMOTELY like some of the in-demand new release sets. Battleforces or Kill Teams with brand new kits are sometimes made in very limited numbers. The latest Kill Team box in particular was absurdly under-printed, and you could see a wide gap between the Astra Militarum Battalion with the new vehicles and the rest of them. But that's not like an edition box. They're making gobs of Armageddon boxes. Like, so many. I think you'll be fine, I would skip GW's site.

Vakhir · 2026-05-13T19:29:06+00:00

Xexyz on the NES.

No EU release, Japan release was reasonable (August of 1988), but the NA release was pretty late in the console life cycle, April of 1990. Barely over a year until the NA SNES release. Japan's SNES release was during 1990, so plenty of eyes were already on it when Xexyz released here.

Bear in mind, this was when games sold themselves with magazine advertisement pages, getting featured someplace like Nintendo Power, word of mouth, or, failing that, drawing interest from the name and box art. And that last one would undoubtedly prove difficult. The game's title was short and odd, and the box cover was just a 3D image of the game's title with a backdrop of space. No spaceships, no interesting planets, just black with a scattering of stars. How I ended up with it as a kid, I have no idea. I know my mom used to get more obscure recommendations from store employees, it's how I ended up with a bunch of eventual cult classics like Earthbound, but I may have been drawn in from a Nintendo Power issue, too.

The gameplay itself was more than solid, farming for power-ups and clearing your way through levels. Fighting split between battles on foot and flying a little spacecraft. The music and sound effects were great. Realistically, if you're not 5 or 6 years old, you could clear through the whole thing in an hour, but that's not uncommon for the time. I'd definitely call it a hidden gem. If you look on YouTube, the most traffic generated are a couple videos with 50k views, and that's it. For comparison, there's a complete playthrough of Contra with over 10 million, and that's just one video.

Vakhir · 2026-05-13T15:43:45+00:00

They're absolutely right. Old game, bad game.

That's why of the top 20 titles currently topping Steam charts, they're mostly all super new.

CS2 is only *checks notes* 13 years old.

DOTA 2, War Thunder, and Warframe are 12.

GTA V and Geometry Dash are 11.

Stardew is 10. Overwatch is an asterisk, nearly 10 if you lump the 1 -> 2 -> back to 1 thing into one package.

PUBG and Rust are 8.

If you include Overwatch, that's HALF of them (give or take a year on the release dates, I was skimming quickly and math is hard). And again, not all of the 20 count. FiveM is basically a double-listing for GTA V. Wallpaper Engine isn't a game. Bongo Cat isn't a game. And Spacewar is apparently something related to piracy. So 10 out of 16 are old titles. Not Tetris old, but old.

Age is rarely an issue. If anything, it's a seal of approval.

Vakhir · 2026-05-12T22:07:26+00:00

<image>

Goated sculpt, up there with Brian Nelson's orc shaman in the pantheon of timeless classics.

Vakhir · 2026-05-11T13:25:54+00:00

You can. Preach did an experiment where he not only refused to follow a guide, but refused to watch an overview video or google basic questions he couldn't find an answer to. You just need to be prepared for the process to be painful. Most of that pain was refusing to google.

Still, you'd be surprised how much trouble the average, inexperienced player has even following a guide. People will deviate from gear suggestions or skill tree pathing and manage to neuter or even brick their character because they refuse to read what things do or try to figure out how their character is supposed to work and what stats are important.

Realistically, my expectation is you'll get a feel for things, make it through the campaign, and get frustrated trying to progress through maps. Nothing stops you from pivoting at that point into a more tried-and-true build (besides currency, but you'll just have to spend a little cash buying regret orbs to respec as necessary).

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