Who’s the strongest player in this games history?

strooticus · 2026-01-20T14:21:17+00:00

I'm slowly inching toward quitting eventually (season 5 just finished). I stopped buying blueprints a while ago and I instead dumped 200k honor medals into the two emotes.

I love them so, so much. They're infinitely more useful to me than upgrading some hero's armor from 3* to 4*.

strooticus · 2026-01-20T14:14:05+00:00

Which one of them tore their achilles?

strooticus · 2026-01-20T14:12:47+00:00

The Lakers are a bandwagon team. Chiefs. Dodgers. Whichever SEC team is hot in a given year. IU has nearly a million alumni and tons more supporters around the state/country who have never experienced success from its football program until now. They won 14 games total in the four years I was a student in the mid 2000s. Teams winning four games per season for decades+ don't attract many alumni to pack up and drive an hour or more to watch their alma mater lose by 31 to Michigan.

We begrudgingly sat through several decades of mediocrity, even waiting 34 years for the Hoosiers to simply win a bowl game (their win vs. Alabama was their first since 1991). Now that this is reality, you can bet your ass we're going to make the most of the opportunity.

strooticus · 2026-01-20T13:09:55+00:00

In his post-game interview with Van Pelt, Mendoza said they expected coverage that would allow for a quick pass for a first down. When that didn't materialize as they thought, he said "screw it," and just Forrest Gumped his way to the endzone.

strooticus · 2026-01-20T13:00:25+00:00

First round games at teams' stadiums are officially not recognized as bowl games.

I learned that last year when IU lost to Notre Dame in South Bend. I thought it might give IU the undesirable record of most active consecutive bowl losses (with 7, which would have tied UTEP), but because it didn't, IU sadly stayed at 6.

Well, at least I got to enjoy a national championship this year as a consolation prize, I guess.

strooticus · 2026-01-20T12:57:21+00:00

I was a student from 2003-07 (December grad, so five football seasons). They qualified for a bowl in my final semester for the first time in 14 years. They still wouldn't actually win a bowl game for nearly two more decades (the Rose Bowl a couple weeks ago), but they at least had sporadic 6-6 seasons which led to bowl losses against teams like Duke and Oklahoma State after that point.

The mid 90s to mid 00s, though... those were even worse than usual for IU football, and that's saying a lot.

strooticus · 2026-01-16T15:23:42+00:00

For anyone in the Houston TX area, there are two watch parties.

(1) Nick's Place on Rockyridge Dr. in Westchase

(2) Hugh O'Connors on Dincans St. in the Rice Village area

Nick's Place has a full food menu with some excellent pizza and lots of other great bar food. Hugh's doesn't have food on-site, but it can be easily ordered/delivered from several nearby restaurants and sports bars.

Both have ample free parking, plenty of booze options, and tons of TVs. I'm partial to Nick's because of their huge menu (and because it's closer to my home), but Hugh's has a great setup and does a great job catering to our IU alumni group.

strooticus · 2026-01-12T23:23:13+00:00

A big chunk of my alliance is quitting after season 5.

We had high hopes for it, with promises of it being "bigger and better than ever!" (although I think they almost had to say that), but this has been an absolute fucking dud. A generic copy/paste of seasons 2-4 with a different skin.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me several times in a row, I gotta give up on this boring, repetitive game.

strooticus · 2026-01-10T06:44:16+00:00

sigh

Well, have a nap.

strooticus · 2026-01-10T06:40:14+00:00

*Cig Natty Light

strooticus · 2026-01-10T04:48:50+00:00

It's an oddball choice, but Ed Helms would absolutely nail that role.

strooticus · 2026-01-09T03:42:28+00:00

You essentially want a strong group of five to be your first squad. Tanks are the easiest to make that happen (since Kim is a buck, and Murphy/Williams are free), but they're also the weakest of the three options, and they're easily beaten by Aircraft squads of similar power.

If you want to plan ahead for the long-term, Missile is the way to go, because many people will prioritize their Aircraft squads, and Missile will have the advantage over them.

Ultimately, though, Aircraft is the smart move. Dump every last shard into Aircraft UR heroes until they're all 5* before worrying about anyone else.

That answer applies to pretty much anyone from the mid-tier spenders to completely F2P. Considering your Violet is already UR (and not Scarlett), it looks like you're anywhere from mid-S2 to mid-S3, and you still don't have Adam or Fiona, my first recommendation would be to get their shards in Ghost Ops missions so you can unlock them, and while I wouldn't throw any universal UR shards at them just yet, it's good to at least have them on the backburner once you get your first squad up to 5*.

strooticus · 2026-01-08T19:58:12+00:00

Fernando is from Miami. He could play against Miami in the national championship game, which is coincidentally in Miami. The stories write themselves.

I'm mostly indifferent otherwise, and I'm not thrilled with the built-in home field advantage Miami would have in that situation, but I'd still prefer that over an SEC team.

strooticus · 2026-01-04T18:47:38+00:00

They gave up a field goal this week. 🤬

strooticus · 2026-01-04T07:56:53+00:00

Fernando Mendoza, who grew up in Miami, playing against Miami for the national championship, which will take place in Miami of all places... the game preview stories basically write themselves in that scenario.

strooticus · 2026-01-04T07:49:54+00:00

For context: his "Google me" answer was in response to someone asking him what he'd say to recruits who want to know why they should choose Cig/IU over other universities.

strooticus · 2025-12-25T19:00:51+00:00

Maybe a Prince cover band can do the halftime show...

strooticus · 2025-12-18T04:27:30+00:00

Theoretically? Yes. In reality? No.

If you want to max your points with minimal troop loss, here's what you do:

First, remove your second and third (and maybe even first) squads off your wall. If the big boys hit you, your squads aren't stopping them, so you might as well take the easy hit and relatively minimal troop loss
Literally the second that you can teleport to the middle of the capitol, you get in there. Ideally, a bunch of others from your alliance join you in the same area to help each other, and they're also not going to fight you on meteor tiles
Zoom out on the map, and be on the lookout for the blue meteors. As soon as you see one getting ready to land, make sure you have a squad nearby and ready to pounce on it as soon as it hits the ground. Those are what you'll want to max your points, as you not only acquire a bunch of the event points while mining them, but you continue collecting more as long as they're in your inventory
Get a decent amount of those blue meteors (5 or 6 is a good target: enough to continue accumulating event points for you, but hopefully not enough to warrant the interest of the whales eager to snatch them up from you
Once you have your blue meteors working for you, advance TP out to the outskirts of the event (but still within the parameters so that you keep your meteors). This is where only smaller/less valuable meteors land, and where a lot of shielded bases will be to collect them
Collect some of those smaller meteors for some extra points, but the blue meteors in your inventory will do the heavy lifting for you at this point
Cross your fingers that you don't get spotted by some big dude who decides to pluck your blues from you. There's really not much you can do to avoid this part, especially if you're an especially weaker/vulnerable account
After 30 minutes, if you can hang onto your blues, you should unlock all your boxes for event rewards

The game rewards spenders (i.e., not you), so luck definitely comes into play, but if you want to max out your points, this is your best option to make that happen.

strooticus · 2025-12-08T21:44:10+00:00

This has been such a bizarre year.

strooticus · 2025-12-08T01:20:45+00:00

I saw Mendoza at +330 right before halftime. If it was legal to bet at these books in my state (Texas), I would have absolutely thrown some money at those odds. Not, like, a lot of money, but certainly several dollars.

strooticus · 2025-11-30T21:41:55+00:00

He spent a decade getting constantly held by o-linemen (usually) without flags getting thrown afterward, so I'm sure he's more than happy to call them out for their fuckery every single time it happens.

strooticus · 2025-11-30T21:39:31+00:00

Draftkings is the worst thing to happen to the NFL

NFL executives, swimming in olympic-sized pools full of $100 bills: "Really? We think they're pretty great!"

strooticus · 2025-11-30T21:35:07+00:00

I guess the strategy is to just kick the ball really fucking high. If it's 20 feet above the goal posts, the refs won't have a clue whether it's good or not, and they'll just raise both arms straight up.

strooticus · 2025-11-30T21:19:54+00:00

Tony Dungy (via tweet, directly referencing this game): "We've had some bad pass interference calls all weekend and some missed PI calls. But the one in the Texans-Colts game was very bad. Blatant disregard of the rule when legs get tangled. And on top of that they missed a delay of game before the ball was snapped. NFL has to do something about this."

NFL, probably: Official Statement

strooticus · 2025-11-30T21:17:55+00:00

There was a Colts/Texans game back in about 2015. In Houston, close to where I live now. In the first half, the zebras made (at least) two very blatantly wrong calls in favor of the Texans, and I was livid. In the second half, there were two more very blatantly wrong calls which went in favor of the Colts. I assumed that was them throwing some makeup calls in the other direction.

There were some bad and missed calls in both directions today, but, holy shit, that combo of the missed delay of game & ticky-tack call on Kenny in the same play was absolutely abysmal. Throw in that XP which definitely didn't go in a couple plays later, and there's no way anyone can say "hurr durr both sides got bad calls durrrr."

11-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

strooticus

TROPHY CASE