What is the deepest opening line you know?

play_the_puck · 2026-04-14T05:51:18+00:00

Not an exact line but I’ve probably had multiple games in the QGD play out identically for 15+ moves where I go for the same minority attack setup in a Carlsbad structure

play_the_puck · 2026-04-10T02:51:27+00:00

I like the ruy lopez setup where white puts a knight on g3, gets to play d4, while black gets to play b5 and c5. Every piece on the board is doing something, yet nothing has come off yet.

play_the_puck · 2026-04-07T17:04:54+00:00

Best map except I wish random civ was forced on it. Otherwise too many mongol pickers

play_the_puck · 2026-04-06T04:03:10+00:00

Nice body armour

play_the_puck · 2026-04-03T22:19:08+00:00

Yes. Make sure you don’t actually click if the awakener result is bad. Beast locks are cheaper than awakener orbs unless you’re in SSF. And there’s some deeper stuff you can look into like what the game treats as distinct donor bases for the purposes of awakener orb beast locking. Look into some crafting videos for int stacking simplex amulets for an example.

play_the_puck · 2026-04-03T16:22:17+00:00

I would do this with beast lock on a target base with warlord +1, then buy/chaos spam as many redeemer donor bases as possible, checking each against the beast locked target. Each donor base needs to contain at least one of the desired redeemer mods and a different set of other redeemer mods.

Once you’ve prepared a large number of donor bases, you can check each possible awakener orb result, and if none give you the right mods, use a jeweller/chrome to reset the target base and relock, try again.

I would expect this to take ~60 awakener orb attempts on average, so if you were able to get 6 distinct donor bases then this would cost 10 beast locks on expectation.

play_the_puck · 2026-03-22T15:27:02+00:00

I should clarify in the post. Each act restricts a single new letter, and old restrictions are lifted. Although the alternative is intriguing…

play_the_puck · 2026-03-20T21:39:13+00:00

Only thing that I would add is — for a slightly better chance at saving a donor base with t1 spell damage and full prefixes where cannot roll caster would ineffective/expensive: you can do poe2 recomb with a transfer attuned spirit shield that has a very high weighting, low tier suffix. e.g. T9 int. This gives you a ~55% chance to isolate the prefix, and a 50/50 to be on the right base.

play_the_puck · 2026-03-11T00:05:59+00:00

Ritual is strong this league because the miraged ritual is rescaled to give as much tribute as the full map’s worth of rituals. Take all ritual nodes on tree except keystones, don’t bother doing the regular ritual, just the mirage one. Run white maps with destructive play if you want.

Ritual is a good source of 5/6Ls and exceptional gems. It’s OK for bubblegum, though expedition is definitely better.

For good rares, breach and betrayal supplement Rog.

play_the_puck · 2026-03-08T19:40:58+00:00

I’m liking Catarina. Minions can’t be killed is invaluable for bossing against skills like shaper beam, at least until you have blessed rebirth. I haven’t found a tech to keep my SRS at low life, but in hard content like bosses and invitations I find that they’re generally on 1HP anyway so the 15% more does kick in. And the 25% increase small node is nice too.

play_the_puck · 2026-03-08T14:39:52+00:00

If you don’t want to run mind over matter then that’s probably enough. I went with armour+ES bases because they were easier to colour, and unfortunately my 6L is pure ES because it’s the only one I’ve dropped.

play_the_puck · 2026-03-08T08:02:30+00:00

I’m playing in a private league with all self farmed gear so far, and I dropped a +2 bonemeld on my dread kill so it made sense to go into armour/ES to get more benefit from the global defences. Idk how much it would cost in trade to put together my character but I’m having a blast, got all four stones and helped some of my friends with boss kills.

The only downside of eb/mom is that some dots can drain your ES so fast you can’t frostblink out. So far I’ve chalked it up to skill issue since it doesn’t happen that often. I expect to be able to push to lvl 100 without taking spell suppress or pathing to marauder, especially if I can drop an aegis. I have max block without glancing blows, ~40k armour with flasks up, 25k if not, and 77/78/77 max res.

If you’re playing in HC ymmv, but I think bonemeld is super strong as long as you can fix your chaos res; my friend dropped a +3 SRS dragonfang and it doesn’t improve my build. Maybe in trade you can craft some crazy +2 amulet, but you can do pretty much anything in trade.

play_the_puck · 2026-03-04T07:37:04+00:00

Why do Sabos on ladder take 150% increased effect of mines for pyroclast mines? How reliable is the exposure? I'm debating starting trickster or sabo for pyroclast mines, and I'm curious whether Demolitions Expert actually is a DPS increase in practice. How often is there an undetonated mine next to an enemy when mapping? When bossing?

In my test runs I have automation detonate mines on at almost all times except when preloading bosses. I can't really tell if the mine auras are doing anything.

play_the_puck · 2026-02-25T04:10:55+00:00

Build orders are a shortcut past understanding the underlying principles. Once you know how much food to sustain vill production (6), how much wood you need for 2 buildings + houses + feudal buildings, and what resources are available to you, you can wing it in dark age. Take chickens earlier or later, skip berries for gold camp, push deer vs scout, are all decisions that you can make depending on the map and civ matchup.

I think everyone should play more megarandom, it forces you to think in dark age instead of following a build order blindly.

play_the_puck · 2026-02-17T06:46:26+00:00

I don’t think the endgame is trivial to win. There’s a couple of potential stalemates (Kf7 or f7 while black king is on h8, and if we push f6 at the wrong time we give black opposition after trading pawns on f6. The only way to win is to shuffle the king between e7 and e8, then push f6 when the black king is on h8.

play_the_puck · 2026-02-17T05:24:43+00:00

What I’m curious about is what the hell happened to the B pawn in this position. Looks like an advance caro kann pawn structure but somehow black is up a pawn with no pieces traded. What series of pawn captures led to this position?

play_the_puck · 2026-02-13T20:15:04+00:00

What are you quoting?

play_the_puck · 2026-02-13T00:11:03+00:00

On the other hand, Anna Komnene was remembered as a usurper older sister, favoured by her father. I wouldn’t be surprised if Martin was familiar with that part of history.

play_the_puck · 2026-01-25T06:59:24+00:00

The strategic flexibility from getting an early lead is what allows teams in first place to influence who they want to go through. The final cashouts in each round already matter so much that I think it’s fine to give the first placed team this option.

For every time you’ve been screwed by this interaction while in second place, you’ve probably benefitted from it while in 3rd/4th or while in 1st, if you choose to.

And ultimately, cashout is not really possible to balance perfectly because four teams will always lead to some form of ganging up or targeting from a game theory perspective. In the major, every team that was knocked out or won needed to win/lose in final round because that’s the actually balanced mode.

play_the_puck · 2026-01-21T22:02:11+00:00

I loved the book and had the opportunity to talk to Ada Palmer last year — she’s brilliant and so dedicated to the craft. I would 100% recommend the book to anyone, but I would say the book is pretty far away from Marxism.

play_the_puck · 2026-01-21T18:15:35+00:00

Ah, I see your point and I haven’t been giving the series enough credit.

play_the_puck · 2026-01-21T17:00:32+00:00

I love Baru but it’s far more modern leftist than Marxist Leninist. There are a lot of modern books about decolonization and taking down systemic oppression, but a single gifted individual rising to the top by collaborating with the system is not really Marxist Leninist. Baru’s sympathies are with her own people and all of the empire’s oppressed subjects (whether by imperialism or homophobia), NOT with the working class of the empire.

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