The Winged Shadow

All good Jeor, hope you and the fam recover swiftly! Same to your grandma Pax, sounds like a rough time.

Meet up at Mountain Goat Newtown around 5pm-ish (pretty close from Newtown Station) Head off to dins around 6.30pm to Konak Turkish Restaurant (a short walk from Mountain Goat) edit: bolded

Update on the meetup for tomorrow: Meet up at Mountain Goat Newtown around 4pm-ish (pretty close from Newtown Station) Head off to dins around 6.30pm to Konak Turkish Restaurant (a short walk from Mountain Goat)

He is still a dog for doing Marnus like that though

Hey Sydney peeps, we are having a meetup on the 30th of December if anyone is interested (hint @Jeor @ithanos ). Not sure if we got any new sydney peeps on the board these days, but everyone's welcome (even other states, or countries!). Plan is to have some arvo drinks + dinner somewhere around Newtown (venues tbc). PM or post here if you are keen. Currently got Brook, Karaddin, Horza, Screaming Turkey and myself, and a couple of tentative. I haven't been here in ages, when did we merge with the kiwis, feels so dirty

Was hoping for a India Pakistan final. But Pakistan always seems to collapse against India so probably for the best. Really hope England doesn't win. Would be a disaster!

Who is even available at the same level? Poch maybe?

Glazers are just trolling United fans at this stage

Man, that really hurt. Best week to worst week in 2 games. Trying to console myself by focusing on the positives of the season, but its just too soon. So now I'm just resigned to being salty for a week (maybe two).....

I was worried ScoMo was gonna make it after he tackled that kid..... I can't wait to hear about the budget emergency from the Libs again......

That explains why my starter chariot experience wasn't great. I thought it was because it wasn't the tier 5 chariot, or i'm not microing it properly. I do love my single entity spams. Initially i was going for a couple of cultist for the summons, just to allow for some overloads in a 20v20 scenario, but they were just so tanky on foot! I didn't build the marauder building that gives the tier 2 whip marauders and the tier 1 marauders were melting so quick in battles that i had to update to tankier frontline. Demonettes are okay, but not for frontal charge. I was going to transition to exalted demonettes, but I couldn't resist trying out the cultist spam. I am not too fussed about the unit roster as I know it will improve as dlcs and patches get released, same as WH2. I think there is enough unit variety that you can still make interesting armies. For Slaneesh I could've gone for a Cav focused army, Chariot focused army, Melee focused (small and monstrous mix or just one type). The range/arty options are limited, but that can get added later, or perhaps never due to the faction theme. There will no doubt be more heroes and lord types added. Slaneesh could really use some replenishment heroes. Or at least use devotees to improve replenishment. It's pretty bad otherwise. Not sure how many more units they can add for each chaos god specific factions since they are so heavily flavoured. They all have a decent roster for their faction flavour.

I don't think people had issue with the negative trait amount as much as the horrible gameplay of waiting for unknown number of turns at the province capital to remove it (or invest in a garbage building to increase the chance of removal). But I am glad they addressed both. Super happy about the rift spawning building as well! Only issue at the moment is the interception mechanic. I hope they do the teleport/mission system like in Vortex to avoid the need to camp at the Forge. In other news, my Slaneesh campaign has come to an end I think. I've won the souls race. Ended up going in with Nkari + Shadow sorceress + 12 cultist on foot + 4 soul grinders (badly needed some anti large in army). This time I camped out at the second holding point rather that the last area, which helped with filtering enemies through slowly and muuuuuuch better tower coverage. The last holding point has some of the stupidest tower positions ever (designed to infuriate!). I also ended up vassalling the ogres (traded them a tier 4 region......) and one empire faction (via domination) but both ended up causing more issues. My demon allies ended their defensive alliance because they didn't like the ogres and empire, people declared war on my vassal and i got dragged into it etc. Don't think it is worth the hassle unless for a themed run or something. Overall, Slaneesh has some interesting mechanics and i enjoyed it a lot more once i got my head around the campaign mechanics. The army roster didn't suit me very well as i am terrible at micro so i didn't get to utilise the chariots/cavs as much. Next time I might try a more defensive setup, like an overlapping defensive line of demonettes/monstrous infantry and then just focus on cycle charging with chariots. I feel bad about not utilising chariots more as they were quite good, they had a lot of mass and just sliced through the lines really well. Now to figure out who to play next......

I expect they will do what they did previously and play a more attacking midfielder like Ox (or let hendo off the leash a little more). Attacks might just go down the left a lot more and let Robbo pick up the slack. Alternatively, might see Thiago on the right side so we still have that penetrating pass from the right hand side. I think it will be okay, but hope the absence isn't long.

I am building tall this run and it feels more like an end turn simulator than when i built wide with Kislev. With big empires it takes forever to manage all the little things, turns take forever to complete. Now, I don't have anything to do between portals since i peaced out with everyone and I have to go out of my way to find enemies or find something else to do. And if i start wars, then portals just become a massive chore as you gotta go in with your main army. I like that for the narrative campaign turtling up is an option. But the turn limit for portal is awful. Doesn't matter what you do, you need to wait for at least 4 portal openings, so that is like 120 turns or something? You just can't finish earlier if you chose to. And camping at forge of souls to deny others the victory was super boring on my Kislev run, since they didn't always come when you want them to so you end up staying there for 15 turns (and sometimes they no show, so you waste 15 turns....). I think I went a bit too extreme with my one province this run. Ideally I should've gotten one or two more. But it did force me to an interesting play style and force some interesting mechanic (like the rebellion farm/negative public order economy). Next play through will be a 2-3 province play I think. While I enjoy expanding my empire, the portal closing is god awful and I never want to do that again in a narrative campaign. edit: To be honest, I don't even see the late game as a problem. I mean, what do you expect? You max out on army and economy, so you SHOULD be OP. Otherwise you don't get a sense of progression, early game = mid game = late game. I don't see how you can make late game interesting. Even when your enemy AI is massive (Order tide or Dark elves for me usually) and taking them out is a challenge when they have strong end game army, it becomes a chore because it feels like you fight the same battle over and over and its not interesting anymore. Usually I lose interest mid/end game when I achieve short campaign victory. Nothing will change that I think. But that is fine because I then move onto another faction with different mechanics*. *i lie, it's probably another lizardment campaign

Started a new campaign with Slaneesh and decided to build tall this time around. Got only one province but easily managed to get 3 souls. I peaced out with Khorne and the warrior of chaos faction in the starter area. I built my province around farming rebellions by constructing the buildings that give negative public order but increased income, paired with the economy building that gives double the gold when public order is below -50. Now my province rebels every 2 turn (more if i let the rebellion roll on a bit and get that +20 public order buff). Have so much time to do side stuff like treasure hunt etc. Currently focusing on building a Cultist spam army for the last soul (Nurgle) as I was still running with Tier 1 units (demonettes/chaos furies/marauders) and the starter units (cav, chariot and mosntrous infantry unit). Got my ass kicked in the Khorne realm, so decided to upgrade my army before the last portal. So far, the Cultists on foot seem very tanky. Easy to get the melee defense up to 70+ so they rarely take damage. Keeping them on foot helps them fight together and harder to hit. They can summon up to 3 demonettes and 1 keeper of secrets each, which seems a bit crazy. Currently running a half stack army of just heroes, 2 keeper and 2 soul grinders so Nkari doesn't get focused by anti-large units. Not sure whether to get some low tier units for some auto resolve power or minor settlement battles (like furies to help take out towers). But since i rarely have settlement battles, it might be a non issue. But it feels wrong to not have a full stack. I also found out pretty late in my campaign that your hero action on enemy armies marks them with gift of slaneesh which generates devotees. Now i have two dedicated heroes just assaulting every army in sight! I am generating stupid amount of devotees now, all of which is going toward building cultist capacity buildings in enemy territory. I wish I discovered this earlier, would've made use of the devotee army a lot more. I think I will summon a couple of devotee army to defend my home base and then go for sea treasures or something while waiting for the rifts.