Tali'Thread vas Clan Zorah nar BSN 6.0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHMYwrC7oAo

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RW0RqBJ7EU

[Dragaros]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... nimations/

[Alienmorph]

Oooh, so they actually hired the guy who made the Astartes miniseries? Good for him, he deserves it!

[Vol]

I have neither a strong beard nor so little hair that shaving is a necessity. I don't think I could look tough even shaved bald. Though I think I can try to get the front part (mustache and chin) to poke out a bit like a Van Dyke style since that's a strength. At least I won't have to rely on the sides being strong or a beard style that borders on boring.

When I did have long hair I don't remember split ends being much of an issue and I forgot what the cause of that actually is. My hair is pretty oily so it was definitely soft enough, just really thin on top and frail on the sides. Man, I can still go through the hand-motions of tying a pony tail. I guess some things never leave you.

Yeah, I got fucked on the facial features, and then full beard growth, but weak density. The one upshot is no bald men on either side of the family, so I'll have hair, if nothing else, going into my twilight. Going by my father, albeit with totally different kinds of hair, I'll lose more ground on the temple, thin a bit, but still be "full" at 60, and that's a greedy thing for any man to ask for.

Italian heritage then? I figure that's where the oil comes from, given how bad it gets after 24 hours.

I'm in the same boat. I used to have nice flowy hair that I really liked, but sadly I got my Dad's hair, which means my hairline is receding and thinning right in the middle, but is perfectly fine along the sides and back. Treatment doesn't reverse hair loss, only stops it from progressing, so if I were to start treating it, it would stay looking ehhhhh rather than look good.

At this point, I resolved myself to just live with it, and it it gets bad, just shave it all off. I've got a reasonably nice beard/mustache to compensate.

I've actually seen some e-personalities go the hair transplant route. It works, but holy crap it looks gruesome, and the aftercare is rough.

Plus shaving it, with a good crop of facial hair, makes getting jacked look 100% better.

I guess my beard is okay, but much like the hair on the rest of my head, it gets rather curly instead of straight and long. Got hair for days on the sides, though. Feels like it'd be a waste to shave that off. Maybe I should look for a comfy hat to wear instead. Preferably something that can handle being washed, unlike that POS baseball cap I had last year which lost its coloring the second it got warm water on it.

I wear a baseball hat whenever I go out anyway. Men aught wear hats, and since fedoras are a bit of a self-selecting mark of shame, sadly, go for the modern solution.

The Hitler Youth sidecut that's so popular baffles me, in that even at my most vain moments as a yoot, putting that much effort into my hair seemed gayer than some of the stuff I'd do with my friends.

I'm actually favouring medium lengths right now, mainly due to lockdown and being unable to go back to my short hair experimentations.
Long hair I am used to, was probably full of split ends because I never knew how to deal with them, lol.

Beard...urgh.
Facial hair is too fine so the Stache and upper cheeks area are all light hair and the lower cheeks, chin, jaw, neck and sideburns are more darker.

Actually my hair has changed colour to be darker over time and now I am more mousey blonde, the only old colour of my hair is the fine/light facial hair.

Oddly enough, my brother changed color too. Was a pure blonde until puberty, steadily darkened to his adult shade. Damn shame. I have a feeling mustaches are coming back in style, so for at least a while, you might be golden!

[Mazder]

Well today's tooth extraction went mostly okay.
2 fragments left in though so I gotta wait for a referral by a proper dental surgeon to have those removed at some point.

[Ragabul]

Awesome, I just fatfinger took down the whole virtual desktop pool and image for the public library for the city that I work for. This sounds horrible but the operational effect is that Grandma can't get on the public computers today and print her coupons and I get to spend all day rebuilding it.

My boss managed to take down 911 for an hour one time so I'm still in little league on fuckups. A going saying in IT is that if you've never broken something important it means that you aren't allowed to touch anything important and thus aren't doing anything that matters. It still sucks balls though.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kpwZvG5gZ4

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0rXEzxOIs4

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmIj2Ppmp7o

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQW0fE6Fuf8

[SciFlyBoy]

Italian heritage then? I figure that's where the oil comes from, given how bad it gets after 24 hours.

No Italian, but I do have some Iberian Peninsula ancestors. Maybe a roman soldier wandered in and made a small home and 2000 years later...

[Vol]

Well today's tooth extraction went mostly okay.
2 fragments left in though so I gotta wait for a referral by a proper dental surgeon to have those removed at some point.

Uh. Why? I have wisdom tooth shards still coming out of my gums on occasion because the surgeon didn't flush the cavities, but that was a fuck up. Sounds intentional on your end.

Awesome, I just fatfinger took down the whole virtual desktop pool and image for the public library for the city that I work for. This sounds horrible but the operational effect is that Grandma can't get on the public computers today and print her coupons and I get to spend all day rebuilding it.

My boss managed to take down 911 for an hour one time so I'm still in little league on fuckups. A going saying in IT is that if you've never broken something important it means that you aren't allowed to touch anything important and thus aren't doing anything that matters. It still sucks balls though.

What function allowed you to do that without a warning prompt?

No Italian, but I do have some Iberian Peninsula ancestors. Maybe a roman soldier wandered in and made a small home and 2000 years later...

Funnily enough, I'm (slowly) reading a book about the genealogical entanglement of humanity. It talks about how Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Adam lived about 150k years ago, in different times, somewhere in North Africa, and they're a constantly changing individual as populations change. But then it makes the excellent point that _extant genetic_ ancestor is to ignore the vast majority of our ancestors. And with a quite conservative migration model (No mass movements, no military conquests), based on estimated ancient populations, they've found that going back only a few thousand years, we very likely have many universal ancestors from all over the place.

[Ragabul]

What function allowed you to do that without a warning prompt?

Being a doofus. I was deleting about 40 Vms in a batch that all have the same naming structure, so like VDI1, VDI2, VDI3, etc. The image they are all based on had the same naming structure but with Gold on the end so it was like VDIGOLD. I just wasn't paying attention and deleted it too by doing a select all on that name type.

If I hadn''t deleted the image I could just make minor changes to it and then recreate a pool based off of it which doesn't take very long. Since it disappeared I have to rebuild the image and the pool. The image isn't complicated. It's basically just a Windows 10 machine but I have to install a bunch of security junk on it, optimize it for VDI, set all the settings back how the library wants them, and download ten thousand windows updates. It just turns a 20 minutes process into a 3 or 4 hour process.

[Mazder]

Uh. Why? I have wisdom tooth shards still coming out of my gums on occasion because the surgeon didn't flush the cavities, but that was a fuck up. Sounds intentional on your end.

Roots got a kink in them so it was hard to remove them with the tools they had at the normal dentists.

And I have gotten through the first night, sleep was....awful.

[Ragabul]

Funnily enough, I'm (slowly) reading a book about the genealogical entanglement of humanity. It talks about how Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Adam lived about 150k years ago, in different times, somewhere in North Africa, and they're a constantly changing individual as populations change. But then it makes the excellent point that _extant genetic_ ancestor is to ignore the vast majority of our ancestors. And with a quite conservative migration model (No mass movements, no military conquests), based on estimated ancient populations, they've found that going back only a few thousand years, we very likely have many universal ancestors from all over the place.

What book? I've gotten really interested in all the new stuff that's been learned from extraction of ancient DNA in the last 10 years or so. One of the more interesting tidbits is that they have learned that modern humans actually probably didn't entirely evolve in Africa. There was a much wider diaspora of humans and other hominids out of Africa for much longer than was previously thought and a lot of mixing went on outside Africa. They've also confirmed that ancient Polynesians made it to South America. And they've shown that modern Europeans actually don't genetically have much to do with the original farmers of Europe but are instead mostly descended from an expansion of steppe people about 5000-7000 years ago (probably the first people to domesticate horses and also the speakers of the original Indo-European language). There's lots of really interesting stuff. I've mostly watched documentaries about it but I did read this a while back:

[Vol]

Being a doofus. I was deleting about 40 Vms in a batch that all have the same naming structure, so like VDI1, VDI2, VDI3, etc. The image they are all based on had the same naming structure but with Gold on the end so it was like VDIGOLD. I just wasn't paying attention and deleted it too by doing a select all on that name type.

Ah. Then I completely understand. Poor naming practices has fucked me over more than once. Though in programming, there's really not a great compromise between conciseness, readability, and descriptiveness. Remember fiddling around with building a game engine from scratch a few years back, and once you get into Windows and DirectX functions, you get a bunch of looooong variable/function names that are all very important and specific and come with a lovely list of parameters that are much the same. But hey. Earning your scars.

Roots got a kink in them so it was hard to remove them with the tools they had at the normal dentists.

And I have gotten through the first night, sleep was....awful.

Yeesh. They could've given you a dose or two of happy pills to get you through that then.

What book? I've gotten really interested in all the new stuff that's been learned from extraction of ancient DNA in the last 10 years or so. One of the more interesting tidbits is that they have learned that modern humans actually probably didn't entirely evolve in Africa. There was a much wider diaspora of humans and other hominids out of Africa for much longer than was previously thought and a lot of mixing went on outside Africa. They've also confirmed that ancient Polynesians made it to South America. And they've shown that modern Europeans actually don't genetically have much to do with the original farmers of Europe but are instead mostly descended from an expansion of steppe people about 5000-7000 years ago (probably the first people to domesticate horses and also the speakers of the original Indo-European language). There's lots of really interesting stuff. I've mostly watched documentaries about it but I did read this a while back:

https://www.amazon.com/Genealogical-Ada ... 114&sr=8-1

Obviously, it's written from a naturalistic theology perspective, but the author is in fact a credible source, and he cites research papers constantly, which I'm sure you can appreciate. Skimming ahead in my own copy, looks like around halfway it becomes less focused on the scientific claims and more about the theological and how to marry them. So if you're not interested in specifically the feasibility of a particular ancient Middle Eastern couple, created specially or normally, being the genealogical ancestor of all mankind by 1 AD, then it's probably not worth reading.

That said, I have heard about some new theories on modern human ancestry, just like you mentioned. Albeit the _places_ I heard it were not ones that inspire confidence in the data or the conclusions, but hey. It always seemed odd to me that in such a relatively short amount of time, we could unintentionally create such distinct phenotypes. Then I learned about the neanderthals, so it would not surprise me if the truth of it is far more complex than a couple migration waves in and out of northern Africa.

[Mazder]

Yeesh. They could've given you a dose or two of happy pills to get you through that then.

Honestly there was no pain, only restlessness and I couldn't stay asleep.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2aLLI49r4s

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5GfdRz098s

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TErgyx0bPh8

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYwsSoPSHiI

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WfReXVsTvc

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXGowfDsc8U

[Dragaros]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... ournament/





Chaos wins Australia.

[Vol]

How many veterans of the Heresy can possibly be around still? Yeah, Chaos distorts time, but the legions got badly smashed, and then some shattered, then the scouring after, then the natural attrition rate of insane warrior monks, then the countless wars after.

Must be a handful of surviving guys doing their best to lay low or something.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yegRHiaao7U

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1oHm5fp924

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlIIwgQmVIU

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td1HJEB3aKQ

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shv5vsHOER4

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz0EKVfPa4I

[Dragaros]

How many veterans of the Heresy can possibly be around still? Yeah, Chaos distorts time, but the legions got badly smashed, and then some shattered, then the scouring after, then the natural attrition rate of insane warrior monks, then the countless wars after.

Must be a handful of surviving guys doing their best to lay low or something.

It depends on the Legion, but yes, they are few in number compared to the fresh recruits after all those wars and all those years. Seems like only the Black Legion and the Word Bearers have a decent amount of Heresy veterans in their ranks at this point. (The Thousand Sons would have a substantial amount if you count the ones that got turned into Rubric Marines, but since those have basically no sense of self/identity/individuality/memory, it doesn't seem fair to count Rubrics.)

Exactly how many of them are left is one of those things that will probably never get answered or addressed in specific detail. Few in number so that it's noticeable, but always enough that some can die outside of the big names like Kharn, Lucius, Typhus, and Ahriman without disrupting the status quo. It's like how the Eldar are always on the verge of going extinct, but always have enough numbers to suffer massive casualties when they lose without tipping the scales. The demands of the tabletop trump the needs of the narrative in GW's eyes. I've seen various BL authors discuss this issue at length in interviews and on reddit, but sadly I don't have a link or quote handy for their responses, and my google-fu is failing me.

It gets brought up a lot in the novels that while Heresy veterans are small in number, they make up for it by being top-tier badasses, basically one-man-armies unto themselves thanks to all their combat experience and wisdom learned on countless battlefields, and usually have exceptional weapons, armor, and blessings from the Chaos Gods to boot. Only the toughest, most ruthless, and most cunning survived this long. Plus, they are almost always of top command positions and high ranks in their respective Legions, with tons of resources and loyal followers at their beck and call. Heresy veterans tend to look down on the younger warriors in their Legions with contempt, viewing them as inferior, seeing their hatred as being not as pure or focused as their own, and disdainful of their lack of accomplishments and experience.

[Mazder]

Well I hope I didn't just give myself Dry Socket or push back my healing from this tooth extraction.
A big old clump of what looks to be healing tissue just fell out during a salt water rinse.

So...FUCK.

No pain but I was hoping to go back to solid foods again tomorrow.
URGH.
Looks like I can't, yaaaay more depression time for me.

[Dragaros]

I got the 9th edition Warhammer 40k Core Book and the new Necron Codex.

The Codex has some great art and tons of new lore on the Silent King and his dynasty. I've gone on record saying I prefer the Oldcrons to the Newcrons multiple times, but that being said, the Silent King is pretty awesome; the dude flayed the necrodermis skin off a C'tan and wears it as a cape. He is a fascinating, complex, enigmatic figure. Some Necrons hate him, some love him, some think he genuinely wants to atone for leading his race into damnation, and others think he's purely out only for himself and has a dark, hidden agenda. No one knows the truth for certain. He's probably the galaxy's best hope against the Tyranids, and he has a plan to close the Rift and stop Chaos from leaking into the materium, but his schemes would fuck over humanity. The narrative is already setting up a war between Imotekh and the Silent King, for Imotekh wants to be the top dog of the Necrons and no longer respects the Silent King or believes his promises. There's also some new tidbits on the War in Heaven, and some nuggets on the current state of things, like a tesseract-labyrinth the size of a planet that contains horrors even they won't dare use in battle, the increased spread of the Destroyer Cults, a Necron pirate who's making a name for himself, and a civil war between two dynasties over control of the Celestial Orrery.

The Core Book has some nice art, a fantastic map of the galaxy, all the new rules you need if you play the tabletop, establishes some new warzones, and it does an excellent job of laying out the setting, the factions, and the foundational lore for newcomers, but doesn't have much new lore if you've been keeping up with the recent storylines like Gathering Storm and the Psychic Awakening. It does drop these two big notes of worth however:

► Show Spoiler

The next Daemon Primarch to join the party after Magnus and Mortarion is Angron. He's coming to finish what he started on Armageddon, and his return is imminent. Someone better call in the Grey Knights!

The book specifically mentions that the bulk of the Emperor's will and spirit isn't tied to his withered body on the Golden Throne, but bestrides the Warp, where he is fighting off endless tides of daemons, striving to protect humanity. Which would mean, by the metaphysical rules of the Warp, all the psychic energy generated by every thought/emotion/act/deed/prayer done in the Emperor's name by quadrillions of humans for the last 10,000 years has been feeding him, making him stronger. (Not to mention all the souls he eats daily) Nothing's said for certain, but if the Emperor wasn't a god before, it would logically seem he would most certainly be one now. It jives well with the increase of miracles happening and living saints manifesting, and the reports of various Sisters of Battle and priests being able to perform acts of great, unexplainable power by their faith even in areas that have been cut off from the Warp like in the Pariah Nexus that prevents psykers from using their abilities and decays the soul.

[Alienmorph]

I got the 9th edition Warhammer 40k Core Book and the new Necron Codex.

► Show Spoiler

So one of the few Demon Primarchs who doesn't have much of anything in terms of art and miniatures rapresentation (at least on the official side) and the good old "The Emperor Proteccs!" getting a lot more literal eh? How interesting!

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_lYq6VQ48s



RIP AND TEAR
SMASH AND BASH

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55IA_ng9L2c

"Tobyfox will release Undertale for Xbox One on March 16 for $14.99. It will also be available via Xbox Game Pass for Console. Undertale first launched for PC and Mac in September 2015, followed by Linux in July 2016, PlayStation 4 and PS Vita in August 2017, and Switch in September 2018. While the PC version of Undertale has been available on the Microsoft Store since July 2019, the Xbox One version will not support shared progress and save data between the two, but “similar to previous console releases, the Xbox version features its own little… shrine, one might say… of exclusive content to look out for.”"

[SciFlyBoy]

Well I hope I didn't just give myself Dry Socket or push back my healing from this tooth extraction.
A big old clump of what looks to be healing tissue just fell out during a salt water rinse.

So...FUCK.

No pain but I was hoping to go back to solid foods again tomorrow.
URGH.
Looks like I can't, yaaaay more depression time for me.

Was it bleeding profusely? It could have been extra packed material not related to the new tissue. I'm trying to remember if I had something similar. What's the situation now?

[Vol]

I got the 9th edition Warhammer 40k Core Book and the new Necron Codex.

The Codex has some great art and tons of new lore on the Silent King and his dynasty. I've gone on record saying I prefer the Oldcrons to the Newcrons multiple times, but that being said, the Silent King is pretty awesome; the dude flayed the necrodermis skin off a C'tan and wears it as a cape. He is a fascinating, complex, enigmatic figure. Some Necrons hate him, some love him, some think he genuinely wants to atone for leading his race into damnation, and others think he's purely out only for himself and has a dark, hidden agenda. No one knows the truth for certain. He's probably the galaxy's best hope against the Tyranids, and he has a plan to close the Rift and stop Chaos from leaking into the materium, but his schemes would fuck over humanity. The narrative is already setting up a war between Imotekh and the Silent King, for Imotekh wants to be the top dog of the Necrons and no longer respects the Silent King or believes his promises. There's also some new tidbits on the War in Heaven, and some nuggets on the current state of things, like a tesseract-labyrinth the size of a planet that contains horrors even they won't dare use in battle, the increased spread of the Destroyer Cults, a Necron pirate who's making a name for himself, and a civil war between two dynasties over control of the Celestial Orrery.

The Core Book has some nice art, a fantastic map of the galaxy, all the new rules you need if you play the tabletop, establishes some new warzones, and it does an excellent job of laying out the setting, the factions, and the foundational lore for newcomers, but doesn't have much new lore if you've been keeping up with the recent storylines like Gathering Storm and the Psychic Awakening. It does drop these two big notes of worth however:

► Show Spoiler

The next Daemon Primarch to join the party after Magnus and Mortarion is Angron. He's coming to finish what he started on Armageddon, and his return is imminent. Someone better call in the Grey Knights!

The book specifically mentions that the bulk of the Emperor's will and spirit isn't tied to his withered body on the Golden Throne, but bestrides the Warp, where he is fighting off endless tides of daemons, striving to protect humanity. Which would mean, by the metaphysical rules of the Warp, all the psychic energy generated by every thought/emotion/act/deed/prayer done in the Emperor's name by quadrillions of humans for the last 10,000 years has been feeding him, making him stronger. (Not to mention all the souls he eats daily) Nothing's said for certain, but if the Emperor wasn't a god before, it would logically seem he would most certainly be one now. It jives well with the increase of miracles happening and living saints manifesting, and the reports of various Sisters of Battle and priests being able to perform acts of great, unexplainable power by their faith even in areas that have been cut off from the Warp like in the Pariah Nexus that prevents psykers from using their abilities and decays the soul.

Given how small they've made the setting in recent years, more weird, unexplained shit is welcome. Long term plans we'll not see for decades? Cool beans! Horrors that are only explained vaguely? Sure! _New models at affordable prices for everyone_? Never.

► Show Spoiler

AKA, the only daemon primarch to get shit done the last 10k years. Though in a way, he's far easier to put down now than before his ascension. Already about as tough and strong, but now with the weakness to anti-warp methods. Might've been one of the hardest primarchs for the Custodes to put down, but with enough SoS, far easier than it was.

Did hear some interesting LORE about my golden boys. Apparently they made a proper story of that codex mention of them rescuing the nearly overrun survivors of a faith-planet in their macrocathedral. Retconned it from the Custodes just leaving the survivors to get wiped out by the Grey Knights to a narrative that isn't retarded. But at one point, a captured, tortured Chaos cultist is about dead, seeing and hearing the daemons about to eat her soul, when the head Custode walks in, and she's able to see and feel the Emperor's presence and power through him. Like they're living conduits for him, which absolutely makes sense. She tries to repent, but is way too close to death, so once she gives up the info they want, he just ends her suffering quickly. And then the daemons eat her soul.

The head guy dies in the final battle, because Custodes can't have any clean victories for some reason, and during the massive funeral march among the faithful citizens left, 2 of his brothers talk about how they use the faith of the people to further the Emperor's goals, and how it's become the opposite of the Truth, and yada yada. But clearly the Emperor is a god, in the polytheist sense, at this point.

[Mazder]

Was it bleeding profusely? It could have been extra packed material not related to the new tissue. I'm trying to remember if I had something similar. What's the situation now?

No bleeding.
Wasn't packing material either it was definitely new tissue I had grown.

I have since spoken with the dentist and sent pictures and the clot is apparently in place and I can go back to a more normal diet.
But I am still to wary to because I don't want to jostle the clot loose accidentally with food because the clot hasn't got anything on top to protect it like it should have by now...
And, yeah, everyone heals differently but I don't know if I have pushed my healing back a few days or not to be safe.

Kinda being a big baby about it.

[SciFlyBoy]

No bleeding.
Wasn't packing material either it was definitely new tissue I had grown.

I have since spoken with the dentist and sent pictures and the clot is apparently in place and I can go back to a more normal diet.
But I am still to wary to because I don't want to jostle the clot loose accidentally with food because the clot hasn't got anything on top to protect it like it should have by now...
And, yeah, everyone heals differently but I don't know if I have pushed my healing back a few days or not to be safe.

Kinda being a big baby about it.

I remember eating food on one side and just being gentle about it for most of a week. Is your liquid diet unbearable?

[Mazder]

I remember eating food on one side and just being gentle about it for most of a week. Is your liquid diet unbearable?

Yeah.
I am slowly eating more solid foods on the other side of my face.
Nothing too bit-y, or makes lots of little bits when I chew it, mainly eggs and mashed potato based stuff.
But I am just very worried about the hole. Don't want anything getting in it.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC1smbjIVJI

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o86MFZPb_WI

[Dragaros]

https://twitter.com/Nanmu_studio

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

"It’s named after Argentinian paleontologist Sebastian Apesteguia, whose nickname is “El Ninja”. It’s the oldest titanosaur they’ve found and might just be the largest dinosaur ever discovered."



"Paleontologists found remains of an Oviraptorid dinosaur and embryo-bearing egg clutch."

[magnuskn]

After finishing a short victory in Total War: Warhammer 2 with the Orcs (Wurzzak, to be precise), because I didn't want to slog through the Empire to get the long victory, with their 58 settlements, I've rediscovered the joys of a Total War game without magic and dragons, and have been playing Total War: Three Kingdoms the last week.

I finally am doing the Ma Teng campaign I wanted to do last time, which I stopped because I was getting sick of Three Kingdoms. But, man, what a difference to TW: Warhammer 2. Really much better diplomacy, resources matter again and, totally contrary to TW:WH2, the endgame is actually challenging. Since I play Ma Teng, I can't craft an emperor seal, which means that I need to capture the capital of one of the three kingdoms, when they form. Okay, sounds reasonable.

Well, of course Cao Cao, Liu Bei and, um, Congsun Zan for some reason instead of Yuan Shao, form their three kingdoms and their fricking capitals are on the other side of the map. Okay, guess I'm gonna go for Liu Bei, who has territory right next door. I build up my treasury for a good battle chest and, boom, Liu Bei gets confederated by Cao Cao. Well, shit.

So, now I have to deal with what seems an endless amount of stacks from Cao Cao, with his and Liu Beis legendary heroes to boot. And, hey, since I play Ma Teng, I've been betting on cavalry heavily. Seems the AI is smart enough to recognize that and now Cao Cao is sending stack after stack filled with elite glaive infantry. So, gotta change my army composition, to at least include some units of sword and shield infantry to hold the line, so my cavalry can circle around and rush their rear. Researching my own elite units right now, because I focused on the red and yellow research trees so far, with some blue mixed in for silk trading. 5 turns to either get decent melee sword infantry (Saber Infantry) and then another 10 turns to get the best elite sword infantry, Imperial Sword Guard (which are super expensive) or, to go another way in the research tree entirely, 10 turns to get the elite Yellow Dragons, who are some sort of infantry specialist assault troop, with half the troop size of the other guys but basically a cavalry charge on foot.

All in all, very nice and refreshing to meet different challenges again in a Total War game, instead of the magic /ranged / artillery / monster spam of late game TW:WH2 campaigns. I highly recommend trying it out if you haven't already. With the new mechanics introduced by the recently released DLC, the experience is pretty different from one year ago as well. Some lords have really changed mechanics (Cao Cao, for example, just gets bloody unfair mechanics to the other lords... how the fuck does he precisely remove the charge bonus from my cavalry for five turns through "intrigue"?), like the faction council, which is a huge boost to your economy and empire management, especially when you have unlocked the full council and can enact up to five different of their proposals each year. Your general are harder to manage as well, since you cannot bribe them easily anymore with money and empty titles. Now they really need ancillaries to calm them down when they get higher level and don't have a post in your administration. Sometimes you just need to let them go, before they defect on their own. Again, all very refreshing to see some interesting empire management again, which was really a bit lacking in TW: WH2.

I'll be interested to see if they keep TW: WH3 simple in terms of diplomacy and empire management or overhaul the entire experience. That'd be a huge time investment for them, though, since they'd have to overhaul the older factions as well. I guess we'll see how bold they are when the previews begin.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maVh6fU3kls