So the big hope and salvation of the Craftworld Eldar that they've been building up for years now just got taken out back and shot in the head for the sake of making Generic Edgy Space Marine Character #1765 and the Brand New Productmarines look more hardcore and cool.
Robin5t wrote: So the big hope and salvation of the Craftworld Eldar that they've been building up for years now just got taken out back and shot in the head for the sake of making Generic Edgy Space Marine Character #1765 and the Brand New Productmarines look more hardcore and cool.
Please, let's discuss this absolute drivel.
It's hardly surprising is it?
Did Eldrads plan have any effect on other Craftworlds? Someone said it killed the Infinity Circuits.
Looks like it wiped all the infinity circuits clean of souls.
So the whole 'Ynnead' thing is effectively done, caput, never going to happen. The Craftworld Eldar have basically lost at everything and can not gain any kind of ultimate victory any more.
Still, though, at least Captain Marty Stu of the Bland Marines got to say an edgy line and do something cool.
Robin5t wrote: So the big hope and salvation of the Craftworld Eldar that they've been building up for years now just got taken out back and shot in the head for the sake of making Generic Edgy Space Marine Character #1765 and the Brand New Productmarines look more hardcore and cool.
Please, let's discuss this absolute drivel.
Tell me more
Automatically Appended Next Post: Where did those souls go, and how do you know eldrad did not plan this to happen ?
Robin5t wrote: So the big hope and salvation of the Craftworld Eldar that they've been building up for years now just got taken out back and shot in the head for the sake of making Generic Edgy Space Marine Character #1765 and the Brand New Productmarines look more hardcore and cool.
Please, let's discuss this absolute drivel.
Tell me more
Automatically Appended Next Post: Where did those souls go, and how do you know eldrad did not plan this to happen ?
Basically, Eldrad started a ritual to summon Ynnead early. The ritual goes wrong because he apparently failed to account for one particular timeline out of tens of thousands where the Deathwatch were able to interfere. This then happens, the ritual is ruined, Ynnead's birth goes totally wrong and the god is shattered into countless, useless little fragments, every infinity circuit of every craftworld (as Eldrad was able to tap into them for his ritual) was wiped clean of souls and the Craftworld Eldar's endgame is now gone.
Robin5t wrote: So the big hope and salvation of the Craftworld Eldar that they've been building up for years now just got taken out back and shot in the head for the sake of making Generic Edgy Space Marine Character #1765 and the Brand New Productmarines look more hardcore and cool.
Please, let's discuss this absolute drivel.
Tell me more
Automatically Appended Next Post: Where did those souls go, and how do you know eldrad did not plan this to happen ?
Basically, Eldrad started a ritual to summon Ynnead early. The ritual goes wrong because he apparently failed to account for one particular timeline out of tens of thousands where the Deathwatch were able to interfere. This then happens, the ritual is ruined, Ynnead's birth goes totally wrong and the god is shattered into countless, useless little fragments, every infinity circuit of every craftworld (as Eldrad was able to tap into them for his ritual) was wiped clean of souls and the Craftworld Eldar's endgame is now gone.
oldzoggy wrote: So where did those souls go, and what happened to those "useless" fragments ?
The souls were pulled together into Ynnead. Ynnead was then scattered into tiny fragments when the Deathwatch interrupted the ritual, with only one small glowing bit staying coherent enough to get launched off into the cosmos instead of dissipating entirely. The only way Ynnead wakes up now is as a bare fragment of what it could have been, and certainly not a being capable of killing a chaos god, so the whole plan is now done for.
And the souls are gone. When I say they're gone, I mean they're gone, I don't mean they 'went somewhere', I mean that they no longer exist in any useful form.
First off, I'd be wary of accepting any else's interpretation of that since it seems there are some people out there that are unbalanced enough in their RL hatred of the Eldar that they think GW is seriously going to eliminate and trash their best selling Xenos product line, so they are busy putting the most anti-Eldar spin on it.
I see no reference to Infinity Circuits going dark. There is the bit about the constellation losing cohesion but there is also that bit about the point of light shooting off. I see crystal seer statues shattering but nothing about the souls of the Eldar in all the infinity circuits of all the craftworlds being lost. I got the impression the statues were a means to access and tap the power of all those distant souls, not the souls themselves.
What do I think this means?
From a RL perspective, I do not see GW shooting themselves and eliminating the Eldar as a faction, given the recent release of the Jes Goodwin Eldar sketchbook (which is quite nice btw), and the knowledge the Eldar have always historically been one of their best performing non-Imperial factions in terms of sales. Basically given how GW choked on advancing the timeline, I do wonder whether they are trying to preserve the status quo even though they may reshuffle chairs and tweak the details. So Ynnead waking up and killing Slaanesh was unlikely to happen since it would eliminate a big chunk of Chaos as a faction. The point of light shooting off suggests Ynnead isn't dead either though and they are hinting at something else. Probably in the rumored upcoming timeline advance, that point of light will come back into play. It could be that Ynnead is awakened after all, but not in the form or at the "destroy all of Slaanesh" power level the Eldar hoped.
I am willing to think that GW is trying to do a narrative thing about prophecy: Eldrad in trying to hasten the wakening of Ynnead fulfills the prophecy, albeit not in the way he thought it would be fulfilled.
I'm taking away from this that the circuits work fine, there's still a chance at Ynnead and Artemis is unbelievably stupid. To the point where I can't understand why he's a Captain as he is just like Angron based on that....
This sounds like a proper beginning of a campaign to me.
Gw is not likely to give a happy ending in part 1 of the adventure. Eldrad likes to plot ahead on multiple roads, and isn't above sacrificing and betraying others to reach his goal. So could we really have expected the ritual to turn out any better on the short term ?
First off, I'd be wary of accepting any else's interpretation of that since it seems there are some people out there that are unbalanced enough in their RL hatred of the Eldar that they think GW is seriously going to eliminate and trash their best selling Xenos product line, so they are busy putting the most anti-Eldar spin on it.
I see no reference to Infinity Circuits going dark. There is the bit about the constellation losing cohesion but there is also that bit about the point of light shooting off. I see crystal seer statues shattering but nothing about the souls of the Eldar in all the infinity circuits of all the craftworlds being lost. I got the impression the statues were a means to access and tap the power of all those distant souls, not the souls themselves.
What do I think this means?
From a RL perspective, I do not see GW shooting themselves and eliminating the Eldar as a faction, given the recent release of the Jes Goodwin Eldar sketchbook (which is quite nice btw), and the knowledge the Eldar have always historically been one of their best performing non-Imperial factions in terms of sales. Basically given how GW choked on advancing the timeline, I do wonder whether they are trying to preserve the status quo even though they may reshuffle chairs and tweak the details. So Ynnead waking up and killing Slaanesh was unlikely to happen since it would eliminate a big chunk of Chaos as a faction. The point of light shooting off suggests Ynnead isn't dead either though and they are hinting at something else. Probably in the rumored upcoming timeline advance, that point of light will come back into play. It could be that Ynnead is awakened after all, but not in the form or at the "destroy all of Slaanesh" power level the Eldar hoped.
I am willing to think that GW is trying to do a narrative thing about prophecy: Eldrad in trying to hasten the wakening of Ynnead fulfills the prophecy, albeit not in the way he thought it would be fulfilled.
Reading that bit of text the end it's ambiguous, the planet explodes, all deathwatch marines are death now and something happens.
Best case scenario Ynnead it's half awake and can be manifested tru the spirit circuits when eldar go to war in a similar way to khaine Avatar's just to justify all the different *models* when they pull it for sale from under the hat.
pm713 wrote: Artemis is unbelievably stupid. To the point where I can't understand why he's a Captain as he is just like Angron based on that....
No he isnt. Not trusting Alien sorcerers and especially not letting them bring a power into existence is a good thing to do when your job is to kill the alien.
oldzoggy wrote: This sounds like a proper beginning of a campaign to me.
Gw is not likely to give a happy ending in part 1 of the adventure. Eldrad likes to plot ahead on multiple roads, and isn't above sacrificing and betraying others to reach his goal. So could we really have expected the ritual to turn out any better on the short term ?
Considering the rumored timeline advance and new edition is somewhere in 2017, I expect there will be more kind of dramatic hyped buildup in the months to come.
In the book Valedor and the Iyanden supplement, there was quite a bit about a possible positive future or resurgence of the Eldar, which was surprising given the general doom and gloom grimdark focus in recent years. Given the RL considerations of continuing the 40K product line, obviously the Eldar cannot curbstomp everyone in the galaxy. Thematically the sense I get from AoS is "brightdark", in that there are pinpoints of brightness in the general grimdark. I wonder whether GW is sending 40K down that same thematic path, as opposed to everything being grimdark all the time everywhere.
Ynnead is alive just not an all powerful God so expect an avatar of ynnead at some point with probably some long story about collecting the fragments in the cosmos. (It Defintely didn't say the souls dissapated.
oldzoggy wrote: This sounds like a proper beginning of a campaign to me.
Gw is not likely to give a happy ending in part 1 of the adventure. Eldrad likes to plot ahead on multiple roads, and isn't above sacrificing and betraying others to reach his goal. So could we really have expected the ritual to turn out any better on the short term ?
Considering the rumored timeline advance and new edition is somewhere in 2017, I expect there will be more kind of dramatic hyped buildup in the months to come.
In the book Valedor and the Iyanden supplement, there was quite a bit about a possible positive future or resurgence of the Eldar, which was surprising given the general doom and gloom grimdark focus in recent years. Given the RL considerations of continuing the 40K product line, obviously the Eldar cannot curbstomp everyone in the galaxy. Thematically the sense I get from AoS is "brightdark", in that there are pinpoints of brightness in the general grimdark. I wonder whether GW is sending 40K down that same thematic path, as opposed to everything being grimdark all the time everywhere.
Brightdark might suit some players better. A large portion of the players don't like to play the bad guy in a gloomy apocalyptic setting. Enabling them to play the good guys with promising goals might just be one of the things gw needs.
I kind of expected some stupid gak, but this... this just blows. But that is just my pessimism.
My significant other (blood angels player) has theorized that Ynnead is actually awake now, and that because of this Rhana Dandra will likey not kill off all the Eldar since Ynnead will be able to consciously effect events and gather power during the battle.
I mean, Eldrad fethed up... big time. He should have just taken the hit and finished the ceremony. But, Ynnead may not need as many dead to gather power now that it is awake... unless GW continues this garbage storyline since Artemis did not die. Then we're going to get a race to find the new god, with Artemis and his suck squad probably killing it off in the end...
Edit: Jeez, did not expect to have to refresh that many times before posting. Did not mean to kind of rehash so much of what everyone else is saying
I think the current GW is shying away from killing off any named characters that have (current) models. Aun'va was killed off but that was because his model was being phased out.
pm713 wrote: Artemis is unbelievably stupid. To the point where I can't understand why he's a Captain as he is just like Angron based on that....
No he isnt. Not trusting Alien sorcerers and especially not letting them bring a power into existence is a good thing to do when your job is to kill the alien.
I'd agree if he wasn't a member of the Deathwatch. He knows they were going to hurt Slaanesh, he knew the Harlequin wasn't lying and he knows that Harlequins are primarily fighting Chaos. He traded a major blow against the biggest enemy the Imperium has to harm a race that realistically aren't anywhere near as much of a threat as Chaos. His job is protecting the Imperium and he is very bad at it.
FWIW Gav Thorpe's website has an update with a tidbit that his Jain Zarr novel is coming next year. If GW are still approving new Eldar novels, they are not going to eliminate the Eldar (or other Xenos factions).
pm713 wrote: He knows they were going to hurt Slaanesh, he knew the Harlequin wasn't lying
He knew no such things. He knew that the Eldar had launched a massive invasion of an important Imperial World and that they were doing something dodgy on the moon of that world.
He has no reason to believe what the Eldar tell him, especially when he has no time to waste.
pm713 wrote: He knows they were going to hurt Slaanesh, he knew the Harlequin wasn't lying
He knew no such things. He knew that the Eldar had launched a massive invasion of an important Imperial World and that they were doing something dodgy on the moon of that world.
He has no reason to believe what the Eldar tell him, especially when he has no time to waste.
He was told right before he shot the Harlequin in the face. On top of that he's a member of the Deathwatch so he should know a basic thing like colourful Eldar + Mask = Harlequin. Harlequin = Chaos enemy. Again the paragraph states that he didn't think the Harlequin was lying. Artemis suffers from the common problem of plot induced stupidity.
Harlequins who fight in the name of Eldrad aren't your friendly cuddly trustworthy up to no harm xenos species. A hand full of them tried to assassinate the emperor and murdered their way trough the custodians on the palace of terra while claiming to come in peace.
Here is a actual spoiler of the beast arises
Spoiler:
On the other side was a hall bigger than all but the widest craftworld domes. On the far side were the great gates to the Sanctum Imperialis, wherein languished the morbid Emperor of Mankind. Twin Titans guarded it, poorly fashioned to resemble hounds, and festooned with vulgar attempts at art. They started towards her clumsily, jogging across the court and opening fire. Bursts of shattered metal and rock jumped skyward. She somersaulted between the impacts as the Warhounds tracked her. The noise of their discharge obliterated all senses, and Lhaerial danced through the thunder. The war machines ceased firing as she sought shelter among the ranks of the enemy.
They were so close to their goal. Lhaerial could feel the lessening of the Palace’s psychic defences. They were nearing the centre of the wards. She called out with her mind to the Lord of Man. There came no reply, but lines of Adeptus Custodes running at them. The great gates were far away.
For a moment her heart faltered. She could not succeed. But she must try.
Bho was surrounded, attacking his foe with the great energy scythe affixed to the end of his gun. He slew four of theirs before he fell, shot from so many angles even his reflexes could not save him. As in life, he died silently. Lhaerial fought on, slaughtering her way through the humans as their war machines neared and slowed, stalking the edge of the melee
The harlequin was later captured and brought to in the Inquisitorial palace for further questioning. Any deathwatch should know that these vile and lying clowns should not be trusted.
He was told right before he shot the Harlequin in the face. On top of that he's a member of the Deathwatch so he should know a basic thing like colourful Eldar + Mask = Harlequin. Harlequin = Chaos enemy. Again the paragraph states that he didn't think the Harlequin was lying. Artemis suffers from the common problem of plot induced stupidity.
Yes, the Harlequin told him, pretty vaguely, what was going on. But then he has no reason to trust what an Eldar says.
And while he might know that Harlequins are enemies of Chaos, that doesn't mean they are friends of the Imperium.
It said he didn't sense duplicity from the Harlequin, but that doesn't mean much because he still had no actual reason to trust him.
pm713 wrote: Artemis is unbelievably stupid. To the point where I can't understand why he's a Captain as he is just like Angron based on that....
No he isnt. Not trusting Alien sorcerers and especially not letting them bring a power into existence is a good thing to do when your job is to kill the alien.
I'd agree if he wasn't a member of the Deathwatch. He knows they were going to hurt Slaanesh, he knew the Harlequin wasn't lying and he knows that Harlequins are primarily fighting Chaos. He traded a major blow against the biggest enemy the Imperium has to harm a race that realistically aren't anywhere near as much of a threat as Chaos. His job is protecting the Imperium and he is very bad at it.
His job is to protect the Imperium from xenos.
Letting a race of xenos who would sacrifice a billion human lives to save 1 of their own summon a god does not seem like it's in the best interests of humanity.
Even if Slaanesh did get destroyed by Ynnead, the Imperium still has 4 enemy gods...
oldzoggy wrote: Harlequins who fight in the name of Eldrad aren't your friendly cuddly trustworthy up to no harm xenos species. A hand full of them tried to assassinate the emperor and murdered their way trough the custodians on the palace of terra while claiming to come in peace.
Here is a actual spoiler of the beast arises
Spoiler:
On the other side was a hall bigger than all but the widest craftworld domes. On the far side were the great gates to the Sanctum Imperialis, wherein languished the morbid Emperor of Mankind. Twin Titans guarded it, poorly fashioned to resemble hounds, and festooned with vulgar attempts at art. They started towards her clumsily, jogging across the court and opening fire. Bursts of shattered metal and rock jumped skyward. She somersaulted between the impacts as the Warhounds tracked her. The noise of their discharge obliterated all senses, and Lhaerial danced through the thunder. The war machines ceased firing as she sought shelter among the ranks of the enemy.
They were so close to their goal. Lhaerial could feel the lessening of the Palace’s psychic defences. They were nearing the centre of the wards. She called out with her mind to the Lord of Man. There came no reply, but lines of Adeptus Custodes running at them. The great gates were far away.
For a moment her heart faltered. She could not succeed. But she must try.
Bho was surrounded, attacking his foe with the great energy scythe affixed to the end of his gun. He slew four of theirs before he fell, shot from so many angles even his reflexes could not save him. As in life, he died silently. Lhaerial fought on, slaughtering her way through the humans as their war machines neared and slowed, stalking the edge of the melee
The harlequin was later captured and brought to in the Inquisitorial palace for further questioning.
Any deathwatch should know that these vile and lying clowns should not be trusted.
I shouldn't have to say that something from several thousand years ago is probably unrelated to the current situation. Or do the SOB serve heretical leaders still?
pm713 wrote: Artemis is unbelievably stupid. To the point where I can't understand why he's a Captain as he is just like Angron based on that....
No he isnt. Not trusting Alien sorcerers and especially not letting them bring a power into existence is a good thing to do when your job is to kill the alien.
I'd agree if he wasn't a member of the Deathwatch. He knows they were going to hurt Slaanesh, he knew the Harlequin wasn't lying and he knows that Harlequins are primarily fighting Chaos. He traded a major blow against the biggest enemy the Imperium has to harm a race that realistically aren't anywhere near as much of a threat as Chaos. His job is protecting the Imperium and he is very bad at it.
His job is to protect the Imperium from xenos.
Letting a race of xenos who would sacrifice a billion human lives to save 1 of their own summon a god does not seem like it's in the best interests of humanity.
Even if Slaanesh did get destroyed by Ynnead, the Imperium still has 4 enemy gods...
Again we come to a choice. A. Wipe out roughly a quarter of the greatest enemy.
B. Take out a small group and god of a race that doesn't actively seek to wipe out humanity and directly aid Chaos.
In other words: A is the one where you potentially save Humanity. B. is where you help your greatest enemy. Artemis chose B like an idiot.
He's a Space Marine. Even while specialising against a certain type of threat his job is defending the Imperium. He failed massively.
So the big hope and salvation of the Craftworld Eldar that they've been building up for years now just got taken out back and shot in the head for the sake of making Generic Edgy Space Marine Character #1765 and the Brand New Productmarines look more hardcore and cool.
Please, let's discuss this absolute drivel.
English please?
Do you speak it or can you make your point salient for those that havent read DM?
You can't call the church heretics and expect me to take you seriously.
Who is heretical depends on who is in power. To the Temple of the Saviour Emperor, the Confederation of Light were heretics. The history of the Imperium is littered with self styled prophets and failed religious rebellions. What makes the Confederation different is they won, so they got to write the history.
The "Temple Tendency" (i.e. those remnants of the Temple that survived the Age of Apostacy) view the Ecclesiarchy as heretics still and the Imperium as having been led astray for the last few thousand years. If the Temple ever got back into power, then yes the SoB would have been serving heretics.
oldzoggy wrote: This sounds like a proper beginning of a campaign to me.
Gw is not likely to give a happy ending in part 1 of the adventure. Eldrad likes to plot ahead on multiple roads, and isn't above sacrificing and betraying others to reach his goal. So could we really have expected the ritual to turn out any better on the short term ?
Considering the rumored timeline advance and new edition is somewhere in 2017, I expect there will be more kind of dramatic hyped buildup in the months to come.
In the book Valedor and the Iyanden supplement, there was quite a bit about a possible positive future or resurgence of the Eldar, which was surprising given the general doom and gloom grimdark focus in recent years. Given the RL considerations of continuing the 40K product line, obviously the Eldar cannot curbstomp everyone in the galaxy. Thematically the sense I get from AoS is "brightdark", in that there are pinpoints of brightness in the general grimdark. I wonder whether GW is sending 40K down that same thematic path, as opposed to everything being grimdark all the time everywhere.
Brightdark might suit some players better. A large portion of the players don't like to play the bad guy in a gloomy apocalyptic setting. Enabling them to play the good guys with promising goals might just be one of the things gw needs.
As long as they're a big enough majority to sustain the company as they recruit new customers when the people who actually like 40K slow down or stop their purchases.
I always find it odd that there are so many people who evidently consider the fluff for games important, but are seemingly playing a game with fluff they don't like. And don't give me any nonsense, if you want to change the core thematic and tonal elements of a setting, you didn't really like it that much at all.
Again we come to a choice. A. Wipe out roughly a quarter of the greatest enemy.
B. Take out a small group and god of a race that doesn't actively seek to wipe out humanity and directly aid Chaos.
In other words: A is the one where you potentially save Humanity. B. is where you help your greatest enemy. Artemis chose B like an idiot.
He's a Space Marine. Even while specialising against a certain type of threat his job is defending the Imperium. He failed massively.
The Eldar gave Artemis two choices.
A. Don't shoot me good sir, I promise that what we're doing will hurt Chaos! You can trust me!
B. Shoot me
That's really no option at all, especially given that Eldar have a tendency to decieve.
So obviously Artemis chose B.
I always find it odd that there are so many people who evidently consider the fluff for games important, but are seemingly playing a game with fluff they don't like. And don't give me any nonsense, if you want to change the core thematic and tonal elements of a setting, you didn't really like it that much at all.
I would argue it hasn't been really grimdark for awhile now since it seems the Imperium/Marines always seem to come out on top (or at least stabilize the situation), despite maybe a few token defeats in the timeline that don't seem to change much of anything. The Marines in the recent fluff have come off as the shiny paladin knights (i.e. Stormcast). The BL stuff has certainly played into this concept with making Marines be more human like stereotypical movie square jawed action heroes. Although GW recites off "The Imperium is falling" every so often, it hardly seems that way when the Marines keep saving the day. I mean, just look at the level of wailing, denial, and frothing at the mouth by Imperial fanatic players that occurred with the old Eye of Terror worldwide campaign when the Imperium actually lost.
Suppose you opened an ancient tome about the harlequins as an Xenos Inquisitor and you stumbled upon the following reference: "An individual claiming to work for the eldar sorcerer Eldrad, somehow managed to open a web way portal to terra and nearly succeeded into reaching the golden throne. Only with the combined power of the custodians, warhound titans and inquisitorial agents could she be stopped, but not before murdering, any human resistance outside the palace walls and tens of custodians."
Would this be worth remembering and or replicating into later tomes ?And would this something worth mentioning when you trained your personal xenos extermination team.
Automatically Appended Next Post: An other thing to notice is that that book isn't an obscure book published in the 1980's it is published this may and thus only a few months old. Making it quite relevant.
Again we come to a choice. A. Wipe out roughly a quarter of the greatest enemy.
B. Take out a small group and god of a race that doesn't actively seek to wipe out humanity and directly aid Chaos.
In other words: A is the one where you potentially save Humanity. B. is where you help your greatest enemy. Artemis chose B like an idiot.
He's a Space Marine. Even while specialising against a certain type of threat his job is defending the Imperium. He failed massively.
The Eldar gave Artemis two choices.
A. Don't shoot me good sir, I promise that what we're doing will hurt Chaos! You can trust me!
B. Shoot me
That's really no option at all, especially given that Eldar have a tendency to decieve.
So obviously Artemis chose B.
The Eldar who almost exclusively fights Chaos and was actually being believed.
You're right there is a clear choice and that's the choice where you cripple Chaos.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
oldzoggy wrote: Suppose you opened an ancient tome about the harlequins as an Xenos Inquisitor and you stumbled upon the following reference: "An individual claiming to work for the eldar sorcerer Eldrad, somehow managed to open a web way portal to terra and nearly succeeded into reaching the golden throne. Only with the combined power of the custodians, warhound titans and inquisitorial agents could she be stopped, but not before murdering, any human resistance outside the palace walls and tens of custodians."
Would this be worth remembering and or replicating into later tomes ?And would this something worth mentioning when you trained your personal xenos extermination team.
Automatically Appended Next Post: An other thing to notice is that that book isn't an obscure book published in the 1980's it is published this may and thus only a few months old.
Making it quite relevant.
Would this be mentioned in the same sentence as the many times Eldrad fights Chaos and destroys Chaos artifacts? Or are we cherry picking things?
Another thing to note is that the date the book was written is irrelevant. The book still deals with events 8'000 years ago in universe.
pm713 wrote: Artemis is unbelievably stupid. To the point where I can't understand why he's a Captain as he is just like Angron based on that....
No he isnt. Not trusting Alien sorcerers and especially not letting them bring a power into existence is a good thing to do when your job is to kill the alien.
I'd agree if he wasn't a member of the Deathwatch. He knows they were going to hurt Slaanesh, he knew the Harlequin wasn't lying and he knows that Harlequins are primarily fighting Chaos. He traded a major blow against the biggest enemy the Imperium has to harm a race that realistically aren't anywhere near as much of a threat as Chaos. His job is protecting the Imperium and he is very bad at it.
His job is to protect the Imperium from xenos.
Letting a race of xenos who would sacrifice a billion human lives to save 1 of their own summon a god does not seem like it's in the best interests of humanity.
Even if Slaanesh did get destroyed by Ynnead, the Imperium still has 4 enemy gods...
Again we come to a choice. A. Wipe out roughly a quarter of the greatest enemy.
B. Take out a small group and god of a race that doesn't actively seek to wipe out humanity and directly aid Chaos.
In other words: A is the one where you potentially save Humanity. B. is where you help your greatest enemy. Artemis chose B like an idiot.
He's a Space Marine. Even while specialising against a certain type of threat his job is defending the Imperium. He failed massively.
I disagree with your options there.
I see it more like
A. Let the scheming aliens do *something* which *supposedly* will do damage to Chaos, with no evidence that it will even be an act against Chaos or that it will work in the slightest.
B. Don't let the scheming aliens do the thing which may, in fact, be a direct act against humanity.
From the Imperium's perspective, there's not many upsides for Ynnead awakening. If it works, one god is defeated and a new one takes its place. That's just a trade. The Imperium gains NOTHING. What if it fails, but Ynnead isn't destroyed? Now there are FIVE gods to deal with! That's a LOSS for the Imperium.
The most beneficial outcomes for the Imperium are:
1) Ynnead is stopped from awakening. Status quo remains.
2) Ynnead is awakened, but destroyed. Status quo remains.
edit: 3) Ynnead is awakened, but is destroyed as it destroys Slaanesh. This outcome is worth it, I guess, but I wouldn't bank on it if I were the Imperium...
Artemis did his job and he did it well enough. The fact that Ynnead may yet remain as shards is regrettable, but Artemis did his best for the Imperium.
I would argue it hasn't been really grimdark for awhile now since it seems the Imperium/Marines always seem to come out on top (or at least stabilize the situation), despite maybe a few token defeats in the timeline that don't seem to change much of anything. .
You can have a agrimdark setting with heroes that always win. ; ) Allmost all RPG's and Movies are build like this. Mad Max never loses, batman never dies and the Governor didn't really have a chance in the walking dead. Space marines can't really lose until they decide to shoot down the game. GW needs them just as the Batman movie imperium need Batman. The best thing we can get and expect is a "grownup" version of the never ending story
The Eldar who almost exclusively fights Chaos and was actually being believed.
You're right there is a clear choice and that's the choice where you cripple Chaos.
Almost is not good enough to be perfectly honest.
The Eldar gave zero reasons for Artemis to trust him and plenty of reason not to trust him in that Eldar were planetside and slaughtering humans.
Would this be mentioned in the same sentence as the many times Eldrad fights Chaos and destroys Chaos artifacts? Or are we cherry picking things?
How many times is this actually witnessed by the Inquisiton, and does destroying some chaos actually counterbalance nearly succeeding in assassinating the emperor for those who are tasked with keeping the empire safe from xenos?
Another thing to note is that the date the book was written is irrelevant. The book still deals with events 8'000 years ago in universe.
It does quite a lot outside the game world. This book is fresh in the memory of many players. you might even say that the plot line almost directly continues.
I would argue it hasn't been really grimdark for awhile now since it seems the Imperium/Marines always seem to come out on top (or at least stabilize the situation), despite maybe a few token defeats in the timeline that don't seem to change much of anything. .
You can have a agrimdark setting with heroes that always win. ; )
Allmost all RPG's and Movies are build like this. Mad Max never loses, batman never dies and the Governor didn't really have a chance in the walking dead.
Space marines can't really lose until they decide to shoot down the game. GW needs them just as the Batman movie imperium need Batman.
The best thing we can get and expect is a "grownup" version of the never ending story
I would disagree. There are plenty of works where it ends on a dark note, or where the hero wins but has had to make a real sacrifice to do so. Sure often Hollywood blockbusters play to the simple story dynamic, but there are more things out there than just Hollywood. When was the last time we saw Marines losing and having to say cope psychologically and/or materially with losing? Or something involving real sacrifice (i.e. that is not made good or cancelled out in the future)? Losing or sacrificing does not necessarily mean death btw.
That is why even superheroes have moved to becoming less 2-D cardboard cutouts over the years and decades. It is boring when there is no suspense, and when you know Superman will always win the day, and the bad guy goes off twirling his moustache swearing vengeance.
pm713 wrote: Artemis is unbelievably stupid. To the point where I can't understand why he's a Captain as he is just like Angron based on that....
No he isnt. Not trusting Alien sorcerers and especially not letting them bring a power into existence is a good thing to do when your job is to kill the alien.
I'd agree if he wasn't a member of the Deathwatch. He knows they were going to hurt Slaanesh, he knew the Harlequin wasn't lying and he knows that Harlequins are primarily fighting Chaos. He traded a major blow against the biggest enemy the Imperium has to harm a race that realistically aren't anywhere near as much of a threat as Chaos. His job is protecting the Imperium and he is very bad at it.
His job is protecting the Imperium from aliens. If the Eldar successfully destroyed Slaanesh, that power gap would be filled by the Eldar themselves as their species would see a resurgence. The Inquisition, specifically the Ordo Xenos, may see it as more advantageous to basically maintain the status quo.
All of the inhabitants of the Infinity circuits "lent a measure of their sentience" to the ritual. So they may be weakened, but are not gone.
I'm on the side of Artemis on this one. The last time a god was brought into existence through the work of the Eldar, it was Slaanesh, and created the Eye of Terror. What would the birth of even a benevolent god do to the fabric of space and the warp?
This is...way more disappointing then I feared. I had low expectations but this is incredibly bad.
I think I'll have to just focus on playing and painting, if even all the Eldar's best focusing on a super-desperate plan can be destroyed by a Death Watch Captain we barely know anything about I have no more feeling of suspense.
EDIT: This is exactly what I meant when I said a story becomes boring when I can 8 times out of 10 successfully guess which faction is going to win before I even read the book.
Anemone wrote: This is...way more disappointing then I feared. I had low expectations but this is incredibly bad.
I think I'll have to just focus on playing and painting, if even all the Eldar's best focusing on a super-desperate plan can be destroyed by a Death Watch Captain we barely know anything about I have no more feeling of suspense.
EDIT: This is exactly what I meant when I said a story becomes boring when I can 8 times out of 10 successfully guess which faction is going to win before I even read the book.
I feel that this might be a bit over the top given that we have little to no idea what the implications of this will be yet. Heck, it doesn't even say that all the souls are "gone", just that every Eldar that had lived since the Fall gave "something".
I don't get the complaints, Eldar screw over humanity yearly, lie about their motives, and try to put their own kind over others. I can't believe the Imperium doesn't trust them!
Why should they feel bad? Artemis did his job. The Imperium has proven time and time again, they WILL work with xenos if they approach them on equal footing. They've done it with Eldar, Tau, other minor xenos. Eldrad literally ATTACKED AN IMPERIUM PLANET, why didn't he approach the Imperium with the offer to kill She Who Thirsts? Because he knew it would screw the Imperium over in some fashion.
Eldrad literally gambled it all on a prophecy and lost, boohoo. It isn't like they have a good track record with gods anyway...
Anemone wrote: This is...way more disappointing then I feared. I had low expectations but this is incredibly bad.
I think I'll have to just focus on playing and painting, if even all the Eldar's best focusing on a super-desperate plan can be destroyed by a Death Watch Captain we barely know anything about I have no more feeling of suspense.
EDIT: This is exactly what I meant when I said a story becomes boring when I can 8 times out of 10 successfully guess which faction is going to win before I even read the book.
I feel that this might be a bit over the top given that we have little to no idea what the implications of this will be yet. Heck, it doesn't even say that all the souls are "gone", just that every Eldar that had lived since the Fall gave "something".
Pardon my overreaction but I doubt many players would be happy if Logan Grimnar, Dante or Ghazghkull engaged in desperate gambles of impossible odds fighting a virtual non-character and...just failed completely.
We'll see what happens, I doubt it will be good for the Craftworld Eldar since I cannot remember the last time there was something majorly good fort hem in the fluff, but I stand by what I've said; A war story is boring to me if I can guess the victor with almost absolute certainty every time. And its almost always the same person. That makes the fluff boring and uninteresting to me.
My problem isn't why Captain Thingy did what he did, it's that he was able to to it at all in the first place.
They've built up Ynnead as this big, positive thing for the Eldar for over a decade now and suddenly it fizzles out to nothing to sell some more Space Marine models?
What was the point of that decade of build-up, exactly?
Also - the title change? Really? Who was immature enough to do that?
They are making things even grimmer and darker, so why are you surprised?
Just because Captain Artemis believed him doesn't mean that he shouldn't pull the trigger. I'm sure the Eldar in his past have been very convincing as well, as I am sure they are when they convince Inquisitors and planetary governors to do things that end up hurting the Imperium for the Eldar's gain.
Besides, you didn't really think Ynnead was going to be born and Slaanesh be screwed in this campaign anyways? Now we can have multiple campaigns of the Eldar hunting the fragments of Ynnead.
Wow... Just wow. I wake and jump on Dakka to catch up on the Background, Fanfiction, and General discussion forums; chip away at huge pm's and find this... I'm not even sure what to say.
A lot of us can say they've spent quite their fair amount on Warhammer Fantasy/40K products, I myself set aside a hundred bucks every month solely to buy codexes and literature. I don't collect miniatures but I'm a die hard fan for the fluff and rich history... Up until now. It's been bothering me lately that the Imperium subsequently wins everything. From Kaldor Draigo to the Tyranids codex stating the smack down they receive.... IN THEIR OWN CODEX! On the Warhammer Lore Reddit they go into further detail about the fluff involved. https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/4xju2x/the_storyline_of_death_masque_massive_spoilers/ Reading that, how poorly the Harlequins were protrayed, Eldar loosing this beautiful prophecy simply to make Space Marines look cool... I'll probably never buy a GamesWorkshop product ever again. If this is truly what's meant to be, the Imperium foiling every prophecy, dismantling any other factions attempts at building then there's really no point. Whether written beautifully or not that is essentially the outcome we'll be facing time and time again. Even if the shards are salvageable all purpose is lost. Without any chance of resurgence for the Eldar, it's over... Simple as that.
Whoever demands the plot be pushed forward, unless you're blowing the Marine beside you you'll sorely be disappointed. The entire universe has become a business ploy to sell marines, and maybe the odd guardsmen. I'm not going to put myself through the disappointment in the coming years.
For the pain Eldar players feel currently, and the pain to come for other faction players outside the Imperium; you have my sincerest sympathies.
The issue here isn't about the game being rigged from the start, it's about the Space Marines continually foiling any and everything. I had a feeling it would ultimately fail but not like this, where a gallant band of Space Marines murders, skull f's an entire troupe of Harlequins, and ultimately saves the day. It's the direction in which the entirety of the universe is going... Space Marines murder fething everything out of existence to sell more. I love Necron's, adore the Harlequins, hope that one day Tyranid's will contact other races with telepathic hate messages, and so on and so forth... But none of that will ever be seen.
Crazyterran wrote: They are making things even grimmer and darker, so why are you surprised?
Just because Captain Artemis believed him doesn't mean that he shouldn't pull the trigger. I'm sure the Eldar in his past have been very convincing as well, as I am sure they are when they convince Inquisitors and planetary governors to do things that end up hurting the Imperium for the Eldar's gain.
Besides, you didn't really think Ynnead was going to be born and Slaanesh be screwed in this campaign anyways? Now we can have multiple campaigns of the Eldar hunting the fragments of Ynnead.
I didn't think they would actually touch on Ynnead until the point when it was actually ready to be born and do its job. It was the Eldar's endgame for a reason. And now, the Eldar, or at least the Craftworld Eldar's role in whatever end times we may see has gone from 'die in battle to summon death god, kill Slaanesh and be reborn' to 'die uselessly' in the space of one minor campaign box designed to sell another faction.
I'm so disappointed. They made it out in the advertisement that this event would be important, that it mattered to the greater chronology of the setting. And then Eldrad pisses it away in terrible writing. I don't buy that the most skilled seer of a craftworld of the most skilled seers, vaunted as one of the most powerful psykers in the galaxy, couldn't foresee the interruption and have adaquate counter measures. He could've shot the Corvus down. He could've waited until the Death Watch arrived, personally dealt with them (remember Eldrad beat Abbadon in close combat) then started the ritual due to the ritual not having a deadline.
Instead they throw away the majority of the Craftworlders end game because supposedly the most machiavellian character in the setting is dubbed incompetent enough to lose to a posse of 13 Marines.
Question: Do we know if Eldrad's plan was also the Laughing God's plan? The book references the Laughing God's playbook in the time-line but I'm not sure. I'll be hella pissed if hs end game is up in smoke as well.
ALEXisAWESOME wrote: I'm so disappointed. They made it out in the advertisement that this event would be important, that it mattered to the greater chronology of the setting. And then Eldrad pisses it away in terrible writing. I don't buy that the most skilled seer of a craftworld of the most skilled seers, vaunted as one of the most powerful psykers in the galaxy, couldn't foresee the interruption and have adaquate counter measures. He could've shot the Corvus down. He could've waited until the Death Watch arrived, personally dealt with them (remember Eldrad beat Abbadon in close combat) then started the ritual due to the ritual not having a deadline.
Instead they throw away the majority of the Craftworlders end game because supposedly the most machiavellian character in the setting is dubbed incompetent enough to lose to a posse of 13 Marines.
Question: Do we know if Eldrad's plan was also the Laughing God's plan? The book references the Laughing God's playbook in the time-line but I'm not sure. I'll be hella pissed if hs end game is up in smoke as well.
Apparently, the Harlequins following Eldrad were 'renegades'. The main faction of Harlequins were busy beating off a big attack by Ahriman on the Black Library, but these guys decided to go follow Eldrad in his stupid plan, instead.
Probably a good thing. If they got mowed down like mooks by the Deathwatch, those morons probably wouldn't have added anything to the defence of the Library anyway.
That doesn't mean it couldn't have been written better or less one sided. Harlequins are arguably the most elite soldiers of a multi-million year old race of psychic-gifted geniuses with technology only rivaled by the necrons, they should not have been written like fodder. Imagine if there was a story about Death Leaper and let's say 6 lictors that attacked 100 grey knights led by Draigo who was in the midst of activating some ancient McGuffin device that would halt Abaddon's black crusade. Only for the Lictors and Death Leaper to slice through the Grey Knight's like a hot knife through butter. Finally Death Leaper approaches Draigo who is about to complete the McGuffin device's activation. Sensing his doom, Draigo looks Death Leaper in the eye and says "Diplomatic immunity..." Only for Death Leaper to shoot him in the head and say "...has just been revoked." How would that make you feel?
Robin5t wrote:So the big hope and salvation of the Craftworld Eldar that they've been building up for years now just got taken out back and shot in the head for the sake of making Generic Edgy Space Marine Character #1765 and the Brand New Productmarines look more hardcore and cool.
Please, let's discuss this absolute drivel.
"Muh favourite faction got a fluff setback oh nooooo, never mind them being the best codex in the game and just as plot armoured as space marines, so I'm going to rage-post on an internet forum"
Robin5t wrote: So the big hope and salvation of the Craftworld Eldar that they've been building up for years now just got taken out back and shot in the head for the sake of making Generic Edgy Space Marine Character #1765 and the Brand New Productmarines look more hardcore and cool.
Please, let's discuss this absolute drivel.
Tell me more
Automatically Appended Next Post: Where did those souls go, and how do you know eldrad did not plan this to happen ?
Basically, Eldrad started a ritual to summon Ynnead early. The ritual goes wrong because he apparently failed to account for one particular timeline out of tens of thousands where the Deathwatch were able to interfere. This then happens, the ritual is ruined, Ynnead's birth goes totally wrong and the god is shattered into countless, useless little fragments, every infinity circuit of every craftworld (as Eldrad was able to tap into them for his ritual) was wiped clean of souls and the Craftworld Eldar's endgame is now gone.
Did you really think they were going to kill Slaanesh and get rid of a 4th of the daemon models? You should know better. That one little ball of light just opened more doors for the eldar and GW than a full strength Ynnead ever could. Avatar of Ynnead here we come!
Robin5t wrote:So the big hope and salvation of the Craftworld Eldar that they've been building up for years now just got taken out back and shot in the head for the sake of making Generic Edgy Space Marine Character #1765 and the Brand New Productmarines look more hardcore and cool.
Please, let's discuss this absolute drivel.
"Muh favourite faction got a fluff setback oh nooooo, never mind them being the best codex in the game and just as plot armoured as space marines, so I'm going to rage-post on an internet forum"
Robin5t wrote: So the big hope and salvation of the Craftworld Eldar that they've been building up for years now just got taken out back and shot in the head for the sake of making Generic Edgy Space Marine Character #1765 and the Brand New Productmarines look more hardcore and cool.
Please, let's discuss this absolute drivel.
Tell me more
Automatically Appended Next Post: Where did those souls go, and how do you know eldrad did not plan this to happen ?
Basically, Eldrad started a ritual to summon Ynnead early. The ritual goes wrong because he apparently failed to account for one particular timeline out of tens of thousands where the Deathwatch were able to interfere. This then happens, the ritual is ruined, Ynnead's birth goes totally wrong and the god is shattered into countless, useless little fragments, every infinity circuit of every craftworld (as Eldrad was able to tap into them for his ritual) was wiped clean of souls and the Craftworld Eldar's endgame is now gone.
Did you really think they were going to kill Slaanesh and get rid of a 4th of the daemon models? You should know better. That one little ball of light just opened more doors for the eldar and GW than a full strength Ynnead ever could. Avatar of Ynnead here we come!
I'm sure you're going to provide citations of all of this apparent Eldar plot armour, now.
You know, if you can find it in between the million stories of Seers completely failing to predict that the mighty and superior Space Marines would interrupt their plans and kill them.
I play Harlequins, not Craftworld, as well, so unless Harlies suddenly gained a lot more options than I last recall seeing in their codex, I really doubt they're 'the best codex in the game'.
And... avatars of Ynnead. Wow. So now, instead of one shattered god incapable of killing Slaanesh, the Eldar have... two shattered gods incapable of killing Slaanesh. Anyone who believes that 'Avatars of Ynnead' is a good thing has completely missed the point of Ynnead.
What I really thought was that they weren't going to touch the 'Ynnead' story line until the End Times, you know, when it should have been concluded, rather than this nonsense of having the big end-game of one of the game's major factions snuffed out in a box for the sake of selling Captain Martystu and his awesome detachment of Space Marines who are totally different from all the other Space Marines out there, honest.
Got to say I’m very disappointed with what has happened but more so in the manner in which it happened.
To have the Eldar’s whole end game flushed down the sewer after decades of build-up is frankly terrible. But was it really necessary to add insult to injury by having such an important event kicked to the curb in a box set designed to sell another faction, not even being given the full campaign treatment it deserved.
Spoiler:
As for the bright spark flying off into the void I wouldn’t get my hopes up that it means anything for the Eldar in fact I’m going to have a wild stab in the dark and predict that somehow the imperium will get hold of it and use it to revive the emperor (the whole star child thing). You know just to put the boot in whilst their already down.
So if I'm reading that little excerpt from Death Masque right, instead of all the dead eldar's souls being funneled into the new god, a bit of their energy was used to create what we presume is a mini Ynnead, but otherwise everything is business as usual? Seems a bit anti-climactic.
Thinking about it I guess there is no way GW could let the plan succeed. All the inifinity circuits would be drained so no more wraith constructs until there are some more dead eldar willing to pilot them. Since the infinity circuits are left intact and something was formed from it all, this is a best of both worlds, I suppose.
Can I have your stuff? Since you are raging out, and all.
And, the Harlequins have some pretty good plot power, considering they kidnapped a space marines (Ultramarines) strike force and delivered them to Commoragh before the Space Marines stirred.
Oh and correction, it's the Tau that win everything they are involved in.
Oh and correction, it's the Tau that win everything they are involved in.
Unless you count their run-ins with Dark Eldar or Necrons. Tau stand out as unique because they are the only faction to have a pretty good (but not flawless) track record versus the Imperium, which to many imperial fans ironically means that the Tau win everything.
Yes, their first run ins with the DarkEldar and Necrons were as naive civilians/earth caste opening their doors for the new races and getting reminded why this setting is grim dark.
Crazyterran wrote: Yes, their first run ins with the DarkEldar and Necrons were as naive civilians/earth caste opening their doors for the new races and getting reminded why this setting is grim dark.
They were beaten by harlequins too (and they did not attempt a naive first contact) when the Tau discovered an adrift long-abandoned craft world, and to be fair the Tau were only able to stop one of the smallest ever known hive fleets from exterminating their entire race with the help of the Imperium. Also prince Yriel has had success pirating Tau fleets according to the Craftworld Codex. So essentially Eldar > Tau > Imperium > Eldar. Hope that cleared things up.
Cosmic Schwung wrote: So if I'm reading that little excerpt from Death Masque right, instead of all the dead eldar's souls being funneled into the new god, a bit of their energy was used to create what we presume is a mini Ynnead, but otherwise everything is business as usual? Seems a bit anti-climactic.
Thinking about it I guess there is no way GW could let the plan succeed. All the inifinity circuits would be drained so no more wraith constructs until there are some more dead eldar willing to pilot them. Since the infinity circuits are left intact and something was formed from it all, this is a best of both worlds, I suppose.
The infinity circuits are drained, so not quite business as usual.
Can I have your stuff? Since you are raging out, and all.
And, the Harlequins have some pretty good plot power, considering they kidnapped a space marines (Ultramarines) strike force and delivered them to Commoragh before the Space Marines stirred.
Oh and correction, it's the Tau that win everything they are involved in.
When are you people going to learn to distinguish between the Harlequins and the Craftworld Eldar?
They're different factions. Harlequins normally do extremely well in the fluff (with Death Masque being a big outlier) while Craftworld Eldar universally get their heads kicked in by the Imperium whenever they appear.
Let me make my stance clear, here: I am angry, as a fan of a separate faction, because the Craftworld Eldar got so unbelievably shafted in this lore piece.
Cosmic Schwung wrote: So if I'm reading that little excerpt from Death Masque right, instead of all the dead eldar's souls being funneled into the new god, a bit of their energy was used to create what we presume is a mini Ynnead, but otherwise everything is business as usual? Seems a bit anti-climactic.
Thinking about it I guess there is no way GW could let the plan succeed. All the inifinity circuits would be drained so no more wraith constructs until there are some more dead eldar willing to pilot them. Since the infinity circuits are left intact and something was formed from it all, this is a best of both worlds, I suppose.
The infinity circuits are drained, so not quite business as usual.
Does it actually say that? I haven't got a copy of Death Masque yet so I can only go by what's been posted. I know the plan was to drain the circuits as all the dead would be funneled into Ynnead, but that final bit of text says the dead only gave part of their sentience before it was all interrupted.
Cosmic Schwung wrote: Does it actually say that? I haven't got a copy of Death Masque yet so I can only go by what's been posted. I know the plan was to drain the circuits as all the dead would be funneled into Ynnead, but that final bit of text says the dead only gave part of their sentience before it was all interrupted.
The ritual reached its climax. The souls of Eldar had been moved from the Infinity Circuits to the crystalline sands of the moon, then the ritual went wrong.
It wasn't partially committed. The whole thing is described as a cosmic wager, and you don't get your money back if you lose a bet.
Even if the universe was feeling generous, the Crystal Seers had been shattered, meaning the souls had no way of returning to their Infinity Circuits.
Cosmic Schwung wrote: Does it actually say that? I haven't got a copy of Death Masque yet so I can only go by what's been posted. I know the plan was to drain the circuits as all the dead would be funneled into Ynnead, but that final bit of text says the dead only gave part of their sentience before it was all interrupted.
The ritual reached its climax. The souls of Eldar had been moved from the Infinity Circuits to the crystalline sands of the moon, then the ritual went wrong.
It wasn't partially committed. The whole thing is described as a cosmic wager, and you don't get your money back if you lose a bet.
Even if the universe was feeling generous, the Crystal Seers had been shattered, meaning the souls had no way of returning to their Infinity Circuits.
I'm gonna laugh if this causes the plot event of Slaanesh getting full from all the Eldar souls it devoured all at once and somehow the Sig...I mean Ultramarines/Grey Knights showed up to "capture" Slaanesh.
Cosmic Schwung wrote: Does it actually say that? I haven't got a copy of Death Masque yet so I can only go by what's been posted. I know the plan was to drain the circuits as all the dead would be funneled into Ynnead, but that final bit of text says the dead only gave part of their sentience before it was all interrupted.
The ritual reached its climax. The souls of Eldar had been moved from the Infinity Circuits to the crystalline sands of the moon, then the ritual went wrong.
It wasn't partially committed. The whole thing is described as a cosmic wager, and you don't get your money back if you lose a bet.
Even if the universe was feeling generous, the Crystal Seers had been shattered, meaning the souls had no way of returning to their Infinity Circuits.
Wow, yeah that's a colossal mess! I assumed the souls were still in the infinity circuits and were transferring their power from there as the ritual progressed.
I wonder where they all went. I don't like the idea of them just fizzling out.
Vankraken wrote: I'm gonna laugh if this causes the plot event of Slaanesh getting full from all the Eldar souls it devoured all at once and somehow the Sig...I mean Ultramarines/Grey Knights showed up to "capture" Slaanesh.
I have a feeling something like this will happen, not the capture but the soul bloat, Slaanesh will go dark for a while while he gets rebooted in Age of Sigmar and 40k simultaneously.
Cosmic Schwung wrote: Does it actually say that? I haven't got a copy of Death Masque yet so I can only go by what's been posted. I know the plan was to drain the circuits as all the dead would be funneled into Ynnead, but that final bit of text says the dead only gave part of their sentience before it was all interrupted.
The ritual reached its climax. The souls of Eldar had been moved from the Infinity Circuits to the crystalline sands of the moon, then the ritual went wrong.
It wasn't partially committed. The whole thing is described as a cosmic wager, and you don't get your money back if you lose a bet.
Even if the universe was feeling generous, the Crystal Seers had been shattered, meaning the souls had no way of returning to their Infinity Circuits.
Wow, yeah that's a colossal mess! I assumed the souls were still in the infinity circuits and were transferring their power from there as the ritual progressed.
I wonder where they all went. I don't like the idea of them just fizzling out.
I'm of the opinion that most would be devoured by Slaanesh. So that they can match up with AoS fluff, where Slaanesh eats too many souls and needs to sleep it off.
Can I have your stuff? Since you are raging out, and all.
And, the Harlequins have some pretty good plot power, considering they kidnapped a space marines (Ultramarines) strike force and delivered them to Commoragh before the Space Marines stirred.
Oh and correction, it's the Tau that win everything they are involved in.
How...how is the Harlequins ability to kidnap a single Space Marine Strike Force some sort of 'story breaking' development? I mean...Ultramarines...you do know the victories they have had right? So your bar for a 'plot-armoured faction' is taking out a single strike force of said faction? By this measure every single faction in the game has ludicrous plot armour.
Additionally, the Tau, I hate seeing this because it just isn't true. If you're going to allege the Tau win everything adduce the material evidence for it. The Tau lose the following battles to the Imperium; Voltoris, Kvariam Alpha, Styx, K'ail, Pallia, Vesh'yo and a Tau Fleet and base near Ethron's Harbour.
These are only the defeats I remember off hand, that's what? Seven? So don't come with 'Tau win everything' unless you can literally point to every single battle the Tau win and show they win, you're literally lying.
I cannot believe that in the immediate aftermath of this what we automatically go to is how the Imperium loses too much instead of, say, the Craftworld Eldar's near endless string of failures.
Anemone wrote: Additionally, the Tau, I hate seeing this because it just isn't true. If you're going to allege the Tau win everything adduce the material evidence for it. The Tau lose the following battles to the Imperium; Voltoris, Kvariam Alpha, Styx, K'ail, Pallia, Vesh'yo and a Tau Fleet and base near Ethron's Harbour.
These are only the defeats I remember off hand, that's what? Seven? So don't come with 'Tau win everything' unless you can literally point to every single battle the Tau win and show they win, you're literally lying.
I think the idea is that Tau might lose battles but they "win" the overall conflict although it usually is a pyrrhic victory. Its kinda hard for the Tau to have major defeats as they don't have much in the way of ground to give up without being at risk of exposing the plot hole of the Tau being overwhelmed and destroyed.
I cannot believe that in the immediate aftermath of this what we automatically go to is how the Imperium loses too much instead of, say, the Craftworld Eldar's near endless string of failures.
In my opinion it makes sense that Eldar continue to lose and to fail to fight against their destiny. The theme of the Eldar is this superior race that falls due to their own hubris and indulgence that spawns a cosmic horror that is destined to destroy them. And despite the vast majority of the Eldar race being destroyed by this event they still have a relatively large group who continue to fight the inevitable by essentially throwing everyone else in front of the Slaanesh bus to buy time while the other main group attempts to suppress themselves, foresee the future, and use stones to save their souls to delay the inevitable. The Eldar split themselves into two parts of the same original concept and yet collectively they continue down the same path of their demise of being overindulgent hedonist (Dark Eldar) and arrogant supremacist who see themselves above everyone else and even above fate (Eldar).
Anemone wrote: Additionally, the Tau, I hate seeing this because it just isn't true. If you're going to allege the Tau win everything adduce the material evidence for it. The Tau lose the following battles to the Imperium; Voltoris, Kvariam Alpha, Styx, K'ail, Pallia, Vesh'yo and a Tau Fleet and base near Ethron's Harbour.
These are only the defeats I remember off hand, that's what? Seven? So don't come with 'Tau win everything' unless you can literally point to every single battle the Tau win and show they win, you're literally lying.
I think the idea is that Tau might lose battles but they "win" the overall conflict although it usually is a pyrrhic victory. Its kinda hard for the Tau to have major defeats as they don't have much in the way of ground to give up without being at risk of exposing the plot hole of the Tau being overwhelmed and destroyed.
I cannot believe that in the immediate aftermath of this what we automatically go to is how the Imperium loses too much instead of, say, the Craftworld Eldar's near endless string of failures.
In my opinion it makes sense that Eldar continue to lose and to fail to fight against their destiny. The theme of the Eldar is this superior race that falls due to their own hubris and indulgence that spawns a cosmic horror that is destined to destroy them. And despite the vast majority of the Eldar race being destroyed by this event they still have a relatively large group who continue to fight the inevitable by essentially throwing everyone else in front of the Slaanesh bus to buy time while the other main group attempts to suppress themselves, foresee the future, and use stones to save their souls to delay the inevitable. The Eldar split themselves into two parts of the same original concept and yet collectively they continue down the same path of their demise of being overindulgent hedonist (Dark Eldar) and arrogant supremacist who see themselves above everyone else and even above fate (Eldar).
The Tau point is just incorrect; Kvariam Alpha, Styx, Vesh'yo and Pallia are all individual conflicts which the Tau lose with no 'greater' victory elsewhere. They simply engage in the battles and lose. The Tau have won a single 'wider' conflict and even then that 'victory' is actually described as a loss by the canon book itself.
Again, there is no material evidence to prove this point.
As for the Eldar point; the Eldar do not need to lose everything, I find it actually startling that in the fluff for a game with a number of factions and players the idea is that one faction's 'thing' should be that it loses constantly, and I totally disagree that the Eldar's 'thing' is losing constantly via hubris, learning from their mistakes is exactly what the Craftworld Eldar represent compared to their hedonistic days. Encapsulating in one faction as representing a single facet 'loss' is silly in my opinion and misses the point of how inherently unfair it is to have the fluff continue to have a single faction have no purpose beyond loosing.
Anemone wrote: Being a 'dying race' doesn't mean 'loosing all battles' High Elves were a dying race, as were Dark Elves and Wood Elves, but they still won battles.
Besides by that logic the Imperium is described as a 'Crumbling Empire' but that doesn't mean they can only lose.
Or what, is your argument that Eldar are a 'dying race' so in Fluff they must always lose?
No, my opinion is that dying races mustn't cease to be "dying". Any hope must be fleeting.
The Imperium does play up the "Crumbling Empire" part often and well. Remember: Chaos/Tyranids/Necrons will ultimate win (and, because this is GW, it will be Chaos that wins).
Really, we couldn't have had Ynnead awake because it would potentially weaken Chaos (on a "real" level, not just "oh we found an artifact that will bind 1 greater daemon" or whatever), and that's against the #1 rule of the setting.
Note that i'm not saying that "Chaos always wins", just like I'm not saying that "Eldar must always lose". Narratively speaking, Chaos must never be weakened, Eldar must never stop dying, the Imperium must never stop crumbling, the Orks must never stop Waaagh-ing, the Necrons must never stop awakening, and the Tyranids must never stop swarming. So, when a huge thing like "destroying a Chaos god and allowing the resurgence of the Eldar race" is about to happen, obviously it is going to be stopped. Did it need to be stopped by Deathwatch? No, I guess it would have been more satisfying to have the plan been stopped by Ahriman or some Slaanesh champion.
Okay, win and loss ratio's don't matter here and should not matter. The discussion at hand is the great injustice done to the Eldar simply to push an already lucrative Space Marine Chapter that didn't need pushing. This was completely senseless, they've stripped all hope for the Eldar and perpetuated this... Well, stupid gimmick of losing. I will say right now that anyone who believes they should lose is stupid, incoherent, bias nut cases. When you see the lore and have a good grasp of why they follow certain paths, the idea of them becomes mind boggling, especially the Harlequin losing how they did.
Any number of things could have been done to push their Space Marines but essentially kicking one faction off the board was not one of them. What this all represents is GW obsession with Space Marines that they're willing to compromise other major factions simply to push them. It'll start with this and progress into other factions. Soon we'll have a wide spread fertilizer made by some Ultramarine that kills Ork Spores or Grey Knights begin a quest to capture Daemon Primarchs... And succeed.
So none of this is about wins and loses but the injustice and what it represents.
I wonder how Space Marysue players would react if the Harlequin faction had been introduced with them shanking Calgar, effortlessly slaughtering the Custodes and killing the emperor.
Would "the empire is supposed to be crumbling" be acceptable to them?
This is a starter box. Little jimmy and Johnny pick it up, and expect a cool story with an epic battle between two forces that THEY get to decide in their game!
Instead jimmy gets to read about how cool Johnny's guys are and how they totally killed the crap out of all Jimmy's guys with no problem whatsoever.
Anemone wrote: Additionally, the Tau, I hate seeing this because it just isn't true. If you're going to allege the Tau win everything adduce the material evidence for it. The Tau lose the following battles to the Imperium; Voltoris, Kvariam Alpha, Styx, K'ail, Pallia, Vesh'yo and a Tau Fleet and base near Ethron's Harbour.
These are only the defeats I remember off hand, that's what? Seven? So don't come with 'Tau win everything' unless you can literally point to every single battle the Tau win and show they win, you're literally lying.
I think the idea is that Tau might lose battles but they "win" the overall conflict although it usually is a pyrrhic victory. Its kinda hard for the Tau to have major defeats as they don't have much in the way of ground to give up without being at risk of exposing the plot hole of the Tau being overwhelmed and destroyed.
I cannot believe that in the immediate aftermath of this what we automatically go to is how the Imperium loses too much instead of, say, the Craftworld Eldar's near endless string of failures.
In my opinion it makes sense that Eldar continue to lose and to fail to fight against their destiny. The theme of the Eldar is this superior race that falls due to their own hubris and indulgence that spawns a cosmic horror that is destined to destroy them. And despite the vast majority of the Eldar race being destroyed by this event they still have a relatively large group who continue to fight the inevitable by essentially throwing everyone else in front of the Slaanesh bus to buy time while the other main group attempts to suppress themselves, foresee the future, and use stones to save their souls to delay the inevitable. The Eldar split themselves into two parts of the same original concept and yet collectively they continue down the same path of their demise of being overindulgent hedonist (Dark Eldar) and arrogant supremacist who see themselves above everyone else and even above fate (Eldar).
The Tau point is just incorrect; Kvariam Alpha, Styx, Vesh'yo and Pallia are all individual conflicts which the Tau lose with no 'greater' victory elsewhere. They simply engage in the battles and lose. The Tau have won a single 'wider' conflict and even then that 'victory' is actually described as a loss by the canon book itself.
Again, there is no material evidence to prove this point.
As for the Eldar point; the Eldar do not need to lose everything, I find it actually startling that in the fluff for a game with a number of factions and players the idea is that one faction's 'thing' should be that it loses constantly, and I totally disagree that the Eldar's 'thing' is losing constantly via hubris, learning from their mistakes is exactly what the Craftworld Eldar represent compared to their hedonistic days. Encapsulating in one faction as representing a single facet 'loss' is silly in my opinion and misses the point of how inherently unfair it is to have the fluff continue to have a single faction have no purpose beyond loosing.
I'm looking at the grand scheme of things. Losing a planet or a battle is small potatos compared to the bigger campaigns that the Tau had their Pyrrhic victories. Same for the Eldar in their continuous defeat on a grand scale. As to the fluff of Death Masque if the Eldar won in birthing a Eldar God then that would of been a massive victory and would be a 180 to their dying race status. Having their gambit foiled and their pieces scattered fits the inevitability of death and doom that is the grimdark setting of Warhammer. Maybe that one part stayed together and shot off will be the seed to grow into a new chance for the Eldar or maybe it is their hopes and dreams flying out the window to be lost forever.
Vankraken, you're missing the complete concept of this entire twist of events. Everything that happened, all those events were completely unnecessary. They're making an already weak faction look exceptionally weaker simply to push more Space Marine sales. Whether or not things do pan out in the end, the Death Watch are the champions. They mowed down a troupe of Harlequins with their sheet metal cocks, foiled the most powerful psyker in the galaxy but left a flicker of hope. That little flicker could be noting depending on how sales turn out but overall, it's little more than nothing. With the success of 30K, everything is going to become more Space Marine orientated and focused while others are openly crapped on by said Space Marines. That flicker of light can't compensate for anything, won't compensate for anything except to introduce new models for Eldar.
In conclusion, this is the beginning of one massive Space Marine push and every other faction suffering for it. I can see Trazyn's vault being plundered already.
@Rihgu: No one is suggesting the Eldar cease being 'dying'; I said the Craftworld Eldar have a near constant stream of failures and then you quoted me and said that it was their 'thing'.
Also how is the Imperium playing up 'Crumbling Empire'? What major section of the Imperium has any the recent narrative campaigns 'Crumbled'?
There are 101 different outcomes to Death Masque to preserve the status quo which did not involve having the primary special character of the Craftworlds defeated and outwitted by a Death Watch Captain and did not involve deactivating all Infinity Circuits and Craftworlds.
@the_scotsman: That is exactly part of the problem I've had with some of my friends! My older brother had little to no enthusiasm for the plastic Eldrad because of how certain we both were that Eldrad and the Eldar would, again, lose to the Marines.
Where is a starter set or narrative campaign book which is just a clear victory for a non-Imperium faction in which they fight the Imperium?
@Vankraken: How is losing six planets small potatos but, the victories you are mentioning, gaining one planet and a burnt husk somehow automatically mean the Tau 'always win'? The empirical data does not add up.
@Benny Badmen: This is what I've feared with the current fluff's direction for a while now and why my interest in it is withering.
I want the factions to have a chance to do well in the fluff, all of them, I don't like the constant near-surety in all narrative releases of Imperium victory.
Benny Badmen wrote: Vankraken, you're missing the complete concept of this entire twist of events. Everything that happened, all those events were completely unnecessary. They're making an already weak faction look exceptionally weaker simply to push more Space Marine sales. Whether or not things do pan out in the end, the Death Watch are the champions. They mowed down a troupe of Harlequins with their sheet metal cocks, foiled the most powerful psyker in the galaxy but left a flicker of hope. That little flicker could be noting depending on how sales turn out but overall, it's little more than nothing. With the success of 30K, everything is going to become more Space Marine orientated and focused while others are openly crapped on by said Space Marines. That flicker of light can't compensate for anything, won't compensate for anything except to introduce new models for Eldar.
In conclusion, this is the beginning of one massive Space Marine push and every other faction suffering for it. I can see Trazyn's vault being plundered already.
They went with the narrative option that looks like it pushed the doomsday clock forward without actually changing the status quo too much. They are creating narrative events to get people interested and to stir the pot to create excitement. Just like the Curse of the Wulfen has the Wolves being attacked by the Imperium. The most likely event of that story will be the Wolves surviving, tensions flaring up, new threats arising, etc but ultimately nothing truly changes in the grand scheme of things. Birthing a powerful new god is a major shake up and probably doesn't fit with their goal to creep things along.
The focus on Space Marines is something I don't really care for as I find the other factions (specifically Xenos) to be more interesting but for better or for worse IoM and more specifically Spess Mahreens are the big sellers. I do think Eldar losing in a campaign box is a bit of an overreaction to claim that GW is going to be turning 40k into 30k (aka space marines being 90% of the game). The rumors for content coming up look interesting and we shall see how things pan out.
@Vankraken: But the clear difference I'm referencing is evident in your post; In Wulfen the Space Wolves will win, and in Death Masque the Space Marines won as well, it becomes the sole constant.
EDIT: Besides unless Warzone Fenris ends with most of the system dead, the Chapter left incapable of using its ships and Logan Grimnar defeated by, like, a random Thousand Son Sorcerer then its not comparable to the level of defeat the Craftworlds suffered at the hands of 13 Death Watch Marines (and Eldrad's continuing stupidity).
I know exactly what you're talking about. There was so much left to be explored and imagined that they never needed to advance the plot. You have 40 Thousand years of history and events to cover yet they push the plot... IT'S STUPID! Nothing needs to be pushed but added. It's these biases that ruin any possible push... And the Imperium isn't going to crumble, we all know that. They only say that to satiate all the wailing non-Imperium players begging for a leg up. 'It's okay, the Imperium is failing'. If anything, they'll bring the primarchs to take control and revitalize the Imperium.
Edit: Have you ever read that book? The man at Edmonton GamesWorkshop actually gave me a refund when I brought it back and told him it was a waste of time. Not exactly a refund but he let me swap it for The World Engine, which was FANTASTIC! Anyway, erasing all hope for the Eldar to have any endgame or resurgence is shaking things up; it's leading towards eliminating an entire faction. That campaign depicted them as freaking morons getting molested by Death Watch... HOW!? Well, they're that confident in the Space Marines that they can crap all over any other faction and let the money flow cause... IT'S SPACE MARINES!
Anemone wrote: @Vankraken: But the clear difference I'm referencing is evident in your post; In Wulfen the Space Wolves will win, and in Death Masque the Space Marines won as well, it becomes the sole constant.
Tau "won" in the Mont'ka book because it doesn't change the grand scheme of things. Space Wolves losing would be the removal of an entire sub faction which is a major shake up in terms of the structure of the hobby.
Tau didn't win Mont'ka. The book itself calls it a defeat, at most its a Pyrrhic victory and, again, the fluff itself called Mont'ka a defeat for the Tau.
Also that's 1 example, do you know how many of these starter sets and narrative campaigns the Imperium has won?
Besides the Craftworld Eldar have had their entire fleet deactivated so why can't another faction suffer something similar then if it isn't a problem?
EDIT: Besides, why not let the Orks win Sanctus Reach then?
The thing is that there was no need for Ynnead to have anything to do with this release; they could have simply released a Deathwatch box set with them fighting some random farseer. Both Eldar and Marine players could have enjoyed playing this without it affecting the wider fluff to much. There was a conscious decision made at GW to remove Ynnead and effectively screw over any future that the Eldar might have had. And for what? Just so the space marines can look cool. If GW are pushing forward with the End Times why then have they effectively removed the Eldar from playing any role in it before it's even begun.
To those saying that the Eldar’s defeat in Death Masque somehow maintains the status quo then I have to ask what have you been reading exactly? These events do not in any way maintain the so called status quo of the setting. It may not directly affect the other factions but for the Eldar this is a massive shift. In a single starter box set the Eldar have just lost everything, their last great hope has just been trampled into the dirt and left for dead and if GW follows through then they have just crippled the Craftworlds and their fleets on top of losing the Infinity Circuit and all the souls that it contained.
In a single stroke GW has effectively removed the Eldar as a relevant force in the setting and this saddens me to no end. I’m sorry if I’m coming across as a bit angry but I am and it’s not because of what has happened but how it happened. To have such a vital part of Eldar lore just cast aside so easily in a simple box set is just frustrating beyond belief. Sorry just needed to vent a bit.
Benny Badmen wrote: Reading that, how poorly the Harlequins were protrayed, Eldar loosing this beautiful prophecy simply to make Space Marines look cool... I'll probably never buy a GamesWorkshop product ever again. If this is truly what's meant to be, the Imperium foiling every prophecy, dismantling any other factions attempts at building then there's really no point. Whether written beautifully or not that is essentially the outcome we'll be facing time and time again. Even if the shards are salvageable all purpose is lost. Without any chance of resurgence for the Eldar, it's over... Simple as that.
Some of us, of course, remember playing Eldar armies in 40k long before all that Ynnead business was retconned into the fluff; somehow we had fun doing so anyway...
That doesn't mean it couldn't have been written better or less one sided. Harlequins are arguably the most elite soldiers of a multi-million year old race of psychic-gifted geniuses with technology only rivaled by the necrons, they should not have been written like fodder. Imagine if there was a story about Death Leaper and let's say 6 lictors that attacked 100 grey knights led by Draigo who was in the midst of activating some ancient McGuffin device that would halt Abaddon's black crusade. Only for the Lictors and Death Leaper to slice through the Grey Knight's like a hot knife through butter. Finally Death Leaper approaches Draigo who is about to complete the McGuffin device's activation. Sensing his doom, Draigo looks Death Leaper in the eye and says "Diplomatic immunity..." Only for Death Leaper to shoot him in the head and say "...has just been revoked." How would that make you feel?
Only if there was a 'rubber tree' in it and a scene where a Death Leaper is on the toilet wired with a bomb...
Benny Badmen wrote: Reading that, how poorly the Harlequins were protrayed, Eldar loosing this beautiful prophecy simply to make Space Marines look cool... I'll probably never buy a GamesWorkshop product ever again. If this is truly what's meant to be, the Imperium foiling every prophecy, dismantling any other factions attempts at building then there's really no point. Whether written beautifully or not that is essentially the outcome we'll be facing time and time again. Even if the shards are salvageable all purpose is lost. Without any chance of resurgence for the Eldar, it's over... Simple as that.
Some of us, of course, remember playing Eldar armies in 40k long before all that Ynnead business was retconned into the fluff; somehow we had fun doing so anyway...
The Ynnead business has been around for a pretty long time now and has become somewhat fundamental to the larger story of the Eldar. People have the right to complain about decisions when there is a legitimate reason for doing so without people lazily accusing them of whining.
No one as far as I can see has said you can’t still have fun playing the Eldar on the table top? The complaints against what has happened are purely from a fluff prospective.
If in the next box set it’s the orks vs the Adeptus Custodes and the story takes place on terra do you not think people would complain if a previously never before heard of Ork warboss somehow managed to destroy the golden throne, slay the emperor and silence the Astronomican thus throwing the imperium into turmoil.
If your argument is that as long as you can still have fun playing them on the table top then you have no right to complain about any terrible fluff decisions that are related to your chosen faction then I don’t know what to say.
The Ynnead business has been around for a pretty long time now and has become somewhat fundamental to the larger story of the Eldar. People have the right to complain about decisions when there is a legitimate reason for doing so without people lazily accusing them of whining.
No one as far as I can see has said you can’t still have fun playing the Eldar on the table top? The complaints against what has happened are purely from a fluff prospective.
If in the next box set it’s the orks vs the Adeptus Custodes and the story takes place on terra do you not think people would complain if a previously never before heard of Ork warboss somehow managed to destroy the golden throne, slay the emperor and silence the Astronomican thus throwing the imperium into turmoil.
If your argument is that as long as you can still have fun playing them on the table top then you have no right to complain about any terrible fluff decisions that are related to your chosen faction then I don’t know what to say.
This is well said, Eldrad is literally the number 1 Craftworld Eldar special character, comparable to Abaddon, Vect, Ghazghkull, Dante and Grimnar, yet he's defeated by a barely known Captain (not even the highest ranked member of his own organization) and the defeat literally removes the primary military and civilian capacities (Craftworlds and Fleets) of the entire Craftworld Eldar faction.
I have no doubt that if a similar circumstance happened to any other faction (except Tau where so many people want the faction itself squatted I'm sure there'd be jubilant celebrations) and said faction lost power in all its worlds, fleets and spiritual realm as a result of a minor character from an enemy faction and their own chief character being a colossal idiot that it would be met very poorly.
Benny Badmen wrote: Reading that, how poorly the Harlequins were protrayed, Eldar loosing this beautiful prophecy simply to make Space Marines look cool... I'll probably never buy a GamesWorkshop product ever again. If this is truly what's meant to be, the Imperium foiling every prophecy, dismantling any other factions attempts at building then there's really no point. Whether written beautifully or not that is essentially the outcome we'll be facing time and time again. Even if the shards are salvageable all purpose is lost. Without any chance of resurgence for the Eldar, it's over... Simple as that.
Some of us, of course, remember playing Eldar armies in 40k long before all that Ynnead business was retconned into the fluff; somehow we had fun doing so anyway...
The Ynnead business has been around for a pretty long time now and has become somewhat fundamental to the larger story of the Eldar. People have the right to complain about decisions when there is a legitimate reason for doing so without people lazily accusing them of whining.
No one as far as I can see has said you can’t still have fun playing the Eldar on the table top? The complaints against what has happened are purely from a fluff prospective.
If in the next box set it’s the orks vs the Adeptus Custodes and the story takes place on terra do you not think people would complain if a previously never before heard of Ork warboss somehow managed to destroy the golden throne, slay the emperor and silence the Astronomican thus throwing the imperium into turmoil.
If your argument is that as long as you can still have fun playing them on the table top then you have no right to complain about any terrible fluff decisions that are related to your chosen faction then I don’t know what to say.
Ynnead has never been much more than a footnote to the Eldar fluff. I can't claim to have read every bit of GW's voluminous (and largely terrible) prose output, but pretending that he's central to the game's setting in a way analagous to the Emperor of Mankind is preposterous hyperbole.
(It also rather misses the point that the fluff constantly foregrounds how the Emperor is trapped in agony at the threshold of death, preserving a miserable dictatorship anathema to what he stood for, blah blah, grimdark, etc.)
I nabbed a copy of Death Masque today, and read through the whole lore thing before getting to work on the exquisite models.
Essentially, Eldrad gets it in his head that he can pre-summon Ynnead before he's ready by hijacking every infinity circuit in realspace. By having Harlequin contacts steal Crystal Seers ( the crystallised remains of Farseers that are hooked into their infinity circuits) from their final resting places, he can do this by using the psychic moon of Coheria, a vast, moon-sized lump of psychoactive crystal in Imperial hands.
However, there's a cost to this. If he does this, every infinity circuit would permanently shutdown, leaving all the Craftworlds and spaceships adrift, and the Exodite worlds open to attack. In addition, the resulting Warp beacon would drown out the Astronomicon, dooming billions of humans to deaths by daemons/cut off from the wider Imperium. Eldrad thinks that the deaths of a vast sum of humanity and the majority of his own kin is an acceptable tradeoff for the death of Slaanesh.
However, no one else thinks this. If he told anyone the truth, he'd be exiled at best. So he lies to the Autarchs of Ulthwe and Samm-Hain and gets them to deploy nearly 100k Eldar in the nearby Imperial dockyards to act as a decoy for his great ritual of betrayal. While the IMperials are distracted, he gets to work.
Then, as he's about to finish the ritual, 12 Angry Astartes drop from the sky and kick his ass. I'm serious; the Deathwatch tear through the Harlequins like they're Cultists. The Dreadnought personally stomps into the ritual area and fires a plasma cannon point blank into Eldrad's face. Artemis puts a bolt through Eldrad's Harlequin buddy (a Death Jester named Irinam who goes renegade and takes his personal Troupes away from the main Masque, who are busy defending the Black Library from a massive, renewed assault from Ahriman) after straight up telling him he'd rather watch the Imperium fall to Chaos than trust the word of an Eldar.
The ritual is disrupted, the Deathwatch bail out, the crystal moon explodes like the Death star, and Eldrad escapes into the webway, falling unconsious like a damsel in distress as Ynnead is denied his grand entrance.
Slaanesh is laughing their ass off the entire way through.
TL;DR: Chaos wins. Everyone else loses. Especially Eldrad, but he's a dick so who cares about him?
Ynnead has never been much more than a footnote to the Eldar fluff.
Ynnead has become far more prevalent in the Eldar fluff in the recent decade with mentions in all of the different Eldar factions codex’s. The Craftworlder’s, the harlequins and even the Dark Eldar all had plans that centred around Ynnead’s birth. She was their end game.
I can't claim to have read every bit of GW's voluminous (and largely terrible) prose output
Can’t really argue with that.
but pretending that he's central to the game's setting in a way analagous to the Emperor of Mankind is preposterous hyperbole.
I don’t think i said she was as central to the game’s setting as the Emperor but simply used it as an example to display how such an event might be replicated using another faction. Just to satisfy my curiosity if you would, if the situation I described did happen how would you feel about it?
Personally I’m hoping that this is all part of Cegorach’s final trick and that this was all part of the great harlequins master plan.
I feel that the thread may have gone a bit off topic, perhaps it would be better to take this to the "Each factions end game?" Thread.
I know some Eldar and many Space Marine players IRL who thought in the end times Tau would get wrecked first and worst. So at least I can laugh about this to them.
Ha Ha. Silly Eldar always acting so high and mighty then screwing themselves over. Ah good times. That was just the prelude. I can't wait to see how much worse everything gets.
Edit
When I heard what happened I laughed so hard in real life.
Eldrad's plot isn't the same as Cegorach's. What if the entire purpose of mini god Ynnead is to be consumed by spawned and get them trapped in the infinity circuits!
It would be a wonderful trick, and certainly would be using her to ensure the resurgence of the Eldar!
1. I think it's safe to say we all knew the plan wouldn't work as intended. Birthing a new god and defeating Slaanesh is too big of a shift to make in one box and thinking of the business side of things what now happens to all those Slaanesh armies? It wouldn't make good sense to have Eldrads plan come to fruition. I admit it's anti-climactic but overall expected.
2. This won't spell doom for the Eldar in the long run. GW needs to keep them in the game and so will eventually have to throw them a new bone to chase. Wasn't there a big thing about Cegorach, The Laughing God, in the Harlies codex where he would play a vital role? We still have plots to follow, Ynnead wasn't the only plot-line to follow.
3. Ultimately what I feel is disappointing is that the plan was essentially foiled by 13 marines. I know GW likes to play up how awesome individual marines are but this was kind of a major plot piece to have the action-movie crew come in and clean house in. Insult to injury is that this was an essentially nobody captain that foiled a major Eldar hero that's been in the lore since long before I started playing 40K.
Ultimately the main story plot and its conclusion in this box is expected. The real crime IMO is the way in which the ritual was stopped. The writers could have written any number of ways that the plan went awry but ultimately settled on "small elite task force goes in guns blazing". It's just not very believable and is not satisfying at all unless you're a DW fanboy or loathe Eldar. It very much just feels like GW was only interested in the end in making sure DW were as awesome and badass as they could write them.
Inevitable_Faith wrote: 3. Ultimately what I feel is disappointing is that the plan was essentially foiled by 13 marines. I know GW likes to play up how awesome individual marines are but this was kind of a major plot piece to have the action-movie crew come in and clean house in. Insult to injury is that this was an essentially nobody captain that foiled a major Eldar hero that's been in the lore since long before I started playing 40K.
As much as I hate to say it, is anyone really surprised though? Eldar vs space marines, space marines win because space marines are top cool and cannot lose to anything since they are space marines and space marines are the bess!
Take out a small group and god of a race that doesn't actively seek to wipe out humanity and directly aid Chaos. In other words: A is the one where you potentially save Humanity. B. is where you help your greatest enemy. Artemis chose B like an idiot. He's a Space Marine. Even while specialising against a certain type of threat his job is defending the Imperium. He failed massively.
Eldar spy detected.
Backspacehacker wrote: Correct me if im wrong, as im not versed in eldar lore much, but from what i have read, and been told.
Aint Eldraad one of the most well know, "all according to plan," Characters in 40k?
He is an interesting one. Yes he is a nasty plotter and isn't above ignoring prophesies of other seers or spoiling the plan of other eldar factions based on his own visions , stubbornnes or ideals He is known for betraying and sacrificing millions in order to move his own plan one step further. And still he is one of the few major eldar players who didn't accept the "kill all vermin plan" when the cabal decided upon the fate of humanity, chaos and the universe. So he might actually be one of the "good guys" or just a fan of using suffering humans as his tool...
You might want to read up on the reason why there was a Second War for Armageddon, If you like a more recent reason why the deathwatch should shoot anyone on sight who has anything to do with Eldrad.... Hint this is a good place to start: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Eldrad_Ulthran
Automatically Appended Next Post: The other reason if you don't care about assassination attempts on the emperor or the death of millions of humans might be that he should not be alive at all. So this "Eldrad" is likely an imposter and might just be an agent of some dark god.
From my knowledge, wasn't Ynnead meant to be birthed after the death of the last Eldar? Only then being powerful enough to take on Slaneesh? If Eldrad had succeeded, I can only imagine that Ynnead would have gotten bitch slapped so hard by Slannesh he would have disappeared right out of existence. After all, Khorne couldn't put down Slaneesh right after her birth, what chance would a half formed Eldar god have had?
If anything, the Death Watch have done the Eldar a favour by having at least part of Ynnead surviving Eldrad's stupidity and given Ynnead a chance to return in the future.
I would be less surprised when this was actually just one of eldrads just as planned moments and that those marines played the role that they where expected to preform.
This isn't the first time and we all know that he could have stopped those marines before they where even born if he really wanted.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Gw likes to give characters a theme. Eldrads is the rebellious plotter who somehow saves his race at the end of the day by screwing others over. No way that gw would change this in the starter set of a grand campaign
oldzoggy wrote: I would be less surprised when this was actually just one of eldrads just as planned moments and that those marines played the role that they where expected to preform.
This isn't the first time and we all know that he could have stopped those marines before they where even born if he really wanted.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Gw likes to give characters a theme. Eldrads is the rebellious plotter who somehow saves his race at the end of the day by screwing others over. No way that gw would change this in the starter set of a grand campaign
No is not, maybe some sector of internet population has led you to believe it but Eldrad it's not a rebellious plotter and never been.
He's always been the uttermost determination, defying to even rest or finally die (crystalize) past his time in order to protect his kind, always performing his duty not matter the cost. Ironically he has more in common with the die hard chaplains of the Marines like Lemartes or Cassius (going on just by sheer force of will to keep performing their duty ) than the Vect portrayal some people wish to put upon him.
@Inevitable_Faith: My personal views on it are quite similar to yours, I only differ in that I also think that the Craftworld Eldar's consistent inability to win almost anything of note is vexing and that I think the defeat was too extreme, having Eldrad fail would have been good enough, but having the Craftworlds go dark, all Infinity Circuits go quiet, the Exodites are described as now being helpless and the fleets of the Eldar are described as being defenceless too. That's far too much! It's hyperbolic on its own.
Other than that I do just doubt your presumption that 'the Eldar will be thrown a bone eventually' I would not be surprised if the Craftworld Eldar never get thrown a 'narrative' bone.
@Backspacehacker: The narrative makes very clearly that none of what happened was according to Eldrad's plan. Per the narrative's description Eldrad failed the moment he sought to shield himself from Nihilus' Plasma bolt and what happened was completely different to what he wanted. This is not a 'grand plan' of his, he just failed. Again.
@oldzoggy: I read Throneworld...I specifically remember the Shadowseer stating that she was there to deliver a message to the Emperor, I remember nothing of her attempting to murder the Emperor and, to be honest, considering her entire inner monologue would find it baffling if she actually thought she could since she goes to great lengths to explain how powerful the Emperor is. I might have missed something but can you say where she attempts to assassinate the Emperor?
@Inquisitor Gideon: The Ritual would specifically, through Warp Magic, allow Ynnead to emerge without needing the last of the Eldar to die, hence why Eldrad wanted to try it. Also discussing the power of Warp Gods in such material terms is not wise since their power fluctuates wildly based on numerous factors (which makes sense since the Warp is in constant flux) since the Eldar Gods existed without threat from all three Chaos Gods for millennia and then died due to the unique propensity of Slaanesh's birth (from inside, and as a result of the Eldar's turning away from them). In general the Gods of 40k, like most actual myths, run on narrative confluences as opposed to hard Power Levels and material realities.
Also i don't get this 'Eldrad's so competent' or the theme that he wins. Other than the Second Armageddon War is there any other time in fluff his or Ulthwe's manipulations have yielded enormous success? To my knowledge, like Ghazghkull, Eldrad hasn't really ever achieved much.
Even if their power does fluctuate, it wouldn't be enough for Ynnead to be any form of threat. Even if the miracle happened and Slaneesh was put down, the other three aren't going to allow it to continue to exist. I can't imagine any of them would entertain the thought of something existing that could possibly threaten them. I'd actually like to see it, if anything just for a proper chaos team up again. But then, the eventualty is that Khorne is just going to end up with a new ring on his finger.
Inevitable_Faith wrote: 3. Ultimately what I feel is disappointing is that the plan was essentially foiled by 13 marines. I know GW likes to play up how awesome individual marines are but this was kind of a major plot piece to have the action-movie crew come in and clean house in. Insult to injury is that this was an essentially nobody captain that foiled a major Eldar hero that's been in the lore since long before I started playing 40K.
As much as I hate to say it, is anyone really surprised though? Eldar vs space marines, space marines win because space marines are top cool and cannot lose to anything since they are space marines and space marines are the bess!
If this was a Black Library novel focused on a unit of space marines determined to stop an Eldar plot as the protagonists then this writing would have been less divisive because when you read a space marine novel you expect the space marines to win or have at least some sort of bittersweet ending at worst. What I think GW often doesn't realize is that when it comes to these boxed games it's not just one player-base buying the box, it's two, the IoM players AND the xenos players. The story needs to be written now knowing that the space marines aren't your only protagonists but the Eldar are now too (or whoever the marines fight in any boxed game for that matter). GW seems to think in many cases that they only have IoM players and that all the xenos (or chaos) races are just AI controlled opponents like in some computer game. That they don't need to make the "bad guy" player feel good about a story or have any victories because you can't hurt the feelings of a computer. Well the xenos players are real people too and same with chaos players and so getting trounced by marines all the time gets pretty old.
Now I'm not trying to state that marines always win or that the xenos races always lose (there's too much lore out there, I haven't read it all) but what I am saying is that this is a box set made for two people. Two people that are going to have an investment and a bias towards one faction or the other depending on what army they field and because of this the writing should be used to make both factions seem cool and epic without demoting one of them to "evil NPC bad guy #47". To be honest I think it would have been wiser for GW to write this box set into a stalemate between Eldrad and the DW and have Black Library progress the main 40k universe story in a novel. That way the box set can portray both Eldrad/Harlies and DW as the protagonists in equal parts so that no player feels like he's playing the lesser of the two factions.
As an aside it must sting as the xenos player in this box set that if you play the campaign against a buddy no matter how much you win in every mission it all means nothing because the lore in the box states that at the end of the day you lose anyways, it cheapens any victory you may feel good about as the Harlie player.
Anemone wrote:@Inevitable_Faith: My personal views on it are quite similar to yours, I only differ in that I also think that the Craftworld Eldar's consistent inability to win almost anything of note is vexing and that I think the defeat was too extreme, having Eldrad fail would have been good enough, but having the Craftworlds go dark, all Infinity Circuits go quiet, the Exodites are described as now being helpless and the fleets of the Eldar are described as being defenceless too. That's far too much! It's hyperbolic on its own.
Other than that I do just doubt your presumption that 'the Eldar will be thrown a bone eventually' I would not be surprised if the Craftworld Eldar never get thrown a 'narrative' bone
I haven't read every bit of Eldar lore out there but from what I have read I agree that it does start to wear on my enthusiasm for the Eldar that they almost always lose in the end or get a pyrrhic victory at best. Hope is a powerful thing and does wonders to ignite a spark of passion for anything, 40k armies included, and to constantly have it taken away is actively lessening my excitement for anything Eldar. I got excited for this plot advancement and now I find myself lost as to what the Eldar need to do next, it's not a good feeling and does nothing to make me want to start my Harlie army. It's a tough balancing act but GW needs to find the right balance between "dying race on the brink of extinction" and "outnumbered space elves seeking their salvation" to make Eldar feel both threatened and at the same time be important players within the 40k universe. These constant losses are not helping their image.
As I said earlier the Eldar are a well established faction on the TT and GW can't squat them due to lore reasons so they will have to eventually make some sort of reasoning as to their continued presence in the universe. I understand right now things looks super bleak but they can't just leave it at this, they'll have to add more. As for the " Craftworlds go dark, all Infinity Circuits go quiet, the Exodites are described as now being helpless and the fleets of the Eldar are described as being defenceless" part I'm not sure about that. I don't own DM so I can't read through the lore at my leisure but where does it say all of this happened? To my knowledge if Eldrads plan worked then that would have happened but since the ritual got interrupted then perhaps all the above stated doom and gloom never transpired? I'm just shooting in the dark now but how can the Eldar function as a military force if all this happened?
You know a few months back there were very specific rumors of upcoming Eldar models. One was described as a Wraith unit put back together and being held together by raw energy or something like that on Faeit.
What if that is what it will take to keep Eldar tech functioning? It seems to fit for such a panned rumor.
Gamgee wrote: You know a few months back there were very specific rumors of upcoming Eldar models. One was described as a Wraith unit put back together and being held together by raw energy or something like that on Faeit.
What if that is what it will take to keep Eldar tech functioning? It seems to fit for such a panned rumor.
Seems more likely Faeit was spouting rubbish to me.
@anemone they where send there to send a peaceful message to the emperror, and they had vulcans trinket to prove their good will.All the inquisition saw was just a group of crazed elder clowns murdering their way to the throne room. The lone survivor was captured and asked about their assassination plans and how she got there but she continued to lie. So yeah it doesn't matter that Eldead tried to warn them against chaos and sacrificed many elder lives in the process all that mattered is what the inquisitors saw and that they now command the deathwatch partly to prevent horrors like these from happening again
123ply wrote: Yneead probably isn't dead and the eldar are still in the game
We will just have to wait and see what they have planned.
After giving it a bit of thought (and a good night’s sleep) I want to be more positive regarding the possible future of the Eldar but this has still left a very nasty after taste.
I want to believe that the bright spark that flew into the void was Ynnead successfully born but not quite in the way Eldrad intended. And that it will play apart in Cegorach’s ultimate jest, which is apparently to trick Slaanesh into expending all her power not to destroy the Eldar, but to save them. If Eldrad had succeeded then Ynnead’s explosive entrance would have alerted Slaanesh immediately but if Slaanesh believes that it failed to materialise the spark might be able to go undetected and slowly draw Eldar souls to it and away from Slaanesh, this could actually work out for the best, who knows?
cosmicsoybean wrote: 3. Ultimately what I feel is disappointing is that the plan was essentially foiled by 13 marines. I know GW likes to play up how awesome individual marines are but this was kind of a major plot piece to have the action-movie crew come in and clean house in. Insult to injury is that this was an essentially nobody captain that foiled a major Eldar hero that's been in the lore since long before I started playing 40K.
Why is it unreasonable? Eldrad's harlequin guards were not all that many either, and the fact that a plasma pistol shot interrupted his concentration seems, well, pretty reasonable to me? The fact that he is a well known character alone is not enough to stop plasma shots - he actually has to stop it with his powers. I do not see a problem with that lack of plot armor.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Inevitable_Faith wrote: What I think GW often doesn't realize is that when it comes to these boxed games it's not just one player-base buying the box, it's two, the IoM players AND the xenos players.
I do not see your point. Both being player factions does not mean that one side won't lose.
The alternative is the rather boring stagnation that, for example, plagues the entire A-H conflict arc in WoW.
In order for anything meaningful to happen in a conflict, it either has to end through peace or one side has to start winning - otherwise it stagnates. That the plasma pistol was held by a newly introduced character does not make the shot less deadly.
The other issue at hand is who foiled Eldrad. Jimsolo hit the nail on the head here on how it cheapens an established character that has been written to be such a powerful being to be beaten by a nobody who just came out of nowhere and just got his nametag that morning. If you've played the pre-patch for WoW then I'd love to explain a perfect example of this to you but I'll refrain from it for the moment because spoilers. This pre-patch has a great example that is pertinent to this conversation.
I also agree that we can't have a stalemate in the lore all the time, that gets dry. A and H in WoW is actually a great example of this but at least Blizzard realizes that there are actual players on both sides of the factions and that one faction isn't just the NPC bad guys and so they make the attempt to do two things:
1. Make sure that both factions are represented in a moral "shades of grey" tone so as not to clearly fall into a "good guys vs bad guys" trope. This makes it so no matter what faction you fight for you can always feel like you're fighting for a good cause and not feel alienated into being "the bad guys".
2. They also make the effort to show both victories and defeats on both factions sides. Since the launch of WoW you can can see an almost 50/50 split between A and H victories and a good number of draws as well. This makes it clear that both are powerful forces and that no force is ultimately stronger than the other. This serves in allowing the players to feel like they are part of a group that can stand on it's own and accomplish things.
Both of these things serve to make the players of either faction feel important and capable no matter which side they chose. This is exactly the feeling that should be introduced to both players of Death Masque (or any boxed game for that matter), that both factions are important, both are capable and that both have something worth fighting for. Sadly the way this was written was that IoM is good guys, Eldar deserve to go extinct and that good guys won because space marines are awesome.
It's fine for a fluff novel to choose the winning side or have a clear "protagonist vs antagonist" plot but because this is a boxed game aimed at two people playing opposing factions I actually feel having it written in such a way that the sides stalemate or take their own respective victories with no clear winner is the correct option. This way both players of the boxed campaign can feel worthwhile in equal measures. Save the "winners vs losers" stuff for the novels where if I buy a DW novel I expect the DW to be awesome and win their hard-fought battles.
I sincerely hope I explained myself well cause I know it's very difficult to get complex issues out in writing. I don't mean to discredit anything you say Ashiraya I just wish to show another side of the coin.
pm713 wrote: He knows they were going to hurt Slaanesh, he knew the Harlequin wasn't lying
He knew no such things. He knew that the Eldar had launched a massive invasion of an important Imperial World and that they were doing something dodgy on the moon of that world.
He has no reason to believe what the Eldar tell him, especially when he has no time to waste.
He was told right before he shot the Harlequin in the face. On top of that he's a member of the Deathwatch so he should know a basic thing like colourful Eldar + Mask = Harlequin. Harlequin = Chaos enemy. Again the paragraph states that he didn't think the Harlequin was lying. Artemis suffers from the common problem of plot induced stupidity.
And he knows Harlequin is an Eldar and Eldar keep attacking Imperium. Somebody who keeps attacking you is no ally. And if he's not ally how can you take his words at face value when lives of humans could be at risk? Being deathwatch he should also know Eldars value Eldar life only. Not human life. Humans can all burn as long as it means even one more eldar survives.
That's right. Eldars will trade EVERY human for ONE eldar. Without blinking an eye.
And you think Artemis should blindly believe what he states?
@Inquisitor Gideon: Except calculating it that way doesn't help. For Millenia Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle were totally impotent whilst the Eldar Gods weren't, Gork and Mork barely ever do anything despite being described as divine 'powerhouses' to quote the lore. The Warp Gods don't work on a "I have done X in the past so I can do Y now and if I can do Z then my Equal can do Z to so combined we have V power". Like real myths they work more like; this happened and was fated to happen. But I'm not going to side track into the discussion now anyway so suffice to say we disagree with each other on this point. That's fine with me.
@Inevitable_Faith: At the height of the ritual this occurs; everything based of Craftworld Eldar (and Exodite tech) apparently shuts down. It occurs. I'll admit maybe they'll reveal that because the ritual 'failed' it'll reverse but, at the same time, the logic also exists that because it has already happened it won't reverse.
To put it simply Eldrad's own description of the entire plot sounds as if he is literally saying; "If I succeed we live, if I fail all Eldar die," so he seems pretty certain this was an all-or-nothing gamble of the entire species.
But we'll wait to see what they do next, certainly, but I also will still feel annoyed by this development because it entrenches the Imperium's inability to lose.
@oldzoggy: Oh, so you were more talking from their perspective in lore, I understand now, I think I misunderstood what you were doing before.
@Ashiraya: The problem is that one side never loses in the Starter sets; the Imperium. If there was some degree of parity, by having starter sets and major narrative supplements which a faction other than the Imperium won it would be fine, but that's not what happened.
Or are you suggesting only one faction should win everything constantly? That's a narrative stagnation of its own kind since it leads you into having a predictable story in which you can always know the protagonist (the Marines) will win no matter what at the end. That's a narrative stagnation which utterly kills any suspense.
@Jimsolo: That is really one thing that bothers me a lot, I like the way you put it. How would people react if an Exarch Special Character in the very book he was introduced bested Logan Grimnar? If one's willing to do it to Eldrad why not have some parity and be willing to do it to the major established characters of other factions?
Anemone wrote: @Inevitable_Faith: At the height of the ritual this occurs; everything based of Craftworld Eldar (and Exodite tech) apparently shuts down. It occurs. I'll admit maybe they'll reveal that because the ritual 'failed' it'll reverse but, at the same time, the logic also exists that because it has already happened it won't reverse.
To put it simply Eldrad's own description of the entire plot sounds as if he is literally saying; "If I succeed we live, if I fail all Eldar die," so he seems pretty certain this was an all-or-nothing gamble of the entire species.
But we'll wait to see what they do next, certainly, but I also will still feel annoyed by this development because it entrenches the Imperium's inability to lose.
Going to be funny to see how GW keeps Eldar major faction. Sure sounds like infinity circuis was drained completely and then ritual failed. No infinity circuit, no craftworlds. Do even their webway gates work enough to evacuate to some planet?
Of course this being GW they can write whatever they wish. Doesn't even have to be logical based on previous books.
Everyone should know Tzeentch is running the show at Gdubs by now.
Eldar fluffers know how Thousand Son fluffers have been treated. Never liked that Ynneed stuff any way.
Not sure why the DJ laid his cannon down, unless Artemus has a larger role to play. Need more info.
Looks like theyre going to combine the Eldar. Ala AOS. Pain engines instead of wraith. Blah blah. It doesnt look to good for the Eldar.
The golden point shooting off, smells like the end AOS and annoyed the feth out of me.
Wait till theres a combined necrodar god, that the reborn Emp makes a deal with. Or some other grox plop
.
an established character that has been written to be such a powerful being to be beaten by a nobody who just came out of nowhere and just got his nametag that morning.
Just one thing to note: Artemis is not exactly 'came out of nowhere' - he's the original named Deathwatch marine and has been in the background and on the table and been name-checked in rulebooks, novels, audiobooks and so on for fifteen years.
Anemone wrote: The problem is that one side never loses in the Starter sets; the Imperium. If there was some degree of parity, by having starter sets and major narrative supplements which a faction other than the Imperium won it would be fine, but that's not what happened.
Or are you suggesting only one faction should win everything constantly? That's a narrative stagnation of its own kind since it leads you into having a predictable story in which you can always know the protagonist (the Marines) will win no matter what at the end. That's a narrative stagnation which utterly kills any suspense.
I think you should turn down your expectations on starter sets, really. Marines are by far the most popular faction and GW's lovechild; obviously they will write them off as as impressive as possible.
I do not think that is ideal - I'd prefer a starting set with no Marines at all, as I like Marines but I like variation even more - but what happened here is very much par for the course and has been for a fair while now. It is no surprise.
The other issue at hand is who foiled Eldrad. Jimsolo hit the nail on the head here on how it cheapens an established character that has been written to be such a powerful being to be beaten by a nobody who just came out of nowhere and just got his nametag that morning. If you've played the pre-patch for WoW then I'd love to explain a perfect example of this to you but I'll refrain from it for the moment because spoilers. This pre-patch has a great example that is pertinent to this conversation.
I did play the prepatch, and what happened to Vol'jin does not overly bother me (what bothered me is Sylvanas, she has more plot armour than Tau and Imperium put together, but that is another topic.) He let his guard down, a demon exploited that, and he paid for it. Eldrad let his guard down (he had to for his ritual), a Marine exploited that, and Eldrad paid for it. If anything, the fact that he managed to perceive an incoming plasma shot, drop his ritual, and empower his armour to completely stop the shot only writes him off as more impressive still. Those hypersonic reactions.
Both of these things serve to make the players of either faction feel important and capable no matter which side they chose. This is exactly the feeling that should be introduced to both players of Death Masque (or any boxed game for that matter), that both factions are important, both are capable and that both have something worth fighting for. Sadly the way this was written was that IoM is good guys, Eldar deserve to go extinct and that good guys won because space marines are awesome.
No, I think it is just written to be a... feasible narrative rather than a Blizzard narrative designed to throw out one bone per faction per conflict. Again, Eldrad may be more liked than Artemis, but that alone cannot stop a plasma bolt, and it's not like there are a lot of well-known Deathwatch characters to pick from. Ironically, in such an unrealistic setting as this, having war be rather unfair is actually something rather realistic.
It's fine for a fluff novel to choose the winning side or have a clear "protagonist vs antagonist" plot but because this is a boxed game aimed at two people playing opposing factions I actually feel having it written in such a way that the sides stalemate or take their own respective victories with no clear winner is the correct option. This way both players of the boxed campaign can feel worthwhile in equal measures. Save the "winners vs losers" stuff for the novels where if I buy a DW novel I expect the DW to be awesome and win their hard-fought battles.
Overall, I think everyone just cares too much about this. This was an inevitable conclusion. Consider that if Eldrad had succeeded, the Eldar would essentially win 40k - they would have a god that could beat up Slaanesh, the doom of the Eldar would be averted and they could start taking their galaxy back. This outcome, while a setback that pushes Eldar's doom-clock another hour forward, otherwise does not change very much. Surely this is the closest to the stalemate you desire?
I sincerely hope I explained myself well cause I know it's very difficult to get complex issues out in writing. I don't mean to discredit anything you say Ashiraya I just wish to show another side of the coin.
The state of the infinity circuits is what's the big deal. If they indeed are drained and all the souls gone, then it is basically game over for Eldar. But is this really the case? To me it merely seemed like some people's overwrought interpretation of somewhat vague story.
Crimson wrote: The state of the infinity circuits is what's the big deal. If they indeed are drained and all the souls gone, then it is basically game over for Eldar. But is this really the case? To me it merely seemed like some people's overwrought interpretation of somewhat vague story.
They should probably stop using Guardians on foot and get more Scatterbikes then.
Crimson wrote: The state of the infinity circuits is what's the big deal. If they indeed are drained and all the souls gone, then it is basically game over for Eldar. But is this really the case? To me it merely seemed like some people's overwrought interpretation of somewhat vague story.
They should probably stop using Guardians on foot and get more Scatterbikes then.
If the infinity circuits die then all Craftworlders are dead.
@Iocarno24: There is no comparison to the degree of presence Eldrad and Artemis respectively have. If this is acceptable then I want parity; have Logan Grimnar bested by Grotsnik, Kharn bested by Sergeant Harker or some such similar situation.
@Ashiraya: I don't really understand what you're saying, to be honest, something not 'being a surprise' doesn't really have any bearing on whether it is desirable or not. My largest gripe with the state of 40k as a whole is how little anything surprises me because 8/10 times the result is simply a variation of 'the Imperium wins'. It feels like a kids cartoon the predictability with which the 'protagonist' wins.
Also, the point concerning Eldrad's defeat, if that's the case why not have a major character from another faction then be bested by a minor character? Do you think someone like Dante would ever be beat by a minor character few people know anything about?
Also it is not close to a stalemate. Close to a stalemate would have been a failure of the ritual which leads to Ynnead not emerging but also still leaves open Ynnead's role in the plot. The Craftworld Eldar had all their fleets and technology powered down, lost all their previous ancestors (which is one of their major strong points as a faction). This isn't a stalemate, its the most grievous defeat in 40k faction has ever suffered in the 41st millennium.
@Mr Morden: I hope no one becomes any type of 'Teclis' personally.
Sadly, disappointingly after the build up in the Valedor novel, neither Illyana or the Tears of Morai-Heg seem to be mentioned or important. I can't confirm for certain but, as fat as I can tell, they have no role and neither do the Dark Eldar.
@Mr Morden: I hope no one becomes any type of 'Teclis' personally.
Sadly, disappointingly after the build up in the Valedor novel, neither Illyana or the Tears of Morai-Heg seem to be mentioned or important. I can't confirm for certain but, as fat as I can tell, they have no role and neither do the Dark Eldar.
The quotes seem to indicate ritual drained circuit as planned and then got interrupted. Which leaves dead circuit.
Maybe there's piece nobody has posted though that indicates otherwise. Or GW writes next installment so that it wasn't. Or they retcon so that craftworlds operate without circuit.
@locarno24: My apologies on my mistake above about Artemis. Admittedly I've never searched out DW novels or lore items as they aren't a faction that interests me so I didn't know he had been established prior to Death Masque.
@Ashiraya: I initially didn't care too much about the manner in which Vol'Jin died either. You are correct, he dropped his guard and it was exploited. The part that bothered me was later in that same video where Varian Wrynn died. It wasn't a simple slip in his guard that was exploited by random demon #477, it was much more than that. He single-handedly took out a fel reaver fought a bunch of demons until he was inevitably surrounded then turned into a pin cushion, brought to Gul'Dan (an established character made to be a credible threat) then Gul'Dan gave his speech and blew Wrynn into little Fel chunks. That was the point I felt cheated. You see while Vol'Jin's death was believable, it lacked any amount of energy or interesting points. Wrynn's death on the other hand was in a word: Epic. In my opinion the video made the Horde out to be a bunch of chumps who called the first retreat and made the Allince (vicariously through their king) seem like the badass warriors willing to risk it all and fight to save Azeroth. Ultimately it just felt like an unfair representation that favoured the Alliance.
Now this video was relevant to this discussion because this is what GW loves to do, especially with these boxed games. The IoM is always made to look like the good guys and are pre-written to win. This does the other factions no favours and does nothing to generate further interest in them. Who wants to play the NPC villains instead of the heroic defenders of the universe? Dungeon masters for Dungeons and Dragons I suppose but that's a different game.
As I've said the plasma shot was fine, in fact it would have been more believable that he couldn't deflect it and that he'd suffer a grievous wound but that's plot armour. To me it just felt that 13 marines was just too small of a force to go in and accomplish what they did. If it was 13 marines lead by a primarch? Then it would have been much more epic, we know the Primarchs to me great warriors and more than mere super-soldiers in their own right. Most Primarchs are written as one-man armies in their own right so any assault led by a Primarch feels much grander than many other characters could muster. While Artemis is not new, I've recently learned, he's still pretty small-fry compared to the bigger SM dudes like Marneus Calgar or Dante. It just doesn't feel good having one of the biggest and most prominent named characters of a faction you care about foiled by a minor character of a different faction.
The final resolution of the plot I agree with, Eldrad couldn't succeed, it would have been to much of a plot shift for the universe and I don't feel GW could handle that. I'm not surprised or disappointed in that.
They aren't JUST Marines though, the Deathwatch are the best Alien Hunters the Adeptus Astartes produce, gathered together and trained to take on any threat. They are the CIA Special Activities Division of the Space Marines, the literal best. Its the job of these 13 dudes to take out dudes like the Harlequins, and that Eldrad survived (because well he is a main character and a badass) is a testament to his badassery.
Mr Morden wrote:Was there any mention of Illyana as one of the more prominant advocates of raising Ynead? Also is the latter now definately "She"?
Sorry as far as i can tell there is no mention of Illyana which is a shame because she is going to be seriously angry at Eldrad for all of this. You’re probably safe referring to Ynnead as either she or he in the same way as Slaanesh can be referred to as the dark prince or she who thirsts.
Ashiraya wrote:It said the circuits gave a piece of themselves.
It is a weakening, not destruction.
I guess it’s all in how you read it. The implication is that Eldrad hijacked the infinity circuits of the craftworlds by using the stolen crystal seers as conduits, thus drawing all the spirits they contained to the crystal moon where they coalesced into a primordial soap of souls were they all gave up a part of themselves in order to bring Ynnead into existence. When the ritual failed the crystal seers shattered meaning that there was no way for them to return to the Infinity circuits of their Craftworlds essentially leaving them stranded. Now if this is anything like AOS then Slaanesh is about to have the feast of a life time but again this is all dependent upon what GW does next.
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: They aren't JUST Marines though, the Deathwatch are the best Alien Hunters the Adeptus Astartes produce, gathered together and trained to take on any threat. They are the CIA Special Activities Division of the Space Marines, the literal best. Its the job of these 13 dudes to take out dudes like the Harlequins, and that Eldrad survived (because well he is a main character and a badass) is a testament to his badassery.
Unfortunately this is part of the problem that GW has written themselves into: everything is the best. Depending on what codex/lore you read the writer has a bias towards that books protagonist. Space marines are the best soldiers the imperium has to offer, grey knights are better than that especially against daemons, deathwatch vs xenos. Eldrad is one of the best psykers in the universe, unless you read the chaos codex then it's Ahriman. Scions are the best the militarum can bring to bear but then you read Inquisitors codex and they pick some of the best scions as their own guard. Reading the Eldar codex the banshees are amazing melee fighters that can beat even the best IoM fighters thanks to their Eldar physiology and graceful moves but then read the Dark Eldar codex and even a lowly Wych is a great match or even better than a Banshee thanks to giving up any psychic tendencies and focusing all on martial prowess couple with performance enhancing drugs. Reading the Harlequin codex makes the troupes out to be almost impossible to fight thanks to their tricky holo technology and nimble moves coupled with eccentric styles to fight/dance.
It's a common theme amongst almost any of the GW lore that depending on the book you read and the intended protagonists of said book that they will always be portrayed as better than the other races/factions. Therein lies the problem that based on our personal biases based on our faction preferences we may be disappointed with how some other lore is written. In this case to an IoM fan the DW are indeed specialized xenos-hunting super-soldiers and almost no victory against a xenos race will seem to far-fetched. On the flipside as an Eldar fan one might think that the Harlequins, being an even more elite and mysterious faction of Eldar beyond even their craftworld brethren shouldn't succumb so easily to what they'd perceive as simply "yet another space marine faction".
It's all what side of the fence you're standing on that dictates what you think of your neighbours lawn I suppose.
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: They aren't JUST Marines though, the Deathwatch are the best Alien Hunters the Adeptus Astartes produce, gathered together and trained to take on any threat. They are the CIA Special Activities Division of the Space Marines, the literal best. Its the job of these 13 dudes to take out dudes like the Harlequins, and that Eldrad survived (because well he is a main character and a badass) is a testament to his badassery.
And yet, it's completely at odds with every other portrayal of Harlequins vs Marines in the fluff, including a fight between Deathwatch and Harlequins in Atlas Infernal, where the former got utterly curbstomped by the latter to the point where it barely looked like a fight.
At rough number parity, Harlequins > any kind of marine. Including Custodes, apparently, given the events of Throneworld.
Now, am I saying the box set should have been a similar curbstomp in the Harlies' favour? No, that would be silly and would just be the same problem as the current box but going in the other direction - it's a box set designed to sell two armies, not just one, and having your brand new model marines get curbstomped in their box-set would be quite the foolish decision. But it should have actually been a fight. They should have made it a battle of clever tactics vs individual superiority, with deathwatch marines luring Harlequins into kill zones and such to gun them down, while any marine unfortunate enough to get caught in close combat with a Harlequin is done for. If they'd done this, and Artemis had nobody left alive on his team by the time he confronted Eldrad, that would have been a fair portrayal of the fight.
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: They aren't JUST Marines though, the Deathwatch are the best Alien Hunters the Adeptus Astartes produce, gathered together and trained to take on any threat. They are the CIA Special Activities Division of the Space Marines, the literal best. Its the job of these 13 dudes to take out dudes like the Harlequins, and that Eldrad survived (because well he is a main character and a badass) is a testament to his badassery.
And yet, it's completely at odds with every other portrayal of Harlequins vs Marines in the fluff, including a fight between Deathwatch and Harlequins in Atlas Infernal, where the former got utterly curbstomped by the latter to the point where it barely looked like a fight.
At rough number parity, Harlequins > any kind of marine. Including Custodes, apparently, given the events of Throneworld.
Now, am I saying the box set should have been a similar curbstomp in the Harlies' favour? No, that would be silly and would just be the same problem as the current box but going in the other direction - it's a box set designed to sell two armies, not just one, and having your brand new model marines get curbstomped in their box-set would be quite the foolish decision. But it should have actually been a fight. They should have made it a battle of clever tactics vs individual superiority, with deathwatch marines luring Harlequins into kill zones and such to gun them down, while any marine unfortunate enough to get caught in close combat with a Harlequin is done for. If they'd done this, and Artemis had nobody left alive on his team by the time he confronted Eldrad, that would have been a fair portrayal of the fight.
Well said Robin5t, have an exalt. It is a box designed to sell two armies and as such should present both in an equal light. Robins suggestion of how to write the scene is much more believable, builds more tension and doesn't just come across as "we love space marines so we're writing them into awesomeness". It's the same conclusion in the end but at least it gives a positive portrayal of both forces.
Inevitable_Faith wrote: @locarno24: My apologies on my mistake above about Artemis. Admittedly I've never searched out DW novels or lore items as they aren't a faction that interests me so I didn't know he had been established prior to Death Masque.
@Ashiraya: I initially didn't care too much about the manner in which Vol'Jin died either. You are correct, he dropped his guard and it was exploited. The part that bothered me was later in that same video where Varian Wrynn died. It wasn't a simple slip in his guard that was exploited by random demon #477, it was much more than that. He single-handedly took out a fel reaver fought a bunch of demons until he was inevitably surrounded then turned into a pin cushion, brought to Gul'Dan (an established character made to be a credible threat) then Gul'Dan gave his speech and blew Wrynn into little Fel chunks. That was the point I felt cheated. You see while Vol'Jin's death was believable, it lacked any amount of energy or interesting points. Wrynn's death on the other hand was in a word: Epic. In my opinion the video made the Horde out to be a bunch of chumps who called the first retreat and made the Allince (vicariously through their king) seem like the badass warriors willing to risk it all and fight to save Azeroth. Ultimately it just felt like an unfair representation that favoured the Alliance.
Now this video was relevant to this discussion because this is what GW loves to do, especially with these boxed games. The IoM is always made to look like the good guys and are pre-written to win. This does the other factions no favours and does nothing to generate further interest in them. Who wants to play the NPC villains instead of the heroic defenders of the universe? Dungeon masters for Dungeons and Dragons I suppose but that's a different game.
As I've said the plasma shot was fine, in fact it would have been more believable that he couldn't deflect it and that he'd suffer a grievous wound but that's plot armour. To me it just felt that 13 marines was just too small of a force to go in and accomplish what they did. If it was 13 marines lead by a primarch? Then it would have been much more epic, we know the Primarchs to me great warriors and more than mere super-soldiers in their own right. Most Primarchs are written as one-man armies in their own right so any assault led by a Primarch feels much grander than many other characters could muster. While Artemis is not new, I've recently learned, he's still pretty small-fry compared to the bigger SM dudes like Marneus Calgar or Dante. It just doesn't feel good having one of the biggest and most prominent named characters of a faction you care about foiled by a minor character of a different faction.
The final resolution of the plot I agree with, Eldrad couldn't succeed, it would have been to much of a plot shift for the universe and I don't feel GW could handle that. I'm not surprised or disappointed in that.
To be fair, Voljin was not nearly a comparable character in terms of importance in both WoW lore and to the Horde as Varian was to the Alliance. Varian's death needed to be epic and badass, especially as many Alliance players feel like they've been cheated over the last few expansions (the story has been pretty much about the Horde in every expansion except Wrath of the Lich King), so a shift to build up the Alliance a bit is welcomed and necessary. And hell, the Legion expac is still taking away stuff from the Alliance - Dalaran is going neutral again, after the Alliance got it back in MoP.
Really, the only comparable Horde character to Varian is Thrall, who would also go out in some suitably epic way if it came down to it.
Yes, I know the Alliance 'won' the war in MoP, but all they really won was clearing out the evil Orcs in the Horde and some offscreen gains in Ashenvale/Felwood/maybe Gilneas, since they will never be bothered to phase in Alliance gains on screen.
WOD lets the Horde bring back Grom and Durotan whenever they please. Since, apparently, Grom's sins have all been forgiven. The Alliance have the prophetadin, Yrel, i guess? No where near the epic scale as the former two.
As for Ynnead and the Eldar, I'm sure we will see more Eldar campaigns down the line, that will let us see the full consequences for the Eldar, and if the dream of Ynnead is truly dead. He's right now in some kind of shattered, half birth state, with a large fragment of him out there somewhere.
As for the Eldar never winning, it took a quick look at the various Craftworlds on lexicanum and 40k wiki to show that's a pile of gak. Biel-tan singly handedly defeats two sector fleets and ten Space Marine chapters, even after Iyanden decides to not help them out. And that's just the first one I found!
As an aside I'd prefer for this not to become a Warcraft conversation as well. Just me though.
@Crazyterran: Acting like there is any parity in the number of wins the Imperium has compared to the number of wins the Craftworld Eldar have is a pile of complete Gak.
Here's the hard statistic; of the 25 engagements the Imperium has with the Craftworld Eldar in the fluff the Imperium wins 18 and the Craftworld Eldar win 7. That's less than half.
You're arguing that because the Craftworld Eldar win 1 battle all of a sudden there is absolute parity between the tendency for victory between the two factions. If that is the case then you, in particular, can no longer complain about Imperium losses to the Tau since battles like Kvariam Alpha, Styx and Pallia are defeats for the Tau.
Honestly its absolutely ridiculous to argue against the fact that the Craftworld Eldar have an abysmal track record for victories and that the Imperium is ridiculously favoured in terms of victories.
More importantly, returning again, would you have been happy to accept Dante being defeated by Grotsnik?
EDIT: Additionally nothing you say changes or challenges any core points made here so far. The Craftworld Eldar are still consistently incapable of achieving any forms of substantial victories, the Imperium still consistently wins every single narrative campaign supplement and starter set, as well as major historical events, and Eldrad's defeat by a minor character is still something which would never be done to a Marine special character.
I don't even know what you're saying since you're argument seemed to simply be; "Information is forthcoming, and because the Craftworld Eldar won one battle there can never be any complaining or feeling aggrieved over the fact that they overwhelmingly lose," what does any of this mean?
Anemone wrote: Here's the hard statistic; of the 25 engagements the Imperium has with the Craftworld Eldar in the fluff the Imperium wins 18 and the Craftworld Eldar win 7. That's less than half.
Again, I do not see the problem. War is not fair. If you want a game that distributes victory according to the offscreen quota, you should find something less grimdark.
@Ashiraya: I'll divide my response into two parts;
1) If you have that opinion about this game then it is fine for you to hold it. But at the same time Crazyterran was attempting to refute the idea that the Craftworld Eldar lose constantly, meaning he was implicitly accepting an argument that there should be parity already, otherwise there would be no point in arguing against the skewed win-loss ratio.
2) War is a million things which Warhammer 40k is not. It is not an accurate reflection of war, science, religion, politics, biology, phenomenons, military strategy or tactics.
It is a GAME.
It is a game created in which multiple different players invest, all equally worthwhile human beings, with the option to enjoy themselves in their game and invest within its story.
So they all have an equal right to desire it to be fun and enjoyable for them.
If your argument is that since 'War is unfair' (a nebulous point itself since what 'fair' is can be argued) certain factions can be treated in the fluff as losing constantly and be incapable of achieving anything then we simply do not understand what a GAME is in the same way at all.
All of this returns to parity in any case, no one would accept a similar outcome to Death Masque if it'd applied to the Imperium. No one ever engages with this point because that would be difficult.
Anemone wrote: As an aside I'd prefer for this not to become a Warcraft conversation as well. Just me though.
@Crazyterran: Acting like there is any parity in the number of wins the Imperium has compared to the number of wins the Craftworld Eldar have is a pile of complete Gak.
Here's the hard statistic; of the 25 engagements the Imperium has with the Craftworld Eldar in the fluff the Imperium wins 18 and the Craftworld Eldar win 7. That's less than half.
You're arguing that because the Craftworld Eldar win 1 battle all of a sudden there is absolute parity between the tendency for victory between the two factions. If that is the case then you, in particular, can no longer complain about Imperium losses to the Tau since battles like Kvariam Alpha, Styx and Pallia are defeats for the Tau.
Honestly its absolutely ridiculous to argue against the fact that the Craftworld Eldar have an abysmal track record for victories and that the Imperium is ridiculously favoured in terms of victories.
More importantly, returning again, would you have been happy to accept Dante being defeated by Grotsnik?
EDIT: Additionally nothing you say changes or challenges any core points made here so far. The Craftworld Eldar are still consistently incapable of achieving any forms of substantial victories, the Imperium still consistently wins every single narrative campaign supplement and starter set, as well as major historical events, and Eldrad's defeat by a minor character is still something which would never be done to a Marine special character.
I don't even know what you're saying since you're argument seemed to simply be; "Information is forthcoming, and because the Craftworld Eldar won one battle there can never be any complaining or feeling aggrieved over the fact that they overwhelmingly lose," what does any of this mean?
Considering it started off as 'the Eldar always lose to the Imperium' before it was edited away...
As mentioned above, war is not fair. The Eldar (Eldrad) have literally been one of the main causes for the fourty first Millenium being the dumpster fire that it is, so I'm not going to shed any tears if they get burned a lot for their hubris.
Sicarius gets beaten down by a no name Necron lord in the first battle for Damnos, Cassius by a random Carnifex, Lysander is captured by random Iron Warriors...
As for the battle I mentioned, im pretty sure none of the Imperial victories have equated to ten space marine chapters and a pair of sector fleets. That is a huge amount of resources that a single Craftworld smacked down.
How many victories have the Imperials scored if you take out no name Craftworlds that are literally mentioned once or twice for some Space Marine chapter to seem badass?
Edit: it's been a week and you are still whining? God damn.
@Crazyterran: This was never about the Craftworld Eldar 'always losing' this is about the fact that, indisputably, there is an enormous disparity in the ratio of win-loss for every faction other than the Imperium.
Your repetition of the 'war is not fair' argument doesn't need dealing with since I already discussed it at length above.
Now as for the defeats; Sicarius returns from his defeat by said Necron Lord to reclaim Damnos and kills a Transcendent C'tan so that's no comparison to Death Masque at all.
Cassius loses, sure, but he's a totally minor character so, again, no comparison to Death Masque.
Lysander is a terrible example since do you know what he achieves following that capture? That's more an achievement of his than anything else.
Seriously none of this comes close to comparing to Eldrad's inability, despite being the greatest living seer and among the greatest living psykers, to defeat a minor character with little fluff and almost no major achievements in a defeat so total it nearly wipes out the entire Craftworld Eldar faction.
Your arguments make so little rational sense, it feels like you just string along examples of non-comparable events in the hopes that linguistics will cause them to sound convincing.
Considering the Imperial victories have amounted to the destruction of in the vicinity of 4-5 whole Craftworlds, have involved Alaitoic's near destruction and the foiling of the forces of Iyanden, Biel-Tan, Ulthwe and Saim-Hann it is pretty clear that they've equated to said battle.
Also, again, you fail to use the fluff correctly. Biel-Tan is not stated to fight 10 whole Chapters, they fight elements of 10 whole Chapters.
Also I find this very ironic;
"How many victories have the Imperials scored if you take out no name Craftworlds that are literally mentioned once or twice for some Space Marine chapter to seem badass?"
I don't know...hey, wait a minute, if you remove Space Marine Chapters with no name which are literally mentioned once or twice just to make Biel-tan look badass then...the entire battle you're referring to vanishes. Congratulations, you've defeated your own point.
Now to return to a more serious answer; Iyanden, Biel-tan, Saim-Hann and Ulthwe are all defeated in these battles I mentioned (Ulthwe in particular I believe has three defeats to its name).
Can you name how many times the Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Space Wolves or Blood Angels have been defeated by Ulthwe, Biel-tan or Saim-hann?
Until you can actually use the data effectively and make a more coherent point I really don't see the point to respond to your personal and invective attacks.
.... I'm sitting here still brooding over how it all went down.
I think it's pretty clear there's a huge Imperium bias even if you argue all day long over victories and loses. You're basically recycling what you've already said hoping it'll sink in... But it won't.
A lot of First Founding Chapters have plot armor. So of course they won't lose, even mentioning a possible huge lose for them is heresy.
Eldar are well on their way to a squash fest, SPESSSS MAREEEENS are going to dismantle the remaining factions until it's them and Chaos, Primarchs will return to save the day, the end.
Edit: I should just get a job at GW for such brilliant insight.
I think it is misleading to argue that Death Masque exists to sell two armies, it is to sell deathwatch first and foremost and the Harlequins are there to increase perceived value and probably to get rid of spare stock. This is clearly the start of a push towards something in the narrative, but the boxset seems to merely consist of an enemy for the harlequins to fight.
Put simply, how many people are going to buy this for thte Harlies and not the Deathwatch?
Redseer wrote: That's a depressing read... But I'm rather unsurprised. So I guess eldrad is dead... Again?
He's alive.
Well, at least there's a plus. Thanks for tellin me. Albeit sounds like the Harlequin Deathjester character didn't make it. And i was so excited for a Harlequin character. :(
Going into this thread, I already wasn't a big fan of DM; GW had been teasing Eldar progression and the lack thereof, coupled with lack of new units/rules/etc. was ultra disappointing. So I didn't figure the story could be much worse, just more generic Spess Mehrenes doing what GW wills them to.
@Crazyterran: Last time I'll talk about WoW here, sorry I thought the comparison was worth making though. If we are the compare characters then would not Eldrad be more like Varian in importance instead of Vol'Jin? If that's the case then he deserved a suitably epic defeat.
I won't get into the larger fluff discussions because I haven't read everything out there concerning Eldar and Space Marine interactions however the point has been made that these box sets come with two armies and each army will go to a player (usually) and since both players are human and deserving of equal representation for their respective forces then I say for the box sets GW should put the effort into making both forces seem suitably badass. Leave the clear winners and losers for the Black Library fluff.
From a sales perspective it would be wise too since making armies other than the space marines also look powerful and badass can only help to generate interest in them and increase sales. Many of these box sets may be bought by new players and it doesn't help the xenos players enthusiasm for his army if he just reads that they got smacked around. Likely he may want to swap to being a marine player too and drop his xenos army.
Currently the status quo feels like:
1.Space marines sell well, obviously people like them...
2.Market the gak out of them, use them for every poster/advertisement/box set...
3.Sell more marines...
4. Repeat steps 1 to 3 ad infinitum
I have no problem with Marines being popular, they deserve it after all since they are really cool but I don't think it would hurt GW to market some of their other factions sometimes too.
Thing is, they keep promoting the Marines ahead of anyone else because Marines are popular, but the Marines are at least partially more popular because they keep getting promoted ahead of everyone else.
It's a self-perpetuating cycle of overly large pauldrons and dime-a-dozen characters.
Robin5t wrote: Thing is, they keep promoting the Marines ahead of anyone else because Marines are popular, but the Marines are at least partially more popular because they keep getting promoted ahead of everyone else.
It's a self-perpetuating cycle of overly large pauldrons and dime-a-dozen characters.
This is true. Much as I don't think the Marine-bashing in here is that pleasant, I agree that they get an inordinate amount of attention which some of could be diverted to other races - in my eyes, Chaos (in the form of playable rules), Sisters (in terms of exposure) and xenos (in terms of lasting impact on the setting).
Robin5t wrote: Thing is, they keep promoting the Marines ahead of anyone else because Marines are popular, but the Marines are at least partially more popular because they keep getting promoted ahead of everyone else.
It's a self-perpetuating cycle of overly large pauldrons and dime-a-dozen characters.
This is true. Much as I don't think the Marine-bashing in here is that pleasant, I agree that they get an inordinate amount of attention which some of could be diverted to other races - in my eyes, Chaos (in the form of playable rules), Sisters (in terms of exposure) and xenos (in terms of lasting impact on the setting).
Very well said Sgt_Smudge. Marine bashing won't make things any better and only serves to embitter the player-base. Instead if the other factions were supported and received more exposure more akin to the marine level then I think that's a great way to make more people happy and make for a much more rounded universe and player-base.
May i just point out that this whole thing (theoretically) has been set up by Cegorach.
Per Death Masque timeline, the Tome of Cegorach (which has been sealed since the Fall) has opened up, and the Masque of the Midnight Sorrow, performs a new interpretation of the Fall.
Per Codex: Harlequins, upon the Tome opening, the Shadowseers found a new Act that changes the tale of the Fall. One with a slender hope to change the fate of the Eldar. Known as Cegorach's ultimate jest, a way to trick Slaanesh into saving the Eldar.
@Happyjew: Always a possibility but I, personally, doubt it. The Harlequin Death Jester, who's providing Eldrad with the blessing of Cegorach necessary for the ritual to work, is described as sounding as 'despairing' when he appeals to Artemis. Clearly none of the Harlequins believe their plan is to fail and, additionally, the fluff seems to suggest Cegorach was, through the Death Jester, providing aide to Eldrad which was removed by Artemis and not part of the plan.
But we'll have to wait and see what the fallout is.
Ynnead was viewed as the death of the Eldar (at least craftworld eldar). Cegorach's Ultimate Jest is different than the creation of Ynnead. Its goal is to cause Slaanesh to expend all of her power saving the Eldar, instead of destroying them.
Cegorach isn't a nice god. He is actually closer to a villain, like loki, than to a good guy. Its entirely possible that Ynnead getting stopped would be a part of his plan to save the Eldar. Especially considering that if Ynnead is created, while probably killing Slaanesh, would also likely be the end of Eldar. Ynnead being born seems mutually exclusive with Cegorach completing his Jest.
No one knows what part they specifically will play in his plan so any harlequin may believe that their part is vital, or that they must succeed, where as in reality the opposite could be true. They could be just a distraction, or it could be vital that they initiate something and then fail. Whose to say.
Cegorachs jest intrigues me, it could lead into something very interesting in the future.
Likewise the "jest" could be just that. Here's a prophecy that I'll half-tell, you guys have to fill in the blanks and figure the rest. So while craftworlders and Harlies alike scramble to decipher the prophecy and find out their place in it Cegorach sits back, cracks open a cold one and laughs to himself knowing the truth. There is no plan and he just made up the prophecy on a whim all so he could catch the the Eldar dance. I highly doubt this interpretation but it has a sense of cruel irony to it that I find appealing.
Inevitable_Faith wrote: Cegorachs jest intrigues me, it could lead into something very interesting in the future.
Likewise the "jest" could be just that. Here's a prophecy that I'll half-tell, you guys have to fill in the blanks and figure the rest. So while craftworlders and Harlies alike scramble to decipher the prophecy and find out their place in it Cegorach sits back, cracks open a cold one and laughs to himself knowing the truth. There is no plan and he just made up the prophecy on a whim all so he could catch the the Eldar dance. I highly doubt this interpretation but it has a sense of cruel irony to it that I find appealing.
Honestly, this is completely possible. I doubt this is the direction they'll go, but the potential is definitely there. Like I said Cegorach is not a nice God. For example not all of the masques have the same goals. The Masque of the Shattered Mirage believes the elder race is doomed and want to do as much damage to the rest of the galaxy as possible before they die off, they couldn't care less about chaos.
I continue to reserve judgement until further releases show where the fluff is going.
I would not take second hand information, particularly from /tg, as gospel particularly given how the original poster on /tg is apparently so full of hate for Xenos factions IRL that he was beside himself with glee as he believed Death Masque meant GW was scrapping the entire Eldar product line, and he was apparently eagerly awaiting the RL scrapping of Orks, Tau, and all other Xenos factions. Needless to say that is crazy talk and is tantamount to GW committing suicide. But hey, there are people out there unbalanced enough to think IRL that no player can honestly like a non-human faction.
The sad thing is that should GW had use another character like Iyanna Ariennal instead Eldrad pulling this stunt due her zeal and belief in Ynnead and detachment of reality as side effect of his time attached to the dead as Spiritseer would have made more sense.
Keeping the whole history as it is but just pointing that her followers convinced a large part of the Eldar souls within the infinity circuits to support her ritual instead the whole Eldar souls within all Craftworlds.
Lord Perversor wrote: The sad thing is that should GW had use another character like Iyanna Ariennal instead Eldrad pulling this stunt due her zeal and belief in Ynnead and detachment of reality as side effect of his time attached to the dead as Spiritseer would have made more sense.
Keeping the whole history as it is but just pointing that her followers convinced a large part of the Eldar souls within the infinity circuits to support her ritual instead the whole Eldar souls within all Craftworlds.
Agreed I guess they didn't fancy actually giving her a model and proper rules again .......another opportunity missed.
Does the fluff talk any more about the Deathwatch now apparently being completely independent operators and working with the Inquisition rather than for them as the new codex says?
Inevitable_Faith wrote: Cegorachs jest intrigues me, it could lead into something very interesting in the future.
Likewise the "jest" could be just that. Here's a prophecy that I'll half-tell, you guys have to fill in the blanks and figure the rest. So while craftworlders and Harlies alike scramble to decipher the prophecy and find out their place in it Cegorach sits back, cracks open a cold one and laughs to himself knowing the truth. There is no plan and he just made up the prophecy on a whim all so he could catch the the Eldar dance. I highly doubt this interpretation but it has a sense of cruel irony to it that I find appealing.
Honestly, this is completely possible. I doubt this is the direction they'll go, but the potential is definitely there. Like I said Cegorach is not a nice God. For example not all of the masques have the same goals. The Masque of the Shattered Mirage believes the elder race is doomed and want to do as much damage to the rest of the galaxy as possible before they die off, they couldn't care less about chaos.
I think the harlequins are way too precise for that. There's too many examples of them playing dumb the whole time but knew the ending all along. They wouldn't be laughing if they weren't in on the joke.
As for the masques, I thought they were made out to embody the roles they play in the performances. If they are performing the role of someone with that mentality(being doomed etc) they live it to its fullest. The Solitaire seems to be the best example of this. He lives the role that he plays
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'm not seeing a connection that Eldrads Plan is Cegorach's plan in its entirety, so I'm not the least bit worried about the Eldar surviving despite these events.
Cegorach will have the last laugh and I assure you it will be a performance like no other
Inevitable_Faith wrote: Cegorachs jest intrigues me, it could lead into something very interesting in the future.
Likewise the "jest" could be just that. Here's a prophecy that I'll half-tell, you guys have to fill in the blanks and figure the rest. So while craftworlders and Harlies alike scramble to decipher the prophecy and find out their place in it Cegorach sits back, cracks open a cold one and laughs to himself knowing the truth. There is no plan and he just made up the prophecy on a whim all so he could catch the the Eldar dance. I highly doubt this interpretation but it has a sense of cruel irony to it that I find appealing.
Honestly, this is completely possible. I doubt this is the direction they'll go, but the potential is definitely there. Like I said Cegorach is not a nice God. For example not all of the masques have the same goals. The Masque of the Shattered Mirage believes the elder race is doomed and want to do as much damage to the rest of the galaxy as possible before they die off, they couldn't care less about chaos.
I think the harlequins are way too precise for that. There's too many examples of them playing dumb the whole time but knew the ending all along. They wouldn't be laughing if they weren't in on the joke.
As for the masques, I thought they were made out to embody the roles they play in the performances. If they are performing the role of someone with that mentality(being doomed etc) they live it to its fullest. The Solitaire seems to be the best example of this. He lives the role that he plays
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'm not seeing a connection that Eldrads Plan is Cegorach's plan in its entirety, so I'm not the least bit worried about the Eldar surviving despite these events.
Cegorach will have the last laugh and I assure you it will be a performance like no other
You may think so but they're still written by GW. And gosh darn are they going to magically morph into chaos cultist-level thugs guarding a mustache twirling baddie with his doomsday weapon when the spess muhrines need their daily ego stroke!
Inevitable_Faith wrote: Cegorachs jest intrigues me, it could lead into something very interesting in the future.
Likewise the "jest" could be just that. Here's a prophecy that I'll half-tell, you guys have to fill in the blanks and figure the rest. So while craftworlders and Harlies alike scramble to decipher the prophecy and find out their place in it Cegorach sits back, cracks open a cold one and laughs to himself knowing the truth. There is no plan and he just made up the prophecy on a whim all so he could catch the the Eldar dance. I highly doubt this interpretation but it has a sense of cruel irony to it that I find appealing.
Honestly, this is completely possible. I doubt this is the direction they'll go, but the potential is definitely there. Like I said Cegorach is not a nice God. For example not all of the masques have the same goals. The Masque of the Shattered Mirage believes the elder race is doomed and want to do as much damage to the rest of the galaxy as possible before they die off, they couldn't care less about chaos.
I think the harlequins are way too precise for that. There's too many examples of them playing dumb the whole time but knew the ending all along. They wouldn't be laughing if they weren't in on the joke.
As for the masques, I thought they were made out to embody the roles they play in the performances. If they are performing the role of someone with that mentality(being doomed etc) they live it to its fullest. The Solitaire seems to be the best example of this. He lives the role that he plays
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'm not seeing a connection that Eldrads Plan is Cegorach's plan in its entirety, so I'm not the least bit worried about the Eldar surviving despite these events.
Cegorach will have the last laugh and I assure you it will be a performance like no other
You may think so but they're still written by GW. And gosh darn are they going to magically morph into chaos cultist-level thugs guarding a mustache twirling baddie with his doomsday weapon when the spess muhrines need their daily ego stroke!
The Deathwatch were portrayed as villains, with barely a coherent thought beyond "kill xenos".
I'm not sure if anybody really got jazzed up about how they were portrayed, even Deathwatch players. Reading the fluff was like reading the story of a group of Khorne Berserkers bearing down on some Eldar.
If it was a Space Marine ego stroke the Eldar would have been written much less sympathetically.
Anemone wrote: Here's the hard statistic; of the 25 engagements the Imperium has with the Craftworld Eldar in the fluff the Imperium wins 18 and the Craftworld Eldar win 7. That's less than half.
Again, I do not see the problem. War is not fair. If you want a game that distributes victory according to the offscreen quota, you should find something less grimdark.
Anemone wrote: Here's the hard statistic; of the 25 engagements the Imperium has with the Craftworld Eldar in the fluff the Imperium wins 18 and the Craftworld Eldar win 7. That's less than half.
Again, I do not see the problem. War is not fair. If you want a game that distributes victory according to the offscreen quota, you should find something less grimdark.
Or look towards the space marines.
Oh shnap, shots fired!
This is not the place for those kind of comments. Lolz
Anemone wrote: Here's the hard statistic; of the 25 engagements the Imperium has with the Craftworld Eldar in the fluff the Imperium wins 18 and the Craftworld Eldar win 7. That's less than half.
Again, I do not see the problem. War is not fair. If you want a game that distributes victory according to the offscreen quota, you should find something less grimdark.
Or look towards the space marines.
Oh shnap, shots fired!
This is not the place for those kind of comments. Lolz
I couldn't resist, but yeah shouldn't start off a marine hate party either. I like the death watch the best out of them, but with these releases they're watering them down too much as well. I agree that it should have probably been Iyanna, thought it would make sense and they even seemed to go to the effort of basically making one in one of the pictures for this.
Spoiler:
But yet again nothing seems to be coming from it. Interesting to see where Cegorath takes this, although the way this is I wouldn't be surprised if Cegorath turned out to just be Tzeentch with a clown mask now.
At this point you just need to grit your teeth and bare with it. GDub is obviously fixated solely on making the Space Marines the main attraction by essentially having them murder everything out of existence. If you have any hopes for another faction getting any semblance of spotlight, I wouldn't cling to them too tightly. Eventually, Space Marines won't have much character depth beyond who they murdered in the goriest fashion while other races simply fade away, their purpose being lose to inferior sales.
As for the laughing god, I honestly wouldn't put it past them to completely forget about him and leave him just there... Some clown faced god who isn't acknowledged. Otherwise, I suspect the Black Library will be stripped clean in the wake of Ahriman's attack when more Space Marines arrive to foil him, as well.
Kinda feels like they did this to squash the God of the dead theory, but I was always more inclined to believe the joke is slaneesh needs the eldar alive to continue to exsist. So at the last moment instead of destroying them allows them to live. mind blown. chaos rules broken. Cegorach lols.
Inevitable_Faith wrote: Cegorachs jest intrigues me, it could lead into something very interesting in the future.
Likewise the "jest" could be just that. Here's a prophecy that I'll half-tell, you guys have to fill in the blanks and figure the rest. So while craftworlders and Harlies alike scramble to decipher the prophecy and find out their place in it Cegorach sits back, cracks open a cold one and laughs to himself knowing the truth. There is no plan and he just made up the prophecy on a whim all so he could catch the the Eldar dance. I highly doubt this interpretation but it has a sense of cruel irony to it that I find appealing.
Honestly, this is completely possible. I doubt this is the direction they'll go, but the potential is definitely there. Like I said Cegorach is not a nice God. For example not all of the masques have the same goals. The Masque of the Shattered Mirage believes the elder race is doomed and want to do as much damage to the rest of the galaxy as possible before they die off, they couldn't care less about chaos.
I think the harlequins are way too precise for that. There's too many examples of them playing dumb the whole time but knew the ending all along. They wouldn't be laughing if they weren't in on the joke.
As for the masques, I thought they were made out to embody the roles they play in the performances. If they are performing the role of someone with that mentality(being doomed etc) they live it to its fullest. The Solitaire seems to be the best example of this. He lives the role that he plays
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'm not seeing a connection that Eldrads Plan is Cegorach's plan in its entirety, so I'm not the least bit worried about the Eldar surviving despite these events.
Cegorach will have the last laugh and I assure you it will be a performance like no other
The codex paints a different picture than you are suggesting. If you read the masque description not all of the masques are particularly very precise, some are some are not.The harlequins essentially play roles in a play, but they are not in the know about what the play is about.
Considering only a small number of Harlequins were involved and the rest prioritised the Black Library do we even know that Cegorach himself was taking an interest in this side expedition? If he so wished I imagine the Harlequins (and likely the Craftworld Eldar as well) would have aided Eldrad en masse.
I'll be interested to see where they go with the follow up instalment of this. it appears to have made the Eldar's desperate situation more desperate and made their one remote hope a bit more remote. I can see where they might go with this to generate new opportunities for the Eldar- the pursuit of soul fragments from the shattered moon. Ynnead becoming a presence in the physical universe/webway- could lead the wraith units being seen as servants of Ynnead within Craftworld forces. I definitely see the Laughing God involved in this -especially as Eldrad slipped up. I never thought it would work out as a full rebirth of Ynnead and this partial one is intriguing.
At this point you just need to grit your teeth and bare with it. GDub is obviously fixated solely on making the Space Marines the main attraction by essentially having them murder everything out of existence. If you have any hopes for another faction getting any semblance of spotlight, I wouldn't cling to them too tightly. Eventually, Space Marines won't have much character depth beyond who they murdered in the goriest fashion while other races simply fade away, their purpose being lose to inferior sales.
As for the laughing god, I honestly wouldn't put it past them to completely forget about him and leave him just there... Some clown faced god who isn't acknowledged. Otherwise, I suspect the Black Library will be stripped clean in the wake of Ahriman's attack when more Space Marines arrive to foil him, as well.
Marines have been in the spotlight like that for a long long time and something I don't mind but like to poke at sometimes. I kind of like the idea of papa smurf being able to punch everything to death and go with the text to speech device stuff for headcanon so as the winning stuff he actually is tired of and no one likes sicarius.
Crazyterran wrote: Yes, their first run ins with the DarkEldar and Necrons were as naive civilians/earth caste opening their doors for the new races and getting reminded why this setting is grim dark.
...............coming from the guy who plays ultramarines? The brightly coloured legomen mary sues that ACTUALLY win virtually everything?
Crazyterran wrote: Yes, their first run ins with the DarkEldar and Necrons were as naive civilians/earth caste opening their doors for the new races and getting reminded why this setting is grim dark.
...............coming from the guy who plays ultramarines? The brightly coloured legomen mary sues that ACTUALLY win virtually everything?
I see you are new here.
Something important to remember is that 1d4chan memes are not the same thing as the actual lore.
Crazyterran wrote: Yes, their first run ins with the DarkEldar and Necrons were as naive civilians/earth caste opening their doors for the new races and getting reminded why this setting is grim dark.
...............coming from the guy who plays ultramarines? The brightly coloured legomen mary sues that ACTUALLY win virtually everything?
I see you are new here.
Something important to remember is that 1d4chan memes are not the same thing as the actual lore.
Me being new (to posting I might add, for all you know I have been lurking here for years) is irreverent. Someone who plays ultramarines should not be bitching about such a thing. The ultramarines are the definition of a mary sue. Not to mention they are essentially a amry sue of a mary sue. The space marines themselves are already stupid as hell from a writing stand point(and imo from a design standpoint as they look like blocky legomen), but the ultramarines are even worse.
Not to mention me being 'new' here does not change the lore or how utterly focused it is on SPASS MARINZ when there's so much more potential in all the other factions. But nope, let's just focus on the legomen.
Did expect spoilers and info .... but nothing in this thread ? 
