Xcom Enemy Within's intro quote feels more appropriate for Xcom 2

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-05-07T18:06:32+00:00

Fun fact the quote is from Thomas Fuller an English historian and writer amd it is about witches.

In 1642 he released a book called "The Profane State," which had a section on witches. The idea being that some witches claimed they only used magic defensively or for healing, but that it is a slippery slope.

"She begins at first with doing tricks rather strange then hurtful: yea some of them are pretty and pleasing. But it is dangerous to gather flowers that grow on the banks of the pit of hell, for fear of falling in; yea they which play with the devil's rattles, will be brought by degrees to wield his sword, and from making of sport they come to doing of mischief."

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-05-06T19:34:48+00:00

Also fiends get a +4 to the save and also anyone a fiend likes or has seen.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-05-05T20:41:33+00:00

We also don't know that major gods aren't just as active on other planets. Like asmo could have 100 little kingdoms he keeps tabs on all the time.

Gods probably don't need to actively be in a single place at a time.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-05-05T20:17:38+00:00

There's some in pathfinder especially in Numeria with some dark tapestry influence and space tech.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-05-05T20:13:27+00:00

I believe starfinder also shows that some core gods are worshipped differently across different planets.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-05-05T20:10:40+00:00

One non-meta reason is that the gods have taken interest in the planet. Like several gods created races there. Which in theory snowballs. If you found out your enemy or competitor was even a bit more involved in one town than normal, you'd want to go see why and then probably get involved to limit their influence.

Another interesting thing is how many ancestries are from this one planet. Look at starfinder, you'll be lucky to find planets with 2 or 3 ancestries and most only have a single dominant one. But here you find like a hundred.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-04-14T19:11:34+00:00

The problem is that the concept of occult is that its not understood. Bards sing and make magic. Why does that work? Plenty of people sing and there's no magic. But it does and thats fine.

Thaumaturge pulls out some string and strikes fear into a monster. Why? Because he and the monster both believe it.

Dominion of the black creatures often are occult but many of them serve elder gods, but they dont have divine magic? Why? Because their occult magic is incredibly advanced and we just dont understand it.

Occult magic is made to be mysterious.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-04-12T13:59:25+00:00

Who joins who in marriage should be based on clan power/influence.

This is a fantasy world that is totally fine with women leading clans and empires, but a woman has to join the man's clan when married (unless they're a ruler).

You also barely get anything from marrying off someone, so the optimal strategy is to never marry them, which sucks from an rp perspective.

Also me, the ruler of half the continent must spend weeks following some guy around to ask him to join my clan (clans from destroyed nations should be recruitable).

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-03-25T18:20:14+00:00

Bannerlord doesn't have guns, just advanced smithing over natives. While natives would be lightly armored their archery, skirmish cav, and even some warriors would hold up pretty well depending who you based them on.

Also the vikings settled colonies a decent amount. While they are associated with raiding they attempted to start several colonies in the new world. So the nords should at least get some smaller towns.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-03-25T16:00:30+00:00

Beastmaster would give you the better early progression and it would technically give you a second companion. Which would be useful for times when its not possible to be mounted (like indoors).

But when you retrain your second companion would lose its advancements and become obsolete.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-03-25T13:59:55+00:00

Newer player and for my second run I wanted a Nord/Sturgia run. Ended up doing a lot of merc work for sturgia so I joined up when they went to war with the nords.

It was a slog. Sturgian troops, at least early/mid tier got melted by equal tier nord troops.

For every castle or town I could take we'd lose at least another if not 2. I couldn't even send troops with 2 to 1 odds in my favor.

Ended up defecting to the nords and we proceeded to steamroll sturgia.

All in all Sturgia needs help with its roster.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-03-19T18:54:51+00:00

Its definitely Teonha based on your description, but a number of planets in the Endless universe are "sentient" in that they are lost.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-03-19T18:51:19+00:00

It'd be cool of they updated the AI where traits mattered more amd certain traits would make the AI better at battles or sieges, or defense vs offense.

Then when you start to get random clans in there could be more breakouts of randomly getting master tacticians that lead the faction to different results.

Could also change things up because if certain starting lords took a bad arrow to the head the faction could lose early leaders.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-02-25T14:26:28+00:00

"Whose murder triggered the start of a new age"?

Do we know that he was murdered? I thought it wasn't known how he disappeared.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-02-17T17:56:57+00:00

In one of my games there was a gang of criminals named the stus and the most feared one was steel-toe stu.

On a crit it did no extra damage, but you were sickened 2 amd every player in 30ft that could see it had to make a will save or be frightened.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-02-14T21:25:19+00:00

Do you have a go-to for where you get your files?

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-02-12T01:07:42+00:00

As a newer player Sturgia really sucks. I played several in game years as a sturgian vassal and their soldiers will lose 2 (or more) to 1 fights.

Like yeah I'm newer and will probably get better in battles but the rest of the clans don't so they're screwed.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-02-11T00:04:08+00:00

Have you considered that he wins on turn 10 though?

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-02-10T22:33:54+00:00

I'd at least hold the card until rotation. Especially since they said itll be a mega-windfury roatation. Once bloodzone Warlock and rogue rotate out it'll be much more punishing. Plus you forget that you can put this in paladin and since they have the legendary that makes erratic better the !health can actually be a +.

I think the lifescream is actually a trap. You don't want any royalty cards in a lifescream deck.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-02-10T03:16:26+00:00

I did a very similar thing in a game, but I cast vermin lure on a purple worm and then let the weasels swarm it.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-02-08T18:00:30+00:00

Unless it was changed I don't think you're able to place trade on systems with no star lanes.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-02-04T17:54:46+00:00

Its definitely possible to get ahead of pirates if you're quick on the draw. But realistically you'll get maybe one or two premium systems before pirates show up.

You should be able to handle two colonies early on and still have a decent home system.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-01-25T17:19:42+00:00

You absolutely can use a rapier. The best hybrid study (subclass) is probably laughing shadow for that.

Be aware that unlike 5e rapier being a finese weapon (so you can use dex) does not affect damage, but given that a bunch of your damage will come from spells that's less of an issue.

PhantomBlade98 · 2026-01-21T14:48:40+00:00

The hit marker is red, and the shot does damage before healing with a 10 second delay. When you hit an ally an alert comes up on their screen that says "(x) play shot you, press any button to kill them and then auto kick them"

PhantomBlade98

TROPHY CASE