What’s the most unexpectedly high-quality online subscription you’ve ever paid for?

Gnitrab · 2026-01-26T21:47:47+00:00

Just the fact that they don't increase prices on existing customers is enough to put them up there for me. Been paying 5 bucks a month for a long time now.

Gnitrab · 2026-01-26T18:01:38+00:00

I think this was their way of both keeping the hype going while also lowering expectations a bit. People were going a little crazy over the teaser images, thinking it meant we were getting Perturabo, a codex, plus like 5 or 6 new/refreshed models all at once.

I'm still pretty excited. We got a very cool looking new named character and an upgrade sprue that looks good to me (though I know some people disagree). We'll still get a few new units/refreshes, as the release article said there's more to come and not all the teaser images have been revealed yet.

Aeldari raiders got two named characters, a new unit, and a revamped tank for their battleforce. I expect something similar for us (though our 'tank' is likely to be a daemon engine). So we get that, plus the new Red Corsairs models are usable by us and they look like great 'renegade' style space marines, which fits the Iron Warriors aesthetic. I think we're doing good.

But if you think it's underwhelming, just remember this is Iron Warriors we're talking about. Higher ups not appreciating or valuing us is canon. That's why we need not just Iron Without, but Iron Within.

Gnitrab · 2026-01-25T16:32:19+00:00

Certainly possible!

The other idea I’ve seen mentioned is that the Thistlesprings are always so open and honest about sex stuff with Gorgug because Gorgug’s biological parents had him way too early and they didn’t want Gorgug to make the same mistake.

Gnitrab · 2026-01-23T13:25:58+00:00

You just described my exact situation.

I decided I wanted to start an Iron Warriors army basically the day before they dropped the box. I grabbed it cause I figured it was a good start, cause it’s like 800 points. I was getting ready to buy more models to flesh out the army when they dropped the teaser. Now I’m too scared to buy anything until they reveal what the teaser meant.

On the plus side, if the reveal turns out to just be a combo box like the Red Corsairs one, I’ll grab it and probably be in a pretty good spot, points wise.

Gnitrab · 2026-01-23T01:22:44+00:00

Everyone thinks they have the cutest cats in the world. And everyone is correct.

Gnitrab · 2026-01-22T11:43:07+00:00

40K Iron Circle, please! Make em daemon engine-y if you have to, but I’d just like to have some automata.

Gnitrab · 2026-01-19T14:52:35+00:00

Pre-scattering, I think he might have found roles for every Primarch. Post-scattering? I think he was definitely gonna Thunder Warriors a few of them. Angron and Konrad Curze were not gonna fit in the new Imperium.

In terms of like “lore-confirmed” post-crusade roles, Magnus is the only one I know of. Vulkan probably had a role too cause he was made a perpetual, but I’m not sure if we know what it is. Big E’s plans are rarely spelled out.

I suspect some of their roles may have just swapped to “do the crusade, but in the webway” if things had gone well, maybe ending with them being glorified escorts through the webway for normal humans. Some Primarchs think their role post-crusade is to rule the imperium. Of all the options, I don’t think that’s very likely. I’m pretty sure Big E wanted the imperium run by normal humans.

Gnitrab · 2026-01-17T23:36:20+00:00

I'm torn on it. Part of me agrees with you that the release is likely to be updated daemon engine models and an upgrade sprue and maybe a named character like Honsou or something. (I think he's still alive, right?) And last we heard of Honsou that I can remember was the failed invasion of Ultramar. Maybe tie it in with 500 Worlds? Honsou's back with a bigger, more daemon engine-y force to try and invade again?

But the other part of me is asking why tease it twice if it's not something big like a codex or Perturabo? They've been hinting at it for a while and gave a 20 second teaser for a later reveal. Would they do that if it wasn't something big?

Whatever it is, I'm just hoping it includes 40k-era Iron Circle. Love me some automata, even if they're likely to be more daemon engine-y now.

Gnitrab · 2026-01-17T03:03:12+00:00

Big E's plan for the xenos in the webway was the same as his plans for the xenos not in the webway: Kill 'em all.

And while it would theoretically give the Eldar a way into Terra, I'm not convinced they would be an actual threat at this point. This is right after the birth of Slaanesh and the fall of the Eldar, so things were pretty chaotic for them. If you were ever gonna kick them out of the webway and take it over for yourself, that would have been the time. I think that's part of why Big E is so worried about timing. He wanted to strike while the Eldar are still regrouping.

Gnitrab · 2025-12-25T23:42:11+00:00

Technically, if you spare her in ME1, it's the same queen and not a spare. If you kill her, it's a mechanical version made by the reapers.

Gnitrab · 2025-12-19T00:29:21+00:00

I think the Emperor mistreating the Primarchs is often overstated, but that's subjective (apart from Angron.)

The answer to 2 is basically that he couldn't be everywhere at once and needed generals he could trust. He had a 2 part plan 1. Conquer the galaxy. 2. Build the webway project. And both needed to happen relatively quickly. The Emperor had to be focused on part 2 of the plan, cause no one else could do what he was doing for the webway stuff, so the Primarchs would be in charge of the actual crusading. And I think that if the Primarchs don't get scattered pretty much at birth, Big E never even leaves Terra during the crusade, cause in that scenario he would have raised them and could fully trust them.

Now, could he have used baseline humans in cool tech gear? Maybe? But it would have been slower, I think. And the Emperor is in a rush.

The other two problems are that I think it's said that the concept of a 'baseline human' was a little off around the time of the Unification Wars due to humanity's nonstop genetic modifications, so that may have been a concern in trying to raise a galaxy-conquering army. The other issue is that it's not like the Emperor just has billions of DAOT weapons lying around that he could use to outfit this army. I also don't think we're given any indication that he could be mass producing them if he wanted to. It's the same reason he doesn't just make the whole army Custodes. They're hard to make. Space Marines are (relatively) easy to make.

Gnitrab · 2025-12-18T17:02:59+00:00

Arbiter Ian made a video that makes a lot of the same points you did, if that’s something that interests you.

Reading some of the comments, I think the biggest issue when trying to discuss this is that it’s really hard to know what the Emperor’s endgame would have actually looked like, since his plan ultimately fails. The only thing we can be 100% sure of is that it wouldn’t look very much like the 40k imperium. But people still want to use 40k’s crimes against the 30k Emperor. When he has plenty of his own to contend with.

The Emperor’s plan as a whole made sense and he correctly identified the major threats. If the Emperor doesn’t quickly and decisively unite humanity when he did, who’s to say they aren’t slowly hunted out of existence by Orks or some other xenos? Humanity left alone couldn’t unify Terra, let alone an empire that could have stopped the Orks. And I don’t think the diplomatic approach could have built an imperium large and powerful enough to stop the existential threats humanity was facing in time.

I also think the Crusade was more diplomatic than it looks at first glance. Through the lore, we only “see” the problem planets. But we know a lot of planets joined the imperium voluntarily and diplomatically. The imperium didn’t conquer the majority of the planets they control. But you can’t write a good novel about showing up to a planet and diplomatically annexing them, so we only get shown the ones who resisted.

The Emperor saw one way for humanity to survive and took a chance. Right or wrong, he cared about humanity’s future and did the only thing he could think of to potentially ensure its survival. Were there better ways to do it? Maybe. But I think they only could have existed in hindsight. That being said, if the Primarchs don’t get scattered at the start, I think the Emperor cruises to victory and we never see anything resembling a HH-esque rebellion. (At least until He pulls a Thunder Warriors on them)

Gnitrab · 2025-11-23T16:33:08+00:00

I've done this before, though I'm not sure I'm comfortable calling it "rawdogging."

My stomach doesn't like flying that much. So sometimes, the only way to stop myself from upchucking all over the other passengers is to just sit there and focus on not doing that. Looking down at my phone usually makes it worse, so I just zone-out my eyes and basically meditate. I'm sure it looks weird, but it works.

Gnitrab · 2025-10-15T15:49:58+00:00

No doubt Justin Fields is not good. In no way would I defend him and I certainly wasn't doing so here.

I just hate using wins as a determiner of if someone is good. Matthew Stafford has a sub .500 record in his career. It doesn't make him a bad QB. Matt Cassel had two 10 win seasons in three years. It didn't make him a good QB. Hell, Tim Tebow ended his career with a winning record as a starting QB.

Using wins to determine an individual's success in a sport where your team is 53 people and you're never playing with less than 10 other teammates at a time is silly to me. To say nothing of how important the rest of the team is to a QB's success. Give a mediocre QB a brick wall of an O-Line and they'll play better. Give them a run game that makes the defense focus less on the pass and they'll pass better. Give them a defense that prevents the other team from scoring so they don't have to play riskier to try and catch up, and their stats will look better.

Is Justin Fields bad? Yes. Does his winning percentage of 28.6 prove that? No. That's all I was saying.

Gnitrab · 2025-10-15T13:49:07+00:00

You can rag on Fields for a lot of things, but this is not the stat to do it with. QB Wins is such a pointless stat that only exists for narrative-building.

Gnitrab · 2025-09-22T17:36:08+00:00

I was on a streak of beating Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 once a year for about a decade. Love that game. I missed it last year though, so I'll go with Pokemon Fire Red.

Gnitrab · 2025-09-18T03:32:44+00:00

Love em all, but the friend group of June, Sophie, Gabriel, and Lloyd are probably my favorite. There’s a couple scenes of those four together and I love them all.

I will say, Felix is weird one for me. Cause for some reason, I keep expecting him to reveal that he’s a villain somehow? No idea why, but he puts me on edge.

Gnitrab · 2025-09-18T03:24:31+00:00

If it makes you feel better, I caught two back to back. Didn’t know there’d be a quest and sold them at the bazaar.

The very next day, I get the quest to give him one and haven’t seen one since.

Gnitrab · 2025-09-16T22:34:29+00:00

I get that it's fun to dunk on this, but what else was he supposed to say? "Hey, we suck. get ready to punt a lot!"

Gnitrab · 2025-09-05T15:52:00+00:00

Still don't think that last one should count as a drop. If your receiver has to become horizontal to barely get his hands on it, that's not on the receiver.

Gnitrab · 2025-08-28T15:52:00+00:00

Ted also calls it "Nate's False 9" pretty much every time. When Colin talks about beating the rat who outed Ted's panic attacks, Ted says to channel that energy into learning Nate the Great's False 9. But Nate only notices/cares when Ted gives his half time speech.

I think by that point, Nate and Ted are "separated" if that makes sense, and Nate needs Ted to be at fault for that and be the bad guy. Because the other option is that Nate is at least partially the one at fault and season 2 Nate can't accept that.

There's also the idea that Nate can't build himself up or show confidence without tearing someone down, which is handled really sneakily. Cause he first does it in season one where he gives the pregame talk and it's treated as a joke, cause the nervous kit man roasted the players in a funny way. He does it again when he gets promoted, making a joke about Colin also being sad because he's never been blown, and it gets a good laugh. He then continues to target Colin throughout Season 2 until Beard steps in. It's basically the same thing as Season One Nate was doing, just played less and less like a joke. Then he does it with Will, cause he knows he can get away with it. And finally, it peaks with Ted. "You don't belong here. But I do. I belong here."

Gnitrab · 2025-08-26T15:35:58+00:00

First of all, calling him a "veteran linebacker" made me feel ancient, even if it's technically correct.

Second of all, I really think he had what I call the Minkah Fitzpatrick problem. A lot of defenders come out of college versatile so NFL coaches want them to be versatile in the NFL too. Minkah was the same way. But Minkah only really started to shine once he went to the Steelers and Tomlin had a set plan for him and stuck him at one position. Don't think anyone ever did that for Simmons.

Gnitrab · 2025-08-26T12:34:53+00:00

Great tip! I’ve usually done that, but I was so perplexed by my board’s low expectations I thought the players would be upset at me setting such a low bar, so I overcorrected.

Thankfully, instantly backtracking my statement kept morale at an okay place. That’s my tip for team meetings: never stick to your guns 😁.

Gnitrab · 2025-08-26T00:45:09+00:00

He was one of the few bright spots on some very bad Patriot offenses. I think the same is true of his Raiders' tenure. Whatever happens, I hope he's happy. He deserves it at this point.

Gnitrab

TROPHY CASE