u/Mammoth_Composer_111

I sincerely hope 40k handles this better. I just can't even bring myself to play a full campaign anymore because it's so tedius.

every battle feels inconsequential because armies are replenished and recruited almost instantly.

Large, pitched battles should feel defining. instead I have to beat the same ratmen stack like 5-6 times before it's over. it's just tiring more than it is fun.

Then you're often playing factions that are absolutely surrounded by other enemy factions with basically zero option for diplomacy. So you're often fighting 2-3 factions at the same time with no ability to negotiate aside from extremely short term "non-aggression pacts" which any designated enemy faction will simply ignore after a few turns.

This just makes the issue worse, as I know even after I've fought this current faction down to the last pebble there's simply another one eating away at my opposite border.

Is three kingdoms better with this?

I'm looking for a lot less battles, more diplomacy options, and a lot more emphasis on the battles themselves. I don't want to have to fight a faction 7 times in massive battles before I finally win against one single faction.

I'm not asking to steam roll either, but having so many battles just makes each one feel meaningless.

This will be our first time going and we’re heavily debating which themed weekend to go during.
I’m more interested in the cool Viking like stuff, but we’re both worried that that theme could invite…folks we’d rather not deal with.

Proud boys, racists,misogynists, etc.

Has anyone noticed if this themed weekend has any more of that kind of stuff than other themed weekends? Or is it pretty inclusive/safe?

A lot of spells that I don't see many people talk about, or they talk about them negitively are actually pretty good. My last playthrough I made an effort to use a lot of the spells I hadn't used as much and I was pretty surprised at their value.

in particular spells like:

Heroism on a paladin:

5 temp HP every turn alone is actually not bad in practice. Why would you ever use this over smite? Well, for starters regular smite only adds like 2d8 holy damage to your regular weapon strike. Secondly every other special smite takes both your primary and bonus action to use.

I used it in some fights and was surprised to find in the combat log that it was regularly shielding my two front liners for like 15/20 hp a piece per battle. This is huge especially on honor mode.

Is it possible that one spell slot would have ended the fight earlier? Maybe, but it's also possible my party would have had less HP by the end not having the 5 hp buffer every turn. The smite could have missed, the rolls could have been low for it, etc. Heroism never misses and is always a sure thing.

Phantasmal force:

oh boy does this one get hate, but when I started using it there are tons of ways to get a lot of value out of this.

it synergizes well with arcane lock--cast it, retreate the whole party behind door, arcane lock. and play dice or something for ten turns while you do like 5d6 out of a level 2 spell slot. It has a lot of other synergies as well with it's initial psychic type. I used this to practically solo z'rell during the moonrise assault (evil run, so no allies except me and my party) by casting this thing and arcane locking the front tower doors lol. Can synergize well with hunger of hadar too.

Protection from energy:

This one is more straight forward but there are actually a ton of enemies that deal elemental damage types in this game and a lot of it is rather predictable.

This spell definitely saved me in more than a few situations when I was remembering to use it.