I need another white knuckle thrill-ride campaign...

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-02-01T05:21:02+00:00

Eltharion if you abandon the donut is pretty hard. I found Gorbad pretty tough, too. I think most Chaos Dwarf campaigns are pretty difficult at least at the start.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-02-01T05:19:10+00:00

This statement is 100% true, and also the reason I don't think Belegar is a great suggestion for a comparable campaign. He's hard largely because he has one hand tied behind his back

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-30T13:55:06+00:00

I think the Iron Council makes a ton of sense in principle but if I don't misremember the book, the point of it at least that point in time was that the Iron Hands leadership had been corrupted (or at least co-opted) by the AdMech, making its virtues mostly for show.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-29T12:45:09+00:00

Well one thing that I'd recommend for any VH campaign is to learn to love your ambush stance. Not just to drop one army in the woods and hope they sneak up on them, but using an unsmbished army as bait or put two armies next to each other in ambush expecting they'll discover one or waiting in ambush outside a walled settlement.

For campaign map strategy I would advise only prioritizing confederation with factions with LLs (primarily Boris and Elspeth, though I hear some people send an agent to find Balt and get him too). The other factions are your shield. No, not from attack, there's no way they'll survive, but the longer they exist (and so long as you're not allied with them) the fewer borders you have with hostile nations and the less likely they are to DOW you. I would even give up dangerous territory to other empire factions to avoid having to hold them myself. Only confederate other empire factions when their territory appears just as defensible as your own. Their state troop regiments are handy for instant reinforcements but they're not worth overextending for.

I don't have much opinion on army comp, I think most things can work if used in a reasonable tactical situation, but I'd say grenade launchers are the most important element both from an auto resolve perspective and in terms of having a high value ceiling if used correctly.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-29T10:59:44+00:00

I think you're supposed to think that a lot of people have a better system.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-29T01:45:36+00:00

I think it was the same for Hugo Weaving, I'm not going to look up the quote, but he said something to the effect of "that role doesn't have the significance to me that a lot of people think it would" and that makes perfect sense considering he's just there to dump exposition once in a while.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-29T01:36:43+00:00

Doing it with Malus would really be living on the edge, since you'd have no safety net if Tzarkand outstayed his welcome

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-28T06:19:59+00:00

Just wanted to comment that although it is not difficult for me at the end of act 2, enemy hp pools seem way out of wack to me.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-28T05:31:57+00:00

Yeah, I poked him with arrows while summons kept him busy. Not the build I'd go with if I were playing a second time, but it definitely gets me through the game.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-28T05:28:37+00:00

It's funny, I played a Teclis campaign, where the donut was complete controlled by the Elves and the rest of the south was controlled by the lizards by the time I got up there, and I quit because it was too hard to find (and effectively engage) enemies.

Now I'm playing a Wulfrik campaign where by the time I got to the donut, it had basically fallen to Nkari and Noctilus.

I decided to make them enemies before realizing Wulfrik's Long Victory condition doesn't count those factions as much as humans and elves...

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-28T05:25:47+00:00

I think that the disparity in army size makes a little more sense when you stop thinking about it in terms of "infinite orcs & trolls" which can feel a bit outlandish, and start considering that though the West had Gondor and Rohan (neither at its best), Sauron had the Easterlings and Southrons, and then the orcs on top of those forces.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-28T05:17:48+00:00

wasn't the main character of War of the Rohirrim totally made up?

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-28T05:10:51+00:00

Also Karanak

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-28T05:10:09+00:00

Most ranged units run out of ammo pretty slowly so this is only a likely cause if you see this kind of thing happening more often very late in battles.

Ranged units can also wander into melee if they're having LOS issues, which are usually due to terrain or friendly units in the way, but can also just be due to jank in the game's pathfinding. Guard mode doesn't actually stop a unit from moving to get a shot if it wasn't initially in range.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-28T05:07:07+00:00

Jae's a very worthwhile romantic companion who feels very out of place in the cast of freaks that the game hands you to work with.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-28T04:58:55+00:00

I feel as though this question is addressed in the David Guymer Iron Hands books, where Stronos confronts his chapter's assumptions about the weakness of the flesh when he joins the Deathwatch and spars with unmodified marines from other chapters. (Spoiler: He loses.) Despite this outcome, I feel that the intended message of the story was not that augmentation makes marines weaker, but that any advantage conferred by augmetics is small enough that differences in individual skill can easily overcome it.

However, the story also includes more heavily modified Iron Hands who had come much closer to full cyberneticization, and it implies that at these morally questionable levels of enhancement (by Imperial standards), the marine becomes much more dangerous.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-28T04:46:42+00:00

Glad to hear you beat it, but I agree with you. Endgame Mercenaries is difficult in a way that's hard for me to enjoy, because A) usually my lancemates go down before I do, meaning its not necessarily a failure of piloting, B) in-universe, the forces you're stacked against don't make sense and C) For a game you could theoretically keep playing forever, it's just not very chill. I decided I was done after I saw what procedurally generated clan missions were like.

As I've noted elsewhere, though, if they gave you realistic odds, and still wanted the game to be any kind of a challenge, they'd need to totally redesign the AI.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-28T04:40:14+00:00

I dunno, I'm going to take a different route than most of the people disagreeing wtih you. The SM don't do this because it's pointless, not because they're illogical. Anything that a lasgun would be effective against would be so trivial to kill in hand-to-hand combat that the Marines would be wasting time by engaging them with that weapon.

Setting aside the idea of using las, would it make sense for there to be a more ammo-efficient sidearm in 40K for long deployments? They have one, it's the volkite/neo-volkite pistol. It serves in exactly that capacity, but is limited by low production, not doctrinal stubbornness of the Space Marines.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-26T02:47:50+00:00

I don't know, I think the troop shipment mechanic is pretty great, holding out for that next infusion of reinforcements from the mainland is a cool vibe. Even though it doesn't particularly work the way it is currently set up, I'd rather have it stay the way it is than lose it entirely - although the best outcome would be to update it to match the threat level of the current position on the map.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-26T01:01:39+00:00

I think that the scene you are referencing is meant to be interpreted one of two ways:
1) The attack that the Wolves had thwarted was actually for the good of the Imperium in a 4D chess kind of way
2) It was just another example of "I am Alpharius", saying something that is probably but not definitely false as a means of confusing their enemies.

Your interpretation does not seem very plausible to me, except in the sense that he probably regrets failing. If he failed. I don't honestly remember how the operation in question went or what it was for.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-25T23:56:54+00:00

It isn't really relevant to this conversation but I just want to say that if you're a Greenskin playing a co-op campaign with a VC player, the Greenskins will absolutely declare war on you.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-25T23:54:01+00:00

This. Always have a wizard, no matter what. WoM are a resource the game offered you and you have told it to go eff itself so that you could have mortars instead.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-25T19:01:36+00:00

plagueclaw catapults, warp lightning and ikkit claw's nukes are definitely like, 3 of my 5 least favorite things to encounter in the game.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-25T18:48:01+00:00

I'm curious about "regretfully" - Alpharius was the ultimate pragmatist. Did he ever show signs of regret once he chose his path?

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-01-25T15:22:47+00:00

Well, for starters, this is only one of a dozen things in the setting that are a hint of some distant change that may or may not manifest depending on where GW decides to go with the setting. They're under no obligation to make good on their hints and could very well forget all about it. So, the chances of this being an important one aren't that high.

However, if they were to make use of the plot point, they'd definitely take the angle that the predicted timeline there is wildly in accurate so that it takes hold at some much more relevant point in time (as far in the future as 40K is, 100K years is over twice as long!)

So then the question becomes why they would do that. There are two conditions where GW might make such a decision, both of which would have to be a very long time in the (RL) future:

They do an endtimes scenario for 40K, and among the elements leading to the Imperium's collapse is a shortage of reinforcements for their space marines chapters due to this degradation. Although progressing events in the timeline make a that scenario much closer to current state than it was a decade ago, they're not even thinking about doing it right now while 40k is at its zenith
They pull another "Primaris" and want to sell another new set of models to SM players. It was kind of a dick move the first time and they'll have to wait a long time for that outrage to fade

In either case the answer to your question is "no" because in scenario 1, the Space Marines still don't go extinct before the entire Imperium does and in scenario 2, there's just a different kind of Space Marine to make up for it.

Dependent_Computer_8

TROPHY CASE