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Necrons have pretty shit close combat tbh, either it's super expensive and pretty much specialised, or it's shit. I'm not a fan of the changes they made with the new codex (basically have the WBB on 5+ and done each phase rather than 4+ and at the start of your turn, Warriors having their save reduced to 4+ rather than 3+ which is really huge in terms of AP values when you get shot at (heavy flamethrowers basically wipe your unit on a 3+ throw per figurine) and also just by simple statistics you lose twice the amount of figurines even when you have a save since you go from 1/6 to 2/6 odds of losing one), they felt pretty squishy when I tested it, which was quite the opposite of their previous incarnation. I guess at least they have real HQ choices, some CC options and even one or two energetic weapons. They don't unleash such a flurry of shots however (esp. from Destroyers) and they aren't as strong against vehicles as they used to be.
Also necrons aren't much without vehicles (which seem pretty broken as far as sturdiness goes), and the prices (I mean actual $, not points) are pretty steep for them.
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Whatever you're talking about ... the names sound ridiculous.
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heh I was a cheapskate I just played with my brother and we used pieces of cardboard cut to the right diameter with the name of the unit on it for our armies he played tau, i played orks (back with the old green ork codex)
i'd go with necrons because you don't have to buy and paint as big of an army, more time for individual detail plus glowing green cyber lines everywhere
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Herro, I'm a lurker around GD, and all your Pokemon off tangent stuff lead to me buying a 3DS XL today and Pokemon Black 2. I haven't played since Leaf Green, and even then I had no idea what the hell was going on. I feel like I'll be completely lost without some help... So, which starter do I pick? Are there any good guides online I should look at? Anything new and scary i need to look out for?
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United States15536 Posts
On August 14 2013 06:50 cDgCornpops wrote: Herro, I'm a lurker around GD, and all your Pokemon off tangent stuff lead to me buying a 3DS XL today and Pokemon Black 2. I haven't played since Leaf Green, and even then I had no idea what the hell was going on. I feel like I'll be completely lost without some help... So, which starter do I pick? Are there any good guides online I should look at? Anything new and scary i need to look out for?
It's Pokemon. You can do whatever you want and still have fun as long as you grind a little.
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On August 14 2013 07:22 AsmodeusXI wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2013 06:50 cDgCornpops wrote: Herro, I'm a lurker around GD, and all your Pokemon off tangent stuff lead to me buying a 3DS XL today and Pokemon Black 2. I haven't played since Leaf Green, and even then I had no idea what the hell was going on. I feel like I'll be completely lost without some help... So, which starter do I pick? Are there any good guides online I should look at? Anything new and scary i need to look out for? It's Pokemon. You can do whatever you want and still have fun as long as you grind a little. fun? FUN? this is TL. we have no fun here. all srs bsn.
personally i always go fire.
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United States15536 Posts
On August 14 2013 07:51 Ryuu314 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2013 07:22 AsmodeusXI wrote:On August 14 2013 06:50 cDgCornpops wrote: Herro, I'm a lurker around GD, and all your Pokemon off tangent stuff lead to me buying a 3DS XL today and Pokemon Black 2. I haven't played since Leaf Green, and even then I had no idea what the hell was going on. I feel like I'll be completely lost without some help... So, which starter do I pick? Are there any good guides online I should look at? Anything new and scary i need to look out for? It's Pokemon. You can do whatever you want and still have fun as long as you grind a little. fun? FUN? this is TL. we have no fun here. all srs bsn. personally i always go fire.
That was the right choice until they made THREE FIRE/FIGHTING STARTERS IN A ROW.
Gen V? Go Oshawott. Little fucker's adorable and Samurott is amazing.
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United States23745 Posts
On August 14 2013 08:01 AsmodeusXI wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2013 07:51 Ryuu314 wrote:On August 14 2013 07:22 AsmodeusXI wrote:On August 14 2013 06:50 cDgCornpops wrote: Herro, I'm a lurker around GD, and all your Pokemon off tangent stuff lead to me buying a 3DS XL today and Pokemon Black 2. I haven't played since Leaf Green, and even then I had no idea what the hell was going on. I feel like I'll be completely lost without some help... So, which starter do I pick? Are there any good guides online I should look at? Anything new and scary i need to look out for? It's Pokemon. You can do whatever you want and still have fun as long as you grind a little. fun? FUN? this is TL. we have no fun here. all srs bsn. personally i always go fire. That was the right choice until they made THREE FIRE/FIGHTING STARTERS IN A ROW. Gen V? Go Oshawott. Little fucker's adorable and Samurott is amazing. That's who I chose.
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United States15536 Posts
On August 14 2013 08:02 onlywonderboy wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2013 08:01 AsmodeusXI wrote:On August 14 2013 07:51 Ryuu314 wrote:On August 14 2013 07:22 AsmodeusXI wrote:On August 14 2013 06:50 cDgCornpops wrote: Herro, I'm a lurker around GD, and all your Pokemon off tangent stuff lead to me buying a 3DS XL today and Pokemon Black 2. I haven't played since Leaf Green, and even then I had no idea what the hell was going on. I feel like I'll be completely lost without some help... So, which starter do I pick? Are there any good guides online I should look at? Anything new and scary i need to look out for? It's Pokemon. You can do whatever you want and still have fun as long as you grind a little. fun? FUN? this is TL. we have no fun here. all srs bsn. personally i always go fire. That was the right choice until they made THREE FIRE/FIGHTING STARTERS IN A ROW. Gen V? Go Oshawott. Little fucker's adorable and Samurott is amazing. That's who I chose.
Then you did it right.
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He had to make up for Curse somehow.
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I chose snivy in Black and oshawatt in White 2.
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On August 13 2013 04:34 ticklishmusic wrote: On the other hand, chicken is hard to cook well. It's healthy and flexible, but it gets dry very easily and is kind of flavorless-- remember, when people say something tastes like chicken, they actually mean "oh it doesn't taste like shit, actually it doesn't taste like much of anything, meh".
I find a problem with a lot of meats these days, especially chicken, is how producers/whoever like to add water to it. It makes the meat look juicier, and also makes it weigh more. That meat you got for like $1.99/lb? I'd say maybe 1/4 of that price is actually water. So keep an eye out of the "water added" label. There's a lot of all-natural, no preservatives, never frozen stuff now, but added water is kind of an issue.
The added water causes another problem. First, it excretes a ton of water when you pull it out and let it defrost or sit. Also when you cook meats (apart from boiling) what you WANT to be doing is cooking it in its own fat and oil, which sounds delicious (but totally unhealthy). When you cook a meat that has added water, it means that you're basically boiling it. Doesn't matter if you're frying or grilling chicken breast on a pan or grill, if there's high water content you're basically steaming it. And it will come out not delicious and tender and grilled, but it will taste like slightly burnt boiled chicken.
For example, this is how steaks work. You buy a steak, slap it on the grill. It's pretty good, but doesn't taste like restaurant quality. Now, if you bought yourself a nice Angus whatever whatever at the grocery, your meat is actually probably better than the steak at like Outback or something. Why does it not taste as good? Well, because it wasn't aged. Aging is a process by which the water content is removed from the beef-- if you look at aged beef, that's why it looks like an Egyptian mummy. The steak you cooked yourself is basically half boiled in water, which is why its tough.
You can get around this problem pretty easily. First, use Kosher or sea salt (or something pretty coarse) and liberally salt the steak. You can add other spices here as well. For every inch of thickness of the steak, you need to leave it out for an hour. After the time has passed, take the steak and pour of the juice (there should be a decent amount of it), wash off the salt and other crap and then pat it dry. Then cook your steak. It will taste much better.
The above process works alright for pork. Chicken breast takes a little longer because it already has really low fat/oil content (usually you want to brine it). I've only ever marinated and baked thighs.
Marinating basically does the same thing to meat. It's basically all based on concentration gradients (yay high school chemistry). The salt and other stuff in the marinade generally does the same thing to get rid of some of the water, and it also helps "relax" the meat.
What? That's not how you make the steak taste better. You are supposed to salt the meat, as with all meats, at least an hour before cooking, but not wash off the juices and salt, that's the opposite of the intended purpose. You salt the meat to draw the juices out of the meat so that they will recombine into the meat when you cook it, not so you can wash them away. That's how you make the steak juicy and flavorful instead of dried out and crap. If you are trying to get rid of excess water in the meat that way, you just are washing away all the juices that you do want to keep, instead you get rid of the excess water by just using proper cooking technique. While having added water isn't as ideal as having the food just be fresh, the cooking away of the inherent water is a fundamental aspect of how cooking works, not some thing that screws up your cooking. If you cook a steak/chicken and blame the added water for making your meat tough, that's just wrong. It's tough because you screwed up cooking it, not because of the added water. Also, where did you get the notion that boiling meat makes it tough? It's salting your meat and then washing away all the moisture it had before cooking too long and hot that makes it tough.
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On August 14 2013 09:12 Fyrewolf wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2013 04:34 ticklishmusic wrote: On the other hand, chicken is hard to cook well. It's healthy and flexible, but it gets dry very easily and is kind of flavorless-- remember, when people say something tastes like chicken, they actually mean "oh it doesn't taste like shit, actually it doesn't taste like much of anything, meh".
I find a problem with a lot of meats these days, especially chicken, is how producers/whoever like to add water to it. It makes the meat look juicier, and also makes it weigh more. That meat you got for like $1.99/lb? I'd say maybe 1/4 of that price is actually water. So keep an eye out of the "water added" label. There's a lot of all-natural, no preservatives, never frozen stuff now, but added water is kind of an issue.
The added water causes another problem. First, it excretes a ton of water when you pull it out and let it defrost or sit. Also when you cook meats (apart from boiling) what you WANT to be doing is cooking it in its own fat and oil, which sounds delicious (but totally unhealthy). When you cook a meat that has added water, it means that you're basically boiling it. Doesn't matter if you're frying or grilling chicken breast on a pan or grill, if there's high water content you're basically steaming it. And it will come out not delicious and tender and grilled, but it will taste like slightly burnt boiled chicken.
For example, this is how steaks work. You buy a steak, slap it on the grill. It's pretty good, but doesn't taste like restaurant quality. Now, if you bought yourself a nice Angus whatever whatever at the grocery, your meat is actually probably better than the steak at like Outback or something. Why does it not taste as good? Well, because it wasn't aged. Aging is a process by which the water content is removed from the beef-- if you look at aged beef, that's why it looks like an Egyptian mummy. The steak you cooked yourself is basically half boiled in water, which is why its tough.
You can get around this problem pretty easily. First, use Kosher or sea salt (or something pretty coarse) and liberally salt the steak. You can add other spices here as well. For every inch of thickness of the steak, you need to leave it out for an hour. After the time has passed, take the steak and pour of the juice (there should be a decent amount of it), wash off the salt and other crap and then pat it dry. Then cook your steak. It will taste much better.
The above process works alright for pork. Chicken breast takes a little longer because it already has really low fat/oil content (usually you want to brine it). I've only ever marinated and baked thighs.
Marinating basically does the same thing to meat. It's basically all based on concentration gradients (yay high school chemistry). The salt and other stuff in the marinade generally does the same thing to get rid of some of the water, and it also helps "relax" the meat. What? That's not how you make the steak taste better. You are supposed to salt the meat, as with all meats, at least an hour before cooking, but not wash off the juices and salt, that's the opposite of the intended purpose. You salt the meat to draw the juices out of the meat so that they will recombine into the meat when you cook it, not so you can wash them away. That's how you make the steak juicy and flavorful instead of dried out and crap. If you are trying to get rid of excess water in the meat that way, you just are washing away all the juices that you do want to keep, instead you get rid of the excess water by just using proper cooking technique. While having added water isn't as ideal as having the food just be fresh, the cooking away of the inherent water is a fundamental aspect of how cooking works, not some thing that screws up your cooking. If you cook a steak/chicken and blame the added water for making your meat tough, that's just wrong. It's tough because you screwed up cooking it, not because of the added water. Also, where did you get the notion that boiling meat makes it tough? It's salting your meat and then washing away all the moisture it had before cooking too long and hot that makes it tough. Actually, they don't recombine when you cook. When you salt beef, it draws water out, then it works its way back in and flavors the beef from the inside out.
Washing it afterwards does nothing. The magic has already happened... unless you don't wait long enough for your salt to make its way through, in which case you are washing away all the juices.
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So, what exactly do you do to get rid of that water? A little confused now. And noob question here, but what do you do to get rid of all the salt that you added?
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On August 14 2013 09:12 Fyrewolf wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2013 04:34 ticklishmusic wrote: On the other hand, chicken is hard to cook well. It's healthy and flexible, but it gets dry very easily and is kind of flavorless-- remember, when people say something tastes like chicken, they actually mean "oh it doesn't taste like shit, actually it doesn't taste like much of anything, meh".
I find a problem with a lot of meats these days, especially chicken, is how producers/whoever like to add water to it. It makes the meat look juicier, and also makes it weigh more. That meat you got for like $1.99/lb? I'd say maybe 1/4 of that price is actually water. So keep an eye out of the "water added" label. There's a lot of all-natural, no preservatives, never frozen stuff now, but added water is kind of an issue.
The added water causes another problem. First, it excretes a ton of water when you pull it out and let it defrost or sit. Also when you cook meats (apart from boiling) what you WANT to be doing is cooking it in its own fat and oil, which sounds delicious (but totally unhealthy). When you cook a meat that has added water, it means that you're basically boiling it. Doesn't matter if you're frying or grilling chicken breast on a pan or grill, if there's high water content you're basically steaming it. And it will come out not delicious and tender and grilled, but it will taste like slightly burnt boiled chicken.
For example, this is how steaks work. You buy a steak, slap it on the grill. It's pretty good, but doesn't taste like restaurant quality. Now, if you bought yourself a nice Angus whatever whatever at the grocery, your meat is actually probably better than the steak at like Outback or something. Why does it not taste as good? Well, because it wasn't aged. Aging is a process by which the water content is removed from the beef-- if you look at aged beef, that's why it looks like an Egyptian mummy. The steak you cooked yourself is basically half boiled in water, which is why its tough.
You can get around this problem pretty easily. First, use Kosher or sea salt (or something pretty coarse) and liberally salt the steak. You can add other spices here as well. For every inch of thickness of the steak, you need to leave it out for an hour. After the time has passed, take the steak and pour of the juice (there should be a decent amount of it), wash off the salt and other crap and then pat it dry. Then cook your steak. It will taste much better.
The above process works alright for pork. Chicken breast takes a little longer because it already has really low fat/oil content (usually you want to brine it). I've only ever marinated and baked thighs.
Marinating basically does the same thing to meat. It's basically all based on concentration gradients (yay high school chemistry). The salt and other stuff in the marinade generally does the same thing to get rid of some of the water, and it also helps "relax" the meat. What? That's not how you make the steak taste better. You are supposed to salt the meat, as with all meats, at least an hour before cooking, but not wash off the juices and salt, that's the opposite of the intended purpose. You salt the meat to draw the juices out of the meat so that they will recombine into the meat when you cook it, not so you can wash them away. That's how you make the steak juicy and flavorful instead of dried out and crap. If you are trying to get rid of excess water in the meat that way, you just are washing away all the juices that you do want to keep, instead you get rid of the excess water by just using proper cooking technique. While having added water isn't as ideal as having the food just be fresh, the cooking away of the inherent water is a fundamental aspect of how cooking works, not some thing that screws up your cooking. If you cook a steak/chicken and blame the added water for making your meat tough, that's just wrong. It's tough because you screwed up cooking it, not because of the added water. Also, where did you get the notion that boiling meat makes it tough? It's salting your meat and then washing away all the moisture it had before cooking too long and hot that makes it tough.
The bottom line is salting the meat is done to remove water and concentrate the flavor of the meat.
The salt and other flavors creates a water gradient which draws out water. Eventually as it goes towards equilibrium, the salt and other things you rubbed on go into the meat and add flavor, so you're correct on that point. The salt also induces the protein fibers to loosen up (I won't go into the biochem here), which makes it more tender. The flavor in the meat isn't really lost when the juice comes out of the meat since the salt creates a concentration gradient pulling only water out, not whatever compounds give the meat deliciousness. Some is lost, and since I've never used/tasted the liquid that is excreted because its basically brine, I have no idea how it tastes or anything.
After salting your meat, you can go ahead and cook it without rinsing off, but I really wouldn't recommend it. I mean, you're going to have a shit load of salt and crap on it, which is going to result in a really salty and crusty piece of meat if you don't remove it. That's why you rinse off the salt (I'm not saying to dunk the meat in a bucket or anything) then pat it down.
Water boils at a much lower temperature than oil. Basically when you boil something, you cook it at a much lower temperature than if you fried or baked it. This causes the meat to denature in a different way, which generally tends to be tougher. For example, people grill steaks instead of boiling them for maximum deliciousness. Boiling also does essentially the opposite of what salting does and just makes you lose a ton of the flavor.
I have no real problems with tough meat (except pork, stupid thin-cut pork chops always mess me up). Having too little water will make the meat taste dry and tough, but too much will do the same thing as well.
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On August 14 2013 09:12 Fyrewolf wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2013 04:34 ticklishmusic wrote: On the other hand, chicken is hard to cook well. It's healthy and flexible, but it gets dry very easily and is kind of flavorless-- remember, when people say something tastes like chicken, they actually mean "oh it doesn't taste like shit, actually it doesn't taste like much of anything, meh".
I find a problem with a lot of meats these days, especially chicken, is how producers/whoever like to add water to it. It makes the meat look juicier, and also makes it weigh more. That meat you got for like $1.99/lb? I'd say maybe 1/4 of that price is actually water. So keep an eye out of the "water added" label. There's a lot of all-natural, no preservatives, never frozen stuff now, but added water is kind of an issue.
The added water causes another problem. First, it excretes a ton of water when you pull it out and let it defrost or sit. Also when you cook meats (apart from boiling) what you WANT to be doing is cooking it in its own fat and oil, which sounds delicious (but totally unhealthy). When you cook a meat that has added water, it means that you're basically boiling it. Doesn't matter if you're frying or grilling chicken breast on a pan or grill, if there's high water content you're basically steaming it. And it will come out not delicious and tender and grilled, but it will taste like slightly burnt boiled chicken.
For example, this is how steaks work. You buy a steak, slap it on the grill. It's pretty good, but doesn't taste like restaurant quality. Now, if you bought yourself a nice Angus whatever whatever at the grocery, your meat is actually probably better than the steak at like Outback or something. Why does it not taste as good? Well, because it wasn't aged. Aging is a process by which the water content is removed from the beef-- if you look at aged beef, that's why it looks like an Egyptian mummy. The steak you cooked yourself is basically half boiled in water, which is why its tough.
You can get around this problem pretty easily. First, use Kosher or sea salt (or something pretty coarse) and liberally salt the steak. You can add other spices here as well. For every inch of thickness of the steak, you need to leave it out for an hour. After the time has passed, take the steak and pour of the juice (there should be a decent amount of it), wash off the salt and other crap and then pat it dry. Then cook your steak. It will taste much better.
The above process works alright for pork. Chicken breast takes a little longer because it already has really low fat/oil content (usually you want to brine it). I've only ever marinated and baked thighs.
Marinating basically does the same thing to meat. It's basically all based on concentration gradients (yay high school chemistry). The salt and other stuff in the marinade generally does the same thing to get rid of some of the water, and it also helps "relax" the meat. What? That's not how you make the steak taste better. You are supposed to salt the meat, as with all meats, at least an hour before cooking, but not wash off the juices and salt, that's the opposite of the intended purpose. You salt the meat to draw the juices out of the meat so that they will recombine into the meat when you cook it, not so you can wash them away. That's how you make the steak juicy and flavorful instead of dried out and crap. If you are trying to get rid of excess water in the meat that way, you just are washing away all the juices that you do want to keep, instead you get rid of the excess water by just using proper cooking technique. While having added water isn't as ideal as having the food just be fresh, the cooking away of the inherent water is a fundamental aspect of how cooking works, not some thing that screws up your cooking. If you cook a steak/chicken and blame the added water for making your meat tough, that's just wrong. It's tough because you screwed up cooking it, not because of the added water. Also, where did you get the notion that boiling meat makes it tough? It's salting your meat and then washing away all the moisture it had before cooking too long and hot that makes it tough.
Losing moisture while cooking is the #1 thing to avoid. I cook all of my steaks with an internal thermometer to test for doneness, as well as a pan thermometer for making sure my skillet is between 475 and 530F at all times. I also have a spreadsheet where I track the local grocer or supermarket where I sourced the meat from, the price per lb, weight before cooking, and weight after cooking.
Shitty quality meat (you can tell it is shitty by the outrageously low $/lb, or the fact that the butcher there is totally clueless) of the same cut will lose more water weight during cooking and be tougher, drier, and less flavorful. Even given approximately equal levels of surface marbling and cross-sectional marbling, the lower quality meat will have been fed on bullshit that artificially expands the cells to contain more water. This comes out during cooking as the muscle fibers contract because they're being cooked.
Moreover, surface moisture is not "recombined" into the meat. Browning of your steak and surface searing requires temperatures of 350F minimum, which would instantly vaporize the water. External moisture is actually to be avoided, since the steam vaporization will interfere with heat transfer. Salting a steak is also optional, since you can either do it while it is cooking purely for flavor, or at least 40 minutes ahead of time, so that the salt draws out surface moisture as it dehydrates the meat, then disassociates with the ensuing fluid, before causing the surface cells to relax and thus draw the moisture back in (if it was because of water diffusion, you'd get the juiciest steaks by soaking them in DI water, which in fact makes them taste like shit).
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I never thought a discussion about cooking meat could sound like quantum physics
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its just chemistry, mostly
though talking about denaturing meat would be biochem
i guess it is quantum physics if you really want to get down to the details about energy though
meat is srs bizness
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We're lucky that some dudes already did most of the empirical testing needed to find various objective measures for cooking so us laymen can just follow directions.
It probably would've otherwise cost me $100 in steaks to discover the 130-135F internal is medium-rare. And then I'd be eating reheated steaks for 2 weeks.
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I'm really sad that no one here vouched for the Imperial Guard. Like, Necrons and Tau? REALLY?
But as far as my limited knowledge of 40K tabletop goes, If you wanted to get a cheap army you could probably go onto e-bay and buy an army there (I've heard that Chaos and Space Marines tend to be a little cheaper than the other races). I hear the market is saturated but I don't play 40K tabletop so I don't know. Also if you if you are new to 40K tabletop apparently Sphess Mahrines are the easiest to play and the most well-rounded (supposedly also a little over powered, thanks to the new Codex)
Take everything I say though with a grain of salt as I myself don't partake in 40K tabletop. Also check out bluetablepainting if you're interested in getting your models painted. That's a good place to get your stuff painted. (They also sell some armies as well)
Also the day I saw the splash art for Gladiator Draven was the day this happened to me! + Show Spoiler + If I hadn't been such a Castlevania fan, none of that would have happened to me.
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