Awesome / Many A True Nerd

• Jon managed to complete his playthrough of "You Only Live Once". He only had a few points of health left, but he made it.
• Pretty much the entirety of his Fallout 3 Is Better Than You Think video, which is an extended video essay where he deconstructs several arguments against the game, calls out the hypocrisy of some of the more vocal criticisms, and praises Fallout 3 and how it serves as an excellent Fallout game.
• Medieval II: Total War
  • Jon is unexpectedly attacked by the French when he's already at war with three other powers, but notices that the French have an army right next to an English force, who Jon has allied with. He decides to send a small army over to fight that French army purely to draw the English into the war via their alliance, and counts on the larger English army's strength to carry the battle. But while the English honor their alliance when the battle begins, their reinforcements are delayed, leaving Jon's scratch force of mercenaries and archers outnumbered nearly twice over by a French army that includes proper midgame knights. Yet in the battle that results, Jon uses clever deployment and strategic charges to break the French's morale and rout their army, wiping out 80% of the enemy without the English's help.
    Jon: I can't believe we actually won that ourselves. Like, the force I had: five mercenary units, three peasant archers, no extra cavalry beyond the general. And we managed to win this - and here come the bloody useless English. [...] They had flippin' dismounted heavy flippin' infantry, they had dismounted knights, we didn't have anything like that. They out-shot us, they out-classed us on the ground, they had vastly more cavalry, and we still kicked their arses, no thanks to you Johnny-Come-Latelies!
  • Later on, Jon engages in a Uriah Gambit to get rid of a crappy faction heir while taking a rebel settlement. Instead the prince dies almost immediately and Jon fears he's lost the battle, but with the careful use of his remaining cavalry and exploitation of the morale mechanics, Jon's able to take Adana with a handful of horsemen.
    Jon: Oh, that's so stupid! That's so stupid! But it bears out what I said, cavalry in this game can do the stupidly impossible!
  • Conventional wisdom is to defeat the game's horde armies by hunkering down behind walls and withstanding siege after grueling siege until the invaders' strength is exhausted. Jon tried to do that, and planned his entire expansion into the Middle East around defense-in-depth and having ballista or cannon towers to help during sieges, but with two exceptions, the Mongols and Timurids never attacked his settlements. Instead Jon ended up taking the fight to them and beating the hordes in the field, which is all the more impressive because the Danish faction lacks the "sharpened stakes" ability some archers have, and has little to nothing in the way of quality spear infantry. And in the Timurids' case, Jon lost battle after battle to their numbers, mobility and War Elephants, until he managed to bottle their armies up in the Armenian Highlands, and finally mastered the positioning and use of artillery to slaughter their elephants and win the day.
• Crusader Kings II:
  • Just the fact that Jon, despite being a beginner in the ways of CKII, manages to take the weakest start possible, the Duchy of Cornwall, and make an empire. With a total army size of barely 500, and an absolutely pathetic economy, a newcomer like Jon should have been roundly stomped, but despite some close calls, he succeeded.
  • King Jon the Fat's ascension in Part 7 is greeted with dismay due to him being a thoroughly mediocre glutton, and his reign seems set to be one long, painful fat joke. Yet despite his shortcomings, under King Jon's rule, Cornwall more than doubles in size, survives multiple plagues and invasions, prospers economically, advances technologically, and modernizes its government. King Jon himself manages to survive into old age despite several health scares, only dying in another battle to push back the realm's borders. By the end of the character's life in Part 11, Jon has to dub him King Jon the Expansive in recognition of all he's done for his country.
  • King Catastrophe turns out to have quite the Non-Indicative Name, as apart from some marital problems and failed excommunication wars , he leads Cornwall to great success until, at the end of Part 32, he's able to declare himself Emperor of Cornwall. He also has the learning to climb to the highest rank of the Hermetic Society, and calls a gathering of sages to work on new military technology. Jon jokes about some sort of fire-breathing siege engine shaped like a Welsh dragon, or inventing gunpowder earlier than scheduled, but to his surprise...
    Jon: Oh wow, I was just joking! But we literally invented gunpowder! "We have also designed and produced a device which can launch small metal balls at lethal speeds. This 'handgun' is sure to revolutionize warfare!" Oh flip, I've just invented a gun! And I get the gun!
    • For reference, the oldest surviving firearm, the Heilongjiang hand cannon, dates back to around 1288. Jon's Cornish handgun was developed in 1231, while historically hand cannons wouldn't be seen in Europe until the late 1300's.
  • In part 42, Cornwall sees its Darkest Hour. Its military has been depleted by a pointless crusade, its population has been decimated by the Black Death, its treasury is all but empty, and then when Jon tries to revoke a title from a too-powerful vassal, he triggers a civil war where Cornwall proper and the Kingdom of Wales face the combined might of England, Ireland and Brittany. Jon assumes that he's just destroyed his empire but resolves to go down fighting - and then remembers that he still has Perenn, the Holy Maid of Glamorgan. Between her leadership and military genius, and Aragon honoring its alliance to come in as The Cavalry, Emperor Morhaetho holds his domain together and ends up with all his uppity vassals in his dungeon, allowing him to reorganize his empire without any resistance.
• For his playthrough of Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion, Jon picked the Western Roman Empire because it was in his opinion the hardest campaign in Total War history, starting with a bloated, underdeveloped empire plagued by unrest, religious disorder, economic problems, incompetent leadership, and surrounded by hordes of enemies. Yet in an astonishingly short amount of time, Jon recovers the provinces that rebeled against him, starts putting his economy back together, and begins expanding. Even when he gets lucky, such as when the Huns deplete themselves against the Sarmatians before limping his way, the game makes up for it by blatantly cheating in some cases, or glitching during a key siege. By the end of the series, Jon has expanded Western Rome past its historical borders, retaken Greece (including Constantinople) and Egypt from Eastern Rome, and amassed a host capable of taking on multiple horde armies in the field at once and completely shattering them.
  • Also noteworthy, as some YouTube commentors have pointed out, is Jon's ruling family in this campaign. In Rome proper, the Brutii had some naturally-gifted generals who spent all their time in the field, like Julianus Vatinius, while goofballs like Cassius the Lewd managed cities and amused the viewers with their antics. Barbarian Invasion in contrast has a Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits being forced to do whatever it takes to keep the empire together, whether it be by escorting artillery to the front lines or converting a settlement to Christianity so it calms down.
• Jon thought his Stellaris Impossible Run was going to be a joke series that lasted at most three episodes, since after all he was playing on the highest difficulty and with every slider cranked up to make things as hard as possible. Yet despite the odds against him, Jon's able to turn things around with the help of the Head of Zarqlan and become a force to be reckoned with. The Prethoryn Scourge showing up seems to mark the beginning of the end, and Jon surrenders the initiative after a tactical blunder or two, yet he still manages to rally and rebuild until he's assembled a host capable of curb-stomping Scourge fleets while taking minimal losses, and goes on to lead the offensive to cleanse the Scourge from the galaxy. All said, it's an eighteen-episode epic that goes from "impossible," "improbable," "actually possible," "really impossible," to "possible." For bonus points, the last shots of the war are fired by Zarqlan's First Pilgrims, the fleet that let him stay in the game, right next to the Brightest Quack, home system of the Mighty Ducks, his very first Stellaris empire.
• Crusader Kings II - The Restoration of Rome:
  • Episode 6 gets a special red skull background, as it features "The Lunacy War of Skull Mountain." What should have been a straightforward attempt to usurp the crown of Serbia leads to Jon's character Perun using the high ground advantage to win battle after battle against mercenary armies, in one case personally defeating an enemy leader and then crushing a force that outnumbers his army two-to-one. At the start of the war, Perun was considered a weak nerd who happened to have a divine axe. By the end of it, he's single-handedly breaking apart boulders blocking his army's path and seeking out rival leaders to defeat in personal combat, leaving him the most powerful fighter in his court, and most likely the most powerful in his part of the world.
    Jon: I think we need to take a moment just to acknowledge what that war did to Perun. He left as a skinny nerd, and he has come back as a cocking mountain of a man! With Martial of 22, with Personal Combat Skill of 56! He left Frail, he came back actively Brawny! He is now an unstoppable flipping killing machine!
  • Perun's awesomeness continues in episode 12, in which he and a few of his warrior lodge buddies go to challenge all the greatest warriors of the Middle East. When he returns home, badly injured but triumphant, he's declared a Legend by the lodge and instantly founds a bloodline, which Jon had previously tried to accomplish by just executing people left and right. All this while Perun is in his late sixties.
  • In episode 15, after years of scheming, politicking, and careful deployment of his character, Despot Hektor of Serbia become Basileus Hektor of the Byzantine Empire.
  • Episode 18 ends with Basileus Kallistos the Wise facing the combined might of the Roman Catholic Church when a crusade is announced on Constantinople, and due to the nature of the event, it would if successful mean the end of the Byzantine Empire. By the end of Episode 19, Basileus Kallistos the Great has personally led his army to crush the invaders, gained valuable knowledge of warfare, and ordered a counter-invasion of Rome itself that led to the Pope's humiliation and massive war reparations.
    Jon: And now, I am swimming in money, and the Catholic armies have been broken by my forces. I now know I can take on all of Catholic Europe, and win.
  • Emperor Kallistos' attempt to revive Hellenism in Part 21 was a bit of a flop, but his heir, Emperor Ioseph, is able to carefully cultivate the faith among the empire's kings and dukes, so that he's able to declare himself Hellene in Part 23 without causing a civil war. And by the end of Part 25, Emperor Poseidon has not only retaken Rome, but now controls all five of the holy sites of Hellenism, allowing Jon to reform the faith and give it some significant bonuses.
  • The actual fight for the final territory is a bit of an Anti-Climax, but in the Grand Finale, Emperor Hermes is able to conquer Carthage and restore the Roman Empire, personally adding a second bloodline to the dynasty, since he'd already convinced everyone he has the Immortal Blood of Alexander the Great.
  • Pontifex Maxima Aphroditia, full stop. At the age of 19, without having held any form of public office or military position, she had a Martial of 26. After becoming empress of the restored Roman Empire, she founded the warrior order of the Olympian Champions. She goes into battle singing The Aeneid, inspiring her whole army to march faster and fight harder. When rebels rise against her, she crushes them in battle and sacrifices the instigators to Zeus. She once successfully hunted a werewolf with her niece Anastasia and made a trophy from its tooth. She doesn't need to besiege cities or castles, she can assault the walls and immediately win with paltry losses. In her first major battle against a jihadi army that outnumbered hers by 6,000 men, she charged the enemy center, an axe in each hand, breaking it and sending the survivors fleeing, killing 12,000 foes while taking only 3,000 losses. When the Hungarian King of France had her husband assassinated, she bribed him into accepting gavelkind succession, dooming his domain to being split amongst his brood of children, and then made a drinking-cup out of an old Hungarian skull just to make a point. Whereas Perun returned from his Dick Pilgrimage triumphant but mortally-wounded, Aphroditia returned from her own successful Middle Eastern dueling spree with nothing but a fashionable scar and other people's blood on her face. By that point, she was 52 and had a base Martial score of 39, and an effective Martial score of 71, while her Personal Combat Skill was a staggering 185, which combined with her casus belli against former Roman territory, access to holy wars and great holy wars, and the Invasion ability from Alexander the Great's bloodline effect, left her in a good position to "paint the map." And Genghis Khan, the would-be rival that Jon was hoping to fight in an apocalyptic final showdown for the series finale? Died of infection at age 85, leaving a disappointing successor who made no attempt to invade the Roman Empire... probably because his horde only had 80,000 men in it, while Aphroditia could personally command 200,000.
• The Fallout 4 YOLO series can be a real nail-biter at times, since the nature of the game means there's ample opportunity for chaos to strike as a player moves between locations, and Jon decided to play on Survival Mode, which ramps the danger up even further. Between the game's difficulty, bad luck, and moments of hubris, Jon takes a number of hits, most severely in Episode 34 where a "clown booped me on the ass" to bring him down to 29% health. Even though it looks like the run is doomed, Jon perseveres, and concludes that if he's lost most of his health bar, there's no downside to starting the (quite difficult) Far Harbor DLC to take advantage of the Children of Atom's radiation-linked unique perks. Jon survives despite the odds, salvages the run with careful perk selection and level-ups to recover health, goes on to clear Automatron and settles his business with Nuka-World, and for a grand finale completes the chaotic assault on the Institute while taking only a scratch and bit of rads. Then for an encore, Jon declares war on the Brotherhood of Steel and survives their attack on the Castle. By the end, he's taken more damage than any of his other YOLO runs, but Jon still managed to bring his health bar up to 44%.
• Jon started his XCOM 2: War of the Chosen playthrough without ever trying the game's core campaign, meaning he's learning about Concealment and other new mechanics at the same time he's getting attacked by the Chosen and Alien Rulers from the game's expansion content. Despite some mishaps, he rises to the challenge and grows confident enough to tick the difficulty up to "Commander," which doesn't stop him from making it all the way to the final mission. But things take a turn in the very last minutes of the game, when there are a full three alien pods on the field, the last Avatar is at full health, two of Jon's soldiers are mind-controlled, and one of them is literally on her last hit point. Jon's able to break mind-control on one soldier, and focuses all his attacks on the Avatar in a make-or-break turn, but one missed shot and a graze threaten to cost him everything... until the Avatar teleports into the sights of Claire, the "Chosen One" from the original Enemy Unknown campaign, who's armed with the anti-psychic Disrupter Rifle.
  Jon: ...I can't believe this, Claire's going to be cocking insufferable about this nonsense.
• The mere existence of Jon's Zoo Tycoon video is awesome for multiple reasons. One, the fact that it was made in response to a fan who commented on Jon's videos for three years requesting that he play the game, until Jon caved after over 1200 comments of this nature. Two, Jon went above and beyond in making sure that he was playing the game legally, despite the fact that it's not available for purchase online - he went and bought a physical CD, restored the CD drive on an old PC of his so he could use said CD to install the game, and fiddled with the game's setting himself to make it run at a higher resolution so it would be actually playable on a modern PC.

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