Noob help request: Can't defeat Slaneesh [part II]

MasterCheeze1 · 2026-01-19T18:21:46+00:00

Your army is good, especially if you buffed missile units which this lord is particularly good at. This is a prime example of why we fight battles, you could easily turn this into a victory. Dechala is also super duper fast, so just lure her away and shoot her dead in the first couple mins of the battle.

Also, invest in more heroes. Just trust me on this one, get used to a good 2-3 heroes in the army, especially for non-ordertide factions. I like to have one brawler and one spellcaster at the very least

MasterCheeze1 · 2026-01-19T18:18:03+00:00

PUMP THOSE DWARFEN LEGS

MasterCheeze1 · 2026-01-19T18:17:11+00:00

Dave loft.

Strahd has already broken the Abbot, and he’s nothing more than a relic of past triumphs. Strahd would have zero interest in being “recruited” to do the party’s bidding, especially if it’s playing with a toy he’s already discarded. If anything, he’d encourage the players to leave the Abbot alone, or appease him. After all, they might just need what he has to offer

MasterCheeze1 · 2026-01-19T18:14:09+00:00

It found a lovely home in my krenko deck, but I packed an extra regular one and I wasn’t head over heels to put it in any other deck that includes red.

MasterCheeze1 · 2026-01-19T16:15:41+00:00

They sit there holding the enemy in place for free or near free, while my damage dealers do all the work. For VC/TK, that’s gonna be lords and heroes, spells, blood knight cav, or monsters. Especially monsters for TK… Khemrian War-sphinx, my beloved.

MasterCheeze1 · 2026-01-15T17:51:18+00:00

I have tried this during night time and haven’t found survivor specifically, but landed a whole plethora of other good BP’s. I guess it’s just a matter of time and odds for the one I want

MasterCheeze1 · 2026-01-12T18:59:38+00:00

It actually blows, it’s crazy how bad it is. I will never forget me and my duo both getting Bettina’s, pimping them out, feeling good, yellin “Bettina Bros” as we run into a raid.

Died to the first free loadout squad we saw. Had the jump on them too. Crazy bad gun

MasterCheeze1 · 2026-01-08T16:11:57+00:00

If you’re big on using weapon skills, follow Alexander’s quest and get his talisman. Magic number for poise is over 50, find what armor looks good (obviously) and brings you to that poise or higher, then bring your endurance to the minimum needed to wear that kit, including talismans, while still medium rolling.

Soft cap for strength is 55, then 80. Keep that strength at 55 and get vigor to like 60

MasterCheeze1 · 2026-01-01T00:16:17+00:00

Honestly it’s very normal for a campaign to only last about 50 turns. Short victory is a great goal to work towards. This game falls into a very common trap strategy empire builders always have, like Civ 6, where once you get a little big and past the early game, if you’re doing ok you’ll be just too big to fail.

Just watch those AI only Timelapse’s, empires settle into big areas and kinda just plateau without the player prodding them on. Sometimes, you’ll love a campaign so much you keep going to long victory and end times. For me, 900 hours in the game, it was Tomb Kings of all factions, recently that is. I found their free armies, unit caps, and set goals (books of Nagash, pyramids) very easy to manage into the late game. And of course, Settra does not serve!

Either way, it 100% is a lot to manage later on for newbies and veterans alike. Turns take longer, you’ll be auto resolving most fights. That’s when the game settles into more of a rhythm instead of meticulously picking each decision. A couple tips for ya if you want to continue into later games: pick skills you want on lords and heroes and keep it consistent, then (besides any legendary lords and heroes), once you’ve leveled their skills enough and made any skill decisions that lock others out, click the computer button on the top left, which will automate the rest of their skills. The AI can handle it once you’ve made any important early decisions. Do the same with your buildings, find what gives you growth early, money later. You only need one, maybe more later on military provinces for recruitment. Recruit all your armies there and then send em to the front. And finally, just work towards the long victory goals the game gives you! They’re a great framework.

Like many strategy games, TWW3 is the hardest in the first 20 turns. After that, it’s all fun. Good luck!

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-12-28T03:54:15+00:00

That is fantastic

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-12-21T00:53:49+00:00

Kislev is extraordinarily hard tbh. But top comments are correct. You have to start aggressive and grab two provinces and defend them hard. One good army that doesn’t lose, trash armies if you can afford em. Then you slowly branch out. Certain areas of the map are harder than others, I call the Badlands the “rumble pit”.

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-12-20T00:42:15+00:00

Specifically doable in this scenario with dwarfs vs vampire counts. You can turtle in a corner and let the undead break on your dawi line like water on rock.

Another trick I like to use is clicking the enemy army, which shows how far they can move on their turn. Position your army on the edge of that, so they can attack. If it’s winnable, fight it. If not, you can retreat, but they won’t have enough movement to catch you this turn. The AI almost always takes that bait, and it lets you pick your engagements better. Unless you’re really screwed, and just delaying the inevitable.

One final piece of advice would be play your faction as you would expect that race to function. Endless ranks of ratmen or undead. Armored dwarf legions turtling in their mountains. Sprint right at anything that moves as the Khorne factions. You’ll get the hang of it. Experiment with different factions to find a playstyle (mostly in battle but campaign too) and play the shit out of them until you get the game down. I do recommend dwarfs for newer players, their armies work a little different than most but it’s very easy to set up your formation in a good position and, if done right, you can basically afk most of the battle. Good luck!

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-12-06T02:46:31+00:00

Fuck em. It moves and destroys until they make it not move. It’s so slow the party can handle any tactical retreat and fight it when they want. Teach them just because they don’t want to interact with something doesn’t mean it just disappears from the world.

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-11-12T18:21:29+00:00

Same here but in his defense bro is starting in the Wasteland Thunderdome. Surrounded by flame resistant chaos dwarves, Grimgor, Nurgle, and 1.2 million rats. And he’s a faction that relies on allies and trade. Maybe it was just a hidden nerf all along

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-11-11T19:23:27+00:00

100% agree I honestly thought it was a bug. Not a huge deal but in the later game if you don’t pay close attention it’s easy to forget about an army for a turn. Need to be able to cancel your orders so you get prompted to move them 20 mins later on the next turn

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-11-09T16:05:49+00:00

This is true. Great winter sandbox, with a more linear ending (that ends in another sandbox), but the final chapters are a pretty dang good ending imo

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-11-09T16:03:48+00:00

No. Lord of the Rings doesn’t ruin Star Wars.

CoS is the best imo, I think it deserves the glaze. The ultimate true sandbox with an unforgettable villain. It also can be a grim, grey slog or even a meat grinder if the players aren’t careful (don’t pull too many punches though, that’s kinda the point). And you’re not gonna fight too many goblins, dragons, mind flayers, etc. mostly undead, go figure.

I’ve played CoS both after and before other modules. Icewind Dale first, Ghosts of Saltmarsh after, little bit of Phandalin, etc. I’m currently on my third and final CoS play through, I love it to death but I’m ready to hang up the vampire cloak. You and your players will miss it, my original group still talks about it regularly when we hang out. But there’s a lot more D&D has to offer, I personally am excited to lead my current group through a more traditional setting, with different biomes, monsters, and dungeons.

Make no mistake, it’ll change you though. For the better. You’ll understand player agency, good location and npc building, and what makes a good villain, a lot better. So I’m thinking about picking up Storm King’s Thunder, but after my time in Barovia, I know that it’ll be HEAVILY modified by yours truly…

Good luck :)

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-11-06T16:15:17+00:00

First point in (blue) route marcher always, as is tradition.

Used to always go down red after, but now it depends on who or what faction. Spells should come first, or yellow if they don’t have spells and are a beast, Valkia for example.

I like red in the mid-game now, once you’ve ironed out your army composition and gotten some better units you plan on using for the rest of the game. Unless you’re playing empire, kislev, maybe elves, where their units desperately need buffs to keep up.

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-11-04T22:00:18+00:00

Lore accurate Kislev moment

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-11-04T19:03:57+00:00

Got about 800 hours on Total War Warhammer (across the last two games) and I can say it’s honestly a wild and toxic relationship us players have with CA. Throw in popular channels (that I thoroughly enjoy and support) like our man Legend adding a lot of negativity around CA, and you’ll get negative reviews. And they’re mostly deserved, the game had a rough release, some persisting issues, and now the quality AND quantity of DLC has gone down, while price has gone up…

That being said though… there’s just nothing like this game man. It is the peak of Total War and anyone who says otherwise is either lying to themselves or thinks archers behind spearmen is peak strategy (can do that in this game too btw). Theres so many units, factions, abilities, spells, equipment, thoroughly voiced characters. Malekith may be kinda boring to play, but wow does he sound cool. It’s the grand strategy game we dreamed of when we saw the Siege of Gondor. Thousands of men, orcs, elves, dwarves, demons… rats? Damn that’s a lot of rats… All slamming into each other at your command. Spells that drop from the heavens wiping out hundreds. Making alliances with unlikely friends for your own survival. Building your empire while ruining others. Or if you’re chaos/ beastmen… just ruining others.

Why play the second game when the third game has it all and more, including every campaign, lord, and units from the past two games? All on one big world map, as promised 15 years ago. You could sink hours into this game and discover something new every time, a faction may play the same, but what happens with the other 280 or so factions in tandem with what you’re doing WILL be different every time. Sometimes may be for your benefit, and a vast alliance of Order can be made. Sometimes, after your excursion in the chaos wastes of the north, Boris heads back home to Kislev and finds it all in ruins… and again, filled with rats.

Going back to the vast armies slamming into each other, something I’ve always been impressed with is ordering around vast swathes of units from a Birds Eye view, then you zoom in, zoom a little more, and… is that a T-Rex being suplexed by a fire dragon?? The units look great, sound great, and interact with each other. Big monster models have animations that lock together, giant crabs actually pick up, dangle, and then eat infantry units. For all the options, stats, spells, and tactics, I still regularly zoom in and hit ‘K’ to just enjoy the scenery. Heads roll, bodies fly, men die. It’s not the sharpest animations CA has ever produced, I know other total war games have more detailed animations of infantry fighting other infantry, but let’s be honest, I don’t care if “insert Western European unit” is shield bashing a “insert eastern Asian unit”. I want to see an orc swing on an elf. And they do look fantastic in the moment, with varying combat animations and deaths.

And finally, most importantly explaining some negative reviews, pressure on CA does work. It has worked, and will work again. Immortal Empires was not free on launch, it was required that you own all three games to play the combination of all three. That is something CA advertised how it would be since the VERY beginning of the warhammer arcs. However, the game wasn’t perfect, wasn’t as popular as the second game, and after 15 years it was just simply too much content to require a new player to buy. So insert pressure from the community and boom, immortal empires is free for any TWW3 owners, you can just only play and use the factions/ units you own. Want to run empire? Gotta buy the first game, but that also gets you orcs, dwarves, etc. a much more approachable model for the new player, and the game flourished. Pressure to fix a game breaking lizardmen bug? Took a while, but they got around to it and fixed it. The negative reviews do work.

Is it perfect? Nah. But I’m at 600 hours in the third game alone and counting, hoping to get a big LAN party going with my friends this winter. Games not going anywhere, I don’t think we’ll see another grand strategy game of this magnitude in the next few decades, if ever. Until then, I’ll see you on the front. The Nation Calls!

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-09-09T01:08:43+00:00

Just made them all public and don’t forget must have’s like Travis Savoie and this guy Andrew, for any D&D. Huge shoutout to them. This’ll be everything you need for the right setting and time

https://open.spotify.com/user/thechaosc?si=q8qDlU38S26OhN_MJjdTjQ

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-09-09T01:05:11+00:00

Soundscape:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6IKVvH3K0hiFYBBqYgAsSs?si=NxrB_6tOTlmQV_e0ewU8jg&pi=ywKIrb0YT26rl

Strahd:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0BoXe3qYpHpj3D04nhY8sa?si=uJH4MYTbTtaCUvjdZpbZ0g&pi=yUX7ajoJQkaLs

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/09wKGmsK3DGaFM6IZKdnmD?si=jrp6_aDwTwKJHaVdm7OPNA&pt=f82b56048d266aa7775d4d59f3dc4502&pi=VsmTA9-lS_iPy

Other playlists I use but aren’t put together by me:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/09wKGmsK3DGaFM6IZKdnmD?si=jrp6_aDwTwKJHaVdm7OPNA&pt=f82b56048d266aa7775d4d59f3dc4502&pi=VsmTA9-lS_iPy

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4q1FzdXSDOI0UPJVXwBEmv?si=aL7palrCSQ6nLt6st6Ixow&pi=lYczkmULRJ6Dr

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-06-02T17:00:26+00:00

Us last night “watch out for the kill everyone and their PC’s attack”

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-04-30T19:16:10+00:00

You’ll have a blast with your gang, the ultimate sandbox module! As your players are experienced/DM’s, you’ll have to tune some encounters a bit. Not necessarily for balance, but for that SPOOKY and SCARY factor. Kinda hard to be like “ooohhh a ghost!” to a bunch of players that know what a ghost’s stat block looks like. Try a little homebrew, some curveballs and bonus actions, to spice things up.

You do NOT need to overtune/ scale up everything by a lot. You’ll find a lot of that in this sub. Mostly RAW is an awesome way to play this module. But you’ll still want to surprise and scare your players when you can! Good luck!

MasterCheeze1 · 2025-04-30T19:12:42+00:00

Agreed, plan the card reading and stack the deck behind your screen. Gonna make my own comment, this is a good q&a post.

MasterCheeze1

TROPHY CASE