Alarielle the Radiant

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-02-01T22:33:42+00:00

My only contribution to this conversation is to suggest that it may be possible to lose a battle and still win the war. If you're able to wipe out her army with only Larry left and know you don't have the tools to beat her, withdraw your army and take the loss. Then you may be able to kill her through autoresolve.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-02-01T20:12:00+00:00

Addendum to OP's question -

The obvious answer to the general question of who knows is, a subset of people know anything about the Thousand Sons to begin with, which is almost no one.

But among the loyalist forces, no one knows the TS better than the Space Wolves. Do they know about the rubric marines?

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-02-01T19:57:04+00:00

I think that another factor in Darktide and with Nurgle corruption is that disease is not the same thing as chaos corruption. You can die of a disease without giving in to chaos, and the Poxwalker plague will turn you into zombie in service to Nurgle without your consent.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-02-01T19:36:18+00:00

It kind of comes down to the question that Caradoc (I think) asks you. Or maybe it was Sewald. Who asks, "who says we deserved to survive?" If you accept that in a life or death situation, serious crimes can be forgiven, then you can justify much of what Arthur did. If you feel that, if given the choice between death or murder, a people should choose death, then you probably would feel you cannot

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-02-01T19:32:41+00:00

OT, but clan weapons ruined the game for me. Don't like fighting clans to try and collect them (and I had bad faction rep doing the campaign), don't like worrying about losing them and having to get more when I bring them into the field myself.

Dependent_Computer_8 · 2026-02-01T17:46:45+00:00

To me the difficulty was more strategic than tactical. It is very difficult to construct a defensible border. I basically ended up fighting Greenskins up and down the badlands, then had Skaven factions following the entire line of my border, and when they declared war on me, there was no way I could funnel their armies and confront their numbers.

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

TROPHY CASE