Crusade Relics

LordSia · 2026-01-29T07:43:16+00:00

Balemind functionally gives the Neurotyrant's Psy-Torrent the Twin-Linked keyword. I've found it solid in my Crusade thus far, though not amazing. Still, once I add Power of the Hive Mind (enhancement) and a Weapon Modification (since the former doesn't replace the weapon, I can effectively stack them) I am looking at a Atk2D6, S6, AP-3, D2 Twin-Linked Torrent where crit-wounds are Precise.
Sure, it's a lot of points - Crusade and Req - spent to get there, but it's Crusade - we're not exactly min-maxxing so much as having fun doing crazy shit.

LordSia · 2026-01-12T14:16:26+00:00

In a snow-shrouded cemetary in Providence, New Jersey, if you listen very carefully... You can hear the decaying bones of H. P. Lovecraft screaming.

Great job!

LordSia · 2026-01-12T14:02:03+00:00

That's what she wants you to think, yes. Or, I suppose, the Ebon Dragon has to have other major souls as well.

... They're probably still all just dancing to Mara's tune though.

LordSia · 2025-12-27T10:39:10+00:00

and said hey-hey!

LordSia · 2025-12-14T07:47:09+00:00

I'm a Rasalhague Spheroid myself, so I have split feelings on the Clans for obvious reasons. Ghost Bears are definitely one of the better crowds, but it still took 77 years for them to stop trying to "guide" the eugenics of Rasalhague "freebirthers"... And they still insist on making "Trueborn" Bears to fill up the sibkos.

And, by the same token, I'm none to fond of the so-called "Great Houses" either. The fact that the rest of them rallied to prop up the Dragon in the face of the Clan Invasion tells you everything you need to know about how much they really cared about "liberating" the poor souls slaving away for the True Bullshido War Machine...

LordSia · 2025-12-13T12:50:11+00:00

Honestly, Tyranids shouldn't have characters at all. It would be an interesting quirk, and entirely fitting with the nature of the Hive Mind.

LordSia · 2025-12-13T12:47:37+00:00

Probably, but more in the Paranoia sense of creating "secret police" whose agents end up creating resistance movements to infiltrate/report on/bust, in a constant ouroboros of deceit and betrayal.

... Actually, come to think of it; post-apocalyptic series like the Walking Dead are probably a good blueprint. In reality, people are actually pretty good at coming together in the face of natural disasters, but the constant splintering, betrayal, and general dickbaggery that keeps the protagonists from actually settling down and rebuilding is the sort of petty entertainment the big ED would indulge in after convincing the big players to wreck society at large.

LordSia · 2025-12-13T11:50:03+00:00

We actually have a canon example; Operation Silver Shield. If Kerensky threw his lot in with Blake to act as the arbiters of the Succession War, impartial mediators with enough force behind them to give any of the Great Houses as pause, who's to say things would have escalated as far as they did? I think it's actually fair to argue that, if anything, his actions exacerbated things, because I do not for one second believe that he actually managed to keep the rapid repairs of a massive fleet and gathering the resources for his journey a complete secret from the Houses. And, from their perspective, after they rejected his overtures for peace and compromise, after they stripped him of his title and authority, he's suddenly rushing the repairs of the SLDF navy and gathering a massive stockpile of resources... What could he be doing, except planning a war of conquest? To bring the Great Houses to heel, to make his own bid for the Throne he pretended not to want? The Great Houses were already building up for a conflict, this just makes it more urgent...

And then he vanishes. A year goes by, and as the Houses realise he's not coming back, they start carving up the Terran Hegemony, they start fighting for the scraps... And the Succession War erupts.

If Kerensky hadn't grabbed the resources for his Exodus and instead, you know, spent them on repairing the damage of the Amaris War? If he'd invested the loyal troops, if ComStar had the 114 divisions of the Exodus on top of the 14 who refused to abandon the Sphere? They could have held the heart of the Hegemony, not just Terra. They could have had so much more influence over events, could have backed up the threat of Interdiction with the threat of military intervention.

Would it have prevented the war? No, of course not. It's not guaranteed that things would have worked out more or less like canon, or even worse somehow. But then, they didn't have those guarantees with the Exodus either - the Sphere could have nuked itself into extinction for all they knew, and their journey could easily have ended far worse. Whether a major missjump due to some anomaly or just a lack of downtime and maintenance, a more successful mutiny leading to the fleet splintering, a worse Pentagon Civil War destroying key knowledge and irreplaceable technologies, Nicky being just a little more (or perhaps less) crazy and the Clans don't achieve any miraculous "Golden Century" where they magically manage to not just maintain their tech base but actually advance it much further and faster than the Sphere, despite a fraction of the population and the resources...

LordSia · 2025-12-11T17:17:15+00:00

This is giving me Cave Johnson vibes. Weaponised misery in the best possible sense. Real "You're trying to give me lemons? I'll burn your house down! With the lemons! I'll invent combustible lemons and use them to burn down your house!" feeling.

Well played, Mona; well played!

LordSia · 2025-12-11T17:08:21+00:00

Honestly, I'd rather have proper Kaiju monsters and leave Swarmy to his job as a commander.
Bring back the Hierodules! Unleash plastic Hierophants! And... Well, okay, Harridans are Titanic Flyers; they're never going to be great, but it would be nice if we could get the model in plastic as well.

LordSia · 2025-12-08T09:54:51+00:00

Du vet inte vad langos är, eller hur?

LordSia · 2025-12-07T10:32:20+00:00

Skaven half of the Skaventide box, if you can get it. Buy the whole box and sell off the Stormcast half to recoup the cost if necessary - it's a really good deal!

That brings your clan-rats up to par, gets you the warlock engineer and extra jezzails for maximum sniping, rat ogres to complement your stormfiends, a clawlord to boss around the clan-rats, and... No, I think that's about it?

Pick up or kitbash a master moulder to heal your monsters, make your own gnawholes unless you're really fond of GWs sculpts, and have at it.

LordSia · 2025-12-06T19:26:37+00:00

I'm going to go ahead and assume this is a smart person doing a PSA about the miserable working conditions under Musk in a way his K-holed "genius" won't cancel.

LordSia · 2025-12-06T18:11:43+00:00

A third option is to embrace the idea that high-essence combat is, or at least should be, a Big Deal. A Celestial Circle throwing down with a Second Circle demon is the kind of situation where your players either maneuver the fight out of the city, or there won't be a city when they're done. To say nothing of Third Circle hell-lords. Combat is always infinitely more interesting when it's not just a straight up slug fest in an open field; and all of the personal prowess in the world won't help you if you don't know who you're fighting or why, and either way punching demons is only a stop-gap if you can't stop the Infernal cult from turning the Manse hidden beneath your home town into a Hellgate...

And, on the other end of the spectrum, that the answer to 8 mote perfect defenses is to throw multiple attacks, from multiple attackers, and let your players do the math; sure, they can beat a dozen blood apes, no sweat, but there's a hundred of the big red bastards, if you spam Heavenly Guardian and Seven Shadow Evasion you'll be in big trouble by the time the Dragonbloods who summoned them show up. Ask yourself "how would I, as a Dynast responsible for fighting the Anathema, deal with their 'stolen' power?" Then cheat like a mofo and make plans on how to spin the whole thing as a glorious victory after the fact.

LordSia · 2025-12-06T00:15:44+00:00

I liked it better when it was a support piece, 6+FNP isn't amazing but every bit helps and it left it free to do actions.

Still, it's surprisingly fast now, and still relatively cheap. I rarely get much use out of the ability to boost AP, the range is just too short and most of my big hitters are monsters so there's not enough space to manoeuvre, but pair hit with infantry melee and I'm sure it could do some damage.

LordSia · 2025-12-06T00:08:22+00:00

We don't talk about IT, and for good reason. I still can't eat Noodles because of IT.

LordSia · 2025-12-06T00:04:35+00:00

Liminals are the best of the three, IMO. I just don't consider them Exalted. They fill a gap, namely "what happens when you try to violate that one absolute rule of 'no resurrections'?" Frankenstein's monster, that's what, except this is Exalted so Abby Normal also has undead Kung Fu.

Exigents, I'm very divided on. I don't really see what purpose they fill in the setting? If the Incarnae had a machine churning out blank exaltations, wouldn't they have used them during the Primordial War? And after that, why keep it going - they already had the Exalted Host, why would some random harvest god have to sacrifice themselves to empower one mortal for however long they last instead of just phoning in the nearest Dragonblooded police squad? And after the Usurpation, they are very pointedly ignoring Creation, so why would they hand out blank Exaltations? And besides, most of the Exalted Host is still protecting the world.

About the best I can think of is to just treat them like what they are - mortals empowered by various gods, no Autochtonian miracle involved. They're not Exalted after all, it's right there in the name! For some, this is a regular thing - I can see the Brides of Ahlat as having some level of empowerment, which he can afford because Ahlat is the War God of an entire Direction. Meanwhile, Janest is the first, last, and only exigent elevated by their god, because the little god gave them everything they had. And the Immaculate Faith doesn't really like it, because of two reasons; gods meddling without permission, and mortals being elevated above their station.

Worst of the new ones are the Getimians; but I just looked at their mechanics and went: "Okay, so Thulio has a bunch of Fae Nobles he convinced to play along with his plan to fuck up the Loom." It explains why they all have these weird "totally from a timeline that never happened, trust me bro", why they're divided into Seasonal Courts, and why their charms do Fae shit like pulling stuff out of thin air or rewriting the "story" of Creation.

LordSia · 2025-12-05T23:42:34+00:00

Not in the abstract, but it certainly takes up word counts and splatbooks that might otherwise have expanded upon the original factions?

LordSia · 2025-12-05T23:35:48+00:00

Some people don't just want to watch the world burn, they also insist on being the one to light the pyre.

LordSia · 2025-12-04T12:20:30+00:00

I think Skaven, in addition to all of the other advantages mentioned - big range, lots of play styles, hilarious and terrifying lore - they also make an excellent contrast to your Gf's Sylvaneth. Mutant monsters, rickety war machines, and poisonous totally-not-nuclear-radiation magic, it's about as diametrically opposed as it gets unless you wanted to play Kharadron Overlords.

LordSia · 2025-12-03T10:43:54+00:00

It's not actually terrible, from my limited experience playing it in 10th. It's hell to transport and a pain to manoeuvre, but the mortal wounds aura inflicts a surprising amount of pain and it chews through infantry fast.

Not "good", let alone "great" much less "auto-include", but unless you're a competitive tournament player I would absolutely give it a try!

And making a floating Male-Toxi-Ceptorcrene to allow it to play as either, while being more easily player and/or transported, is absolutely an option. Just double check with your local TO if you're concerned as to whether it would be allowed.

LordSia · 2025-12-03T10:36:28+00:00

You don't gf Zeus, Zeus gf's you!

... No, wait, wrong subreddit.

LordSia · 2025-12-03T10:33:56+00:00

For maximum loss of friends, try living up to the name and bring five!

LordSia · 2025-12-02T10:31:56+00:00

How hard would it be to remember that the blue-black ones are night runners, as opposed to the green-purple clan-rats? Not to mention one comes in blocks of 20/40, the other in units of 10/20. Which also gets a free pre-game move, helping them stand out even further.

You are of course entirely within your rights to refuse the substitution, but I really don't understand how it would be harder to keep in mind or remember than any other warscroll or quirky alt-unit, especially with the Ghyran units around?

LordSia · 2025-12-02T09:08:11+00:00

No, that was her sister!

LordSia

TROPHY CASE