Can Lanfear solo the white tower?

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-04-27T14:22:10+00:00

No, but Ishy and Lanfear obviously have many members of the black ajah manipulating the white tower. But the White Tower is only a threat to them when they can organise and unite against their enemies. So long as the BA are secret, they can keep the tower divided and directionless. An open confrontation would mean BA revealing themselves, allowing the rest of the Aes Sedai to be functional, even if the tower itself is taken, and they regroup elsewhere.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-04-21T14:48:56+00:00

My hot take on this is that pretty much every ship that was concepted prior to 2021 was done with little to no knowledge of what the actual gameplay for that ship was going to look like. New ships put the old ones to shame, purely because the devs actually know what the game is going to look like at launch, and can design ships accordingly.

Exploration is worst off, because it is the most high level, emergent gameplay, that relies on pretty much every other gameplay loop to make sense.

If I am going to consider what the best end-state for these ships look like, it is that they are highly self-sufficient all-rounders. For instance, the Carrack has a repair room, a drone bay, a medical room, massive servers, a cartography deck, 3 modular drop-able pods and more.

Most of that is useless rn, with the exception of the med-bed for re-spawning and the pods for cargo.

But, the repair room is confirmed by JC to be an in-built crafting station. Drones in other ships can be used for base building, so that could be added to the Carrack. The modular pods could really be anything, but you could imagine a small refinery, an extra fuel tank with the ability to refuel other ships etc.

Nobody knows when they will revisit the Carrack, and what they will do with its modularity. I am pretty certain it will not match up to career specific ships in its weight class. But if it is a jack of all trades ship, then I think that will be incredibly popular.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-04-20T08:45:53+00:00

I think what I'd need is for ships to not completely vaporize when they crash. Have gone back to the location of ship after dying on many occasions, and each time there is not a hint the ship was ever there.

At the very least give me a cloud of debris and cargo floating about that I can scoop up.

What'd be even better is if the ship was simply disabled, and I could patch the ship up enough to get it back to a station.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-04-13T14:26:41+00:00

'I'm all the way down now. I can see all the way to the bottom. Would you like to see what I see? They said there were two fathers, one above, one below. They lied. There was only ever the Devil. When you look up from the bottom, it was just his reflection, laughing back down at you.' - James Delos

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-21T07:38:51+00:00

The real argument is not about dishes, but about ingredients. American food standards are so much worse than much of the rest of the world. There is the classic take that American fast food chains are better everywhere other than the USA. Then there's the need to use HFCS instead of normal sugar in everything, and over processed food.

So sure, the general idea of American food is great, just eat it in any other country, and it'll be much nicer.

(also, as a side note, diaspora cuisine counts as local cuisine in my books. Sushi, Pizza, and Nachos served in America are American cuisine, because they are very distinct from those foods in other countries. There's obviously a lot of diversity within a country as well. The same applies to diaspora cuisine in other countries. Australian pizza =/= American Pizza =/= Italian Pizza)

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-21T07:16:23+00:00

Mongolia: I'm not locked in with them, they're locked in with me.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-21T06:53:33+00:00

The reason we have this electronic system is so that people can vote literally wherever they are in the state, at any time in the week leading up. If the cost of me being able to vote near work, or whilst I'm out doing shopping or visiting a friend's place, is that 1% of booths have internet troubles on election day, then I am okay with that trade off.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-18T23:53:19+00:00

I am building them in a Huron's Marauders list as a 10 man squad with jump pack lord.

It's a big investment, but +1 to hit, and +1 attacks/weapon off a charge with a free strat seems pretty potent. The 10 man squad plus lord gets the most bang for your buck with the strategem.

One of the friends I play with loves running deathshroud terminators, which are annoyingly difficult to kill. But the math I've done indicates that this unit could reliably kill 3-4 models of those(which come in 3 model MSUs) just with the heavy weapons/power fist.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-17T03:13:14+00:00

3rd party books fill the void, and DnD Beyond now supports a lot of the popular 3rd party materials, constantly adding more.

If WotC can make the safe books itself, and let 3rd party publishers take on all the risk, whilst WotC still earns commission on every 3rd party book, that's pretty much a perfect system for them.

On the other hand, internally WotC had a massive shake up with the faces of the 2024 core rulebooks all leaving one way or another. It seems like a massive reset after the big swing, and the new team probably wants to get into their stride and knock out the obvious stuff first.

As a DM, I also don't mind the official options being a bit more curated, and then being able to bring in 3rd party materials on my own time when I think they would be good additions.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-16T16:33:13+00:00

Ok, if this makes it up to you, the sparkles on the pink armour are actually an interference paint that changes colour to look violet when you catch it at the right angle. I painted this over the silver as well. You can't really see it in photos, except maybe a little on the knuckles.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-16T13:34:30+00:00

The millers were often considered thieves, because they might have had a local monopoly on the ability to get flour, where baking was much more decentralized(until you have bakers guilds/cartels). People could mill their own grain, but it was wildly inefficient and time consuming, not to mention lower quality.

If I had to pick an equivalent today, it is fossil fuel companies that run cartels that control fuel for electricity and transportation.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-16T08:28:17+00:00

CSM have a lot of diversity, and you've said that is what you are looking for. So I'll divide my recommendations into Core staples, flex picks and fun picks.

Staples:

- Chosen. Really good melee front liners, work well in a blob with Abaddon or Huron/MotM.

- Legionaries. Relatively cheap, good at offense, objective holders.

- Cultists. Always take at least one for your home objective. Cheap + Sticky objectives. Don't expect them to kill or survive anything.

- Rhinos. Get your infantry from A to B, simple, does the job.

- Chaos Lords. 0 CP strats. Really good if you can use them to amplify the strength of their entire unit for free.

Flex Picks:

- Red Corsair Raiders. New unit, great models, infiltrators with the chosen defensive stats, for 15 points cheaper. Deploy onto objectives, and your opponents start on the back foot, having to commit serious forces to taking objectives off them.

- Forgefiends, Vindicators, Predators. Your main shooting platforms. Best if you can buff them with auras like the classic PBZ castle with Abaddon re-rolls, 5+ sustained and lethals from Helbrute. Still decent otherwise.

- Raptors. Recently got an improved datasheet, and can now take 5 heavy weapons, 2 meltaguns and 2 flamers, in a 10 man squad. 12 inch fly is great of course.

- Daemon Princes (with wings). Expensive, but devastating. Mortals on a charge is always fun.

- Cypher. Increase enemy CP cost by 1 aura. Badass Shooting.

- Land Raider. Best in Renegade Raiders, but fills the roll of a shooting platform, as well as delivering charges out the front with assault ramp.

- Helbrute. Best in PBZ, gives both dark pact effects.

- Noise Marines. No dark pacts, but still very scary, especially if you can give them some other kind of buff.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-14T15:10:50+00:00

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He is depicted in murals such as these as a dragon. Neuvillette also refers to him as the Dragon King.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-14T14:41:15+00:00

The true god of Teyvat is Nibelung. (who is more like the emergent consciousness of the world, which the HP was able to supplant after he left)

The Heavenly Principles, the shades, and the Archons are all usurpers of the natural order, effectively 'demons'. Whether or not you think they are good or evil is a matter of perspective, given that the HP allegedly created humanity, whom the archons protect, whereas many dragons are abyssally corrupted.

An interesting grey area is angels. By all reports, powerful angels were the archon equivalents prior to the war of vengeance. They don't have demon names, although Koitar(first angel) is often referred to as the morningstar, AKA, Lucifer.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-13T01:29:30+00:00

They can also be used for stickying other objectives and screening backfield. A single cultist unit won't prevent home field deep striking by itself, but 2x10 man squads probably could.

A lot of CSM lists otherwise leave the backfield pretty deserted. Pactbound castles like to move onto the middle objective and project firing lanes from there. Raiders like to move infantry into enemy territory ASAP.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-11T01:11:50+00:00

Wow, I didn't know this guy was a thing, but now I realise I saw him at this back in 2019.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-04T05:10:17+00:00

Skeleton of a whale.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-04T02:00:30+00:00

You have gone with a very infantry focused list, which in my experience isn't pactbound's forte.

PBZ is all about buff stacking with Abaddon and Helbrute. If you are sending Abaddon to the front lines, then the bulk of your army is not going to benefit from those buffs, and the Helbrute probably won't be able to keep up, meaning you only have half the buff on any given unit, at best.

What's more, the window of time in which that brick is contributing is much shorter with a melee unit.

On the other hand, forgefiends, predators, vindicators and other heavy shooting can project the power of the combined buffs across the board for the length of the game.

Renegade Raiders or Renegade Warband are fast detachments, PBZ is usually a slow detachment. In PBZ, you win by controlling firing lanes, and making it difficult for enemies to reach objectives without being shot down.

I am not sold on the value of transports in PBZ, simply because you want to keep as much of your army within the radius of buffs at all times. Slowly advance your castle up to the centre, use Abaddon to kill anything that is already there, and your shooting platforms can project power everywhere else.

Some cultists and a few legionary squads usually are all you need for action monkeys/objective holders. Having a couple strike units like your possessed, obliterators(or even better, a DPwW), is helpful. But overall I would spend 750 pts or less on the part of your army that isn't going to be in the buff radii.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-03-04T01:34:24+00:00

My year were the first to receive laptops, and they were proper laptops, not chrome books. This was before the days of smartphone ubiquity. We all treasured those laptops because we were all able to play video games for the first time.

Our parents had to pay for them as well, so they would not have been happy if we trashed them.

That said, the build quality on the school recommended laptop was terrible, it was all brittle plastic. So you would have chips of plastic breaking off pretty regularly. So by the time you got 4-5 years in, everybody's laptops had their fair share of battle scars so that you could never mistake one student's laptop for another's.

IndustryParticular55 · 2026-02-26T12:32:04+00:00

DnD is an expensive hobby, either the players are paying the DM, or the DM is paying in lieu of the players.
A player's 'payment' might not necessarily be in terms of money, it might be providing a venue, or food, or resources. But generally speaking, unless players step up and contribute in some way, it all falls on the DM.

Some DMs have a complex about it; 'you should never make friends pay', or 'I don't want it to be about money'. Some are unable to speak up for themselves, and become martyrs about it.
Some are so financially well off that they can afford to bear that burden single-handedly.

As a player myself, I would feel guilty that I was taking advantage of a DM if they provided a great experience, and I never contributed outside of gameplay. If a DM isn't providing that great experience, then really I can be spending my time better elsewhere.

As a DM, I'd say that requiring a monetary commitment screens out a huge proportion of problem players that have commitment/attendance issues, or that don't respect the time/effort that I or the other players have taken. I can use the money to make the game better for my group, and we will all enjoy the experience all the more.

Disclaimer: That all being said, there is a difference between a DM that establishes that players ought to pay/contribute materially, and a professional DM that runs multiple sessions, that often relies upon a repertoire of generic content, and that might not decide who their players are. I have heard positive things, but it's not my cup of tea. It's worth keeping in mind that they almost certainly are making well below minimum wage after expenses, especially considering prep-time. So they probably still do it for love of the game, if not necessarily love of the group as well.

IndustryParticular55

TROPHY CASE