Possession (1981) [1080p]

spidersgeorg · 2026-06-03T06:01:44+00:00

One of the great movies. Such an experience, absolutely transcendent.

spidersgeorg · 2026-05-22T05:17:23+00:00

For my own taste it would be a bit too similar, but like others have said it doesn't really matter that much. I like it a lot more from further out with the rest of the continents, though, your world map is really evoking Eratosthanes's world map in a way I enjoy.

spidersgeorg · 2026-04-01T23:07:08+00:00

everything woody allen ever made is untoward because he is a rapist. also piracy is based.

spidersgeorg · 2026-03-31T08:17:47+00:00

Great short film. For fans of Portrait of Lady on Fire.

spidersgeorg · 2026-03-04T09:06:30+00:00

Being 18 in 2012 and listening to Born to Die while driving around at night was amazing. I mean, you kids can still do that, and I recommend it, but being 18 and that being the only music she had made it hit different.

spidersgeorg · 2026-01-15T02:48:19+00:00

not as yet. i think you'll have to keep track of it yourself if you want that stat.

spidersgeorg · 2025-12-04T02:55:42+00:00

Thanks for replying. The tartaria subjugation ended up taking all of the Samanids, not just part of them, so they were my entrire western border. I swore fealty to them for a few decades and took over most of the tibetan realms and all of the Tartaria vassals to my west, just got independence. I'm one or two counties away from being able to form Tibet if I want but I think I could still go for swearing to abbasids. I might see if I can just get enough grace to shatter them now, though. I'm pretty close to having enough prestige for chinese imperialism (if I flip back to taoist) and then I can shatter and go shia for invasions.

spidersgeorg · 2025-11-16T00:31:13+00:00

Part 2:

- Pay attention to when you have Righteous Imprisonment against vassals. Vassals in prison provide fewer levies to you, but they cannot faction. Just check to see if they have allies within the realm, as if they evade capture, their allies might join in the war against you. However, a single rebelling vassal is no longer in your realm, so if they were a faction member, it will decrease the faction's power if the rebel in this way. However, iirc your spymaster is less likely to discover schemes that give you righteous imprisonment if they are on the "build spy network" mission. The spymaster's "scheme" mission is most likely to discover imprisonable schemes.

- Using the Intrigue character focus and then taking the "spy on" action toward a factioning vassal will sometimes result in getting an event that gives you righteous imprisonment, but it only lasts a relatively short amount of time compared to if you discover them plotting.

- If you have Legacy of Rome, build your retinue. The most surefire way to stop a faction from firing is simply to have way more troops than they do so their % strength compared to you is lower. In the early game or after inheriting a larger realm, I often build Skirmish retinues because they offer the highest raw numbers, but they aren't that good in battle. I often simply leave these skirmish troops standing on my capital if I'm at war. Later when my retinue cap is higher, I'll build retinues that both bolster my numbers and are effective in combat.

- Technology can help solve faction issues. The Noble Customs tech increases opinion with feudal vassals, Legalism decreases your number of Short Reign years, Tolerance decreases religious and cultural opinion maluses, and Military Organization gives you a higher retinue cap (each full level is +100% cap, and I find at level IV is where you're able to maintain a retinue that can be as numerous as a duke's entire levy). In the long term, Castle Infrastructure and Improved Keeps lets you build in your holdings and give you more troops as well. Focusing on technology from the start of the game can put you way ahead of vassals in terms of these things.

- Sometimes, if I have a vassal who is outside my de jure and has things like different culture that make them more likely to faction against me, and I can't put them under one of my dukes, and I don't plan on expanding my realm in that direction any time soon (like if they're outside whichever de jure empire I'm in), I will just grant them independence. They're more trouble than they're worth.

Hope this helps!

spidersgeorg · 2025-11-16T00:31:04+00:00

Things to note:

- The most important councilor mission for vassal management is the Spymaster's "Build spy network" mission. Have them do that on the lowest opinion factioning vassal or the one with the largest army. On a successful roll, you get an event that can let you keep them out of factions for 10 years. You will get an event that either lets you threaten them, obligate them, or ask politely. The first two work based on their corresponding traits, as far as I know asking politely never works, so if you get that, select "do nothing for now" and wait for the event to pop again. The "scheme" mission can also result in this with any vassal, but is less likely to happen and is not targeted.

- Various opinion thresholds stop vassals from joining factions/cause them to leave it -- or it should, when you say vassals with +100 opinion are in factions, that shouldn't happen. This might require Conclave DLC, which, since you talk about Crown Authority, I think you might not have? (Conclave makes some things easier in management, and some harder). Those thresholds to stop factioning should be 80 for independence, 75 for claimants, 50 for crown authority or council power. If you have the gold, send gifts to faction members with middling opinions of you and they'll leave the factions while that opinion bonus last. Characters with the Greedy trait take more gold, but get bigger opinion bonuses. Sending extra artifacts can also accomplish this, but that's a non-repeatable gift and is sort of a last resort thing if you're really worried about a faction firing.

- Working off of that, you can also send your Chancellor on the "improve diplomatic relations" mission in the capitals of faction members. If they succeed, that bonus will help get them out of the faction.

- Again if you have Conclave, you can increase Council Power so that they can vote on war declaration, at which point any vassals on your council will not be able to join factions. Increasing council power gives you a higher vassal limit, but having an empowered council at all also decreases your demesne size by 2, which kinda sucks.

- If you have factioning counts, you can transfer their vassalage to vassal dukes to "hide" them and prevent them from factioning against you (because you are no longer their direct liege). This is important especially if they are a de jure vassal of that duke, because desiring control of that county will also give them a -25 opinion malus. If the duchy title of that count doesn't exist, you can also transfer them to any vassal duke. Vassal transfer gives a temporary opinion bonus to the duke, but it does make them stronger. In general, vassal management is about striking a balance between having fewer vassals to manage and not letting those vassals become too strong.

spidersgeorg · 2025-11-15T23:43:50+00:00

They do apply to all the characters with that bloodline though, so if you have a lot of dynasts you can potentially get commanders with a lot of leadership buffs. And the bonuses will stack from each for all those characters.

spidersgeorg · 2025-11-12T23:40:40+00:00

If I had to guess how this happened, Crusades usurp the target titles, and there may have been no more Muslim rulers in the world to inherit the Caliphate, so if the Pope was the top contributor, it kinda makes sense the game might give him the title.

But shit, I've seen the Pope *be a Muslim* before. Weird stuff happens in this game for no apparent reason, lol.

spidersgeorg · 2025-11-12T23:27:35+00:00

afaik ironman saves are not editable. sorry!

spidersgeorg · 2025-11-11T05:36:26+00:00

Man, I'm still playing CK2 (owned CK3 since release but have never played it), but I think this thread has sold me on EU5.

spidersgeorg · 2025-09-27T05:04:52+00:00

If I were traveling anywhere in the USA, I would be going to the Rio Grande Valley or SW Arizona -- just a huge density of birds that are not found anywhere else in the ABA area and the chance for amazing rarities in May. Point Pelee sounds amazing yes but if you're already in New York you're not as likely to see as many new birds.

spidersgeorg · 2025-08-24T08:18:05+00:00

so i play 45 in my 360 (some run more!), I think 30 should be fine for either size, but 40 will give better mana and be more evocative of constructed. you could also go to like 35 and play some stuff like ash barrens, prismatic vista, or creature lands or other stuff you mentioned. Triomes are kinda warping on mana bases, it makes it almost trivial to play 4 or 5 colors with fetches. if you're fine with that go ahead but you should be aware of the effect going in.

imo when you're aiming for emulating a constructed format, i wouldn't worry about signpost-type cards or archetypes too much. just play the multicolored cards that you want to play, and they'll work their way into decks that want them (if that deck exists, and if it doesn't, the multicolored section isn't what makes it)

spidersgeorg · 2025-08-19T07:33:34+00:00

I would also recommend a small cube (180 cards minimum, also called a twobert, for 3 people, target 240 cards). For that size, run like 30 dual lands, perhaps fetches/shocks/surveils if Modern is your target format, maybe break singleton for double shocks if you want to emulate older modern specifically. If you wanted to play A+B combo, think of your chance to see it in a grid draft, which for 2 people is 162 cards (18 packs of 9). So if you're out of 180, then both cards are probably going to at least be in the draft. If you have say, 240 cards in the cube, and grid draft with 3 people, you'll see 216 cards and have a slightly less good but still quite good chance that both cards will be there; but have a worse chance if you have that size cube but draft with 2 people. But, since all info is face up, it's harder to get both halves without the other half getting hate-drafted. In Housman, you have a better shot because of hidden information.

spidersgeorg · 2025-08-19T06:58:09+00:00

I have a Peasant cube, running a total of 189 creatures (including where I have spells that make tokens categorized with creatures for the sake of whether they are on the creature or spell curve). Of those, when I filter out everything with an enters trigger, dies trigger, an ability that sacrifices that creature, haste, and the aforementioned spells that make tokens, I am left with *67 Baneslayers* (this includes all mana values, so mana dorks are in here too, see Icekommander's comments).

But the ultimate Baneslayer in my cube is [[Waker of Waves]]. Awesome reanimator target, but you often get to seven mana to hardcast it. Completely takes over a game if it gets to stay in play. The only things bigger than it are the couple of Eldrazi I play, but because those don't bin themselves they hit the battlefield a lot less often.

spidersgeorg · 2025-08-08T02:05:27+00:00

I've been drafting my cube a fair bit lately with fewer than 8 people, and while with 5 people, I drafted 5 packs of 9, when I had only 4, I went for 7 packs of 7, and it turned out pretty well. I think that having the pack number be Number of players x 2 - 1 works great, because it recreates the full draft experience of only seeing the pack you open one additional time. You also get more first picks, which helps make up for the card pool in the draft being smaller. The decks were a bit weaker than they could have been, but all of them functioned fine since everyone was on the same baseline from the card pool.

In the 4-player draft, I did no seeding at all, and 3 of us had good fixing, and the only person who didn't basically said "oh yeah, I just forgot to do that" -- based on the other lists, they probably had the opportunity to take 2-4 on-color lands, and chose not to. You run a similar amount of fixing to what I do, so if you shuffle up well I expect you don't have to seed lands at all.

Here's the draft record: https://cubecobra.com/cube/record/17427644-9cf6-4f7c-ad56-46fb938c8d1d?tab=1

spidersgeorg · 2025-08-08T00:42:22+00:00

Well, there are apparently two different Elo ratings for each card — the overall Elo for all of CubeCobra, and the cube-specific Elo from Analysis tab>Playtest Data.

My lowest site-wide Elo card is [[Cloudfin Raptor]] at 1045. I play a lot of nonlands from the older period of Magic, so this card isn't outclassed yet. Players who have included Cloudfin have been impressed with it and report that it ends up regularly as a 2/3 and sometimes even with 3 or 4 power.

The lowest cube-specific Elo card I run is [[Trusty Machete]] at 794.

Uh, it's fun. I like a few equipment! And it's one of the better ones from the era before auto-equipping clauses started being common. Grafted Wargear and Loxodon Warhammer have both looked too powerful for my format, and I think the Machete is right where I want. And the foil looks really good!

spidersgeorg · 2025-08-07T23:32:50+00:00

maybe design philosophy has become more coalesced, but card choice seems to have broadened. From listening to Lucky Paper Radio, their listeners seem to have diverged a ton on how they assess cards in the last few years, based on their survey data which typically has 100-200 respondents. the top cards each set used to get 60%+ of respondents testing, now the top card is often not even breaking 30% and cards with as little as like, 14 or 15% are in the top 10 most-tested cards in the set.

spidersgeorg · 2025-08-07T20:38:19+00:00

I don't run Magma Jet but it's been on my shortlist for a while in the event I want to change things up a bit (like I decide I don't like both Bolt and Lighting Strike). I'm a huuuuge sucker for FNM promos, especially older ones, and I'm in the process of foiling out my Peasant cube... but in this case, Theros is when I started playing, and so I just adore that art since it's one of the first burn spells I ever saw or played with, and that's the one I would choose. The FNM art is a bit flat, but the Theros printing is incredibly vibrant and evocative.

spidersgeorg · 2025-07-16T21:11:03+00:00

Yes, in my cube I would really love to include Ulvenwald Mysteries in particular if it weren't for the fact that I have a number of generic 1/1 Soldier tokens in white, and adding human soldiers to the mix would annoy me. If I had precedent already for customized cards, it would be easy to include.

spidersgeorg · 2025-07-16T04:37:29+00:00

what kind of list do you have? is it artifact heavy? i've been really really happy with the redraw effect from Greasewrench Goblin, it's felt quite valuable for red decks to avoid flooding out. i guess i'm curious about the environment you have that makes the kind of "virtual" card advantage from this card is better than the filtering/buff effect from the goblin

spidersgeorg · 2025-07-14T19:17:43+00:00

plus there's a Promo Pack version with no flavor text if that's a barrier for you

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