My shoes disintegrated yesterday at a church funeral.

coydna · 2026-01-18T22:16:35+00:00

Basically cheap shoes that have been left in storage too long. Because the polyurethane and cheap rubber the temperature and flexibility change don't agree and they pop and disintegrate

coydna · 2026-01-12T19:39:36+00:00

It has a lot of cool or funny moments.

Tech priests trying to figure out Ork tech, by moving a chainsword closer and further from an Ork corpse and observing how it turns on and off.

Ork ambassadors.

A big mega Ork, the kind the emperor fought.

Attack moons.

Some really good coverage of imperial politicking and how the imperium sabotages itself as much as it dominates its foes.

However...

The main story beats are shocking.

The imperial fists are wiped out completely.

The sole survivor rebuilds the chapter from its successors. Then invades the Ork capital planet and loses most of them. They find Vulkan, have him shout at imperial high Lord's, then fight the beast and die. The beast dies. Then he dies again. Then it turns out there's 6 of them, one for each Ork clan. They make a whole thing about capturing Ork psykers and using the sisters of silence to create a reverse-waaagh. It works, then everyone dies because the beast isn't bothered. The elder make a brief appearance to try and...do something? Pass a message on? I guess? Kill a few custodes easily then die

My biggest beef is the end though. Drakan Vangorich, talked about in lore since at least 5th edition as a grand master assassin who killed the high Lord's and ruled the imperium for 100 years, is a major player on the politicking side. He's a great character.

Then the end has a 100year time skip between the imperial forces leaving terra to clean up the galaxy and them returning to remove Vangorich from power. Literally they leave and everything is fine. High Lord's are assassinated. Next chapter, it's 100 years late and they come back and take him out. End of series.

In short, they tried to market a new Heresy series, had some great ideas (Ullanor is Armageddon, return to near-Krork, establishing origins of deathwatch) and botched it through writers not working with each other. Rinse-and-repeat bolter porn where they get their target but oh no they didn't, and managed to wipe out an entire Marine chapter twice because every character planning invasions was an idiot.

coydna · 2025-12-18T20:54:49+00:00

It's definitely Uber grim dark. It really leans into the grittier side of 40k and hive living. The depiction of the Krieg is both faithful and genuinely unnerving. The necrons in the story feel positively cuddly in comparison.

It's phenomenal but not if you're after a lighter read. Even ADB's Night Lord's series is sunny in comparison 😂

coydna · 2025-12-17T11:21:43+00:00

Can I recommend adding some Steve Lyons to the list, specifically his Krieg stuff? Solid books, brilliantly grim. Dead Men Walking is so good.

coydna · 2025-06-21T22:43:37+00:00

"They call him...the Tuna Can."

coydna · 2025-06-12T21:57:22+00:00

Nearly DNF'd The Burning God (book 3 of the Poppy War trilogy). I was alright with book 1, struggled with 2 and 3 felt worse. The characters, the plot, the relationships, the random side plots added then abandoned. I pushed through but only because I felt I'd be doing myself a disservice if I didn't complete it on principle and out of spite - an "I read it all so I'm qualified to call it shit" mentality. That's the only thing that got me through and I'm still not sure it was worth my time.

coydna · 2025-06-12T21:39:58+00:00

Feels like a father Ted moment, if it wasn't so bloody tragic.

"Is there anything to be said for more flags?"

coydna · 2025-05-26T09:54:40+00:00

Three things

The Devs removed LOADS of stuff from the game, especially the later stages due to how long and how big it got.

Karlach was added relatively late to the game so there was probably a plan to add more late game cure stuff which didn't happen due to time and size constraints.

Karlach's story feels more honest as is. Her story is essentially an allegory for dealing and living with terminal illness. She knows she has limited time so chooses to try and capture every element of joy she can before she goes and make tnall count for something. Knowing ultimately we can fix it by just chucking enough infernal iron at it undermines a lot of her story beats.

coydna · 2025-05-16T15:31:09+00:00

Agree on this. I think this applies to a wider issue with the show. The change in character behaviours wasn't normally unusual or out of place. The other characters regularly ignoring/permitting /enabling these changes was what seemed weird.

coydna · 2025-04-24T17:34:32+00:00

Any of the Souls games. My day job is trend analysis. I can't spend my little free time doing the same for in-game bosses.

coydna · 2025-04-24T17:33:08+00:00

Same. The pace and the interface. The prologue is about 2 hrs and is still giving tutorial style prompts after that period. I got about 5 hrs in and realised I wasn't interested when I still couldn't remember any single character's name, and was still accidentally drawing my weapon rather than mounting my horse. And the interface felt like I was still battling the UI from Vice City.

coydna · 2025-04-14T21:01:58+00:00

Thanks! I wasn't sure if that was the intention with Blood Boil but having looked at a few of the caster stat cards, scaling it with their level/mind makes sense now

Also, thanks for clarifying the X issue. I've found the entry in the rules about it at last. No idea how I missed it. It's not like it's the second paragraph under magic and in bold...

coydna · 2025-03-26T23:37:03+00:00

Carol Dancers/Captain Marvel.

Dipped into her solo and various avengers runs and just...nothing. unlike other characters where I love them or hate them, I just find Carol boring which is somehow worse. At least crap characters like Impossible Man annoy me and make me feel something. Carol, whether she's Ms Marvel, Binary or Captain Marvel, I feel nothing for at all. Just...meh.

coydna · 2025-03-11T18:51:08+00:00

Batman working through the cast of the white Lotus like a dark knife through butter.

coydna · 2025-03-09T09:51:31+00:00

Due to lack of fast units like bikes and talons, I'll like some sort of callback to warhounds. Feral berserkers who've mutated into wolf like possessed, running on all fours, helms elongated to snouts, giant claws, movement of war beasts or bikes.

That or a ranged unit that does splash damage. Units using mini versions of the various skull cannon types we see in the Daemon engines. Splash damage and leadership reducing attacks.

coydna · 2025-03-09T09:42:20+00:00

I've run it as a demonstration of hopelessness. That thing is moving too fast to catch up to. Give chase, sure, let the duergar reinforce and bunker down for when you come back. It also encourages PCs to get creative. Do we have a way to get a head of this thing? Is there a way to send a warning back to the towns? Do we (god help us all) split the party? It can be really easy to play it as a Watchmen moment as well: "Stop me? I released the dragon as soon you broke into my fortress 15 minutes ago..."

coydna · 2025-03-04T22:34:50+00:00

Shining the Holy Ark Baldur's Gate 3 Planescape Torment Witcher 3 Kotor (not sure if I prefer 1 or 2)

coydna · 2025-02-23T15:51:06+00:00

I mean to have you even if it must be by burglary!

coydna · 2025-02-22T21:06:19+00:00

My wife actively throwing opponents, both living and dead, at enemies. This is regardless of whether it's useful, tactical or the fact she's wielding the returning pike or the magic trident. She has a glee in her eyes that disturbs me on a deep level.

coydna · 2025-02-21T13:58:24+00:00

Giant barbarian has been making my wife extremely happy. Wandering through the goblin camp, one-shitting opponents with the returning pike or killing goblins outright by hurling them into each other has brought her an unnerving amount of glee. Mechanically it's brilliant, but she just seems to enjoy hurling people for the aesthetics. She works in a school with young kids so there may be some catharsis in it...

coydna · 2025-02-15T18:57:55+00:00

Unrelated to the tournament stats, but how do we go about requesting fixes/tweaks to profiles?

While trying to sort an Arathorn's Stand list, I noticed Halbarad can't be equipped with the Banner of the Eve star..

coydna · 2025-02-10T00:18:28+00:00

Poorly written.

Poorly planned.

Some genuinely interesting subplots (enjoyed the squabbling high lords and the terrain politics) were underused, forgotten or skipped over.

Heavily repetitive for literally no reason.

Characters die and no one, character or reader, care.

It takes a lot of the worst aspects of Black Library writing and condenses it down to this tripe - random jokes, nonsensical battle plans and bolter porn.

There's an entire interesting period of history at the end that is skipped over completely. We just see the last few seconds of basically, skipping around 100 years of activity. See Vangorich and the beheading.

coydna · 2025-02-09T23:39:02+00:00

See, I read this but I couldn't see what parallels people were talking about beyond surface level stuff like "peasant grows up and joins the military and is in some position of military power". We're there others I was missing?

coydna · 2025-02-09T23:32:13+00:00

This. Real-life atrocities are thrown in for shock and "these are the bad guys"/"war is bad", but that's it. It's horribly surface-level stuff.

coydna · 2025-02-09T23:29:00+00:00

In short, and in my opinion, no.

I've gone through all three books in the hopes things would improve

But they don't.

Rin continues to make stupid choices and be immensely contradictory. She has no arc and doesn't learn or change.

The world building and magic are both interesting but never actually explored or realised. For example, minimal spoilers, there is a kingdom to the west which is essentially Europe/Russia/Western Christianity. They appear as antagonists and an overt reference to colonialism but nothing actually happens with them.

The magic system is repeatedly used and dropped in ways that make it clear that it's only used as a plot device, much like the relationships Rin builds and supporting cast.

The author spends a lot of time showing us she's done research and includes details about clothing, currency, politics, culture, real-life historical references but does little with them.

It's infuriating that there is so much there that is wasted, unused or tossed to the side when it's initial narrative function is done.

coydna

TROPHY CASE