JasonM

Man, this semi-final has been ridiculously dramatic. Luca down 14-5, having a semi tantrum on Friday, and with the finishline in sight Si Jiahui has completely self-destructed and has lost 10 (going on 11) frames on the bounce. Full beans to Luca to strike, because the level of play has taken a complete 180 from both. Phenomenal semi finals on both sides. Edit: And now Brecel is 16-14. Edit: Si finally claws one back to 16-15 Final edit: and Brecel finishes it off 17-15, amazing game all around, but utterly gutting for the young Si.

Uptown Girl is such an amazing bop. It just gets under my skin and makes me happy. Girls just wanna have fun by Cyndi Lauper also does that for me.

Really have to dig deep on the ol' memory, but there's a few. - Joss Stone, Katie Melua, KT Tunstall. You couldn't get past that style of music in the mid 00s, and it just disappeared from the zeitgeist as quickly as they were part of it. Apparently both of them are still very much active, but more so within the niche rather than becoming the big time artists they seemed like they would become at the time. - Gotye, had one banger that everyone knows and pretty much immediately fell off the face of the earth. - More so from their own choice, but LMFAO was EVERYWHERE between 2009-2012. They released 'sorry for party rocking' and apparently took it literal enough to not bring out any music afterwards because they went on hiatus. They're from the Gordy family/fortune, so they probably did their thing and dipped out, but it's surprising with how ever-present they were in terms of pop culture relevancy for that very short period of time. Also I'm still waiting on more Pendulum,

You honestly love to see it. Not even Rob and Ryan were keeping it dry after that, for all the people that are skeptical, they do genuinely seem to care about the club and town, so it's nice seeing Wrexham get their day in the sun, and hope they can keep building from there.

They mentioned it yesterday, never before have two clubs in the same division gotten over 100 points. So it's truly a historic season, and arguably a call for promotion from the National League to be overhauled. Of course that will never happen because EFL clubs have too much to lose, and there are some clubs in the Natty that would leap into the mid table immediately, as well as both Notts and Wrexham arguably being at League One levels already.

But whose side are they on?!

Ten seasons in and I am on the cusp of getting into La Liga, I finally decided to get off my lazy ass and create some custom kits for my custom team. Did have to get a license of FMRTE for it because for some stupid reason SI has made it so that C-A-C clubs cannot use custom logos/kits otherwise (it's because your club copies the GUI-ID from the club you replace), but I am pretty pleased with the end result. The third kit has the added advantage of making it impossible for submarines to sink our boys.

Feels to me that Tuchel was their first choice, but they couldn't get him so they went with nagelsmann. Now they have a flimsy excuse and they're booting Nagelsmann and can get their first choice anyways.

Yeah I don't know what Ben Foster's play is when early on in the season he explicitly chose retirement rather than a contract at Wrexham for the whole season. Hope Notts can get their promotion though, neither them or Wrexham deserve to stay stuck in non-league after this past season and just further highlights the sheer level of play needed to run for promotion.

Follow up on this, the season after I finally managed to get the monkey off my back and we managed to clinch the division one game before the end of the season, to finally give us our exit out of the horrible Tier 3 and into La Liga 2... Finally I can start to grow my team in a meaningful way, no longer restrained to ridiculously undersized budgets that still somehow run the team a deficit of close to 750k a year. ... What do you mean you're only giving me 41K/w budget?! So you're telling me every team is given their own budget they have to deal with, based on past sustainable profits, and because we only get 4000 fans and ran deficits every year of existing we've been given a 41k/w budget, on top of being required to at least guarantee every registered player makes a minimum of 1.5k/w, INCLUDING loan players? - screaming into the void - So you, because of the new Spanish financial system, the league gave me a maximum allowed wage registered wage budget of 41k/w among an entire playing squad, all players except U18 (which I have none of that are actually talented, because we ran the worst youth academy this past decade to save money)? Yeah, to put that in comparison, the next club up in 21st is allowed to register a wage budget of 80k/w... Greaaaaaaat. Through some fenagling and cajoling, I have managed to somehow slap together a 21 player squad with zero depth or backup. All in the hope that we can maintain our place in LL2. One positive in all this, with me spending only 350k a month total on expenses, I am making near the same amount in gross profit every month off the back of outrageously better tv revenue. In one month I got as much TV Money as I got from all the seasons in Tier 4 and 3 combined. So hopefully with that very strong financial growth, I will be able to start investing a lot into the club to build up to my eventual aim at making it into Tier 1 as a regional powerhouse. (with Deportivo stuck in LL2 with me, there's a real chance I can make it happen)

I speak Dutch not Belgian, so i'll try my best to wing it. "Scott Parker is no longer Head Coach (i.e. Manager) of Club Brugge." Hope that's the right translation.

I just finished the 28/29 season, and I have been at the point of desperation since the end of last season. To re-establish what's been going on: I started a Create-A-Club as 'Sporting a Coruña', a breakaway team that tries to rebuild the lost Galician glory in football. Tier 4 took me three years, with the simple fact that the team was crap and I could barely put together a competent team because there was no money at all to play with... But 24/25 was where we put it together and simply clutch the league. It's the end of the 28/29 season... And three out of the past four seasons we were in a place where we could or should've won Tier 3, and we threw it away, before washing out of the playoff finals being forced to watch other teams get promoted ahead of me. I am beyond desperation, because I have done everything to put together a strong team on the tightest budget imagineable, and every time it went down to the wire the team fell apart when it mattered. 27/28 we were running away with it, before ending 2nd and losing the playoff final. 28/29, we worked our way back into the playoff to get 3rd... and threw it away in the final. I honestly don't know what I have to do at this point, I feel like the least clutch manager ever, and it feels like the game just doesn't want to give it to me as all form vanishes when it starts to matter. I'm at a point where I don't even know if I want to continue this challenge, because ending my seventh season and not even getting further than tier 3 is extremely disheartening. So yeah, had to vent... I honestly don't know what to do at this point to break the spell. Tier 3 is also just utterly brutal with the constant presence of big B-teams like Castilla, Atleti B, Valencia B, Sevilla B, etc. who are able to field players that no indepdent club can compete with.

I mean, to a degree they all are. FM is an extremely safe franchise in terms of how it's developed. Whatever game you have or can get at the best price will do you good, in all honesty. It's more like MLB The Show, where everything is very incremental, rather than Madden where they add features (xfactor) that completely mess with the general balance and feel of the game itself. Any title from the past years will do you good, and newer titles are incrementally better than the last. So choose with your wallet.

As Gorka said, latest is the best choice unless you can get 22 for super duper cheap. If you have Game Pass, FM23 is also available on there.

Less than 24 hours between the Jazz owner saying he wants to change perceptions of Utah, and something racist happening. Honestly impressive they managed to last that long.

Frank de Boer sighing a breath of relief now that he's no longer the worst manager in PL history.

I am kinda done with the Mavs after this. I had to go through this shit with Rondo, and I sure as hell don't want to be rooting for a team that trades for Kyrie Irving. It's a monkey paw situation where people were clamoring for Luka help so much it ended up giving him the best/worst option on the table in raging Anti-semite, flat-earther and science denying fucklord Kyrie Irving. So I am done, and I think for now I am going to be off the Mavs until the situation changes to something with 100% less Kyrie Irving.

I just kind of would like a PC port, at this point if they can release it consistently on Xbox systems and not on PC it feels like they just straight up don't want to do so rather than hardware limitations. The current gen of Xbox is about as close to a desktop PC as consoles have ever been, in terms of code.

Update: Survived the first year. Second year we're on the cusp of playoff spots at the halfway mark of the season. Mostly just wondering how on earth anybody is able to run a profit at the fourth tier, because I have the lowest wage budget of all professional clubs (there's 4 semi-pro's who can run lower), I have the 5th highest attendance in the league, yet we're bleeding money like a sieve. I get that part of it is selling players, but it's not like I can put together a squad long enough to get to a point where i'd be able to sell them on. Also I look at other teams that are spending more yet draw smaller gates which are somehow making more. Weird stuff. But still enjoying myself, had a near total overhaul of the playing squad between seasons (due to most players demanding higher wages, and I can literally only give them 300-500/w max to stay within budget.), but a striker and winger combo are carrying us on top of an inordinate amount of players on loan to fill holes cheaply. Hope I can sneak back into the playoffs before the end of the season, but there's like 5 U21 sides in the league, which makes it tricky because Celta/Sporting/Deportivo/Valladolid B have deeper squads than any of us. EDIT: Pain

Honestly, the writing was on the wall for Kubica two seasons ago. The fact he got to have one whole season in 2019 with Williams and two appearances deputizing for Alpha in 2021 is honestly as close to a fairytale ending as this sport tends to have for old hands. I can see him show up at Le Mans, though. He continues to be a great driver, and his team won ELMS with the LMP2 class in 2021. He's got plenty to offer.

Tried to get into a save with Wrexham (partly through the encouragement of a close friend who lives in Wrexham), but despite not getting fired I still decided to stop that save because it was more frustration than I wanted. A combination of the players not doing what I wanted and a pressure to play in a certain way kind of put me off massively. Now decided to give Create-A-Club a try. Haven't ever used it, closest I got was in FM20(?) where I used the pre-game editor to create a Scottish Club starting in the Vana North. Decided I wanted to do a save in Spain because it's probably my least played of the Big Four in recent years. Created "Sporting A Coruña", a 'friendly' breakaway club looking to put the city back on the map with Deportivo continuing to toil in the third tier in recent years. Replaced the worst team in the Fourth Division Group I (3rd and lower tier in Spain is kinda like the English 6th tier in that it's all regional blocks onwards). First challenge of course is the fact that there's squad registration windows, with a maximum of 23 players being able to be registered, not counting any U19. But of course, I have no youth or B squads to begin with. Picked up a few old hands to find out about the next rule, that I can have a maximum of 16 O23 registered, which creates a tricky balance where I can't just stock up on experienced lads to carry me up. Went with a flat 4-1-4-1, Kinda like the classic late 00s Spanish style. Sit behind the ball, and avoid putting myself at risks. Had a very shaky 2-3-1 record in the friendlies, but have started the season with 0-1 and 3-0 wins against better competition to help my mood and hopes that I might be able to use this strategy going forward. Already I feel a lot more interested in this save than I was the last one, so hopefully I can make this my main going forward. Bring some glory back to Galicia, and see how far I can carry a new club.

EDIT: I can see the irony of going "It's really not that hard" and then hitting you with a long piece like this. I have played DF since about 2012 and have picked it back up proper with the release of the Steam version, and I will say that it's more so difficult by being obtuse rather than difficult through requiring advanced strategy or foresight. You could effectively just build a wall around your colony, and pull up the drawbridge every time enemies show up, and be 95% safe for near enough any bad thing that comes at you. You could also start on an island, and be guaranteed to never be invaded by an outside civilisation (although you'll also miss out on trade caravans and migrant waves after the first guaranteed ones). I suggest most first timers who dig into the caverns (it'll happen) to simply just close it off and continue digging down somewhere else, and worry about that some other time. Also, Dwarf Fortress is mostly just a supply chain management game combined with a dwarven city builder. For the dwarves to not die, you need to create supply chains to ensure they have food and drink, beds and rooms to sleep in, taverns and dining halls to drink and eat in, and metals to turn into weapons and armor to ensure their long term survival against both the sentient and non-sentient dangers of the world. For new players especially the early game of any fort is "Ok, what do I do now?" and needing to learn the basics when it comes to what you need to dig out and set up to guarantee a steady supply of booze and food. - You need to dig out a soily layer, drop down farm plots, and set them to grow plants. -- (Optional), you could only ever bring Plump Helmets and have a boring but perfect supply of both food (you can eat plump helmets) and booze (you can distill plump helmets). - Then you need to build a still, and order the dwarf in there to make x(=10) amounts of drinks from plants. - You'd also need a carpenter to craft new barrels from wood, so you need to cut trees and have a carpenter's workshop. So just for making alcohol, you need to set up at least three types of industry. Farming & Carpenting > Brewing booze. The essence of DF is basically that it's all flowcharts in some form or fashion. To make one thing, you need to have set up an industrial chain that ensures you can produce what you want produced. Later on you put down an office (a room + chair + table) and assign a dwarf to be a manager from that room, and you can start giving off work orders. Where you can automate parts of industry with if/and/or type statements. (If booze <= 10, craft 10 booze | If barrels <= 5, craft 10 barrels | etc.) But I digress. What I am trying to say mostly is that the difficulty is in figuring out how it all works the first time around, and once you get a decent grasp of what you need to get XYZ done, the perceived difficulty starts becoming much lower. A few things that the steam version does right out of the gate is having starting industry be pre-set to be done by whatever dwarf is available, rather than having to assign every dwarf their specific tasks or else it doesn't get done. You can still override it, by having two dedicated miners assigned and only the ones that are assigned can do mining, but for many of the industries it's a godsend when your fort is small, you're figuring things out, and you don't have to worry why nobody's building that butchery you wanted set up. (Someone will do it now) Also with a rudimentary UI with menus it's a bit easier to find workshops, place them, and select materials. The built in tileset is nice and clean, and much easier than slapping one on by hand. There's a lot of quality of life features that make it a little bit more accessible for first timers. I also suggest to just check out a few tutorials, and just pause the game whenever you need to sit down and figure something out by checking out the wiki, going to the reddit or forum, or watching another tutorial. It's just one of those games, but personally I find the game's difficulty to be less fickle than Europa Universalis IV was which can derail you pretty hard in the early/mid game. Down here's a tutorial from Nookrium from the new steam version, and I can suggest Nook from both a tutorial and a gameplay standpoint. Also added a longplay from Quill18 who specifically build a fort with the aim of explaining what he's doing and why he's doing, so that beginners can build along.

I have personally been a fan of 13th Age, it does away with stat crunch for a more freeform approach to gameplay. Example, instead of having a very specific preset of skills you can pick from like athletics or animal handling or w.e., it is based around player established backgrounds that challenge the player to invent the reason why they might be capable at climbing a wall. Situation: you need to scale a wall. Player: "My character worked in a circus as an acrobat, and learned to scale even the dizziest of heights." DM: "Ok, roll your acrobat background with a dexterity mod to try and scale the wall." Furthermore, it focuses on moving things forward, so every turn you get a +1 to your to hit until combat ends through an "escalation die", but it could also hooked into enemies showing up or getting bigger moves when the die hits a certain point. It also does away with equipment crunch, for weapons the damage is class based and it allows the players to simply roleplay what weapon they're carrying, rather than needing to pick something from a list of acceptable gear. Tl;dr - its very friendly towards beginners and groups that prefer roleplay and problem solving over stat crunching and dice grind.

I mean, fwiw, there's also the fact it's a 128 player tournament draw without even accounting the qualifiers. That's already one of the things that sets it apart from even the masters which save for Wells/Miami are 56 players. It's a monster two week tournament where (as we're seeing right now) big upsets can happen. And I don't feel the WTA slam or the doubles feel any less 'major' despite being 3 set affairs, the tournament itself has that kind of aura where you are near certain you're going to get big upsets and big matchups. But I can see both sides, from a competition standpoint there's definitely merit in having the Grand Slams be 5 set behemoths, but from a spectator's standpoint it feels like a drag more often than not.

Honestly, the best of 5 format is one of the things I least like about watching Grand Slam's. Sure, it tends to create some of the most gripping matches like Federer/Nadal Wimbledon 08, but they also make for some excruciatingly long matches, and even foregone conclusions mean those matches last another 45-60 minutes beyond its expiration date. I prefer best of 3, I find the WTA Slams to be much easier to watch somewhat casually where I can sit down and watch a full match from start to finish. Best of 5's just become a huge investment, and especially on a slam like the AO where the time zone is hell for me, I can't watch any of the matches.