Gustav

1. @Gustav (GM) F - S.nubbed Analfist F - Mac Atlas F - Jasper Davis D - Mark Calaway D - YaBoi Oven G - Olober Syko 2. @Greg_Di F - Severus Targaryen F - Daryl Dixon F - D - Skor McFleury D - Kronchy Kardashian G - Lachlan Summers 3. @MexicanCow123 F - Leonard Triller F - Raimo Tuominen F - Logan Ninefingers D - Jacob Stone D - Bobby Bob G - Merome Dilson 4. @DarkSpyro F - Viktor Jensen F - Oreo McFleury F - Catia Goncalves D - Reese McFleury D - Fradin McGryer G - Ash Sparks 5. @Victor F - Axle Gunner F - Grimgor Ironhide F - Harry Callahan D - Liv Slater D - Callum Gary Yannick Janser G - Joel Castle 6. @wcats F - Wann Kerr F - Jimi Jaks F - Francesco Mancini D - David Jokinen D - Obuz Schneider Canet du Bocage G - Fuukka Rask

I am so stupid. D - Mark Calaway

Because I need a PT, don't want to write, and don't have a sig. It's not quite what I used to make but it's presentable.

Aren’t all VHLM rule changes minor ones?

I haven't forgotten about my 30 in 30 series, I promise--it's just 1 AM on Monday and I haven't written a media spot. Thankfully, this week gives me lots and lots of things to talk about. I wrote up what was meant to be a highly sarcastic joke thread in the thunderdome the other day, but judging by the fact that no one liked it or said anything in response, I think I may have gone a bit too sarcastic and just made everyone grimace. So, to clear the air a bit, here are my honest thoughts on my biggest VHL development of the week--Lazlo Holmes becoming the latest hot prospect in Prague. I don't actually feel seriously negatively about this, but I was mildly disappointed to see that I fell to 10th overall. It's the lowest I've ever been drafted into the VHL (even in S75 when I could still auto-pick my own player and tried my hardest to trade down as far as I possibly could). I know I was a good bit behind in TPE for reasons not entirely clear to me (leaving a couple career tasks undone so far and not donating accounts for some of the difference, but not all), but I was still a max earner and have been for over 5 years straight at this point. It makes me wonder what more I have to do to prove that I'm the right one for the job in lots and lots of places I could be right now had those teams had a bit more faith in Lazlo. That said, I've found Prague very chill so far. I've been in the server since @diamond_ace brought me in when the team was founded, and digging it out of my "everyone I'm not currently playing for" folder has felt nice. At one point, I was one of the more active members of the server despite not being on the team. Two things I love so far: Our activity has mostly been in the public channel, something I was always hugely in favor of as a GM. I will forever stand by my opinion that this is THE number one way to have an active locker room. I have always thought (and since confirmed) that @Tetricide is a very cool and very real person to talk to, and I'm excited to be part of his rebuild. An honorable locker room mention (and a very nice point in favor of what I just said about public channels) is @samx, who I've always gotten along well with and who I'm glad is still active in Prague. I'm assuming that it's been assumed that I'm going to play in the E this season, and I've decided that I'm just going to suck it up and go along with it. I'm apparently not the monster earner that the top end of my draft class is, Prague isn't in a spot where I'd be contributing to their ability to compete at all, and I am actively hurting my player's future if I decide that maybe whatever marginally active teammates I end up with could benefit from playing alongside a recognizable name this season (the absolute horror!). I think I can still reasonably hold all my E-related opinions without it becoming hypocritical that I stayed down, though, because I did it despite not wanting to but because I don't really have a reasonable choice when you think about it. I'll stop there for now, but consider that the next time you bring up the "oh you can enjoy it either way" argument. Being part of a rebuild is going to be exciting, I think, because I'm one of the first pieces that the roster will be built around. As a player, I have the (underrated) ability to influence my teammates, and I like to think that the right sort of person might be able to be charmed into really loving it in Prague as well. In the past, I've faded out of activity in some of my team servers, but I see the chance to help reform Prague into a super active place to be and I'm excited that I get to be part of defining what that looks like. I hope it's a lot of fun for as long as I'm there.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about lots of things, and I'm a little bit salty today because I thought I had early weekend plans and found out that everyone I had those plans with not only went and forgot about those plans but also went and made other ones that have nothing to do with me. Which, I think, can trigger a few fair thoughts at once: I was told this was an accident, apologized to, and asked if I want to do things next week. Unfortunate things can happen, I value my friends, and I still believe that I am valued too. Though I'll stick to thinking about this myself, I have the right to be disappointed tonight. My early weekend plans are now to have some beer and watch some baseball, and I'm annoyed that that isn't as fun as it is normally. Why am I such a despicable human being? To plumb that last point to its deepest possible extent, I thought that I should think of some things that I have been at fault for recently, so I can take some accountability and move forward as not only a better person but also probably one that people won't forget about. If I were to pick from a hypothetical group of people who I would want around, could I confidently say that I would be picking myself? My experience tonight has shown me that lots of people might not. And as exciting as some of those other plans may have been, I do feel that I am capable of bringing lots of good things to many different environments. So, to those who may not have thought about me tonight, I'd like to present a handful of things I've done wrong. I have made about nine or so mistakes that I can think of pretty recently. Most of these nine mistakes have happened while I am at work at the job that I am paid to do by a higher authority. And perhaps the VHL might be able to think of nine (or so) mistakes that they have made in recent memory as well, perhaps also at some of the jobs that they are paid to do. Sometimes, rinsing out a piece of lab glassware with soap and water doesn't get everything off of it. Anything that's touched a chemical that likes to stick to glass gets put in a solution called a base bath to sort of chemically force it off--but things aren't supposed to stay in there for too long. I forgot to take things out of the base bath this morning--silly me! I want to get trained on how to use one of the instruments owned by my department, but I screwed up the paperwork and got a confused email from our HR-equivalent. I guess I'll have to do better next time! One of my coworkers left for good this week, so we had a going-away party with some funny pictures loaded up on a slideshow. One of my contributions was a Photoshopped picture of a painting of the Last Supper with my coworker as Jesus and the rest of us as some of the Apostles. It turns out that I wasn't paying much attention to who was who and accidentally made one of us Judas! Perhaps I should read up on these things. I was supposed to call up the resource center so we could rent something fun for an event we're planning next month--but forgot. I still have some time, but I hope I didn't let people down! I'm trying to find ways to make a chemical that would be very helpful to what I'm doing, and the only places I've been able to find anything on this have been in a collection of patents from Japan. I spent most of yesterday complaining that I didn't know how to read any of these, before I ended up saving myself lots of time by just finding them in English. I sure wish I had that time back! The circumstances of this week have led me to have not many days where I'm responsible for my own lunch at work, so I decided that I didn't need to cook this week. That's led to me eating like garbage on the days where I should be taking a little responsibility for what I eat, too. So even though I've been good at exercising anyway, I don't really feel like it. Maybe I should learn some balance. I got roped into taking some dance classes. It's been more fun than I thought it would be and I've learned lots of things that I never would have otherwise. But with no experience with these things whatsoever, I wasn't very good at it this week and felt bad for the people whose steps I mixed up. I suppose some practice would be nice! I've been to bed too late every night this week and spent all of every next day tired at work. There's never been a reason why I couldn't have gone to bed on time, meaning that this is my fault. I suppose I could be working on this. Today I parked in a space that I didn't know would charge me for the whole day rather than giving me options for time spent in that space (like just about anything else in the area does). I chose to just accept this when I saw the charge rather than getting back in the car and moving, just because I'm lazy. But some of that money is money that I wish I didn't spend. Maybe I should be more responsible! There are nine mistakes I've made this week! It took me a while to think of all of those, so maybe it's really difficult to make nine mistakes. I'm not sure if, or how, the VHL might be able to relate to this. But perhaps the VHL can see why I'm such a piece of shit that no one wants, and perhaps some who find themselves in the position of ignoring others might be able to reflect on that and imagine that perhaps they may have made mistakes in their own lives as well, whether at the jobs that they are paid to do or just in general. Maybe, if one were to make nine (or so) mistakes, that could be taken as an opportunity for self-improvement.

Various GMs gathered to try to win the Art Vandelay sweepstakes in S84. Is the agency's next player in similar demand? Lazlo Holmes burst onto the VHLM scene late last season, putting up very respectable numbers in a brief stint with the Halifax 21st. It wouldn't be long before he went 3rd overall in S93's draft, recording 59 points and respectable defensive numbers on his way to the Gustav agency's first-ever championship on any level of the VHL. With the S93 draft looming large (and this scouting report making me late for work), what are Holmes' secrets, and does he have what it takes to bring a team to success on the next level? Holmes has largely focused his game on the fundamentals, training in balanced ways but prioritizing the principles of playing defense first--it is his position after all. There were defensemen who played a better game in the offensive zone this season (the Jinns in Philadelphia were a very good example of this), but Holmes' game doesn't leave much to worry about. It's true that he didn't put up as many numbers, but he could generally be counted upon to be in the right place at the right time and make moving the puck difficult for the opposition. Staying out of the physical game for the most part, Holmes' play may be encouraging to analytics people above all else, and time will tell whether a team sees something in him that most people taking quick glances at the stat sheets might not. Despite being a solid player overall, Holmes' 59 points (and 14 goals) were a bit of a step back from his super-hot start in Halifax. Scoring over a point per game and putting 6 goals in the net over just 14 games was a big reason why he was targeted as early as he was by Saskatoon, and though his numbers were good, there's some top-tier potential that may need to be reopened in the VHL. Holmes has publicly stated that he wishes to train for more of an offensive edge to his game, and we will wait and see how he does in that regard. Somewhat undersized for defense, he shows a propensity to move up in the offensive zone and take some chances closer to where forwards tend to take theirs--a mark of an offensive defenseman if he's able to shape his skills the same way. Holmes is on record in every team's scouting books as having defined his goals just about the same way--he would like to spend the bulk of his career playing for reasonably competitive teams. The Gustav agency has been known for years for its loyalty to whichever team pays the bills, so it will be interesting to see how this shakes out down the road. For Holmes, this is a mark of confidence if he's able to handle it the right way--playing for a competitive team requires one to be a competitive player, and he is motivated to put in the time to make that happen.

Board of Gustav* I talked to someone at one point who told me they were actually confused by that one. Honestly I just take it as a compliment that it seemed like it could have been a thing.

Gonna Week 2 this one

I think there's something in the water up there that makes this a thing in general. I know that Taro's S82 MVP win was based on the argument that practically no one else on the team had a good point total, and I know we've had other seasons where we look through the index and don't find Seattle players up on top. This season I put Targaryen on my awards ballot for an all-VHL team spot, mostly because I had to scroll down the points list a bit more than I would have expected to find another Seattle player. But I guess it works.

I’m kinda mindblown that some people are almost 100 ahead of me. Granted, I could make up a bit of that by doing the career tasks I haven’t done yet (and I’m broke so I haven’t donated in a bit either). But I swear I’m earning the same as always and I’ll have to make sure there’s no hidden secret I’m missing. It’s really interesting because I have no clue where I’m going to end up. I think I have a track record that could back up a reach, but others also have the TPE where being a mid-even later 1st is completely reasonable. Free Gustav hug for anyone who drafts me

I don’t know how I missed this going up initially but out of everything in here I really like this one (as well as the cap of 6 in pay). I don’t like it when people stop posting because they no longer have to post. That’s part of the reason why I still do media spots—I like them, first of all. But I also feel like if I can’t still pull the weight of earning mostly as normal, I shouldn’t have the job that assumes I can.

I have been a member of the VHL since February of 2019. I have played 29 seasons as a player, with three full careers behind me, and spent (I think) 14 or so as a GM. That's 43-ish seasons in total. Before today, I could have said that I have never won a championship on any level of the VHL. Not as a GM, not as a player, not at all in general. I don't even think I've won stuff like the World Cup and WJC. But I can't say that anymore--thanks in large part to the management team of @Dadam30 and @dstevensonjr, Lazlo Holmes and the Saskatoon Wild are your S93 Founders' Cup Champions. It's a bit fitting that my first championship came in the M. I think my VHLM tenure as a GM was much more special than my VHL one, and some of my most exciting Cup chases on both the player and GM end have come in the minors. But I'll still have to point out that I've never won a championship in the VHL. Could Holmes be the one to break the curse, and might GMs be less hesitant to pick him now that he's shaken off said curse on some level so far? We'll have to find out when the draft comes up.

Pictured: my experience trying to talk to @gorlab about graphics as a beginner. Anyone who's joined the VHL over the past couple years knows of my tendency to write some big articles. Heck, I'm putting everything I've got into making Gustav 30 in 30 what I want it to be by the end of next season, and we're heading full speed for my halfway mark. In Gustav history, we're right around S71. I'm trying to do these mostly chronologically, and that's pretty convenient right around this point because my first Town of Salem game started in March of 2020. That's also when I made this: That might not look all that impressive--and it isn't; that was just me swapping out a logo, putting in a blank dark background, and abusing the Color Dodge tool--but I still remember everything about making it even though it was over 4 years ago. It was late at night, everyone else in my house was asleep, I was by myself on the floor of my bedroom in the very same spot I was when I first clicked the link to the VHL, and I had just purchased a subscription to Photoshop after hearing all about how I wouldn't be a real graphics person until I did that. I remember being a little disappointed by how much nicer Photoshop felt, because I'd previously sworn by just using Gimp for free, but considering that this was just a few graphics ago... ...one could say that I was pretty happy with the output. I'd been doing my best to get into the wonderful world of graphics for a while, starting out in Mississauga when I tried to crank some out for my players, and the wonderful month that was March of 2020 also gave me lots of nervous energy that I used on things like...oh, I don't know, being the founder of VHL Town of Salem. As well as a lot more graphics. Before that point, I knew a couple things and could work my way around some basic commands. I could cut out a player's picture from a background (I didn't yet know what remove.bg was), I knew what opacity meant and what a layer mask was, I'd learned how to color swap and jersey swap and all that stuff (which is surprisingly not difficult to get on a basic level). I'd used the graphics channel on Discord as a resource, and at the time, it was a great resource to get extensive advice given mostly by @gorlab. Taking things and applying them and mostly just spending lots of time clicking buttons to see what worked made me feel proud of everything I made, even if it didn't look all that great. I'd made more and more for the VHL and was starting to explore affiliate leagues more closely too. For the most part, I found that I really only wanted to do VHL graphics when I had nothing to say that week. I've always been more of a writer in sim leagues (and a "takes a long time to explain things" type in real life; I'm sure that's no surprise) because I feel that I always have lots to say about things that matter to me. So, especially with the understanding that I could just direct people to better sig-makers, I'd really only make something occasionally and my progress was slow. Something that took off for me, though, was shamelessly doing my weekly (or in some cases, monthly) Player Brand in the EFL for affiliate checks here. In the EFL, it was almost the opposite of the reason why I didn't really catch on with my graphics here. I didn't follow the EFL all that closely and really had nothing at all to say--so weren't graphics the perfect thing to do? I got to work and was pretty happy with some of the output. Here's my favorite out of the ones I made of my own player when I was still a beginner: Which isn't perfect, but it's better than either of those I've shown you so far. It was only a few graphics into my time out there and I started making real improvements just about every time I opened Photoshop. I won't harp on my time in affiliate leagues too much (especially because that's a story for another installment), but most of my best work happened outside the VHL. I made a graphic here and there, and lost a league contest or two... Made for a "make a recruitment graphic" contest. I was really proud of this, posted it on Discord, and was immediately told that everyone looks super yellow--fair point. ...but that's mostly it as far as the VHL is concerned. Digging through my old folder, I'm finding that a really surprising amount of my best work was made for the IHL, a now-defunct GM league created by @enigmatic at some point in the late S60s that I was invited to at some point in the S70s. We were only 8 or so members at any one time, but people really seemed to love it when I made them a graphic and I got more positive feedback than I did on most of my stuff in larger communities. I've got a big lineup of images that I'll dump in a future article, but (in my opinion) the best graphic I ever made was this one for the IHL: Clearly better than the Justin Graves one that probably led to Justin Graves almost immediately going inactive on me. I bring up my history with graphics here because it's a huge example of a real-life skill that the VHL can give someone. I have certainly improved as a writer in my time here, but why bring up a list of my favorite articles? I've also built up lots of spreadsheet skills, but why bring up my favorite spreadsheets? Graphics are convenient. They're visually appealing. I've got all of them in a folder in chronological order. And it's easy to see improvement. I never touched the top tier of sig-making, but what I have in my folder (140 sigs, maybe 40 of which are duplicates before and after lighting adjustments) is about the equivalent of making one thing a week for two years. I'd imagine that more would have been reachable had I not burned myself out of affiliate leagues at one point, but I'm glad what I've done. Because, honestly, you would not believe where basic Photoshop can take you in the real world. I'm Vice President of my student organization off the back of a campaign poster I made myself, I design flyers for that same organization for events, I helped my lab get recognized in a photo contest, and I've developed a reputation for making memes that would not be possible without ever having opened that software. Graphics, somehow, have made me a little bit more popular. Ironically, disappearing into the Internet to escape real life has taught me lots of things about real life. If I'd never joined the VHL, there's absolutely no way that I'd have ever learned how to edit a photo. I'd also never have learned how to organize data until school forced me to. But being a nerd led me to learn nerd things for sim league purposes, which just made me a better nerd. And I'm not sure whether I'll ever consistently make graphics again (and I know for a fact my skill has dropped off a bit), but it's something I put lots and lots of time into that fundamentally affected my perspective on both sim leagues and real life over that time. I think that deserves to be talked about somewhere at least, and I'd encourage you to reflect on the ways what you've done here has carried over into your life as well if you haven't. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience: #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile #9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake #10: This Old House #11: Go Directly to Jail

I promise this image made perfect sense in context. The game of Mafia was invented in 1987 by a student at Moscow State University who has definitely never heard of the VHL. That student probably never envisioned Among Us the lengths to which the world would go to study the game, from profitable spin-offs to home-brew versions to even real mathematical research devoted to its analysis. Playing a game like Mafia requires intuition, wit, and lots of knowledge of game mechanics. And running one takes even more. My first exposure to Mafia came much earlier than I thought it was, when @Nykonax floated the idea of a game way back in May of 2019--this would have been S66. He ended up getting a decent-sized player list and making a game happen. At the time, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Not much that was being said in the game thread made much sense to me, and I walked away from the experience considering it largely forgettable. But, I was now aware that this was a thing that could be done on forums. I must have retained that knowledge pretty soon after that, because I remember playing a game in the SBA right around the time of our affiliation fallout. That changed not much of anything about what I knew about the game, but I had retained the basic idea of talking during the day and doing things at night. I'd also joined the EFL (which I will openly admit was fueled by wanting affiliate checks), and in one of those affiliate leagues, I had my first exposure to Town of Salem--a game that you can find on Steam (although I've never played it) that is essentially just a fancy version of Mafia. It turns out that, as a fancy version of Mafia, Town of Salem (or ToS) is readily adapted to a forum game. I still didn't really know what I was talking about in the EFL, but they had a long rule thread and I was more comfortable hanging around there with it being a league that I knew had nothing against me being VHL-first. By this point, it was clear to me that--even though I was clueless--the Mafia concept had managed to stick around for more than just a one-off in our affiliate leagues, and I'd also watched lots of people in those leagues play the games and like them a lot. It was something the VHL was missing, and I was bored--so I figured I should take matters into my own incompetent hands. For those of you who are unfamiliar by this point, Mafia (in general) is a two-sided game consisting of an "informed minority," or an "evil" group of players who plot with each other behind the scenes to kill the others, and an "uninformed majority," or a "good" group who must use their own skills and find out who the bad ones are by talking out in the open (where the bad ones try to blend in and mess with their plans). There are lots of variations on this, many with more unique roles than others. I wasn't confident, so I eventually found myself digging through rule sets on some mafia game forum and settling on a game called Cult in the Jungle Republic where 12 of the 19 people who would end up playing were just residents of the town with no special abilities. We played the game, but most people didn't really like it for that reason--why would you want to play the game where you really couldn't do much aside from following votes? So, it was clear to me that to keep this thing going, we would need to go full Town of Salem--where every single player has a job to do and there are lots of layers to the game beyond just Town and Mafia. Did I establish by this point that I had no clue what I was doing? Whatever. In any case, I relied on two things in equal measure to learn the game, without either of which the game would not be possible. The first was the Town of Salem Wiki, which has every possible role extensively documented with enough information that a game can be run if you read closely enough. The second was @omgitshim, who has every possible role also extensively documented in his head, as well as enough patience that a game can be run even if you're stupid. I spent lots of hours over lots of days dealing with both of those until I felt that I got the point, and then I finally put up the sign-up thread for the VHL's first-ever game of Town of Salem, just over a year after I joined the league and about four months after Cult in the Jungle Republic flopped. Check out the date on that one--is it really a surprise to anyone that we all had the time in our lives to get the game off the ground? ToS #1 was a success, all in all. It took forever--no other game we've played has even started to approach Day 13--but it was a big learning experience for lots of people (myself included) and I had an absolute blast every time I started the night phase and got to see in real time who was taking shots at who. I stuck with asking OMG everything for the most part, but made it through my first game ever without a major crisis. I knew I'd run lots of games at the start, but I had no idea just how frequently I was doing it and I could never pull that type of thing off today. Within a week, I was signing people up for Game 2, and we'd run up 10 games between the end of March and the end of August--that's one game (which itself took just over a week on average between sign-up and last kill) about every two weeks over that time. I'm honestly shocked that we were able to maintain our player base that constantly, but I suppose that's all we had going on over the summer of 2020. In a way, I wouldn't doubt it if COVID was what gave us the amount of interested people to begin with, or if it was the reason why ToS caught on. Regardless, lots of those interested people deserve my mentions. My handy-dandy stat tracking sheets give me all the info I need to tag those who have been involved the most--obviously OMG, but he and @eaglesfan036 have been considered our nastiest, most competent players from the very start. @Doomsday, @Ricer13, @jhatty8, and @Berocka can also all claim to have played just about every single game we've run (with Eagles, Berocka, and @Devise both running their own spin-off versions of ToS at one point or another). Some others who have stuck around consistently for a long time and are still active in our threads today are @Spartan , @Advantage, @N0HBDY, @rory, @Alex, and even @Ptyrell, who has never had a VHL player but has posted over 1,000 times on our forum for ToS and related games (including his own creative project, Town of Pallet). All of these and much, much more have made Town of Salem what it is, which is an awesome way for the community to really feel like a community. I've had so much fun watching everyone go at each other over the past four years (!) and I'm looking forward to a lot more. To bring it back to being a point in the series about my own personal history, this wasn't the first time I decided to just do something fun for the community rather than waiting for it, but it was the most work I'd ever put into that. I think the league would be a much better place if it had more "just doing" in it, and Town of Salem is something I'll always be able to point to as an example of that. Even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the sim hockey part of the league (and therefore is just one of the "intangibles" on my record), I consider it one of my biggest VHL accomplishments and really feel that it deserves a solid place in this series. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience: #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile #9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake #10: This Old House

Well there's an old name. Welcome back to the league @xsjack! Hope you're doing well.

Who's someone you've never played with but would like to? Do you ever find yourself having to explain hockey to people who know nothing about it? How does it usually go? Have you ever gotten anyone into it? Who are some big names in cricket today that I should know about, and why are they special?

Oh, for sure. I think most of what I've written here so far can be read from the standpoint of "there are real people on the other end of the screen." That can be positive (as in, "you wouldn't believe the difference you can make it some people's lives here") or negative (as in, "stop being assholes to each other"), and I think you caught a lot of the negative. You're not the first person I've seen saying that a lot of what went down in the S60s did not make you want to stick around too closely, and I understand that. I think that isn't something I picked up on as a new player, but I hope I didn't contribute to it too much. Looking back, it was definitely more normal to go after specific teams or people--not even to be mean, but just because that's how it was and that was how you could be seen as funny. I definitely think you had it worse than I did in this regard, but it did hurt to really try to make things work and then open Discord to find people talking about how I sucked as a GM. It's also really hard to lose a negative label as a GM once you get it. I remember lots of people wanting to play for me at first, even wanting to sign with me in FA, and that's something that disappeared as I kept losing. Well, that's fine and people get to do whatever they want--but then isn't that another obstacle when no one wants to sign with you? That's just a practical aspect of it, too. It isn't fun to watch people not even take your moves seriously because "there he goes again" or whatever. I'm not convinced I'll ever want to GM again, and that's a big part of why.

I could have been DC's GM if it weren't for you meddling kids--who knows what would have happened? I also would have had way, way less to say about my time in the VHLM if I ended up being promoted in S68 with the addition of a couple new teams. The BoG toyed with the idea, but eventually they'd decided that they hated me some others were better fits at the time. But I was pretty darn good, after all... ...and my time was going to come eventually. Cue @ShawnGlade fucking up. I mostly joke because I think I would have been moved up sometime not far from S70 anyway. At one point, I was the one @Advantage wanted to take over Malmo eventually, and had the league known that he'd be giving up the team right after S70, they definitely would have waited a little bit on hiring me and done that instead. I almost could have flushed Malmo's hopes and dreams down the toilet too--could you imagine? At least two franchises should be glad I was unlucky. But anyway, back to what I said earlier. When I joined the league, I knew Shawn as the builder of a solid player and a passionate GM in Davos who made a lot of moves that people questioned. Davos got made fun of a lot, even when they were good on paper. So did Shawn, by extension. Even when the team was good on paper, they just couldn't seem to piece it together. Which, by itself, wasn't a negative reflection on his management. With that being said, it certainly meant that when there was an actual shortcoming, the league picked up on it and ran with it. After pinging Shawn, I hope I can keep it clear that I like him a lot while also fairly saying that I don't blame league leadership for considering it a red flag when he missed a couple drafts in a row without notice. Which is essentially all that presented a serious issue to the league. Things happen, and sometimes things matter a little more than this website--so when that runs to enough of an extent that the league has to BPA your picks and your players start leaving in free agency (future HoFer Smitty Werbenjagermanjensen was a big loss), it's enough for the league to also consider that maybe your team could use a bigger loser with more time and energy to devote. I came across the BoG thread on the matter a couple seasons later when they let me in, and it actually started out as a discussion about (deservedly) removing Bushito as Calgary's GM after the Wranglers were functionally run by Dil and/or Blade for a few seasons on end. But S70's draft came and went with that thread up, and with Davos discourse becoming very public afterward, the topic quickly shifted. To be honest, things went into "who should we hire" pretty soon after that, and it was @Rin who pretty soon after that managed to avoid a lot of debate and lists and whatnot by recommending me specifically for the job. Really, the only bump in the road was Advantage bringing up that maybe I could run Malmo at some point--which he walked back later on saying that he wasn't sure what his plans were yet. So it was settled--I'd known myself that I was the heir to the Nighthawks and was a little bit disappointed to find out that it wouldn't be working out that way, but I've also mentioned before that S70 wasn't very happening in Mississauga and I was really excited when Beav contacted me to offer the big-league job. It was also cool to watch my then-both-former-and-future AGM @Berocka, who had just been hired in Halifax and made a questionable trade there, be moved over to run the Hounds because the personal connection we'd both built with the franchise was strong enough to warrant it. With all the hype around me moving up, I was also a bit conflicted because I really didn't want it to happen the way it did. I'd seen Shawn's resignation post (the league asked him to quit instead of announcing it officially, but it was no secret) and subsequent discussion thread, and really did feel a bit bad. I also wasn't really sure how to approach the situation from my end. Here was someone I really had no issue with, whose team I'd inherited and would have to work with, who was a rostered player on that team, and who also probably was not a fan of me in that moment. I did reach out and we talked briefly, but we mostly gave each other some space at the start. Something that was really important to me was the buildup of team culture. Davos was not in any position to win games in S70, and I'd heard a lot about how the team's community needed work. I didn't really want to deal with figuring out what that meant or how true that was, so I almost immediately created a new team server altogether. I followed the same exact strategy I had in building a locker room in Mississauga (which was mostly a carryover from my first season in Houston), which was to try to focus discussion into publicly accessible channels as much as possible and try to create a mutually beneficial environment for the team and the rest of the community. With the Hounds, I'd never had the need to bring in people who weren't affiliated with the team (and there were some cases where people would join the team for this reason!), but with a gutted and mostly demoralized roster, and no alumni network in my newly-created server, I decided to invite a handful of people who had been particularly good to me up to that point. I especially remember people like @Doomsday, @GlowyGoat, @McWolf, and @Esso2264 at the start, some of which would stay active in that server through my entire tenure even if they never made it onto my roster. On the roster itself was...really not much. We had the ever-reliable @Ahma on defense, and right around the time I was hired was when @Brrbisbrr (one of the nicest people I've ever met on this website) decided to make a comeback. Samuel Ross was my first Davos goaler, and he faced the absolute barrage of pucks faithfully in S70. As you might guess, the biggest event of S70 was my hiring. I won't act like we won much of anything (we finished last, of course). My GM tenure had gotten off to a rocky start. I could have just thrown lines together and checked out until I finally got to draft in S71. But I felt that it was worth putting the time and effort into making a team run, at least a little bit, and I felt that our server benefited from that. I was really proud of some of the ways I felt appreciated by my new team, and haven't quite forgotten this article that's over 4 years old at this point. My first year with Davos reinforced a lot of what I already knew--that running your VHL team like a VHLM team and actually trying to see that your players have a positive experience instead of zoning them out and doing your lines when you have to is something that pays off. I'd much rather have the record I did in S70, and know that my team had a good time getting there, than have no connection with them and win a bit more. And while it's unfortunate that I couldn't do both of those things at once, you'll see as I cover the rest of my GM tenure that I don't regret it. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience: #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile #9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake

My favorite VHL first name fact is that Jerry Garcia and Jerry Wang were (when they played) the only players ever to be named Jerry and were also briefly teammates.

Can we have more than a handful of hours to fill these out

Currently sitting at work at...Ohio State. So have fun never getting a GM job I have had lots of reasons to think about your team recently. I spent most of my life not caring at all about college football, but getting involved with a big football school has changed that over the past couple years. Now I can't get enough of this shit. I am legitimately curious how the next few seasons will play out for Michigan though. I won't act like I know all your players, but out of the ones I do know I think all of them are going into the draft. I'd imagine that there will be lots more obstacles this season compared to last one. OSU was an interesting case last season. McCord was okay at QB but I felt like he didn't step up as much as some others (painfully, McCarthy is an example) when he had to. Harrison was absolutely incredible to watch and I'd argue he was our MVP despite his position. I felt like we didn't have too many single players who stood out on defense, but the combined effect of having lots of very good players who were all obviously very well-rehearsed turned out very well. I feel like they didn't get enough credit. I'm optimistic overall for this year because we'll have a pretty solid transfer player (Howard) at QB with a couple top recruits (Noland and Sayin) in the room, still a legit #1 receiver (Egbuka) and a new recruit (Smith) who's already impressed--along with last year's top receiver recruit in Tate. Our reputation as WRU should not be at stake. We also got lots of players who left Alabama when Saban retired (and if you want a team who may have more questions to answer than yours, there it is). Offense and defense benefited from this (can't wait to watch Caleb Downs) and I think we look scary. Sincerely best of luck to you guys this year, because I want our matchup to stay exciting.

One of many posts I came across back in the day that featured someone who was really important in one of our affiliate leagues saying negative things about ours in their league's Discord server. Did we deserve it? On some level, yes. Most people know that there are things you just shouldn't say anymore. Maybe not everyone agrees what those things are. Maybe some people aren't quite up on what means what and how those meanings have changed. But you've got to be living under a rock if you aren't aware that much of the Western world has fairly recently come to terms with how our choices of words can affect others, intentionally or otherwise. Whether with any intent to hate or not, lots of words are out there that once were generally accepted in most casual settings and have since been looked at with a bit of hesitation. "If I were a member of this group, would I appreciate this word being used in this way?" is a fair question that's made lots of people reflect. If you're over 20 or so, chances are that you've had both the exposure to such things being common and the life experience to question it. I'm sure you know the sorts of things I'm referring to, so I don't think I need to keep explaining. I won't act like I haven't cringed at a thing or two I've said or found funny in the past. I'm also not going to act like the VHL hasn't, either. Talk to any super-old member, and you'll probably hear a whole lot about how the league used to be the Wild West of the Internet. I've read lots of "if you think this is bad, you haven't seen anything"-type comments, and I believe them. I've seen members attack each other personally and drop comments that really aren't OK in general. But by the time I'd joined the league, it was a good bit tamer than it was. And it's a good bit tamer today than it was then, as well. The single most impactful day in the history of "what is and is not OK to say in the VHL," though, came about after I'd joined. October 31, 2019, should have been a really cool day for the VHL. That morning, @Beaviss, who had revolutionized league recruiting and brought it back from the brink of nonexistence by reeling in the great classes of the S60s, was hired into a very deserved role as league commissioner. The VHLM was in the middle of their Cup finals in S68, with a Game 6 slated for that day that could have given the Houston Bulls their first ever championship. And it was Halloween! What's not to like? There was a lot to like in Houston, that's for sure--that Game 6 I'd mentioned went their way. The season was over and the M had their champion. But the story didn't end there--in fact, this one starts at this point because one comment that responded negatively to the game did so with a choice of words that would not be accepted in the VHL today. Though you can find the thread easily, I'm not going to link it for a couple reasons--mainly, what was said initially came from members who I genuinely believe are good people, who apologized for what they said and took accountability to settle their own business. I consider the start of the situation much more their business than mine, so all I think is absolutely necessary to know is that one of those "ways to describe things that used to be common and now are considered less fine to say" made its way onto our forum. It isn't OK now and wasn't OK then--but it's also a matter that has been settled. Houston, interestingly, was helped quite a bit by deadline signings. The VHL had recently rolled out a strengthened affiliate program (the one still in existence today that gives a free 12 TPE to the super important people in our affiliate leagues), and much of the SBA's leadership had created right at the deadline and signed with the same team. With that being Houston, and with a full weekly cap claimable by all these players, all of SBA leadership saw the thread when they won the Cup--and that also meant that all of SBA leadership saw what was said. At the time, the SBA's guidelines for personal conduct were very different from ours (and much more strict). I had been in their league for a very short time at that time as a very casual affiliate member and never had an issue with anyone there myself, but I was familiar with a few stories that at I thought were ridiculous (I really don't remember most of the stories or most of the details of what I do remember, and it's also been almost 5 years, so I'm not sure if my opinion is any different now). But being a league with stricter guidelines, I can understand where some people may have been shocked to see things posted that they would have dealt with personally on their own website. I'm not going to say that the SBA response was entirely in the right. Our league wasn't given much opportunity to officially respond to a fairly aggressive pushback, and later on that same day, the SBA had removed their affiliation with us entirely. Their justification for this was (legitimate or not is up to you) that the VHL had generally held relaxed standards that the SBA was not interested in promoting, and that recent events had made it clear that the VHL was not interested in changing them. One day in the books for Beav as commissioner, one affiliate partner lost, and one serious dialogue that hadn't even begun to reach a conclusion--what a start to a job (and an admittedly funny one). This was something that made lots of VHL members mad--myself included, and I had nothing at all to do with that game thread. From my perspective at the time, the entire community, just about none of which I felt were actually hateful people and most of which really didn't go around regularly dropping off-color words, had just been punished over something that probably never would have gone down the way it did had the Hounds been able to win a few more playoff games the finals been anything at all other than the team with the SBA's entire BoD up against the team that dropped the first comment. I had a lot to say about this, mostly on Discord, and although I remember being very opinionated and openly saying that I thought the whole thing was pretty stupid, that was about as far as I ever took it. The first few days on the VHL end saw some reactions from our members, though, that certainly didn't help the situation. Some people went to their league to call them the same sorts of words that lit the fire, and not only got banned for it but became shining examples of people the SBA could point to and identify as parts of the problem. I remember disliking some people I'd never talked to personally, and I felt that even though my own disagreements never broke any rules (written or otherwise), I felt that I was disliked by some people as well when I made them known--something I confirmed much later on when I joined BoG and found a screenshot of the list of people the SBA had a problem with, with me on it. Things were pretty quiet after the first few weeks or so, though. We kept observing the affiliation agreement on our end because we didn't want to punish any regular SBA users who had nothing to do with the situation, and while the topic kept coming up (it was huge news!), it didn't ever turn into people going at each other's throats. The only differences were that VHL tasks weren't claimable in the SBA, and lots of us had grown to distrust one another. After five months of sitting around and passively disliking each other, though, the VHL was informed that affiliation was gone forever. The league had been working behind the scenes to try to work out a set of policies that were agreeable to everyone, and it was eventually decided that this was no longer realistic. VHL leadership claimed that this decision was made unilaterally, and you can read the thread I linked there to try to develop your own opinion on the matter. That was one of the more interesting arguments featuring really important people on both sides that I've ever seen, and it relit the fire on our end. Lots of people made it clear how much they still hated the SBA then--I think I did too, but I don't remember. Something that made me think about things a lot, though, was this post made by SBA member @Beowoof a couple days after that announcement. What was detailed in that post didn't fully line up with what I'd seen or my own perception of the situation (I was in BoG at that point and had access to all the primary sources of info), but if I tried to look at it from the SBA's perspective, I found the thoughts laid out there pretty reasonable and could see how someone on their end could have viewed things in that way. I also liked what @okochastar had to say there and thought a bit about how I'd gotten to know a handful of people from the SBA in the past months and really liked them. The sim league world was really a better place once we stopped wondering how we could run around shit-talking each other and got past all the stupid league identity stuff to just have a little bit of fun together in our free time. Plus, I'm sure the VHL wasn't perfect then and isn't now--but the league had taken a harder stance against the sorts of things we were called out for in that time and I really didn't miss seeing them. Why, though, is this in Gustav 30 in 30 instead of just being a recap of the league in general? I'm mostly describing things done by other people, and the most I was ever connected to the situation was that I complained about it a lot. Well...I talked quite a bit in my second installment about how I'd been part of a very tribalistic team-versus-team drama in the VHLM and how that shaped my views on having basic respect for people. I think that did quite a bit in terms of adjusting how I dealt with people I knew I'd have to see again around the site. But I think that sort of tribalism popped up again on the level of the entire league, had real league-altering consequences, and sucked me back into the mindset to some extent. I was important enough as a VHLM GM that the league knew who I was, and so now I had to make sure my league was taken seriously. The SBA, much like any other league, has tons of good people in it that deserve my respect whether I've met them or not. I think this was the last time I jumped on any "my group is better than your group" train in a sim league as blindly as I did, and I think I learned a lot by watching things go down that helped make it so I wouldn't jump on things like that again. Also just like any other league, following incentives for benefit takes priority. Reddit recruitment was pretty much the only source of new members for either of us at the time, and the SECOND our accounts were reported and blocked from a bunch of communities, guess whose affiliation was magically back. I will also clarify that I have NEVER believed the VHL to be a hateful place in general. At the end of the day, now that I'm done caring about it, I think this was an unfortunate situation featuring lots of immaturity both ways that somehow eventually ended up changing the vibe of the league a little bit for the better. For the most part, I think we had good people who had gotten used to a certain environment and evaluated how they did things once that environment was challenged. To some extent, that was eventually me too. I did some growing that I'm almost glad happened as a result of staring alone at a screen instead of saying something wrong in real life and hurting people close to me. That isn't to say I learned to be offended by everything, or that I'm now whatever cartoonish representation of "woke" some people have in their heads over things like this (in fact, I really couldn't care less about that sort of mindset). There's a huge difference between that and just having respect for people and treating them normally--and I think the VHL has largely learned to adapt in those ways. I'm not sure that I'd say I'm glad this was a big chapter in VHL history, but I'm glad that we're past the negative parts. Enough of that--it's time to have fun with what's left of my Wednesday night. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience (hi Berocka): #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile

Welcome back! I don’t think we’ve had much to do with each other since we were teammates in Malmo but it was great getting to know you then and sad to see you go. Crazy that I’ve been here longer than your kid has been alive now. Every now and then I get handed some VHL perspective that makes me think for a minute.

The Hounds would have benefited from a slightly better TPE distribution in the S69 draft. Ironically, BigHARDCORE32 would go to Saskatoon--but sadly would never earn again. #4 in this series covers the beginnings of my time as a VHLM GM, and I like to think that my last article does a good job of covering some of what happened with some of my more notable first-gens. But the players I had put their time into growing and developing did so in hopes of seeing it pay off on the scoreboard, and seeing as that's work I put in as a GM as well, it's fair to us both to tell that story as completely as I can. I've covered S66, in which I did what I could with what I had with no real plan other than to pull a couple wins out of my hat and put together a respectable season. But all good things must come to an end, and trading away my first-round pick that season led to me a bit light on assets in S67. It was here that I decided to take my management strategy that was "what the VHLM should be" and turn it into "what the VHLM actually was" and tank for as much as I could in future seasons. None of this was to say that I checked out or that I stopped caring about people who played for me. I wasn't in the business of losing games for draft position, just in the business of getting rid of anyone who was worth anything for quantity of picks. Of course, the latter led to the former naturally, but I'd still try to field the best lineup I could make in every sim. Plus--and too many people don't realize this--having good players to trade away in the first place necessarily means that you have to have put in the time to help them get to that point. So, while my notable S67 draftees (Keven Foreskin/Jeff Downey/Jaxon Walker) all finished the season in different places, I'd still push them to be the best they could be while I had them. I still stayed on top of waiver signings, and I like to think that the Hounds stayed a good place for new players even when we weren't winning. Some new names that signed with me despite knowing they wouldn't win a championship included Nate Telker (@Telkster's precursor to HoNB #8 subject Brendan Telker), Balentine Kidd (@TukTukTheGreat), Yeet Dabberson (recreate of my former AGM @Radcow), Block Buster (@Banana2311), and one of my favorite locker room additions in Jacob Perry (@Liberty_Cabbage), who ended up as a lower-end role-filler for a few VHL teams. While none of these players became VHL superstars, all made me glad to have them and I like to think we were a good place for them at the time. But the "not much" that was S67 turned into a competitive season in S68. First off, the draft was awesome. The Hounds headed into the draft with the #1 overall selection--which I traded straight-up for #2 so I could pick @Beaviss, but not at #1 like he wanted (a move that I kind of cringe at today but one I found funny in the moment). We followed that up with a string of picks that would define both that season and the next. First, we brought back S67 signing Balentine Kidd at #9 (because smart places promote from within). The second round saw Jerry Wang (then the second VHL player ever to be named Jerry, after mine a few draft classes earlier) and @ColeMrtz, a returning member who stayed fairly active for a bit and briefly made it as a VHLM GM. In the third, we picked first-gens Guy Sasakamoose (@Cxsquared, an underrated longtime Riga defender) and Patrik Tallinder (another underrated longtime Riga player managed by the recently returned @Patrik Tallinder). Our string of good picks would continue all the way until our selection of @Ricer13's Kris Rice at 43rd. Funnily enough, that last selection only happened because I traded up in the draft intending to select a player who I was surprised was still on the board...and then found out that the player I had my eye on had already been picked. Who could I have had instead of Ricer, you ask? None other than the biggest one-hit wonder I've ever seen--Sven Nyckel, who joined the league, dropped a 2300-word media spot, and disappeared immediately after the draft. Luck works in weird ways. We were pretty good, but after having depleted the entire roster, we were still mostly just a solid core lineup. We had holes on defense and at center, and I did my best to fill them. This was first addressed when I traded for @DizzyWithLogic's Finnegan MacBurn (who would unwittingly benefit us by going inactive right at the cap, at a time when such a player didn't have to be released. I don't want that to be the main point of Dizzy's time with us, though, because he was a great person to have around when active). I'd also never had a huge recreate signing yet, but this would finally change when none other than @Beketov signed with us at the deadline with future Hall-of-Famer and perennial Boulet winner Mikko Lahtinen. It's also worth pointing out that my original Houston roots still ran deep--our hole in net was filled by signing Aleksandr Aleksandrov, managed by my former teammate in @aleks. We had a legitimately good team--maybe not quite on top, but very good and a sneaky threat to make a deep playoff run. And then we lost right away, with an embarrassing series against Yukon featuring practically no scoring. We were shut out twice by my former player Block Buster, including a 1-0 Game 5 to end it all. It would be best not to dwell on that too deeply, though. We had all the draft capital in S69 that we did in S68, and this time I had players returning. Before making a single selection, I had Rice and Tallinder up front and MacBurn on defense. All would spend just about all of S69 fully capped, and we were ready to get down to business. Here's the thing--so was Saskatoon. Where we had #5, #8, and #11 in the first round (our maximum of three first-rounders!), they had #1, #2, and #3. Where we were picking at #20 and #22 in the second, they had #13 and #14. And that meant a lot when there were exactly 19 active players in the draft and we only half-hit on two of our first-rounders. The Wild would go 5 for 5 with their early selections, while our two seconds, two thirds, two fourths, fifth, sixth, and two sevenths translated to zero players who meant anything and our first round essentially just amounted to the solid choice of Jimmy Spyro (@DarkSpyro), who under us would blossom into a capped goaltender and well-known member. That was really disappointing, but the core we had in place already was still enough to make our roster look good. And as it turned out, a good roster in a season with a thin draft class is powerful. Because of all of these circumstances, Rice, Tallinder, and MacBurn absolutely exploded in S69. I reached out to San Diego and traded for Will Clarke (the last player I remember @Will managing before his current one), and we looked pretty good to go. But, again, so was Saskatoon. They went on a run managed by GM @Peace that I've never seen in any league of the VHL since, winning game after game and carrying a crazy undefeated streak deep into the season. Nobody could figure them out, not even in overtime, and they were destined to be the Cup champions. And then we took them down. 50 games into the season, and the Wild had just been figured out. And while this was just once, it was a flicker of hope. Across all my time as a GM, there isn't a single game I remember better than this one. Saskatoon also had a full roster where we didn't, and my solid reputation as a GM combined well enough with our regular-season success that we had a super strong pull on recreates at the deadline. Kyl Oferson (@Nykonax), Ola Vikingstad (@Dil), and Roque Davis (@Josh) all signed with the Hounds and had earned well enough to serve legitimate purposes in the playoffs. We beat Saskatoon again before season's end (and so did Mexico City--the Wild only lost 4 times, and it was twice to each of us). But it wasn't the win-50-games-in-a-row situation that it once was for them. They were still easily favored on paper, but we had a fighting chance and the balance of power had been somewhat adjusted. That wasn't before we got past the Kings, though. We'd finished second overall in the standings, but they weren't too far behind and were the only team that could realistically pose a threat to us before the final (we blew past Ottawa in the first round and I had to look at the index to even remember that). That said, we did have to go through them. We'd done better with recreates, though, and Nyko volunteered to obsessively test-sim for me behind the scenes. This led to a fairly decisive series win in which I got cocky and set all the strategy sliders to zero for the game that closed it out. And then there were two. You get one guess as to the other, and it was the team that hadn't lost a game in the playoffs yet. And we took it to Game 5! That's about all I'm going to say about the S69 finals. You know what happened and you know I didn't win it. But we still handed the Wild their fifth loss of the season and could claim that we were more of a speed bump to them than anyone else. I wasn't even disappointed! Luck wasn't on our side in the draft, but the players I'd hoped would get a second good look in S69 did end up with that chance and it was only because of a weird combination of not having active players to pick that the chance wasn't better. It was my best season as a GM to that point, and it would remain the deepest I've ever taken a team in their playoffs. This was, of course, the VHLM, and what that meant was that after a couple seasons of buying, it was time to burn down the team again. S70 was uneventful, underwhelming, and unmotivating--and that would also be when I moved up to GM Davos not long into the season. That is, obviously, a collection of stories for another time. Functionally speaking, my time as a VHLM GM spanned 4 seasons between S66 and S69. I never won a Cup and I never won the top GM award, but I sincerely believe that I was one of the M's best of the time. Now that Gustav 30 in 30 has closed its book on what I did in Mississauga, I hope you'll agree. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience (hi Berocka): #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright