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A Song Of Peace: Imperial Regent Quest [40k]

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[X][LEVIATHAN] The Blood Angels Homeworld of Baal
[X][POSTURE] Participate in the battle directly and engage the most powerful Tyranid Warforms.
 
[X][LEVIATHAN] The Blood Angels Homeworld of Baal
[X][POSTURE] Participate in the battle directly and engage the most powerful Tyranid Warforms.
 
[X][LEVIATHAN] The Blood Angels Homeworld of Baal
[X][POSTURE] Participate in the battle directly and engage the most powerful Tyranid Warforms.

Though call. I really want to save Seraphax's civilians. Hopefully we will still have time.
 
[X][LEVIATHAN] The Blood Angels Homeworld of Baal
[X][POSTURE] Participate in the battle directly and engage the most powerful Tyranid Warforms.
 
[X][LEVIATHAN] The Blood Angels Homeworld of Baal
[X][POSTURE] Participate in the battle directly and engage the most powerful Tyranid Warforms.
 
I think the other bit from Discord which Prime forgot to include was one where Sworo said that God mode would be an awesome fight scene, and compared it to uh....
MP Eva fight scene from End of Evangelion.

...Asuka looked really cool in that fight, right? And her being more powerful than any individual MP Eva was really cool, right?

And the fact that Pandora has no practice with God mode and can only be in it on a very short timer is surely not an issue, r-right?


[X][LEVIATHAN] The Shrine World of Seraphax
[X][POSTURE] Participate in the battle directly and engage the most powerful Tyranid Warforms.


edit: to be more clear, I am not saying it is guaranteed to fail by WoG - if nothing else, Swordo wouldn't spoil it like this.
But the imagery of "Asuka vs MP Eva fight" is quite...evocative. Much more evocative than "oh hell yeah we will one shot any issue and there's no reason to think attention it brings is worse than anything we tried to solve".
 
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[X][LEVIATHAN] The Shrine World of Seraphax
[X][POSTURE] Participate in the battle directly and engage the most powerful Tyranid Warforms.
 
[X][LEVIATHAN] The Shrine World of Seraphax
[X][POSTURE] Participate in the battle directly and engage the most powerful Tyranid Warforms.
 
[X][LEVIATHAN] The Blood Angels Homeworld of Baal
[X][POSTURE] Participate in the battle directly and engage the most powerful Tyranid Warforms.
 
[X][LEVIATHAN] The Blood Angels Homeworld of Baal
[X][POSTURE] Participate in the battle directly and engage the most powerful Tyranid Warforms.
 
Fayhem said:
Here's the thing: it's really, really not always going to be true. Because if we use Goddess Mode as a coup de grâce rather than an opening move, we can reliably expect to wipe all enemy assets from the board before passing out and our opponents will still not have a viable estimate of how long we can sustain the state. That's half of why it worked out fine when Panda flared Goddess Mode to run off Magnus; she popped it, he rabbited, and Chaos didn't have anybody on the field to notice when we went into a seizure and passed out for a couple days (the other half is that we were in motion and by the time they could follow up on that flare we'd already have been gone). The incentive structure I laid out is only true if we pop Goddess Mode and pass out before clearing the field, and that does not always have to be the case, even before we do more work on refining our control of Goddess power.

If our enemies don't know how long Goddess Mode lasts or how incapacitated we are when it ends, they have to consider the possibility that sending an attacking force to follow-up will just run into the same active buzzsaw. If they do know how long it lasts because we couldn't make it through all their assets in play before passing out (and if they have close enough eyes on to see us pass out, they have a good sense of just how incapacitated we are as well, which would be even worse for us), that consideration will no longer apply and cannot thus stay their hand.

In short, we need to be strategic about when we apply Goddess Mode, not just where. And "when" should meet BOTH of two conditions, at least until we learn more about how to control Goddess Mode:

1) We should be confident we can rely on definitely or almost-definitely being able to clear all enemy assets from the field before passing out.
AND
2) We should be planning to move elsewhere shortly after triggering it, if we aren't already in motion already.

If Condition 1 isn't met, then the dangerous incentive structure I already outlined comes into play. If Condition 2 isn't met, then the surge of attention from all of the Four will make everything else we want to do in the region harder and more dangerous - we should remember that Chaos has ways of making life hard that don't rely on confronting us personally directly, as well.
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Okay, I understand now, and I think I agree. I was wrong about the incentive structure, because attacking Pandora while she's unconscious requires you to know that she's unconscious and it requires you to know where she is.

We should keep in mind that Khorne may not care. A Khornate Greater Daemon might get super angry at the "Little Anathema" and just throw everything at her last known position, regardless of how strong she is or whether she's even still there.

The Tyranids are a different story. They have less experience with gods, and their most likely reaction to "Pandora nukes surviving Tyranid hordes" is "try to develop new strategies while evolving anti-psyker strains of Tyranids". Which is not going to be fun, but that's a problem for another day. Based on my limited knowledge, they're not as likely to banzai charge into the position of a major defeat; they'll want to come back prepared, while Khorne's followers are not always devoted to common sense. He cares not from whence the blood flows, after all.

An ideal deployment of Goddess Mode will meet both of your conditions. However, I am open to the possibility that we might have to deploy Goddess Mode is less than ideal conditions; if it comes down to a choice between "lose Baal" and "go nuclear", I would be willing to go nuclear even if there are still enemy observers in the system afterwards. Also, if we could wipe out only ninety percent of enemy forces on Baal with Goddess Mode, and doing so would save us from having to fight a grinding, bloody campaign with millions and millions of casualties, I would be willing to go nuclear under those circumstances as well.

Chaos knows that we can enter Goddess Mode. They also know that we can't stay in Goddess Mode all the time, or we would just proceed from battlefield to battlefield like a terrible avatar of divine wrath. Though I entirely agree that I want to conceal the specifics of how long we can sustain Goddess Mode and how incapacitated we are afterwards, I don't prioritize doing so over every other consideration. "Wipe everything and then rabbit" is the ideal strategy, but it isn't always possible.
 
[X][LEVIATHAN] The Shrine World of Seraphax
[X][POSTURE] Call upon your Deva and direct them to the most important battlefields.
 
dptullos said:
An ideal deployment of Goddess Mode will meet both of your conditions. However, I am open to the possibility that we might have to deploy Goddess Mode is less than ideal conditions; if it comes down to a choice between "lose Baal" and "go nuclear", I would be willing to go nuclear even if there are still enemy observers in the system afterwards. Also, if we could wipe out only ninety percent of enemy forces on Baal with Goddess Mode, and doing so would save us from having to fight a grinding, bloody campaign with millions and millions of casualties, I would be willing to go nuclear under those circumstances as well.
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To be fair, I doubt anyone would be against using the Goddess Mode in either of those cases. Especially the former.
 
Fayhem said:
Here's the thing: it's really, really not always going to be true. Because if we use Goddess Mode as a coup de grâce rather than an opening move, we can reliably expect to wipe all enemy assets from the board before passing out and our opponents will still not have a viable estimate of how long we can sustain the state. That's half of why it worked out fine when Panda flared Goddess Mode to run off Magnus; she popped it, he rabbited, and Chaos didn't have anybody on the field to notice when we went into a seizure and passed out for a couple days (the other half is that we were in motion and by the time they could follow up on that flare we'd already have been gone). The incentive structure I laid out is only true if we pop Goddess Mode and pass out before clearing the field, and that does not always have to be the case, even before we do more work on refining our control of Goddess power.

If our enemies don't know how long Goddess Mode lasts or how incapacitated we are when it ends, they have to consider the possibility that sending an attacking force to follow-up will just run into the same active buzzsaw. If they do know how long it lasts because we couldn't make it through all their assets in play before passing out (and if they have close enough eyes on to see us pass out, they have a good sense of just how incapacitated we are as well, which would be even worse for us), that consideration will no longer apply and cannot thus stay their hand.

In short, we need to be strategic about when we apply Goddess Mode, not just where. And "when" should meet BOTH of two conditions, at least until we learn more about how to control Goddess Mode:

1) We should be confident we can rely on definitely or almost-definitely being able to clear all enemy assets from the field before passing out.
AND
2) We should be planning to move elsewhere shortly after triggering it, if we aren't already in motion already.

If Condition 1 isn't met, then the dangerous incentive structure I already outlined comes into play. If Condition 2 isn't met, then the surge of attention from all of the Four will make everything else we want to do in the region harder and more dangerous - we should remember that Chaos has ways of making life hard that don't rely on confronting us personally directly, as well.
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I agree. Much of my thinking about popping super immediately was premised on the seraphax nids not having linked up with Baal yet - the two conditions you laid out are completely correct, and the blitz/bluff play I described was simply about satisfying and capitalizing on them as quickly as possible.

I'm especially hoping you're right about the nids not intentionally strengthening Khorne's hand here, because afaik the ideal way to get into that position if Ka'Bandha focuses on delaying tactics is to direct our offensive on the nid queens instead - as opposed to a scenario where the queens are on the same page about stalling for what khorne's cooking up to finish.
 
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Could someone make the case for Seraphax? I may have missed it, but I don't think I've read a detailed description of why we should prioritize the Shrine World.
 
dptullos said:
Could someone make the case for Seraphax? I may have missed it, but I don't think I've read a detailed description of why we should prioritize the Shrine World.
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My idea is that, well.

Baal is a tarpit. Even if we win, if will take a long fucking time. If we go there first, we abandon Seraphax to Khorne.
We can clean up Seraphax, take like 4000 Astartes from there as reinforcements and go reinforce Baal, being prepared for a long haul.


Only reasons to go for Baal first are:
1. Being ok with sacrificing Seraphax.
2. Hoping that god mode mystery box does more good than harm, and does it by such a large margin that we don't get stuck on Baal for however the fuck long it takes for Khornates to take over Seraphax.

On other other hand, Dante has a chance to die on Baal. So far, his 30000 (now 27000) Marines stand strong, but there's 32(?) Norn Queens and 29 Bloodthirsters there, so, while we do not know his odds of dying, he can die in a fight. There's a lot of Titan scale units over there.
 
[X][LEVIATHAN] The Blood Angels Homeworld of Baal
[X][POSTURE] Participate in the battle directly and engage the most powerful Tyranid Warforms.

I don't think Baal can wait, the Tarot says some cracks are starting to form in the defense and with how that front is positioned, when things start going bad, they're going to get really bad, really fast.
 
As someone who is voting for Baal it is less that I am OK with sacrificing the Shrine world and more that I think we must, the risks to Baal are too great, not the risks of loss necessarily, but Pyrrhic Victory. the dark gods can guess where we are going and so can the Hive Mind, they can push Baal to the breaking point or near it. Keep in mind Dante does not know we are coming, so if the enemy gives him 'an opening' that would allow him to win at great cost he would likely take it because hey it is better than death.
 
With so many Norn queens above Baal now is the time to try and throw a wrench on the hive mind.

[x] [LEVIATHAN] The Blood Angels Homeworld of Baal
[x] [POSTURE] Remain in the void and contest the Shadow in the Warp directly.
 
dptullos said:
Could someone make the case for Seraphax? I may have missed it, but I don't think I've read a detailed description of why we should prioritize the Shrine World.
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Did a write up of key points here, along with the later thought that if the battle on Seraphax winds down faster than the battle on Ba'al then that would give the Khornates fifteen Bloodthirsters with cohorts, possibly led by Skarbrand again, to intervene in a time and place of their choosing during our fight on Ba'al. I think it more prudent to go to Seraphax to remove them from the equation instead of letting such a dangerous element come in in the middle of the battle when most of our forces will be committed, disordered, and most vulnerable to shock charges.
 
DragonParadox said:
Keep in mind Dante does not know we are coming, so if the enemy gives him 'an opening' that would allow him to win at great cost he would likely take it because hey it is better than death.
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Luckily our Devas have nipped this particular danger in the bud already. The whole theater knows we're here now, so Dante should be able to reason that holding fast is his best bet.

I still want to go to Baal first, mind, but it was worth pointing out.
 
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If we participate, are we going to fight the bloodriders too or only the tyrandis?

[x] [LEVIATHAN] The Blood Angels Homeworld of Baal
[x] [POSTURE] Participate in the battle directly and engage the most powerful Tyranid Warforms.
 
Okay. I came back to this after some time away to clear my mind and hopefully give myself a fresh perspective.

And here are two things I've noticed.

Despite even as the Tyranids are shifting all focus to Baal and Khorne is focusing on Seraphax, Ka'Bandha is, or has been, expending power to summon Bloodthirsters to Baal.

The Tarot says that Seraphax is likely the origin for the Veil's thinness across the Baal Sector.

If that's true, how would a stronger Veil impact the fighting on Baal? Would it harm the efforts of Pandora's Deva? Would it take Khorne out of the fight? Would it just keep Khorne from sending reinforcements? Do we want to turn the battle from a three-way battle into a one-on-one?
 
It's scary just how much the last (shown) words from the God Emperor to Pandora align with those spoken by the God Emperor to Guillimanin Godblight, albeit with different contexts
Like the difference between a god's perspective of another god(?) and a superlative being's perspective of one
You struggled to move your lips and form words. You could not believe… any of this. Anything at all. "Do you even remember mama's name?" You asked, numb to feeling.

[If I do, will you serve as Regent?]
"Guilliman.' The voices overlaid, overlapped, became almost one, and Guilliman had a fleeting memory of a sad face that had seen too much, and a burden it could barely countenance. 'Guilliman, hear me.
'My last loyal son, my pride, my greatest triumph.'
How those words burned him, worse than the poisons of Mortarion, worse than the sting of failure. They were not a lie, not entirely. It was worse than that.
They were conditional.
 
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