Konrad Curze allowing himself to be killed by an assassin. It's the one thing I always think of from 40k as being something I'd prefer they handled differently and was made pointless as we never saw how it effected the Emperor.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:


Yeah that's the new sh*tty fluff. Before they shoehorned Khorne in there it was simply a battle between Khaine and Slaanesh. Infinitely better.

Weeeeelll, it's actually from Rogue Trader

WD 105: When Kaela Mensha Khaine, the Bloody Handed God of the Eldar, fought with Slaanesh the Lord of Pleasure, he was quickly overwhelmed and his energy captured by the newborn God. For the Bloody Handed God was as much a part of Slaanesh as of Khorne - being a product of that part of the Eldar nature which finds gratification in murder and pleasure in bloody violence. Khorne the Blood God, the Patron of War, Murder and Battle, roared with rage to discover one of his own taken from him in this way. Then Khorne and Slaanesh clashed headlong, the Blood God fighting to recover the portion of his power that had been robbed from him, Slaanesh driven by his uncontrollable hunger to consume everything in his path. The Bloody Handed God of the Eldar was tossed this way and that, at first grasped by Slaanesh, then tugged back into the compass of Khorne.

Eventually the rage of the Blood God and the passion of the Lord of Pleasure were exhausted, and the boundaries between them were established. Like a leaf in the eye of a hurricane, Kaela Mensha Khaine fell among the calm, down through the Realm of Chaos and into the material universe. As he entered the material universe he divided into many shards of energy, scattering his power so that neither Khorne or Slaanesh could ever find him again. Each shard entered the body of an Eldar, filling the body with his own mind, possessing it, so that it became a virtually indestructible blood-lusting murderer - the material manifestation of the Bloody Handed God. These are the Avatars of the Bloody Handed God

.

 Xca|iber wrote:

On a different subject, I'm also not a huge fan of the Newcrons. I liked them as the complementary "monolithic bad-guy" to the Tyranids. Now they're just another empire like the Imperium, Orks, Eldar, and Tau.

Oh don't get me started on how bad the Newcron fluff is compared to the Oldcrons. I've probably derailed half a dozen threads by going off on one about it!

Here's a short list of things that the Newcron fluff is worse about compared to the Oldcrons:

1. Mystery
2. Credible motivations
3. Feeling like a credible threat
4. Nuance
5. Originality (both within 40k and outside of it)
6. Feeling of scope
7. Perception that they're aliens, rather than just 'metal people'
8 Acceptable balance of technology/power compared to the other denizens of the galaxy, maintaining the idea of balance/stalemate in 40k

It's not that the Newcron fluff is necessarily bad per-se. More that the Oldcron fluff was utterly beautiful, and the Newcron fluff is a serious step down in almost every respect.

I find all the ork fluff to be delightfully amusing. They are overpowered but are too stupid to make use of it and they bring dark humor into the grim dark future.

It is disappointing that orkz are pitiful and overcosted and do not receive profiles to represent rightful orkz, but whatever.

I enjoy the religious themes of the imperium, it is interesting.

Oh wait, we have to say what we hate....


-I hate Newcrons.
-I dislike that Tyranids and Zerg are basically the same, but then again I enjoy both race concepts a lot.
-I dislike that Eldar are always everywhere and always saving Imperial Guard butt for no reason. Not even the recent stuff, but like in general.
-I dislike the lack of commercial, civilian fluff.

 Da Kommizzar wrote:
-I dislike that Tyranids and Zerg are basically the same, but then again I enjoy both race concepts a lot.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Blizzard were making a Warhammer Fantasy game and a Warhammer 40K game for GW before they pulled the plug on it. However Blizzard had already spent a lot of time on the projects and had a lot of assets for them, and without the license they turned them into Warcraft and Starcraft respectively.

That's probably why Tyranids and Zerg are so alike.

 Da Kommizzar wrote:

-I hate Newcrons.
-I dislike that Tyranids and Zerg are basically the same, but then again I enjoy both race concepts a lot.
-I dislike that Eldar are always everywhere and always saving Imperial Guard butt for no reason. Not even the recent stuff, but like in general.
-I dislike the lack of commercial, civilian fluff.

Agreed. Newcrons are terrible.

There's a reason that the Tyranids and Zerg are pretty much the same thing. The Zerg were based on the Tyranids!

Yeah I don't like the propensity for the writers to use 'Eldar coming to the rescue' as a Deus Ex Machina to pull their Imperial protagonists out of sh*t-creek. The majority of the time it's just a lazy plot device, and feeds into the impression that the eldar are 'good guys' which they most certainly are not. I'd like to see a little more where the Eldar come to the rescue, they both defeat their mutual enemies...and then the Eldar throw the surviving humans under a bus. Would be more fitting to their fluff and the feel of 40k in general

Saying that, I like how it's handled in the Fracture of Biel Tan. It feels like the Eldar are manipulating the humans for their own ends, which is much more fitting than 'join the fight against Chaos noble humans!'...

 Da Kommizzar wrote:



-I hate Newcrons.
-I dislike that Tyranids and Zerg are basically the same, but then again I enjoy both race concepts a lot.
-I dislike that Eldar are always everywhere and always saving Imperial Guard butt for no reason. Not even the recent stuff, but like in general.
-I dislike the lack of commercial, civilian fluff.

my dislikes and hatred mirror yours, while i like tyranids a lot i dislike that pretty much theyre unstoppable and drink planets, a little too grimdark for me lol

How Fulgrim was presented in the Horus Heresy novels. Terrible.

Albino Squirrel wrote:
How Fulgrim was presented in the Horus Heresy novels. Terrible.

im not happy with the how the traitors in general are portrayed, its like "surprise, we're evil!" horus justs randomly shoots a dude "yes look how evil i just randomly shot him! Im evil!" they could have made things much more tragic and dramatic, esp when the final showdown comes, if horus and friends were written better. doesn't matter, in my head canon horus was much more sympathetic and had reasons beyond horus's demon dreams and in particular what irriates me is the authors' half remebered after thoughts on the primarchs' daddy issues. at least the latest book portrays Big E as the d**k he is.

Yeah, the Horus Heresy books were pretty much garbage aside from a few gems which did a good job.

 General Annoyance wrote:

 Da Kommizzar wrote:
-I dislike that Tyranids and Zerg are basically the same, but then again I enjoy both race concepts a lot.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Blizzard were making a Warhammer Fantasy game and a Warhammer 40K game for GW before they pulled the plug on it.

http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-making-of-warcraft-part-1

"Allen Adham hoped to obtain a license to the Warhammer universe to try to increase sales by brand recognition. Warhammer was a huge inspiration for the art-style of Warcraft, but a combination of factors, including a lack of traction on business terms and a fervent desire on the part of virtually everyone else on the development team (myself included) to control our own universe nixed any potential for a deal. We had already had terrible experiences working with DC Comics on "Death and Return of Superman" and "Justice League Task Force", and wanted no similar issues for our new game."

Warcraft predated Starcraft by over three years, since Warcraft was never an actually licensed game I can't see Starcraft having ever been either. They were merely imitating.

The Crimson Slaughter.

Games Workshop decided to finally develop a new Chaos Warband, and the best they could do were the equivalent of the droid army from the Star Wars prequels. 1 dimensional villains with barely any thought put into them that are just there to get blown away. I think that that's why they had to give Crimson Slaughter the extra attention... Just enough for people to care about them being blown away, except not really.

 Mr Morden wrote:


The Dark Angels - loved them when Deathwatch was started - but now them being borderline traitors emo-ing about the galaxy - anything anything new is revealed about the Lion he just seems more of a complete dick.

Lion is a dick but he is not a traitor. As far as the Edge Angels, I think their fluff is the only SM fluff worth reading. Azrael, Belial, Asmodai, Balthasar - yes, yes, and yes. The furry slayers supreme.

Then again you may have been less happy about how Balthasar behaved while he was in the Deathwatch. No hard feelings on that. Shake on it?

Lots of obvious picks, Guillman coming back, post 2009 Grey Knights, the Eldar being the best at everything...

One that bugs me though is the idea the Nids can eat every bit of biomatter on a planet in days. Because if they can do that then everything is pointless. The fact you are playing a game against nids means you lost.

It should take decades and be like fighting an infestation or a cancer. The whole thing there there's a million nid ships in the air and you're already dead should be the exception not the rule.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:


Ah, expediency over art.

"Guys, I really think you need all six words to tell the whole story. 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.'"

"Stuff it, Hemmingway. We're printing it as 'dead babies' and that's final."

So like the other day I donated some baby shoes, never worn, to the local thrift shop. Y'see my dad got them for the girls but he thought their age was the size so when they came they were way, way too small.

I assume that's what happened to Hemmingway.

Yeah, that Hemmingway line about the baby shoes is only interesting if you've never had kids. I have many pairs of baby shoes that were never worn, mostly gifts from relatives or hand-me-downs. Hemmingway apparently didn't realize that babies can't walk, and therefore don't really need shoes. So I'm guessing there are a lot of unworn baby shoes in the world.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 IMMORTAN_AL wrote:

Albino Squirrel wrote:
How Fulgrim was presented in the Horus Heresy novels. Terrible.

im not happy with the how the traitors in general are portrayed, its like "surprise, we're evil!" horus justs randomly shoots a dude "yes look how evil i just randomly shot him! Im evil!" they could have made things much more tragic and dramatic, esp when the final showdown comes, if horus and friends were written better. doesn't matter, in my head canon horus was much more sympathetic and had reasons beyond horus's demon dreams and in particular what irriates me is the authors' half remebered after thoughts on the primarchs' daddy issues. at least the latest book portrays Big E as the d**k he is.

I don't know, I thought some were okay (though I admit I've fallen about 20 or so books behind on the Horus Heresy series now). I thought Lorgar and Magnus were portrayed well. I could even understand where Horus was coming from. But Fulgrim was easily the worst.

He went to chaos because he was possessed by a daemon. Did they ever even explain how that happened? But then in that awful Primarchs compilation, it is revealed that he was able to defeat and drive out the daemon, only to demonstrate that the real Fulgrim is even more stupid and ridiculous than the daemon one. His fall to chaos could have been interesting.

Poor Ferrus Manus also gets portrayed as kind of an idiot.

Guys, those six words had ambiguity. There was room for multiple interpretations. And now you've ruined it with your Buying of the Wrong Size expansion.

Starting to sympathize with GW writers now...

I even heard Hemmingway didn't really write that story.

What a lazy bum, taking credit all these years for someone else's work.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
I even heard Hemmingway didn't really write that story.

What a lazy bum, taking credit all these years for someone else's work.

He attached his name to the property to increase its value. He's the Geat American Novelist.

 MarsNZ wrote:


Actually for me it was the presence of the Necrons, GW takes every opportunity they can to hamfist Necrons into every major galactic event. Doesn't help that I dislike almost everything about that faction in the first place.

The necrons in general are just awful. What was wrong with mysterious robots that want to kill everyone?

 Exergy wrote:

 MarsNZ wrote:


Actually for me it was the presence of the Necrons, GW takes every opportunity they can to hamfist Necrons into every major galactic event. Doesn't help that I dislike almost everything about that faction in the first place.

The necrons in general are just awful. What was wrong with mysterious robots that want to kill everyone?

Agreed. I just headcanon the entirety of Newcrons out of existance. As far as i'm concerned that's all imperial propaganda and ignorance.

Except Anrakyr and the Maynarkh dynasty. They're neat.

Oh, i do like the C'Tan shards thing too. I'm a firm believer that godlike figures belong in the history of 40k. The C'Tan being fragments of their former power fits for me.

Other than that. Lies and ignorance.

Most newcron fluff is Meh, but the easily entertained lizard half of my brain loves Trayzin.

The "Reverse Waaagh" plot device from The Beast Arises really ticks me off. because it completely invalidates an entire species. The Newcron fluff isn't great for the most part, but I don't find it awful enough to dislike.

5th ed DE codex.
I think Kelly wrote it?

Made them out to be able to:
Capture sub fleets of Nids wholesale for their arenas
Manipulate entire worlds for their doing
Their species could 1 vs 1 best "anyone"
Commoragh was literally Nassau (Pirate HQ during the 1800s) - not a bad idea per se being honest. But if so unbelievably metropolis, why not just rush everything in the known Galaxy?
Vect holding back some ultra (daemon?) force?
Vect. Fullstop. Marines are Mary Sue? lulz

Pfff, Im outtie, a true trainwreck of fluff.

But second Newcron and reverse Waagh as seconds. gak writing that should never got past a competent editor.

 Exergy wrote:

 MarsNZ wrote:


Actually for me it was the presence of the Necrons, GW takes every opportunity they can to hamfist Necrons into every major galactic event. Doesn't help that I dislike almost everything about that faction in the first place.

The necrons in general are just awful. What was wrong with mysterious robots that want to kill everyone?

While the older fluff was probably a bit better, I still couldn't stand it back then either. Metal Tyranids and star eating blankets... Woooo

Almost every Chaos story leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth, the general stories aren't so bad and I love a lot of them but it is so disappointing when the endings all just boil down to a Deus ex Machina Imperial victory with the faint wiff of 'Just as planned' thrown in so they can deny never giving chaos a real victory.

Chaos fanboy rant over.

Lelith Hesperax as a witch queen with actual psychic powers, devout of Slaanesh who lives in the Eye of Terror.

 mrhappyface wrote:
Almost every Chaos story leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth, the general stories aren't so bad and I love a lot of them but it is so disappointing when the endings all just boil down to a Deus ex Machina Imperial victory with the faint wiff of 'Just as planned' thrown in so they can deny never giving chaos a real victory.

Chaos fanboy rant over.

It sucks when you have to play the long game due to Plot Armour - I wonder if any Dark Library writers have the skill to write in and write out a "Patsy System"?

Anything where the Imperium is written so badly into a corner that there's no way it could possibly win, then suddenly and without any reasoning at all some magic mcguffin is remembered or found and they win for no reason. Generally the turn around is maybe 3-4 sentences long as well. It's not even the Imperials winning, it's just how they make a reasonably alright story then go "lol no" at the end and leave it so anti-climatic just so the status quo is kept up.

It's as if whoever was editing the story went "oh gak the imperials lost, better fix it!".

In general I hate the hero worship that goes on in 40k as of late. In a setting where millions if not potentially billions die in a single planetary battle and there are weapons that can destroy all life from orbit. It just seems off having these named characters who always seem to be at the important set piece battles and are unbeatable except by other highly important named characters. A plasma gun, melta gun, lascannon, plasma cannon, railgun, etc doesn't care for your plot armor and if it can melt through the armor of a battle tank then its good enough to put down whatever Mary Sue character who isn't even wearing a helmet while leading from the front like an idiot.

 Vankraken wrote:
In general I hate the hero worship that goes on in 40k as of late. In a setting where millions if not potentially billions die in a single planetary battle and there are weapons that can destroy all life from orbit. It just seems off having these named characters who always seem to be at the important set piece battles and are unbeatable except by other highly important named characters. A plasma gun, melta gun, lascannon, plasma cannon, railgun, etc doesn't care for your plot armor and if it can melt through the armor of a battle tank then its good enough to put down whatever Mary Sue character who isn't even wearing a helmet while leading from the front like an idiot.

The very reason that most of them are considered heroes is that they've gone above and beyond what was expected of them, and have lived through battles and wounds that should have killed them outright. They're alive against the odds, either due to their skill as a warrior, their excellent leadership or incredible luck, or all three.

In a setting where billions die in a single planetary battle, and weapons can destroy all life from orbit, and all the other countless terrors such as material Daemons, there would surely be countless proving grounds for heroes to rise.

 General Annoyance wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
In general I hate the hero worship that goes on in 40k as of late. In a setting where millions if not potentially billions die in a single planetary battle and there are weapons that can destroy all life from orbit. It just seems off having these named characters who always seem to be at the important set piece battles and are unbeatable except by other highly important named characters. A plasma gun, melta gun, lascannon, plasma cannon, railgun, etc doesn't care for your plot armor and if it can melt through the armor of a battle tank then its good enough to put down whatever Mary Sue character who isn't even wearing a helmet while leading from the front like an idiot.

The very reason that most of them are considered heroes is that they've gone above and beyond what was expected of them, and have lived through battles and wounds that should have killed them outright. They're alive against the odds, either due to their skill as a warrior, their excellent leadership or incredible luck, or all three.

In a setting where billions die in a single planetary battle, and weapons can destroy all life from orbit, and all the other countless terrors such as material Daemons, there would surely be countless proving grounds for heroes to rise.

Perhaps but heroes are made after the dusts settles and you see who is left standing. They tend to not continue being living heroes charging in first time and time again. Again the issue is how plot dependent they become where only the heroes can do anything while everyone else are nameless mooks who die by the bucket load.

 Mr Morden wrote:


Space Wolves - Space Vikings - ok - thats cool - no now its McWolfy Wolf Wolf on his Wolf with his Wolf sword and Wolf necklace howling like a Wolf

Lol I never liked them before, but since wulfen came out they are among my favourite armies. I hate space marines and their vehicles, so I would only go with wulfen, wolves, thunderwolves and viking looking marines. Drop pods only transport that I can accept.

About what piece of 40k fluff do I hate the most? Pretty much everything about human factions, with the exception of the wolves, of course. I can't stand daemons as I don't see them as a sci-fi army, they should belong only to the fantasy game.

 Vankraken wrote:
Perhaps but heroes are made after the dusts settles and you see who is left standing. They tend to not continue being living heroes charging in first time and time again. Again the issue is how plot dependent they become where only the heroes can do anything while everyone else are nameless mooks who die by the bucket load.

A lot of Imperial Guard lore would disagree with that idea; while heroes are often formed in the newly created Veterans that are left over in the aftermath of a battle, they typically don't stop there, and go on to have long careers of death defying service. Even the mighty heroes of the Imperial Guard like Yarrick or Straken have paid the price in the past for going against opponents that are too strong for them.

I also remember a bit of lore in the 6th ed rulebook regarding a Cadian infantry squad being responsible for a significant number of Chaos Space Marine kills on their own; stuff like that happens in the background, so that the focus goes onto the more developed characters. However, these heroes are often saved by the linemen that they lead into battle.

Perhaps more recent lore has not been done in a similar vein, but that should be how you bring focus to individuals, and has been the case in the past, with many heroic individuals saving a bunch of nameless people, while in turn a bunch of nameless people save that heroic individual.

 Vankraken wrote:
In general I hate the hero worship that goes on in 40k as of late. In a setting where millions if not potentially billions die in a single planetary battle and there are weapons that can destroy all life from orbit. It just seems off having these named characters who always seem to be at the important set piece battles and are unbeatable except by other highly important named characters. A plasma gun, melta gun, lascannon, plasma cannon, railgun, etc doesn't care for your plot armor and if it can melt through the armor of a battle tank then its good enough to put down whatever Mary Sue character who isn't even wearing a helmet while leading from the front like an idiot.

This. It's a problem I've had with 40k for a long time. It clashes with my dudes. It's also downright silly in contrast to every time a special character gets obliderated on the table top.

The death of the Firehowlers... Yes, I'm still bitter about that.

Well theres so much to choose from, pretty much anything Ward touched sets a pretty low bar. But it is all trash really but at least at first it during rt/1ed it had a sense of fun it all went off a cliff when it got srs bisns grim dark.

ADB is the high point of 40k fluff/stories helsreach is very good much better than it should have been given the story and honestly he is way to good to be writing for black libarary.

I think the Cain books are massively overated knock offs of flashman and while funny in places probably stand out due to most other 40k fiction being turgid gabage.

I know it is probably heresy but the Gaunt books are rubbish as well they are better written than most others but still rubbish that fails to transcend the works they are "influenced" by such as sharpe and the old ww1 set comics such as charlies war.

epronovost wrote:
Lelith Hesperax as a witch queen with actual psychic powers, devout of Slaanesh who lives in the Eye of Terror.

Wait, what?

Did I miss something, is this the new fluff?

Space Marine 'Victories'. Don't get me wrong, I like marines as much as the next person, in fact they're all I collect so far, but the endless litany of Space Marine victories gets a bit stale after a while. I get they're heroes, I get they do things the average mortal can only dream of, but sometimes it's more believable to hear about the simple dock worker who gets press-ganged in Helsreach and then goes on to become a hardened veteran just by mere chance. In truth, one of the most enjoyable 40k books I've read recently has been 'rebirth' by Nick Kyme - precisely because the Salamanders don't win - they get their a**es kicked and I find myself eager to find out how they'll win next time. Similarly, I enjoyed Rynns World because the Crimson Fists get just about wiped out and have a hard time holding out.

On the topic of straight up fluff - I dislike how Space Marines are portrayed as 'Strike Forces' with surgical precision, 'The Emperor's scalpel' type of stuff, when the majority of their actions in fluff and books are in fact drawn out campaigns. You may as well just drop the pretense and call them what they are - shock troops, which is a much broader term encompassing just about all forms of SM warfare.

Another newcron hater here. I loved the relentless silent machine coming to get you vibe of th oldcrons, their mystery and unknowable motivations. That was ace, and dark and scary. The new stuff is just pants.

I wasn't around in the Wardian years having stopped 40k in 1997 and only started again last year. However, the humour was gone. The fluff use to be funny no I wish it still was.

 morganfreeman wrote:

epronovost wrote:
Lelith Hesperax as a witch queen with actual psychic powers, devout of Slaanesh who lives in the Eye of Terror.

Wait, what?

Did I miss something, is this the new fluff?

If memory serves, that is related to a C.S. Goto book, part of the Dawn of War series' novelization. For a humorous take on it, see the 1d4chan C.S. Goto page.

 morganfreeman wrote:

epronovost wrote:
Lelith Hesperax as a witch queen with actual psychic powers, devout of Slaanesh who lives in the Eye of Terror.

Wait, what?

Did I miss something, is this the new fluff?

C.S Goto brought this up in a the Deathwatch anthology shortly after the revival of the Dark Eldars. It's not so surpising. Goto was well known for not reading source material and plagiarising. He got droped by Black Library because of this.

Simple.

Chapters being a mere 1,000 Marines.

How many stories have we read where Companies are nearly wiped out? It happens on a regular basis. Yet the Chapter always endures.

Make them 10,000 strong, and it's more believable

I'm a major Guard and CSM fan, so over the top SM victories do frustrate me a little. If they're going to happen, can we at least have them happen like in Helsreach, were the SM are helped by Guard, Sisters, Titans, and the Orks almost win anyway.
Also, as someone who got into 40k from Dawn of War, I much prefer old Necron fluff. Cain is actually pretty good for that.

Probably a whole lot more, but I can't think of much right now.

Orks and chaos being punching bags to show how tough space marines are.

Also poke ball necrons. How can anyone say they like new necron, the guy litterally catches people in pokeballs. And float around space talking about what they use to own.

I choose you a Angron-mon the Marines will be really screwed when's he evolves to angronsaurus.

Jokeroos.

I'll second the one about the small size of Space Marine chapters. It's always been hard to accept. 1000 space marines, good as they are, aren't going to be able to do much against an entire planet with millions of soldiers, or a hive fleet, or pretty much anything. And there are stories where whole companies get wiped out, but they're always full strength again right away to fight the next thing.

Albino Squirrel wrote:
I'll second the one about the small size of Space Marine chapters. It's always been hard to accept. 1000 space marines, good as they are, aren't going to be able to do much against an entire planet with millions of soldiers, or a hive fleet, or pretty much anything. And there are stories where whole companies get wiped out, but they're always full strength again right away to fight the next thing.

Agreed. I just wave that away as being Imperial ignorance/disinformation. Makes so much more sense if they're actually 100,000 strong.

First: Captain Cortez getting offed/disappeared in the fluff because an Aussie WE contributor lost a game.

Second: the Tau going from altruistic Socialists to mind controlling tools because grimdark. A little light is needed, just like the Bretonnians pre 6th.

Third: the extremely patronizing bit in the 5th rd. Marine book stating that every Marine that isn't an Ultramarine wishes they WERE an Ultramarine, even founding legions.

I am sure I could find more, but this is the top 3.

I think the worst part for me is the way that the religious parts of the imperium gets only a token mention.

There is alot of potential in exploring the faith and interpretations of the ecchlisiarchy, but Games workshop never seems to do anything with it.

Maybe they dont want to touch religious themes more than absolutely necessary.

 doktor_g wrote:
Jokeroos.

Oh damn I just read their fluff, was curious about what the hell that was. It's even worse than the Ork psychic thing.

 Boneville wrote:
I think the worst part for me is the way that the religious parts of the imperium gets only a token mention.

There is alot of potential in exploring the faith and interpretations of the ecchlisiarchy, but Games workshop never seems to do anything with it.

Maybe they dont want to touch religious themes more than absolutely necessary.

Yeah there's a ton of untapped potential there.

I remember reading someone's idea for an Imperial Faith that's centred around an Aztec-like culture of human sacrifice to the Emperor. Things like that would absolutely fly as far as the Imperium's concerned as so long as they're worshipping Big E they don't really mind, but there's so much potential for grimdark religious cults

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Boneville wrote:
I think the worst part for me is the way that the religious parts of the imperium gets only a token mention.

There is alot of potential in exploring the faith and interpretations of the ecchlisiarchy, but Games workshop never seems to do anything with it.

Maybe they dont want to touch religious themes more than absolutely necessary.

Yeah there's a ton of untapped potential there.

I remember reading someone's idea for an Imperial Faith that's centred around an Aztec-like culture of human sacrifice to the Emperor. Things like that would absolutely fly as far as the Imperium's concerned as so long as they're worshipping Big E they don't really mind, but there's so much potential for grimdark religious cults

it's why it's so tragic that the 40k RPGs are, for the foreseeable future done. FFG had some amazing material for that stuff

OgreChubbs wrote:
Orks and chaos being punching bags to show how tough space marines are.

Also poke ball necrons. How can anyone say they like new necron, the guy litterally catches people in pokeballs. And float around space talking about what they use to own.

I choose you a Angron-mon the Marines will be really screwed when's he evolves to angronsaurus.

I find current Necron background is far more interesting.

Yes, there's the odd silly element - but still superior to 'C'Tan did it' being the be-all-and-end-all.

The Necron's now have a tragedy all their own. They're the living embodiment of the pyrrhic victory. And all their leaders are irrevocably insane. Sure, for some it's more pronounced and obvious (Nemesor Zandrekh), but they've all more than a little moon-touched. And they don't recognised that in themselves.

Trazyn's collection is his mania manifesting. You call it 'poke-balls', and I see the similarity, but that undermines it somewhat. He's a collector - one so aloof and removed from the living Galaxy he just wanders about like an old lady at a flea-market looking for interesting knick-knacks and wot-nots.

Before, they were all just mindless, characterless automata, at the beck and call of not-particularly-interesting gods. Dull as dishwater that.

But, to each their own

I dont get why everyone is hating on the new books. I think they are amazing. Especially since the 40k lore has been stagnating over the past few years.

I just think a lot of people have way to much problems with accepting change...

disagree all you want, i dont care, but i think this will do this hobby a lot of good.

I cant say i realy hate anything though. Yeah sure, i like some stuff better than other but everyone has that.

The only thing i actually might dislike is retconning. Just stick with what you have please and build from there. If you have the imagination to create new lore you also have the imagination to build from lore you dont like..

The retcons to the Horus Heresy introduced by the new novel series of the same name.

Some are minor annoyances (Mortarion's motivation and relationship to the Heresy/daemons). Some are game breaking (involving the Ultramarines at all).

Joyboozer wrote:
Konrad Curze allowing himself to be killed by an assassin. It's the one thing I always think of from 40k as being something I'd prefer they handled differently and was made pointless as we never saw how it effected the Emperor.

I like this. Curze was insane in the end, he had moments where his mind was clear, but they were far and few between. He thought he had to die that way, to give his life purpose. Though the middle finger for the emperor was a pointless gesture, only followed because his visions interpreted by insanity told him too.
Plus he hated his Legion, his existence, his past, his future and his present. There wasn't much reason for him to go on, and he had a reason to stop.
I like he let the assassin to kill him, and that he ordered the Legion to not stop the assassin from leaving with his head, knowing that Talos would try to chase the assassin down anyway.
Really shows the helplessness of the Legion.

One piece of fluff that isn't my most hated piece of fluff but irks me for some reason that I can't understand, can't really justify, but irrationally dislike for reasons unknown is the bit of fluff in the (either Skitarii or CultMech) codex about how all soldiers from any loyal forge world must have some red on their markings to show their loyalty to Mars. Again, I included it not because I hate it a lot, but because I can't understand why I hate it.

 gnome_idea_what wrote:
One piece of fluff that isn't my most hated piece of fluff but irks me for some reason that I can't understand, can't really justify, but irrationally dislike for reasons unknown is the bit of fluff in the (either Skitarii or CultMech) codex about how all soldiers from any loyal forge world must have some red on their markings to show their loyalty to Mars. Again, I included it not because I hate it a lot, but because I can't understand why I hate it.

Maybe because it limits your colour scheme choices ? I painted mine blue and tan, the only red is on the purity seals. They ain't traitors any much.

 gnome_idea_what wrote:
One piece of fluff that isn't my most hated piece of fluff but irks me for some reason that I can't understand, can't really justify, but irrationally dislike for reasons unknown is the bit of fluff in the (either Skitarii or CultMech) codex about how all soldiers from any loyal forge world must have some red on their markings to show their loyalty to Mars. Again, I included it not because I hate it a lot, but because I can't understand why I hate it.

Yeah I think it's because it messes with the whole 'your dudes' thing if someone's telling you that they have to have a little bit of red on them somewhere.

 Boneville wrote:
I think the worst part for me is the way that the religious parts of the imperium gets only a token mention.

There is alot of potential in exploring the faith and interpretations of the ecchlisiarchy, but Games workshop never seems to do anything with it.

Maybe they dont want to touch religious themes more than absolutely necessary.

Have you read the 4th ed rulebook? Every single page has a
piece of the Imperial creed, prayers or propaganda on it.

Edit: The fluff generally was more religion foccused back then as I recall. If you're really intrested in that stuff check out fantasy flights dark Heresy roleplaying games

1. Matt Ward's Sororita killing spree with the Grey Knights doing the killing of said Sororitas.

 Abanshee wrote:
1. Matt Ward's Sororita killing spree with the Grey Knights doing the killing of said Sororitas.

The Blood Tide?

That one actually isn't so bad when you look at it for what actually happened rather than treating it as a Grey Knights slaughtering Sororitas army.

First, a super-powerful demon was unburied on this planet, killed basically everyone, only Sisters of Battle left because they're basically immune to the red demon goo the reason for which this demon was called "Bloodtide".

Then, Grey Knights show up in orbit in their ships, examine the situation, realize they only have a few hours until that demon does that Warp Rift thing where the sector is open to the Warp that the Grey Knights are always trying to stop.

Grey Knights examine the threat of the super-powerful demon, realize they can't be guaranteed their armor will be protection, and this is the case you don't take chances on.

They open their book of Chaos magic they turn to sometimes when they're desperate and need something powerful. They find something that might work - a magical oil or something that they have access to all the components for, and then when they cover their armor with it they will be immune to the demon stuff.

So they make the oil up on the ship, but there's one ingredient that's not on the ship they need to add - the blood of a virgin.

Well, guess what. Sisters of Battle don't have sex. They are virgins. And there are surviving Sisters of Battle on the planet below.

So they teleport down, kill the Sisters of Battle as quickly as possible, take the blood they need, put it in the mix, put it on their armor and stuff, now they're immune too.

Then they go kill the demon just in time, teleport back to the ship, cyclonic torpedo the planet, and their job is done.

Yeah, they were always planning to cyclonic torpedo the planet, because that's what they do to any planet that's had a demon on it, so those Sisters would've died anyways.

The Sisters were only in the story because they are all virgins due to not having sex ever.

Why was the virgin thing so important to include?

Because the story is based on a terrible movie from the 1980s named Bloodtide where a demon awakens and starts demanding the sacrifice of local virgins until the hero kills the demon.

Anyways, my own most-hated piece of 40k fluff was when they refused to tidy up the lore into a consistent canon and let every version ever be canon simultaneously. This irks me because I'm a big fan of canon stuff, and having tons of different versions mucks with my ability to have things make sense to me.

But on the plus side it does mean that that Half-Eldar Ultramarines Chief Librarian from 2e is considered canon, because they let you pick from any official stuff, guess what, 2e stuff where that guy is from qualifies. If that sounds hard to rationalize that as canon when mixed with the current lore, well, it is, which is my issue with having everything be canon instead of a specific set of things.

Because the story is based on a terrible movie from the 1980s named Bloodtide where a demon awakens and starts demanding the sacrifice of local virgins until the hero kills the demon.

so... basicly it's a cheap knock off, of a cheap knock off? (cause the movie summerized sure SOUNDS like George and the Dragon, with a demon instead of a dragon(

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:
I dont get why everyone is hating on the new books...

..The only thing i actually might dislike is retconning. Just stick with what you have please and build from there.

Maybe you don't realize it, but you've solved your own confusion right there.

Orks... just Orks...

Give me the fluff from 1st edition, especially 'ere we go' and 'aargh the orks' any day

I often cringe when I know an Eldar Avatar will appear in a SM novel because it'll likely be extinguished as easily as the candles on a kids birthday cake

Calgar killing one with a single punch especially annoys me because as he was already badly hurt from a previous blow to his arm / shoulder.

 Pouncey wrote:
Well, guess what. Sisters of Battle don't have sex. They are virgins.

Guess what? There's actually no evidence of that. Unlike nuns in real world SOB don't have celibacy vows. Most don't simply find time nor inclination for it.

SeanDrake wrote:

I think the Cain books are massively overated knock offs of flashman and while funny in places probably stand out due to most other 40k fiction being turgid gabage.

I know it is probably heresy but the Gaunt books are rubbish as well they are better written than most others but still rubbish that fails to transcend the works they are "influenced" by such as sharpe and the old ww1 set comics such as charlies war.

Bears repeating



The Gaunt books are 100 pages of great world building, 200 pages of pew-pew-pew and then 10 pages of wrap-up/killing a 3rd tier character.

It's a shame because Abnett really can write, I think the Einhorn books are still the apex of BL and tied with Ian Watson's Draco books for my favorite 40k fiction.

The Cain books are hamstrung because you can't really mock the (thoroughly mockable) 40k universe while also cashing a paycheck from GW.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
The retcons to the Horus Heresy introduced by the new novel series of the same name.

Some are minor annoyances (Mortarion's motivation and relationship to the Heresy/daemons). Some are game breaking (involving the Ultramarines at all).

OMG speaking of Horus Heresy the highlanders, totally forgot about the Highlanders.

I mean that one immortal guy in the first book was kind of cool, but now Vulcan is a Highlander too? And that IG dude that jumped out and saved the Emperor? He can't just be a random dude, he has to be a Highlander too! Just #$%^ing name him Konnor M'Kloud and be done with it.

 Pouncey wrote:

 Abanshee wrote:
1. Matt Ward's Sororita killing spree with the Grey Knights doing the killing of said Sororitas.

The Blood Tide?

That one actually isn't so bad when you look at it for what actually happened rather than treating it as a Grey Knights slaughtering Sororitas army.

First, a super-powerful demon was unburied on this planet, killed basically everyone, only Sisters of Battle left because they're basically immune to the red demon goo the reason for which this demon was called "Bloodtide".

Then, Grey Knights show up in orbit in their ships, examine the situation, realize they only have a few hours until that demon does that Warp Rift thing where the sector is open to the Warp that the Grey Knights are always trying to stop.

Grey Knights examine the threat of the super-powerful demon, realize they can't be guaranteed their armor will be protection, and this is the case you don't take chances on.

They open their book of Chaos magic they turn to sometimes when they're desperate and need something powerful. They find something that might work - a magical oil or something that they have access to all the components for, and then when they cover their armor with it they will be immune to the demon stuff.

So they make the oil up on the ship, but there's one ingredient that's not on the ship they need to add - the blood of a virgin.

Well, guess what. Sisters of Battle don't have sex. They are virgins. And there are surviving Sisters of Battle on the planet below.

So they teleport down, kill the Sisters of Battle as quickly as possible, take the blood they need, put it in the mix, put it on their armor and stuff, now they're immune too.

Then they go kill the demon just in time, teleport back to the ship, cyclonic torpedo the planet, and their job is done.

Yeah, they were always planning to cyclonic torpedo the planet, because that's what they do to any planet that's had a demon on it, so those Sisters would've died anyways.

The Sisters were only in the story because they are all virgins due to not having sex ever.

Why was the virgin thing so important to include?

Because the story is based on a terrible movie from the 1980s named Bloodtide where a demon awakens and starts demanding the sacrifice of local virgins until the hero kills the demon.

Anyways, my own most-hated piece of 40k fluff was when they refused to tidy up the lore into a consistent canon and let every version ever be canon simultaneously. This irks me because I'm a big fan of canon stuff, and having tons of different versions mucks with my ability to have things make sense to me.

But on the plus side it does mean that that Half-Eldar Ultramarines Chief Librarian from 2e is considered canon, because they let you pick from any official stuff, guess what, 2e stuff where that guy is from qualifies. If that sounds hard to rationalize that as canon when mixed with the current lore, well, it is, which is my issue with having everything be canon instead of a specific set of things.

What about the Grey Knights then? Aren't they virgins aswell?

MasterBeard wrote:

What about the Grey Knights then? Aren't they virgins aswell?

Whaaaat? Grey Knights are the biggest players around!

 mrhappyface wrote:

MasterBeard wrote:

What about the Grey Knights then? Aren't they virgins aswell?

Whaaaat? Grey Knights are the biggest players around!

I thought that was the army of douche-waffles. I mean space wolves.

In Dan Abnett's Ravenor - Omnibus, there's a scene in the last book where the retinue escapes a collapsing underwater facility through the use of a door that
can allow someone to time travel to any time desired or at any location at random (only when the door is "ready"). However, there were certain instances where they visited what seemed to me
like other galaxies outside 40k. Bare in mind, the door they used has no real connection to the warp or any psychic presence whatsoever, so it seems as if it's literally magic.

Otherwise, it was a great novel! Just the sheer lack of explanation about this mysterious door made me feel as if I wasn't reading a 40k novel.

I have hated the recent hyper-exaggeration of the Space Wolves and the ridiculous Mary Sueism of the Grey Knights. I really hope this gets tamed back at some stage, a gentle rereleasing of models and renaming for the Wolves and some very serious kicking to the head for the Grey Knights in the fiction.

I Really hate the orks being the punchbag for the rest of the galaxy, I'd like to see them get some threat back, but also retain some of that characterful background. I really want the Clans back and front and center for army composition and lore.

I am down with both the Nids and especially the Crons taking a hit to their 'vast and ancient terror' lore, honestly. They had both rivaled and then eclipsed Chaos in the previous books and that was never the intention. From day one, the gribbly extradimensional elder chaos gods were meant to be the ultimate bad guys, but the background in cron books and nid books made them out as far vaster and more dangerous and nothing in the lore should be.

So the Necrons became various subfactions with understandable motivations and moved to the Neutral Evil position like the Tomb Kings, allowing for more interaction and more definition, whilst Tyranids, still terrifying and True Neutral as a force of nature, became vulnerable to expending their energies too fast, being vulnerable to wars of attrition and burning up calories too fast when encountering powerful resistance.

I have to say I approve of both these weaknesses. Both couldn't go on being The Ultimate Evil forever and both shouldn't steal the limelight from Chaos and it's eldritch madness and reality breaking.

That was the biggest thing I laughed about Newcrons. Now not only does the galaxy get to wait tI'll they all awaken but the galaxy gets further reprieve time as the Newcrons figure out how to get along with each other. Maybe they'll get their chance in 50K.

Daemons being relegated to cannon fodder. It's not just against Space Marines but against other factions as well. Though Space Marines are the most egregious offenders. Also not much of a fan of "Chaos God X doesn't like planet Y so invades because it wants to" style scenarios.

Also I hate that the Eldar have lost a lot of their themes to other factions. Tau seem more tactical than them (along with taking the high mobility high firepower part), Necrons took their best technology and oldest race angle, Necrons and Imperials in general (though especially Space Marines oddly) took the scrying the future part. Between the Farseers and centuries-of-experience Autrachs they should have a massive advantage in any engagement but they seem to lose most of the time.

Also the Holocaust Psychic Power. More specifically the part where it can permanently destroy souls and Daemons. Way too widely available (or at least it is in Dark Heresy).

tneva82 wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
Well, guess what. Sisters of Battle don't have sex. They are virgins.

Guess what? There's actually no evidence of that. Unlike nuns in real world SOB don't have celibacy vows. Most don't simply find time nor inclination for it.

Well, there's no fluff either way, so you can't make definite statements about it. Unless you take the Ciaphas Cain books as part of your headcanon. I don't personally, but many people do.

Personally I think the Sisters vows would include one of celibacy, but that's just my personal preference.

As to what fluff I hate? The new stuff on Celestine and the twins in FoC. I'm not going to get in to why, because I'd have to go explaining my headcanon and I'm sure someone would take it upon themselves to explain how "wrong" my opinions are and besides all of it would be off topic.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
I have hated the recent hyper-exaggeration of the Space Wolves and the ridiculous Mary Sueism of the Grey Knights. I really hope this gets tamed back at some stage, a gentle rereleasing of models and renaming for the Wolves and some very serious kicking to the head for the Grey Knights in the fiction.

I Really hate the orks being the punchbag for the rest of the galaxy, I'd like to see them get some threat back, but also retain some of that characterful background. I really want the Clans back and front and center for army composition and lore.

I am down with both the Nids and especially the Crons taking a hit to their 'vast and ancient terror' lore, honestly. They had both rivaled and then eclipsed Chaos in the previous books and that was never the intention. From day one, the gribbly extradimensional elder chaos gods were meant to be the ultimate bad guys, but the background in cron books and nid books made them out as far vaster and more dangerous and nothing in the lore should be.

So the Necrons became various subfactions with understandable motivations and moved to the Neutral Evil position like the Tomb Kings, allowing for more interaction and more definition, whilst Tyranids, still terrifying and True Neutral as a force of nature, became vulnerable to expending their energies too fast, being vulnerable to wars of attrition and burning up calories too fast when encountering powerful resistance.

I have to say I approve of both these weaknesses. Both couldn't go on being The Ultimate Evil forever and both shouldn't steal the limelight from Chaos and it's eldritch madness and reality breaking.

I completely disagree. I feel like the old Necron and Tyranid fluff was a necessary response to the actualities of Chaos as the fans perceived it--pathetic. Chaos is almost impossible to take seriously as an enemy, especially after 10,000 years of Has Beening and Never Will Againing as exemplified by Abaddon. They were literally stewing in their own failure for thousands of years. The mechanics of the Chaos gods preclude them from any true victory, or even longterm partnership. Chaos works as the insidious threat of internal corruption, an ideological threat or as the deadly distraction during an actual existential crisis. Other than the cults, they might as well just have been more colorful ork clans (back before orks were diversified into genegineered fungus monsters). Tyranids and Necrons added new dimensions to the fluff, more believable threats, and raised a whole lot of interesting backstory implications.

 Servant of Dante wrote:
As to what fluff I hate? The new stuff on Celestine and the twins in FoC.

I don't like that either. I always saw Celestine as a "Legion of the Damned"-style force of nature who showed up out of nowhere to kick arse, then vanished as mysteriously as she arrived when the day was won. Now she's like, hanging out with all the Cadia dudes and having conversations with people and stuff. She's gone from "mysterious divine benefactor" to "cheesy superhero".

The gameplay and story segregation is a bit jarring too. The Fall of Cadia books are the only fluff I've really read since I got back into the hobby and they're brimming over with silliness. Who puts Suncannons on a Wraithknight? What kind of Eldar general lets a Keeper of Secrets get into close combat with his dudes? Why are they so scared of the Daemonettes? I get that Slaanesh will eat their souls, but in combat, why would they care? Daemonettes suck. I find it hard to believe the elite Eldar warrior classes would be scared of some daemons that my inbred, 5pts-per-model Neophyte Hybrids can destroy by the bushel with their space hillbilly shotguns and autoguns.

Also, why Robot Girlyman? Why not The Khan or one of the other cool Primarchs? Why bring back the boring one?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

I completely disagree. I feel like the old Necron and Tyranid fluff was a necessary response to the actualities of Chaos as the fans perceived it--pathetic. Chaos is almost impossible to take seriously as an enemy, especially after 10,000 years of Has Beening and Never Will Againing as exemplified by Abaddon. They were literally stewing in their own failure for thousands of years. The mechanics of the Chaos gods preclude them from any true victory, or even longterm partnership. Chaos works as the insidious threat of internal corruption, an ideological threat or as the deadly distraction during an actual existential crisis. Other than the cults, they might as well just have been more colorful ork clans (back before orks were diversified into genegineered fungus monsters). Tyranids and Necrons added new dimensions to the fluff, more believable threats, and raised a whole lot of interesting backstory implications.

And the fact that it got to a point where the biggest threat that the Imperium face has become a joke amongst players is also a MASSIVE problem with the fluff.
It's all good saying chaos should be about inner corruption of organisations but that is just the fuel for chaos, the product of chaos is what the Gods then do with the power they get from corrupting things: see Daemons and CSM. The fact that neither of these factions are seen as a real threat by the fans shows that Chaos as a whole isn't really that much of a threat, which is absurd. Chaos should slowly chip away at Imperial institutions, wearing them out until they have gained enough power to tear apart what is left of the crippled Imperium. I actually like the new fluff for thr Black Crusades, it encapsulates what chaos is: deceit corruption, insecurity for those who face it, etc. The fact that despite the Imperiums best efforts chaos are victorious and at the end of it the Imperium actually thinks they have won because they don't know what's really going on is brilliant as a description of Chaos. But unfortunetly we get people who just scream "failbaddon" etc. because they can't accept the fact that Chaos can't be defeated and that the Imperium is stretched too far to defend against the conveluted attacks by Chaos forces, and all of this because GW couldn't write villains for **** and now they're trying to go back and fix it.

(I went on a rant there and may have gotten off topic a bit but it's all over now)

 BBAP wrote:

Also, why Robot Girlyman? Why not The Khan or one of the other cool Primarchs? Why bring back the boring one?

Because he's not all that boring, and he is a better symbol of hope to rally the forces of the Imperium behind than any of his (living) Loyalist Brothers.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 BBAP wrote:

Also, why Robot Girlyman? Why not The Khan or one of the other cool Primarchs? Why bring back the boring one?

Because he's not all that boring, and he is a better symbol of hope to rally the forces of the Imperium behind than any of his (living) Loyalist Brothers.

Roboute is the best/worst primarch to drop into 40k, he is a reformist, master of building and organisation and probably the thing that will cause a 2nd civil war in the imperium as a whole.

The Emperor consuming 500 (1000?) Psykers every single day. It's good that it adds to the grimdark 'everyone's a bad guy' feel but I just wonder who they actualy do that. Even with all the countless billions of Imperial citizens availible it still sounds like a big ask to round-up 1000 psykers and then make them die for the Emperor every single day. There must presumably be an entire admin or Arbites branch devoted to saying: "You're a wizard Harry!.... now get on this ship to Terra so that you can sacrifice yourself."

Terminator armour being a glorified Hazmat suit. It's supposed to be a holy bastion of Imperial engineering with a fragment of the Emperor's own armor in it (crux terminatus).

 Nerak wrote:
I hate Imperial knights

I don't like the way that GW have made Apocalypse games opt-out rather than opt-in but other than that I don't see what's wrong with them.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 BBAP wrote:

Also, why Robot Girlyman? Why not The Khan or one of the other cool Primarchs? Why bring back the boring one?

Because he's not all that boring, and he is a better symbol of hope to rally the forces of the Imperium behind than any of his (living) Loyalist Brothers.

He's a seditious self-righteous jerk, which could be interesting if they fleshed it out a bit - but they're not going to develop that. It's going to be the "spiritual liege" crap. That's dull. There's enough hackneyed one dimensional Marvel/DC comic book toons in the galaxy already.

We could've had bro-tastic Vulkan being awesome and empathetic and compassionate, dragging the Imperium in a less genocidal direction, or the Khan riding out of the Warp or whatever on his giant motorbike to run down the enemies of the Imperium. Instead we get Rowboat leading us into The Age of Smurf Village. Blech.

...It's called the League of Black Ships. They visit your planet and make you turn over your loved ones. You are responsible for screening everyone you know for witchcraft and imprisoning them for later imperial service, and if you don't they will have the Arbites find you in breach of duty and everyone will be killed, just to be safe.

Rofl oh yeah, Robert the Gullible is back. I think The Lion would've been a neater choice. Heck I'd even take Rogal Dorn returning and reforming the loyalist legions. But instead it's Rowboat the traitorous king of his own empire that somehow later is what Every Single Space Marine aspires to be. Well to keep it from being boring I hope he turns against the Imperium and quite frankly I'm pretty confident he would if he's consistent in character. It only takes a rumour that Daddy is dead and he immediately begins running his own show. Imagine now.

pelicaniforce wrote:
...It's called the League of Black Ships. They visit your planet and make you turn over your loved ones. You are responsible for screening everyone you know for witchcraft and imprisoning them for later imperial service, and if you don't they will have the Arbites find you in breach of duty and everyone will be killed, just to be safe.

I've got visions of an epic story of escape and deception as a psyker escapes the Black Ships; then after some weeks the psyker is eventually caught and then the Black Ship person just adds it to the 1K delivery for that day. Then the Black Ship person says "right..now for psyker #2....."

Well that's also how they find their psykers for other uses like astropaths so it's not all so bad I guess. The alternative is eventually a daemon explodes from their head and kills everyone they know.

Yeah, that story would be right on the mark. You could submit it to GW so they can recall the third edition rule book and edit that in somewhere the send the books back where they came from.

pelicaniforce wrote:
Yeah, that story would be right on the mark. You could submit it to GW so they can recall the third edition rule book and edit that in somewhere the send the books back where they came from.

While they're doing it they might make some typos, lose some pages etc and it'll still be a more complete rulebook than 7th.

 ProwlerPC wrote:
Rofl oh yeah, Robert the Gullible is back. I think The Lion would've been a neater choice. Heck I'd even take Rogal Dorn returning and reforming the loyalist legions. But instead it's Rowboat the traitorous king of his own empire that somehow later is what Every Single Space Marine aspires to be. Well to keep it from being boring I hope he turns against the Imperium and quite frankly I'm pretty confident he would if he's consistent in character. It only takes a rumour that Daddy is dead and he immediately begins running his own show. Imagine now.

I'm telling you, I think that Bad Bob there was actually the 10th Primarch to fall to Chaos, and he simply held his forces back to see who would win. Seeing the Imperium without a leader, he steps in to succeed where Horus had failed, but turning the Imperium into a force after his own image. He simply didn't count on Fulgrim winning the duel when he went to silence the Primarchs that could blow his cover.

 BBAP wrote:


He's a seditious self-righteous jerk, which could be interesting if they fleshed it out a bit - but they're not going to develop that. It's going to be the "spiritual liege" crap. That's dull. There's enough hackneyed one dimensional Marvel/DC comic book toons in the galaxy already.

We could've had bro-tastic Vulkan being awesome and empathetic and compassionate, dragging the Imperium in a less genocidal direction, or the Khan riding out of the Warp or whatever on his giant motorbike to run down the enemies of the Imperium. Instead we get Rowboat leading us into The Age of Smurf Village. Blech.

Loving the double standards. RG needs to be fleshed out but good-guy Vulkan and Hells Angels Ghengis are `totally radical` and completely not one-dimensional.

 BBAP wrote:


I don't like that either. I always saw Celestine as a "Legion of the Damned"-style force of nature who showed up out of nowhere to kick arse, then vanished as mysteriously as she arrived when the day was won. Now she's like, hanging out with all the Cadia dudes and having conversations with people and stuff. She's gone from "mysterious divine benefactor" to "cheesy superhero".

Junior Scribe Yimmni O'Sen - Oh my Emperor! The evil Dr. Abbadon is attacking! We should go cover it!
Mild Mannered Sister Hospitalis Rinda Danvarz - Gasp! I just remembered I left the iron on in my hab unit! I'll be right back!
Yimmi - But Rinda... oh she's already gone, where did she go? Wait, who's that emerging from that Com-Link Booth?
St Celestine, Hieromartyr of the Palatine Crusade - Here I come to save the day!
Yimmi - Wow go St Celestine, Hieromartyr of the Palatine Crusade!
(Soon)
Yimmi - Hey there you are Rinda, you missed all the action! St Celestine, Hieromartyr of the Palatine Crusade stopped the evil Dr Abaddon but he escaped in a warp porthole at the last second.
Rinda - Aw too bad, I always wanted to meet St Celestine, Hieromartyr of the Palatine Crusade.
Yimmi - Funny how you two are never in the same place at the same time.

 BBAP wrote:

 Servant of Dante wrote:
As to what fluff I hate? The new stuff on Celestine and the twins in FoC.

I don't like that either. I always saw Celestine as a "Legion of the Damned"-style force of nature who showed up out of nowhere to kick arse, then vanished as mysteriously as she arrived when the day was won. Now she's like, hanging out with all the Cadia dudes and having conversations with people and stuff. She's gone from "mysterious divine benefactor" to "cheesy superhero".

The gameplay and story segregation is a bit jarring too. The Fall of Cadia books are the only fluff I've really read since I got back into the hobby and they're brimming over with silliness. Who puts Suncannons on a Wraithknight? What kind of Eldar general lets a Keeper of Secrets get into close combat with his dudes? Why are they so scared of the Daemonettes? I get that Slaanesh will eat their souls, but in combat, why would they care? Daemonettes suck. I find it hard to believe the elite Eldar warrior classes would be scared of some daemons that my inbred, 5pts-per-model Neophyte Hybrids can destroy by the bushel with their space hillbilly shotguns and autoguns.

Also, why Robot Girlyman? Why not The Khan or one of the other cool Primarchs? Why bring back the boring one?

Gulliman IS the intreasting one, all the other primarchs are warriors first, foremost and only, Gulliman is a statesman, he's gonna change things.

MarsNZ wrote:Loving the double standards. RG needs to be fleshed out but good-guy Vulkan and Hells Angels Ghengis are `totally radical` and completely not one-dimensional

It's not that. GW's writers are cack, so the characters are largely going to be one dimensional no matter what. The Khan and Vulkan might at least be one dimeinsional in an interesting way. Girlyman could be too, but they're going to opt for the "Spiritual Liege" angle and it's going to suck.

The Age of Girlyman is upon us.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Junior Scribe Yimmni O'Sen - Oh my Emperor! The evil Dr. Abbadon is attacking! We should go cover it!
Mild Mannered Sister Hospitalis Rinda Danvarz - Gasp! I just remembered I left the iron on in my hab unit! I'll be right back!
Yimmi - But Rinda... oh she's already gone, where did she go? Wait, who's that emerging from that Com-Link Booth?
St Celestine, Hieromartyr of the Palatine Crusade - Here I come to save the day!
Yimmi - Wow go St Celestine, Hieromartyr of the Palatine Crusade!
(Soon)
Yimmi - Hey there you are Rinda, you missed all the action! St Celestine, Hieromartyr of the Palatine Crusade stopped the evil Dr Abaddon but he escaped in a warp porthole at the last second.
Rinda - Aw too bad, I always wanted to meet St Celestine, Hieromartyr of the Palatine Crusade.
Yimmi - Funny how you two are never in the same place at the same time.

When I was young, foolish, and trying to impress a lit student I was into, I took her to see this play about two men stuck on an island. One of them had a conscience represented by a woman in an angel robe who'd come out from behind the curtain and slap him around the head whenever he thought of doing something bad, before disappearing again. Never spoke a word, just came out, slapped the dude, and vanished.

I always imagined St Celestine as the war equivalent of that. Now she's like "baroque-Calvinist Jean Grey" or something.

BrianDavion wrote:Gulliman IS the intreasting one, all the other primarchs are warriors first, foremost and only, Gulliman is a statesman, he's gonna change things.

He's not a statesman. He's the "Spiritual Liege" guy. "Statesman" is one of the many qualities he is slated to have that he doesn't actually display.

 ProwlerPC wrote:
Rofl oh yeah, Robert the Gullible is back. I think The Lion would've been a neater choice. Heck I'd even take Rogal Dorn returning and reforming the loyalist legions. But instead it's Rowboat the traitorous king of his own empire that somehow later is what Every Single Space Marine aspires to be. Well to keep it from being boring I hope he turns against the Imperium and quite frankly I'm pretty confident he would if he's consistent in character. It only takes a rumour that Daddy is dead and he immediately begins running his own show. Imagine now.

That's an incredibly narrow mindset on why Roboute Guilliman proposed the Legions should be broken down into Chapters. He also wasn't the only Primarch who thought that was for the best.

I have not read anything on Guilliman to suggest that he was a selfish character who could be swayed by Chaos, although in fairness, Horus was meant to have been incorruptible too.


Still, I'm pretty sure the majority of these complaints against Guilliman's return are because it's hip and cool to dislike Rowboat Girlyman and his Ultrasmurfs.

 BBAP wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:Gulliman IS the intreasting one, all the other primarchs are warriors first, foremost and only, Gulliman is a statesman, he's gonna change things.

He's not a statesman. He's the "Spiritual Liege" guy. "Statesman" is one of the many qualities he is slated to have that he doesn't actually display.

Perhaps you should put down that 5th edition codex, it's 2 editions out of date and read some of the lore. and then, without inventing reasons for why it doesn't count and Gulliman is such a horriable guy for stealing screen time from your favorite primarch, sit down and think about the implications. you realize that after the Emperor died, Gulliman BASICLY ran the IoM right?

 General Annoyance wrote:
Still, I'm pretty sure the majority of these complaints against Guilliman's return are because it's hip and cool to dislike Rowboat Girlyman and his Ultrasmurfs.

Oh no doubt. There's no pleasing that crowd regardless of what GW writes.

 General Annoyance wrote:
Still, I'm pretty sure the majority of these complaints against Guilliman's return are because it's hip and cool to dislike Rowboat Girlyman and his Ultrasmurfs.

This is 40k fluff we're talking about. Nothing "hip and cool" about any of this.

The Primarchs died 10,000 years before the story is set. None of them should be coming back, unless it's as a Daemon Prince or some kind of otherworldly monstrosity. Robot Gulliver remained in stasis for 10,000 years because he's a creator's pet. They ***could*** do something interesting with him. He could come back wrong and be a Julius Caesar-style usurper, as his attempt to set up his own Imperium seems to suggest he could be. They could also play up the fact the Eldar manipulated his resurrection.

They're not going to do that though. He's coming back from the dead to Elminster up the 40k universe and lead his Toilet Smurfs to yet more glory at the expense of everyone who isn't a Toilet Smurf or Space Marine. Then, when the Warp storms "shatter" the galaxy and everyone ends up with their own "realms", he'll become the leader of the Imperium.

The Age of Girlyman, that's what they'll call it.

BrianDavion wrote:
Perhaps you should put down that 5th edition codex, it's 2 editions out of date and read some of the lore. and then, without inventing reasons for why it doesn't count and Gulliman is such a horriable guy for stealing screen time from your favorite primarch, sit down and think about the implications. you realize that after the Emperor died, Gulliman BASICLY ran the IoM right?

I don't have a "favourite" Primarch. Some of them are less bad than others, but none of them should be alive in M41.

 General Annoyance wrote:

 ProwlerPC wrote:
Rofl oh yeah, Robert the Gullible is back. I think The Lion would've been a neater choice. Heck I'd even take Rogal Dorn returning and reforming the loyalist legions. But instead it's Rowboat the traitorous king of his own empire that somehow later is what Every Single Space Marine aspires to be. Well to keep it from being boring I hope he turns against the Imperium and quite frankly I'm pretty confident he would if he's consistent in character. It only takes a rumour that Daddy is dead and he immediately begins running his own show. Imagine now.

That's an incredibly narrow mindset on why Roboute Guilliman proposed the Legions should be broken down into Chapters. He also wasn't the only Primarch who thought that was for the best.

I have not read anything on Guilliman to suggest that he was a selfish character who could be swayed by Chaos, although in fairness, Horus was meant to have been incorruptible too.


Still, I'm pretty sure the majority of these complaints against Guilliman's return are because it's hip and cool to dislike Rowboat Girlyman and his Ultrasmurfs.

I never provided any reasoning as to why Rawbutt Jellyman disbanded the legions. I only mentioned Dorn would be more interesting because he'd form them back into legions.

I never mentioned anything about being corrupted by Chaos. He's guilty of building a second empire within the borders and during the reign of the much larger empire he was supposed to be loyal to. It's treason but no I agree he did not fall to Chaos.

The only part of your post that addresses mine is the hip and cool comment. Was it someone else's post you meant to quote? OK well about that. It's got far less to do with hip and cool and more to do with Geedub's mishandling of Robust Gilligan amongst many other characters and a strong cynical prediction that they will continue to mishandle him. It was fine originally when we could debate and question R. Googleman Esq.' loyalties due to his seditious empire building. The whole spiritual liege and everyone aspires to be bull gak was a kick to the nuts of an otherwise potentially colourful character followed not too far by a fan base eagerly pouncing on any debate or question of his loyalty. A debate and question that existed longer then the spiritual liege camp. So no its not being hip and cool to question Robot Gigglytan, it's traditional.

 General Annoyance wrote:
I have not read anything on Guilliman to suggest that he was a selfish character who could be swayed by Chaos, although in fairness, Horus was meant to have been incorruptible too.

And look at the fact that his entire Legion was pretty much intact after the assault on Terra, while all the other Legions took massive beatings, some almost to the point of being wiped out. Some would question the timing and convenience of their "inability" to commit to the battle. Even Russ and Jonson (sp?) dropped what they were doing to make best possible speed to contribute. What did Sweet Baby Row do? Quelled an Eldar incursion, which translates to an entire Legion vs. a few hundred Eldar. Good expenditure of resources. SOMEONE has to question that.

 General Annoyance wrote:
Still, I'm pretty sure the majority of these complaints against Guilliman's return are because it's hip and cool to dislike Rowboat Girlyman and his Ultrasmurfs.

Actually, I've hated the Ultramarines since 2nd Edition. Ever since the first moment someone looked over at my Crimson Fists and said "Oh, you play Ultramarines." and I respond with "No, I play Crimson Fists." and get "You use Codex: Ultramarines, so you play Ultramarines." as a retort. THAT kind of nonsense pissed me off far before Mat Ward bukkake'd all over the Ultramarines in the 5th Codex.

 BBAP wrote:

 General Annoyance wrote:
Still, I'm pretty sure the majority of these complaints against Guilliman's return are because it's hip and cool to dislike Rowboat Girlyman and his Ultrasmurfs.

This is 40k fluff we're talking about. Nothing "hip and cool" about any of this.

The Primarchs died 10,000 years before the story is set. None of them should be coming back, unless it's as a Daemon Prince or some kind of otherworldly monstrosity. Robot Gulliver remained in stasis for 10,000 years because he's a creator's pet. They ***could*** do something interesting with him. He could come back wrong and be a Julius Caesar-style usurper, as his attempt to set up his own Imperium seems to suggest he could be. They could also play up the fact the Eldar manipulated his resurrection.

They're not going to do that though. He's coming back from the dead to Elminster up the 40k universe and lead his Toilet Smurfs to yet more glory at the expense of everyone who isn't a Toilet Smurf or Space Marine. Then, when the Warp storms "shatter" the galaxy and everyone ends up with their own "realms", he'll become the leader of the Imperium.

The Age of Girlyman, that's what they'll call it.

This.

They could do so much interesting stuff with Guilliman.

1. Play up the flaws in his character
2. Have him split/divide the Imperium somehow, possibly unintentionally
3. Intrigue regarding Mechanicus/Eldar control over him
4. Raise questions over his loyalty/motivations

Any of those would give so much more depth than just 'glorious flawless saviour of mankind' which is frankly just as tedious as the 'Eldar swoop in to save the day' trope.

Based on how they handled the Ynnari I actually have hope that this might be interesting, but there's still scope to mess it up as much as they messed up his model...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just Tony wrote:
And look at the fact that his entire Legion was pretty much intact after the assault on Terra, while all the other Legions took massive beatings, some almost to the point of being wiped out. Some would question the timing and convenience of their "inability" to commit to the battle. Even Russ and Jonson (sp?) dropped what they were doing to make best possible speed to contribute. What did Sweet Baby Row do? Quelled an Eldar incursion, which translates to an entire Legion vs. a few hundred Eldar. Good expenditure of resources. SOMEONE has to question that.

This is exactly the character nuance that makes me actually like the idea of Guilliman and the Ultramarines.

In the world of 40k, anyone who stands out as wholly 'good' is out of place. Everyone, and I mean everyone, should be a grey area. The Ultramarines might be completely and utterly loyal, but some of their actions are suspicious. It's exactly that that makes them actually fit with 40k.

 Just Tony wrote:

And look at the fact that his entire Legion was pretty much intact after the assault on Terra, while all the other Legions took massive beatings, some almost to the point of being wiped out. Some would question the timing and convenience of their "inability" to commit to the battle. Even Russ and Jonson (sp?) dropped what they were doing to make best possible speed to contribute. What did Sweet Baby Row do? Quelled an Eldar incursion, which translates to an entire Legion vs. a few hundred Eldar. Good expenditure of resources. SOMEONE has to question that.

.

Yeah. UM were obviously supposed to disobey warmaster(before he was revealed to be traitor). You know? His superior officer he was expected to obey like emperor?

Yeah. Makes sense.

tneva82 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

And look at the fact that his entire Legion was pretty much intact after the assault on Terra, while all the other Legions took massive beatings, some almost to the point of being wiped out. Some would question the timing and convenience of their "inability" to commit to the battle. Even Russ and Jonson (sp?) dropped what they were doing to make best possible speed to contribute. What did Sweet Baby Row do? Quelled an Eldar incursion, which translates to an entire Legion vs. a few hundred Eldar. Good expenditure of resources. SOMEONE has to question that.

.

Yeah. UM were obviously supposed to disobey warmaster(before he was revealed to be traitor). You know? His superior officer he was expected to obey like emperor?

Yeah. Makes sense.

At least it makes his character interesting, rather than just a bland vanilla do-gooder...

 General Annoyance wrote:

 ProwlerPC wrote:
Rofl oh yeah, Robert the Gullible is back. I think The Lion would've been a neater choice. Heck I'd even take Rogal Dorn returning and reforming the loyalist legions. But instead it's Rowboat the traitorous king of his own empire that somehow later is what Every Single Space Marine aspires to be. Well to keep it from being boring I hope he turns against the Imperium and quite frankly I'm pretty confident he would if he's consistent in character. It only takes a rumour that Daddy is dead and he immediately begins running his own show. Imagine now.

That's an incredibly narrow mindset on why Roboute Guilliman proposed the Legions should be broken down into Chapters. He also wasn't the only Primarch who thought that was for the best.

I have not read anything on Guilliman to suggest that he was a selfish character who could be swayed by Chaos, although in fairness, Horus was meant to have been incorruptible too.


Still, I'm pretty sure the majority of these complaints against Guilliman's return are because it's hip and cool to dislike Rowboat Girlyman and his Ultrasmurfs.

As long as calgar keeps being a badass and sicarius (please kill him off gw) is kept far away from being chapter master it's all good.

BBAP wrote:This is 40k fluff we're talking about. Nothing "hip and cool" about any of this.

Let's change the phrasing then - normal and approved of by the majority of the community.

The Primarchs died 10,000 years before the story is set. None of them should be coming back, unless it's as a Daemon Prince or some kind of otherworldly monstrosity.

This sounds more like an opinion than actual fact on why the Primarchs shouldn't be returning, even though there has been the age old myth of them returning to fight during humanity's darkest hour.

Robot Gulliver remained in stasis for 10,000 years because he's a creator's pet. They ***could*** do something interesting with him. He could come back wrong and be a Julius Caesar-style usurper, as his attempt to set up his own Imperium seems to suggest he could be. They could also play up the fact the Eldar manipulated his resurrection.

They could. Do they have to, though?

They're not going to do that though. He's coming back from the dead to Elminster up the 40k universe and lead his Toilet Smurfs to yet more glory at the expense of everyone who isn't a Toilet Smurf or Space Marine. Then, when the Warp storms "shatter" the galaxy and everyone ends up with their own "realms", he'll become the leader of the Imperium.

The Age of Girlyman, that's what they'll call it.

Save jumping the gun on that till it actually happens... if it does at all.

ProwlerPC wrote:I never provided any reasoning as to why Rawbutt Jellyman disbanded the legions. I only mentioned Dorn would be more interesting because he'd form them back into legions.

Not provided, but certainly suggested it to be a poor move that's entirely his fault.

I never mentioned anything about being corrupted by Chaos. He's guilty of building a second empire within the borders and during the reign of the much larger empire he was supposed to be loyal to. It's treason but no I agree he did not fall to Chaos.

But that colony is completely loyal to the Imperium, even if the smaller worlds answer to Macragge first before the Imperium, so it can't be a separate empire by definition.

The only part of your post that addresses mine is the hip and cool comment. Was it someone else's post you meant to quote? OK well about that. It's got far less to do with hip and cool and more to do with Geedub's mishandling of Robust Gilligan amongst many other characters and a strong cynical prediction that they will continue to mishandle him. It was fine originally when we could debate and question R. Googleman Esq.' loyalties due to his seditious empire building. The whole spiritual liege and everyone aspires to be bull gak was a kick to the nuts of an otherwise potentially colourful character followed not too far by a fan base eagerly pouncing on any debate or question of his loyalty. A debate and question that existed longer then the spiritual liege camp. So no its not being hip and cool to question Robot Gigglytan, it's traditional.

It was a general comment regarding how this has been a common theme amongst many 40k fans to bash Guilliman and the Ultramarines at any possible point for years, and how, 9 times out of 10, it is mostly the same tired criticism of them being the poster boys of the Space Marines.

We get it. It'd be cool if some smaller Chapters got some more recognition in the lore, and it'd be great if we could hear more tales of victory from places other than where the Ultramarines happen to be. But when the Ultramarines have been stated as definitively being the finest Chapter of Adeptus Astartes the Imperium of Man can muster at times of war, it's a little tricky to take them off that pedestal.

And why should they be taken off there, honestly? It seems like the concept of insane heroism is lost amongst this community when it comes to lore, in an over the top universe where acts of heroism are practically the only saving grace the Imperium can cling onto.

 Just Tony wrote:
And look at the fact that his entire Legion was pretty much intact after the assault on Terra, while all the other Legions took massive beatings, some almost to the point of being wiped out. Some would question the timing and convenience of their "inability" to commit to the battle. Even Russ and Jonson (sp?) dropped what they were doing to make best possible speed to contribute. What did Sweet Baby Row do? Quelled an Eldar incursion, which translates to an entire Legion vs. a few hundred Eldar. Good expenditure of resources. SOMEONE has to question that.

As far as I'm aware, Guilliman was only hours late to the battle of Terra (I'm not very great with pre 40k lore). Would be much appreciated if you can cite where you got that from.

Actually, I've hated the Ultramarines since 2nd Edition. Ever since the first moment someone looked over at my Crimson Fists and said "Oh, you play Ultramarines." and I respond with "No, I play Crimson Fists." and get "You use Codex: Ultramarines, so you play Ultramarines." as a retort. THAT kind of nonsense pissed me off far before Mat Ward bukkake'd all over the Ultramarines in the 5th Codex.

This sounds more like shooting the messenger than having a genuine problem with the Ultramarines. Call out the bigoted player who said you played Ultramarines rather than CF rather than whoever was writing the UM to fame at the time.

Ynneadwraith wrote:They could do so much interesting stuff with Guilliman.

1. Play up the flaws in his character
2. Have him split/divide the Imperium somehow, possibly unintentionally
3. Intrigue regarding Mechanicus/Eldar control over him
4. Raise questions over his loyalty/motivations

Any of those would give so much more depth than just 'glorious flawless saviour of mankind' which is frankly just as tedious as the 'Eldar swoop in to save the day' trope.

Well he clearly wasn't flawless enough to lose in a fight with another Primarch...

I'll also never get this "being good is boring" argument, especially in 40k. Perhaps it's just me, but in a universe where the majority of people are s, seeing speckles of good under all the dirt can be refreshing, and brings forward the ever so crucial theme of hope in this universe. Besides, Primarchs were meant to be perfect humans in both body and spirit; we can have at least one of them turning out as proposed, right?



Anyways, that was too much writing for me to bear, and I doubt that will change anyone's opinions on *insert jokey alternate name for Roboute Guilliman here* returning. PM's open for lighter discussion on the matter.

G.A

 Quarterdime wrote:
The Crimson Slaughter.

Games Workshop decided to finally develop a new Chaos Warband, and the best they could do were the equivalent of the droid army from the Star Wars prequels. 1 dimensional villains with barely any thought put into them that are just there to get blown away. I think that that's why they had to give Crimson Slaughter the extra attention... Just enough for people to care about them being blown away, except not really.

Interestingly, The Crimson Slaughter appear to be heavily inspired by John Blanche's own home brew renegade chapter as showcased in the 2nd edition Chaos Codex.

 General Annoyance wrote:
Let's change the phrasing then - normal and approved of by the majority of the community.

Oh okay, so you're suggesting it's a reflexive conformist dislike of old Reboot Guillotine then? Despite the fact every person responding to this thread has given perfectly valid reasons for disliking The Rowboat, all subtly different from one another.

This sounds more like an opinion than actual fact on why the Primarchs shouldn't be returning, even though there has been the age old myth of them returning to fight during humanity's darkest hour.

... the Primarchs were done 10,000 years before M41. That's not "an opinion"; that's been the fluff since I first came in contact with it 23 years ago. The Horus Heresy split the Imperium down the middle during the time of the Primarchs, 10,000 years before the battle represented by the game you play today.

There's been myths of them returning, sure, but that doesn't change the fact that the Primarchs were done with and the galaxy's narrative had advanced 10,000 years past them. Bringing them back is the worst hack laziness I can imagine with respect to advancement of this universe's narrative. If I wanted to read stupid stories about superheroes who can get lost in time and die repeatedly only to come back to life due to gak-ass timeline-bending and infantile creator/ fanboy attachments, I'd go and read comic books.

That's not what I want from 40k. I want the visceral, darkly humourous, OTT, baroque sci-fi world that I've enjoyed so much up to this point, not primary coloured superheroes with toilet seats painted all over them coming back to life and being Spiritual Lieges.

They could. Do they have to, though?

No - and they won't. That's my point. Age of Spiritual Liege incoming.

Save jumping the gun on that till it actually happens... if it does at all.

If it doesn't I'll drink my Lahmian Medium. I'll even live-stream it. I haven't been wrong about any of their Fall of Cadia narrative choices yet though, so I can't see me being wrong about this.

Warhammer 40,000: Age of Rowboat, in stores summer 2017.

 BBAP wrote:
Oh okay, so you're suggesting it's a reflexive conformist dislike of old Reboot Guillotine then? Despite the fact every person responding to this thread has given perfectly valid reasons for disliking The Rowboat, all subtly different from one another.

No?

It's definitely normal though.

I'd respect people's points about the return of Roboute Guilliman if they didn't fall into either "he's a goody two shoes" or if they weren't just a contest to see who can make the funniest alternate name to Roboute Guilliman, combined with the old tripe of Ultramarines being the worst thing to happen to 40k ever.

... the Primarchs were done 10,000 years before M41. That's not "an opinion"; that's been the fluff since I first came in contact with it 23 years ago. The Horus Heresy split the Imperium down the middle during the time of the Primarchs, 10,000 years before the battle represented by the game you play today.

There's been myths of them returning, sure, but that doesn't change the fact that the Primarchs were done with and the galaxy's narrative had advanced 10,000 years past them. Bringing them back is the worst hack laziness I can imagine with respect to advancement of this universe's narrative.

I haven't personally seen anything that definitively said the Primarchs were done for; of the ones who weren't killed, or didn't become Greater Daemons, there was always the potential of them returning to the battlefields across the Imperium, one way or another.

I wouldn't compare the Primarchs to superheroes, even Guilliman. While they were meant to be more superhuman than superhuman, only one of them left alive actually turned out as an embodiment of strength in all areas. 1/20 is hardly a good score to conclude that they're superheroes who belong where they were left.

If I wanted to read stupid stories about superheroes who can get lost in time and die repeatedly only to come back to life due to gak-ass timeline-bending and infantile creator/ fanboy attachments, I'd go and read comic books.

I sincerely hope for the sake of my point here that nobody has an attachment that strong with a character in 40k that they couldn't stand to see them removed from the current lore.

Then again, some people have such an attachment to 40k races that they'll adopt their hatred for other races and the people who play/collect them, as well as addressing themselves as part of that race.

Kinda hard to take anyone's point seriously anymore...

My point is this: Guilliman's returned - even if we could reason that having a character such as Guilliman leaning more towards the idea of doing good in the world of 40k is utter heresy (spoiler - it isn't, and never will be in humanity), we'd still have to debate over both his significance and the context of his return, which we'll have to wait for. Hence why I think the bashing of Guilliman is mostly to reinforce that hatred of Toilet Marines; let's wait to see what the reasoning behind how a Primarch (who was locked in stasis) was able to recover to fight in this age for the Imperium before we go running around with that flag.

That's not what I want from 40k. I want the visceral, darkly humourous, OTT, baroque sci-fi world that I've enjoyed so much up to this point, not primary coloured superheroes with toilet seats painted all over them coming back to life and being Spiritual Lieges.

This is a point I'll never understand either; you make it sound like all that characterisation in 40k is gone because a "good guy" from another era has made a fairly predictable return to 40k.

Where has it gone exactly? I can still find all those, even with the return of Guilliman. Surely the return of a Primarch is an indication of how desperate the fight for survival in the Imperium has become, rather than a signpost for large amounts of "surviving against the odds".

No - and they won't. That's my point. Age of Spiritual Liege incoming.

I assume this is memes, not being very interested in AoS myself. Still, I don't see how one important character is going to have this dramatic impact on everything that makes 40k what it is.

If it doesn't I'll drink my Lahmian Medium. I'll even live-stream it. I haven't been wrong about any of their Fall of Cadia narrative choices yet though, so I can't see me being wrong about this.

Warhammer 40,000: Age of Rowboat, in stores summer 2017.

We'll both be disappointed either way, that's for sure.

One over arching theme I'm seeing ehre is "ophh goodie goodie thats boring!" and thats one thing I generally hate across all settings and themes, that characters need to have rediculasly over the top flaws, or need to be "questionably evil" to be intreasting. That's not true, I find some of the most intreasting conflicts I've ever read or seen, have been two people who genuinely belive they're doing the right thing, coming into a conflict. there is a REASON "the emperor's gift" is one of my favorite 40k books. it's such an intreasting conflict because both sides really do belive, and have a strong argument for why they're in the right.


Which brings me back to trying to restore this topic to it's original purpose, me I hate the "pure villians" who don't seem to have ANY redeeming factors to them. some of the old chaos stuff was like that, and GW has, thankfully really worked to add some depth and nuance to people like Abbaddon.

 General Annoyance wrote:
I'd respect people's points about the return of Roboute Guilliman if they didn't fall into either "he's a goody two shoes" or if they weren't just a contest to see who can make the funniest alternate name to Roboute Guilliman, combined with the old tripe of Ultramarines being the worst thing to happen to 40k ever.

The arguments aren't that, though. Reading them as such makes it easier to dismiss them out of hand as conformist nonsense, but you've had three seperate reasonings from people who dislike The Rowboat and none of them fit into either of those categories.

He's a bland, poorly-handled creator's pet and part of a set of characters that should remain in the universe's mythos where they belong. Good or bad, doesn't matter to me. He sucks as a character and as a concept, and is indicative of the fail-ass Marvel/ DC design philosophy that GW creative are hewing towards. That's bad, and I believe it needs to be criticised. You don't agree. It's fine that you don't agree, but you can't pretend my objections to Robot Goggleman are based on the fact he's a "good guy". Dislike of Robert Gulliver is a popular sentiment because there are valid reasons to dislike him; there may be some people who just jump on the bandwagon, but the fact remains he's an eminently suck-ass character and one of a series of such.

The silly names are just low-ball mockery, not part of the argument. It's amusing to poke fun at people's Mary Sues, especially when the person in question is "GW's creative staff for the last 20 years".

I haven't personally seen anything that definitively said the Primarchs were done for; of the ones who weren't killed, or didn't become Greater Daemons, there was always the potential of them returning to the battlefields across the Imperium, one way or another.

Right. Because they're immortal superheroes with the strength of a thousand men who can overcome any odds and shrug off any injury and ignore the passing of time and zzzzzzzzzzz...

I wouldn't compare the Primarchs to superheroes, even Guilliman. While they were meant to be more superhuman than superhuman, only one of them left alive actually turned out as an embodiment of strength in all areas. 1/20 is hardly a good score to conclude that they're superheroes who belong where they were left.

Ten thousand years has passed since they were current, and when they were current they had superpowers. They're openly described as demi-gods as recently as "Fracture of Biel-Tan". "Demi-god" is a fancy word for "superhero". The distinctions are academic. The Primarchs are superheroes. Immortal, cape-wearing, toilet-seated superheroes, to be rolled out like so much old hat whenever GW feels the need to inject a bit of Rob Liefeld into their setting. "Here's a bunch of super-superhumans who are directly descended from Emprah! Here's a list of deeds they've each performed and qualities that they possess! Now - love them!"

Blech.

I sincerely hope for the sake of my point here that nobody has an attachment that strong with a character in 40k that they couldn't stand to see them removed from the current lore.

Your hope is misplaced. The return of Rawbutt Jigglyman is nigh - and I sincerely doubt he's coming alone. Superheroes for everyone!

Then again, some people have such an attachment to 40k races that they'll adopt their hatred for other races and the people who play/collect them, as well as addressing themselves as part of that race.

I've never seen that happen ever.

Kinda hard to take anyone's point seriously anymore...

If you stopped misinterpreting the points you'd have an easier time taking them seriously.

My point is this: Guilliman's returned - even if we could reason that having a character such as Guilliman leaning more towards the idea of doing good in the world of 40k is utter heresy (spoiler - it isn't, and never will be in humanity), we'd still have to debate over both his significance and the context of his return, which we'll have to wait for. Hence why I think the bashing of Guilliman is mostly to reinforce that hatred of Toilet Marines; let's wait to see what the reasoning behind how a Primarch (who was locked in stasis) was able to recover to fight in this age for the Imperium before we go running around with that flag.

Again, misinterpreting the objections.

Eisenhorn was an inveterate do-gooder, yet the Eisenhorn series is one of the very few sci fi franchises I'll go out of my way to buy. Eisenhorn is just some bloke - admittedly a highly trained bloke with psychic powers, but a bloke nonetheless. Throughout that series I got to watch him struggle with everything, from his own physical limitations as "just some bloke", to the emotional demands of his calling, to the mistakes he ended up making as a result of his unwillingness to reflect on his self-righteousness. He was deeply flawed, and as a result he paid heavily for every victory he won. Show the audience your character's flaws and limits, and you can hide even the thickest plot armour beneath a veil of believability.

Show the audience an immortal superhero Spiritual Liege awakening after 10,000 years in stasis, then festoon him in toilet-tastic armour and earmark him as the leader Humanity needs to guide it through these dark times, and they have a right to ask what the hell is wrong with you. Like I said, they could take this in an interesting direction - Gullible dies after three weeks because the stasis field wasn't sealed properly, Trazyn captures him for his Pokemon collection, someone finds out the Eldar/ AdMech are pulling Gigglytan's strings and a civil war breaks out - but that isn't how they'll play it. Spiritual Liege, all the way. The Lord of the Toilet Smurfs shall sit upon the Golden Throne.

This is a point I'll never understand either; you make it sound like all that characterisation in 40k is gone because a "good guy" from another era has made a fairly predictable return to 40k.

It was failry predictable that they'd bring him out of stasis. My point is he should never have been in stasis in the first place. He should be dead, or at the very least forgotten about so new characters can take the stage, ones that aren't Spiritual Lieges and thus can develop in new and interesting ways. You don't broaden the appeal of your IP by rehashing the same comic-book gak repeatedly.

Or maybe you do. I don't know. I suppose we'll see when the post-Smurf financials come out.

Where has it gone exactly? I can still find all those, even with the return of Guilliman. Surely the return of a Primarch is an indication of how desperate the fight for survival in the Imperium has become, rather than a signpost for large amounts of "surviving against the odds".

How much more desperate would the Imperium seem if it didn't have immortal superheroes to awaken? That's what I'm asking here. How much less desperate does the Imperium seem now that they have a designated tactical genius-slash-Spiritual Liege at their head?

I assume this is memes, not being very interested in AoS myself. Still, I don't see how one important character is going to have this dramatic impact on everything that makes 40k what it is.

He's not. He's just one symptom of a slow descent into comic-book banality that the Imperium/ Chaos dynamic is taking. They were always the least-bad faction, and you rooted for them because they were the only one that wasn't actively trying to kill you 80% of the time. Now they're the designated good guys led by Spiritual Liege. Just... blech.

I heard the Eldar have a vid-tape of Roubert getting a golden shower in an Ulthwe hotel room.

He's compromised.

BrianDavion wrote:
One over arching theme I'm seeing ehre is "ophh goodie goodie thats boring!" and thats one thing I generally hate across all settings and themes, that characters need to have rediculasly over the top flaws, or need to be "questionably evil" to be intreasting. That's not true, I find some of the most intreasting conflicts I've ever read or seen, have been two people who genuinely belive they're doing the right thing, coming into a conflict. there is a REASON "the emperor's gift" is one of my favorite 40k books. it's such an intreasting conflict because both sides really do belive, and have a strong argument for why they're in the right.


Which brings me back to trying to restore this topic to it's original purpose, me I hate the "pure villians" who don't seem to have ANY redeeming factors to them. some of the old chaos stuff was like that, and GW has, thankfully really worked to add some depth and nuance to people like Abbaddon.

I absolutely agree with you. 'Pure villains' is utterly tedious as there's no depth to they're character beyond moustache twirling.

Similarly, 'pure heroes' are just as tedious. There's a similar lack of character depth, and it breaks people's ability to relate to them. I'm not necessarily saying make him evil, but certainly make him flawed.

Its an interesting point you raise about the best conflicts arising from two people who think they're doing the right thing coming into conflict. You're absolutely right. I've always thought 40k has been good at that (with a few notable exceptions). Every faction genuinely believes that what they're doing is right. If only they'd wind something in about perhaps Horus doing his Heresy thing for the good of mankind then they'd have everyone possibly being right.

That ties into the main reason why i sugget that there should be some doubt raised about Guilliman's character and motivations. He may well be completely loyal, but if people have doubt then it fuels conflict between people who by all rights should ve on the same side.

If you have Guilliman be a squeaky-clean hero-type who always does the right thing then it makes that harder. Not impossible, but definitely harder.

The main thing that actually does is make the people fighting agaist him seem stupid. If we can see how goody goody he is, then people fighting against him are only doing it because they're selfish, stupid or evil. It's much more compelling to have someone genuinely believe that Guilliman isn't all he says he is, and set out to stop him. Whatsmore, it's even more compelling if this guy might be right about Guilliman.

It's less a 'everyone needs to be slightly evil because 40k grimdark'. It's 'everyone needs to have somethig a little supicious about their character to fuel conflict between other characters'.

Thats how you avoid 'saturday morning cartoon villains'.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

And look at the fact that his entire Legion was pretty much intact after the assault on Terra, while all the other Legions took massive beatings, some almost to the point of being wiped out. Some would question the timing and convenience of their "inability" to commit to the battle. Even Russ and Jonson (sp?) dropped what they were doing to make best possible speed to contribute. What did Sweet Baby Row do? Quelled an Eldar incursion, which translates to an entire Legion vs. a few hundred Eldar. Good expenditure of resources. SOMEONE has to question that.

.

Yeah. UM were obviously supposed to disobey warmaster(before he was revealed to be traitor). You know? His superior officer he was expected to obey like emperor?

Yeah. Makes sense.

At least it makes his character interesting, rather than just a bland vanilla do-gooder...

Well if you don't care anything about internal logic or sense...

tneva82 wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

And look at the fact that his entire Legion was pretty much intact after the assault on Terra, while all the other Legions took massive beatings, some almost to the point of being wiped out. Some would question the timing and convenience of their "inability" to commit to the battle. Even Russ and Jonson (sp?) dropped what they were doing to make best possible speed to contribute. What did Sweet Baby Row do? Quelled an Eldar incursion, which translates to an entire Legion vs. a few hundred Eldar. Good expenditure of resources. SOMEONE has to question that.

.

Yeah. UM were obviously supposed to disobey warmaster(before he was revealed to be traitor). You know? His superior officer he was expected to obey like emperor?

Yeah. Makes sense.

At least it makes his character interesting, rather than just a bland vanilla do-gooder...

Well if you don't care anything about internal logic or sense...

So you think only bland do-gooders have internal logic or sense?

Wait, before we get embroiled in anything, let me just clarify because sarcasm doesn't translate too well online. Are you in favour or in opposition to the 'Guilliman's actions are suspicious' angle?

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
I heard the Eldar have a vid-tape of Roubert getting a golden shower in an Ulthwe hotel room.

He's compromised.

Depends who from.

The return of the primarchs in 30k has been done poorly. I liked the emprah and the primarchs as half forgotten legends of the ancient past. Now we have a boatload of novels about them and im less than impressed. Cheap, cliche ridden and most of the time downright badly written menchildren in mediocre stories with comicbook superpowers who would have been unsuitable to lead a Kindergarden group let alone an empire.
Not everything needs to be iluminated and not everything needs to be explained especialy when the result of doing so does little to improve the overall narrative.

My second gripe are the "new" Grey Knights. I strongly prefered their 3rd edition incarnation as stoic and extremely dedicated if perhaps somewhat one dimensional demonhunters. No feasting under a demon's skull or warptraveling grandmasters but only the distant reward of being finaly laid to rest forever on Titan and a brothercaptain's seemingly endless feud with a Changer of Ways.
Despite their task they were considerably less over the top than their current incarnation, using teamwork, skill and indomitable faith instead of giant babycarriers to banish even the nastiest of daemons.
For that i loved them. Oh, and the new plastic miniatures suck. Don't get me wrong, 50% of each miniature is awesome but the legs...oh god the legs...who in his right mind created such idiotic poses?

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
So you think only bland do-gooders have internal logic or sense?

Wait, before we get embroiled in anything, let me just clarify because sarcasm doesn't translate too well online. Are you in favour or in opposition to the 'Guilliman's actions are suspicious' angle?

What internal logic you would say that supports open rebellion by Guilliman against Horus(when he was still head of Imperial army)?

We aren't talking about minor issue. We are talking about disobeying your superior officer. The one Emperor told you to obey. That's open rebellion.

tneva82 wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
So you think only bland do-gooders have internal logic or sense?

Wait, before we get embroiled in anything, let me just clarify because sarcasm doesn't translate too well online. Are you in favour or in opposition to the 'Guilliman's actions are suspicious' angle?

What internal logic you would say that supports open rebellion by Guilliman against Horus(when he was still head of Imperial army)?

We aren't talking about minor issue. We are talking about disobeying your superior officer. The one Emperor told you to obey. That's open rebellion.

So we are arguing for the same point then. Or at least a similar one. That there's more nuance to Guilliman's situation than just 'loyalist hero', and that should be played up more.

Will Robot Girlyman actually make a difference long term, his "special ability" was to take other peoples ideas,tactics and strategies and refine them with the benefit of his aditonal resources due to his own empire with little actual innovation of his own.

While he is in his element against his brothers and chaos he is 10000 years behind the curve on the emerging races such as Necrons and Tau. I can see him gettting his shiny metal butt kicked by races using new technology and tactics and strategies.

SeanDrake wrote:
Will Robot Girlyman actually make a difference long term, his "special ability" was to take other peoples ideas,tactics and strategies and refine them with the benefit of his aditonal resources due to his own empire with little actual innovation of his own.

While he is in his element against his brothers and chaos he is 10000 years behind the curve on the emerging races such as Necrons and Tau. I can see him gettting his shiny metal butt kicked by races using new technology and tactics and strategies.

Not quite certain I buy that interpretation.

The Great Crusade was a giant leap into the unknown for Mankind. They knew less about what was really out there than the Imperium at large today. Many of the planets they would have encountered and conquered would have used new technology and tactics to what they'd encountered before.

That's not saying that he wouldn't get caught with his trousers down against some of the nastier new threats, and much though I like him to have flaws, I think the interpretation of him as someone who is completely lacking in innovation is a bit reductive.

It's the details that get my back up...

Retinal lenses - what the feth are they? Space Marine power armour has auto senses, such that when you put the helmet on you don't use your eyes and ears any more, the inbuilt cogitator feeds audio and visual signals direct to the brain. As originally described, a marine sees without seeing his helmet obstructing his view.

When they describe the hero of the minute slinging his power hammer or what have you across his back - how? What does every SM have on his back? Yep, a big bulky power pack. You're not slinging any weapon over your back, there's nowhere for it to go.

Whatever happened to auto-reactive shoulder guards?

tneva82 wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
So you think only bland do-gooders have internal logic or sense?

Wait, before we get embroiled in anything, let me just clarify because sarcasm doesn't translate too well online. Are you in favour or in opposition to the 'Guilliman's actions are suspicious' angle?

What internal logic you would say that supports open rebellion by Guilliman against Horus(when he was still head of Imperial army)?

We aren't talking about minor issue. We are talking about disobeying your superior officer. The one Emperor told you to obey. That's open rebellion.

What open rebellion are you talking about?

 BBAP wrote:
The arguments aren't that, though. Reading them as such makes it easier to dismiss them out of hand as conformist nonsense, but you've had three seperate reasonings from people who dislike The Rowboat and none of them fit into either of those categories.

Then forgive me if I have interpreted them as such. Kinda hard to interpret them as anything different when they are filled with memes/dismissive language though.

He's a bland, poorly-handled creator's pet and part of a set of characters that should remain in the universe's mythos where they belong. Good or bad, doesn't matter to me. He sucks as a character and as a concept, and is indicative of the fail-ass Marvel/ DC design philosophy that GW creative are hewing towards. That's bad, and I believe it needs to be criticised. You don't agree. It's fine that you don't agree, but you can't pretend my objections to Robot Goggleman are based on the fact he's a "good guy". Dislike of Robert Gulliver is a popular sentiment because there are valid reasons to dislike him; there may be some people who just jump on the bandwagon, but the fact remains he's an eminently suck-ass character and one of a series of such.

So the idea of a Space Julius Cesar doesn't appeal?

Maybe I just like Ancient Roman history too much.

The silly names are just low-ball mockery, not part of the argument. It's amusing to poke fun at people's Mary Sues, especially when the person in question is "GW's creative staff for the last 20 years".

The term Mary Sue seems pretty overused in 40k these days. I thought 40k allowed us to skip character development for more explosions and Chainsword noises, honestly. It's nice to have well developed characters like Eisenhorn, but not everyone needs to be in that same league to get the story across, especially superhuman warriors bred and trained exclusively to win wars and kill hordes of Xenos and Heretics.

Right. Because they're immortal superheroes with the strength of a thousand men who can overcome any odds and shrug off any injury and ignore the passing of time and zzzzzzzzzzz...

Ask Ferrus Manus if he's got his head on the right way yet

Ten thousand years has passed since they were current, and when they were current they had superpowers. They're openly described as demi-gods as recently as "Fracture of Biel-Tan". "Demi-god" is a fancy word for "superhero". The distinctions are academic. The Primarchs are superheroes. Immortal, cape-wearing, toilet-seated superheroes, to be rolled out like so much old hat whenever GW feels the need to inject a bit of Rob Liefeld into their setting. "Here's a bunch of super-superhumans who are directly descended from Emprah! Here's a list of deeds they've each performed and qualities that they possess! Now - love them!"

Blech.

If Demi-gods are superheroes, what does that make the gods of 40k then?

I'm still not seeing the superhero thing though. Superhuman yes, obviously, but none of them seemed to be strong enough to change the course of time for their advantage when it was time to take a side.

Your hope is misplaced. The return of Rawbutt Jigglyman is nigh - and I sincerely doubt he's coming alone. Superheroes for everyone!

The Lion will be next, surely. I look forward to it, as someone who always wanted to see the legendary Primarchs back fighting in the 41st Millennium.

I guess this is the problem - people would rather they stay as figures of legend. I still need clarification on why we should just let them fade into obscurity, though.

I've never seen that happen ever.

I have

If you stopped misinterpreting the points you'd have an easier time taking them seriously.

Again, misinterpreting the objections.

Eisenhorn was an inveterate do-gooder, yet the Eisenhorn series is one of the very few sci fi franchises I'll go out of my way to buy. Eisenhorn is just some bloke - admittedly a highly trained bloke with psychic powers, but a bloke nonetheless. Throughout that series I got to watch him struggle with everything, from his own physical limitations as "just some bloke", to the emotional demands of his calling, to the mistakes he ended up making as a result of his unwillingness to reflect on his self-righteousness. He was deeply flawed, and as a result he paid heavily for every victory he won. Show the audience your character's flaws and limits, and you can hide even the thickest plot armour beneath a veil of believability.

Show the audience an immortal superhero Spiritual Liege awakening after 10,000 years in stasis, then festoon him in toilet-tastic armour and earmark him as the leader Humanity needs to guide it through these dark times, and they have a right to ask what the hell is wrong with you. Like I said, they could take this in an interesting direction - Gullible dies after three weeks because the stasis field wasn't sealed properly, Trazyn captures him for his Pokemon collection, someone finds out the Eldar/ AdMech are pulling Gigglytan's strings and a civil war breaks out - but that isn't how they'll play it. Spiritual Liege, all the way. The Lord of the Toilet Smurfs shall sit upon the Golden Throne.

Okay, so from what I see here the problem you have with Guilliman is that his path to glory was too straightforward, which created a bland character, yes?

Disregarding past actions that made Guilliman an interesting character to me, such as personally questioning the Emperor's orders and underestimating two of his fellow Primarchs, both of which he was lucky to walk away from, don't you think anything might happen after this event that might provide such a flaw to run on with his character?

It was failry predictable that they'd bring him out of stasis. My point is he should never have been in stasis in the first place. He should be dead, or at the very least forgotten about so new characters can take the stage, ones that aren't Spiritual Lieges and thus can develop in new and interesting ways. You don't broaden the appeal of your IP by rehashing the same comic-book gak repeatedly.

Or maybe you do. I don't know. I suppose we'll see when the post-Smurf financials come out.

Has he been repeatedly brought forwards, though? I think even with his return, he's likely going to be trumped by the return of the other Daemon Primarchs who have not yet come to light.

How much more desperate would the Imperium seem if it didn't have immortal superheroes to awaken? That's what I'm asking here. How much less desperate does the Imperium seem now that they have a designated tactical genius-slash-Spiritual Liege at their head?

Desperate enough to continue work on a 10,000 year old project to bring him back to life. I still have lots of questions on how it was done, honestly.

He's not. He's just one symptom of a slow descent into comic-book banality that the Imperium/ Chaos dynamic is taking. They were always the least-bad faction, and you rooted for them because they were the only one that wasn't actively trying to kill you 80% of the time. Now they're the designated good guys led by Spiritual Liege. Just... blech.

I don't see how his return makes the Imperium of Man any better than they were before. He's going to be very influential, sure, but he's not going to change the way the IoM will fight this war, even if he wanted to.

 General Annoyance wrote:

I've never seen that happen ever.

I have

I mean, I sometimes use "I" or "we" when referring to my preferred faction. It's not really a conscious thing, though maybe it does say I'm a bit too into 40K . I just think it's kinda funny. In any case, I wouldn't get upset if I referred to someone's faction as "you" and they weren't happy about it.

Do I actually want to go around lighting people on fire? No. Do I take the Sisters dislike for traitor/xeno/witch seriously (in terms of allies and so on)? Yeah, but I can joke about it.

Interesting topic in any case. I only spoke up because I don't think it's inherently negative, though the user in your example let themselves get a little heated.

 Servant of Dante wrote:
Interesting topic in any case. I only spoke up because I don't think it's inherently negative, though the user in your example let themselves get a little heated.

A little?

You did go to page 3, right?

Honestly, fluff wise, I now hate the prophecy/prediction/legend (whatever you want to call it of an end times when the Primarchs would return, the Pheonix lords would return and so on.

Now, when it was just nothing more than some far off doomsday prophecy that the fictional world will never actually reach, sure, cool, nice little added realism, all cultures have these sorts of mythos. The reason I wish it had never been written for 40k is that GW is actually trying to live up to it and create that as part of the ongoing universe and everything is leading up to it. Seriously, such prophecies could have been simple wishful thinking, talking about some time in the distant future (couple dozen millennia) or simply left with no specified time frame. But for some reason, GW feels the need for it to actually happen.

 General Annoyance wrote:

 Servant of Dante wrote:
Interesting topic in any case. I only spoke up because I don't think it's inherently negative, though the user in your example let themselves get a little heated.

A little?

You did go to page 3, right?

Hehe no I did not. I saw they were being silly and left. I'll go read the rest, since I commented on it.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
So you think only bland do-gooders have internal logic or sense?

Wait, before we get embroiled in anything, let me just clarify because sarcasm doesn't translate too well online. Are you in favour or in opposition to the 'Guilliman's actions are suspicious' angle?

What internal logic you would say that supports open rebellion by Guilliman against Horus(when he was still head of Imperial army)?

We aren't talking about minor issue. We are talking about disobeying your superior officer. The one Emperor told you to obey. That's open rebellion.

What open rebellion are you talking about?

tneva thinks that my theory way up this page was that Gorrila-arms disobeyed the Warmaster and was pursuing his own agenda, when my post was that he was IN ON IT THE WHOLE TIME and was there to conquer the Imperium through subterfuge rather than open conflict. Fulgrim had to be silenced for knowing the truth, Gogglemane just didn't count on Fulgrim being better and poisoning him. Unless that was also part of the plan...

At this point I don't even know who we're talking about...

Still talking about Big Bobby G.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
One over arching theme I'm seeing ehre is "ophh goodie goodie thats boring!" and thats one thing I generally hate across all settings and themes, that characters need to have rediculasly over the top flaws, or need to be "questionably evil" to be intreasting. That's not true, I find some of the most intreasting conflicts I've ever read or seen, have been two people who genuinely belive they're doing the right thing, coming into a conflict. there is a REASON "the emperor's gift" is one of my favorite 40k books. it's such an intreasting conflict because both sides really do belive, and have a strong argument for why they're in the right.


Which brings me back to trying to restore this topic to it's original purpose, me I hate the "pure villians" who don't seem to have ANY redeeming factors to them. some of the old chaos stuff was like that, and GW has, thankfully really worked to add some depth and nuance to people like Abbaddon.

I absolutely agree with you. 'Pure villains' is utterly tedious as there's no depth to they're character beyond moustache twirling.

Similarly, 'pure heroes' are just as tedious. There's a similar lack of character depth, and it breaks people's ability to relate to them. I'm not necessarily saying make him evil, but certainly make him flawed.

Its an interesting point you raise about the best conflicts arising from two people who think they're doing the right thing coming into conflict. You're absolutely right. I've always thought 40k has been good at that (with a few notable exceptions). Every faction genuinely believes that what they're doing is right. If only they'd wind something in about perhaps Horus doing his Heresy thing for the good of mankind then they'd have everyone possibly being right.

That ties into the main reason why i sugget that there should be some doubt raised about Guilliman's character and motivations. He may well be completely loyal, but if people have doubt then it fuels conflict between people who by all rights should ve on the same side.

If you have Guilliman be a squeaky-clean hero-type who always does the right thing then it makes that harder. Not impossible, but definitely harder.

The main thing that actually does is make the people fighting agaist him seem stupid. If we can see how goody goody he is, then people fighting against him are only doing it because they're selfish, stupid or evil. It's much more compelling to have someone genuinely believe that Guilliman isn't all he says he is, and set out to stop him. Whatsmore, it's even more compelling if this guy might be right about Guilliman.

It's less a 'everyone needs to be slightly evil because 40k grimdark'. It's 'everyone needs to have somethig a little supicious about their character to fuel conflict between other characters'.

Thats how you avoid 'saturday morning cartoon villains'.

I dunno you don't need characters to nesscarily be suspicious as you need clashing personalities and agendas. those can be every bit as good as suspicions. one of my favorite 40k stories is proably the emperor's giftthere was no real suspicions there or anything what there was was differant priorities, world views etc simply clashing we need more of that, and I'm hoping we'll see it in the future, I sincerly doubt we';ll see much sign of it in Rise of the Primarch simply because they're not covering the story THAT closely. but little side paragraphs like "Gulliman was breifly slowed due to a dispute between the Imperial Guard and the Admech as to weather it was more important to save the people on planet X or the holy cog. he eventually managed to make them work together..." could make for epic novels in and of themselves. I have a hunch that we're gonna see some fantastic novels set during the gathering storm, or at least I hope GW doesn't miss this oppertunity

 General Annoyance wrote:
Then forgive me if I have interpreted them as such. Kinda hard to interpret them as anything different when they are filled with memes/dismissive language though.

Is it really that difficult to pick content from between some low-ball wisecracks? I don't think so.

So the idea of a Space Julius Cesar doesn't appeal?

Whenever you see Caesar in fiction he's presented as a manipulative megalomaniac who bought, bartered and beat his way into the hearts of the masses with borrowed coin and other mens' blood. If that's the direction GW take with The Rowboat then fair enough - hackneyed as it is, it's more engaging than "lol designated hero prodigal son spiritual liege new emprah lol". That's what they're lining up for The Rowboat. No wickedness, no avarice, no complexity outside the odd internal monologue as he gazes wistfully out a window and laments the deaths of his soldiers in a way Julius Caesar wouldn't. None of that. Just "Spiritual Liege". See if I'm wrong.

The term Mary Sue seems pretty overused in 40k these days.

If the shoe fits, right?

I thought 40k allowed us to skip character development for more explosions and Chainsword noises, honestly.

I'm free as I ever was to build armies and play games without regard for the fluff. Problem is, GW have decided that the narrative backdrop to the game system they've maintained for 28 years has to "advance", and that means their characters can no longer be the unobtrusive, static scenery pieces they have been up to this point. They need to develop, GW needs to develop them, and the return of Primarch superheroes suggests to me they're going to develop them along the lines of a Rob Liefeld gak-comic. The fact they've chosen to bring back the Elminster of 40k says only bad things about the direction the narrative will take.

I stand to be corrected, of course, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

If Demi-gods are superheroes, what does that make the gods of 40k then?

... gods?

I'm still not seeing the superhero thing though. Superhuman yes, obviously, but none of them seemed to be strong enough to change the course of time for their advantage when it was time to take a side.

Batman's "superpower" is being very rich and going to the gym a lot. He loses sometimes too. He's still a superhero, yet the dude who submerges a metal dragon in lava and walks away with metal hands isn't. Likewise, Superman's super power is being invincible and better than a human being in every conceivable way (i.e. a Primarch, and before you say "thye can't fly though" - Sanguinius). He loses sometimes too. Still a superhero.

The distinctions are academic to me. The Primarchs are superheroes, and having them in 40k makes the galaxy one big superhero comic. Ask me how interested I am in playing the the bit-part Genestealer Cult villain or the Adepta Sororitas third-fiddle in "Rowboat-Force and The Primarch League". The answer is "not very". I'd rather go find a game system where my £800 army actually has a stake in the narrative.

Okay, so from what I see here the problem you have with Guilliman is that his path to glory was too straightforward, which created a bland character, yes?

... what? He's a genetically engineered superhero who fell from heaven in a meteorite and punched his way to the top in true superhero fashion. It's the same story as every other Primarch; there was never any danger he wouldn't make it to the top of anything because he can beat 1,000 men to death with his fists without breaking a sweat.

Now he's coming back to punch his way to the top at the head of The Primarch League and the Imperium. Zzzzzzz.

Disregarding past actions that made Guilliman an interesting character to me, such as personally questioning the Emperor's orders and underestimating two of his fellow Primarchs, both of which he was lucky to walk away from, don't you think anything might happen after this event that might provide such a flaw to run on with his character?

Sure it could. It won't, is what I'm betting.

Has he been repeatedly brought forwards, though?

They've been talking about the Rowboat popsicle forever and a day. I remember reading about it in the 4th Ed BRB. "All the Primarchs are either vanished, dead, or in Hell - except the Spiritual Liege dude who is slowly healing in stasis you guise omg HINT HINT!"

I think even with his return, he's likely going to be trumped by the return of the other Daemon Primarchs who have not yet come to light.

Fall of Cadia 2 mentions "a snake-bodied [REDACTED]" fighting alongside the Emperor's Children somewhere. if Fulgrim reappears and kills Robot Jellyman with a BDSM whip I would buy £2,000 worth of models just on principle.

Desperate enough to continue work on a 10,000 year old project to bring him back to life. I still have lots of questions on how it was done, honestly.

Continue work on? Belisarius Cawl has been sitting on a deus ex machina for 10,000 years, and now, with the Ynnari's help, he's about to deliver it to Rowboat so the Spiritual Liege can walk among us again.

If anything can save 8th Edition it'll be Yvraine and the Ynnari. They're up to something here, and it could be something awesome. Except it won't be because Spiritual Liege cannot lose due to being the new Emprah and zzzzzz....

I don't see how his return makes the Imperium of Man any better than they were before. He's going to be very influential, sure, but he's not going to change the way the IoM will fight this war, even if he wanted to.

The IoM has always had a superhero at its head. The Emprah was fine, because The Emprah was a sealed superhero in (or rather, on) a can. Now Rawbutt is stepping forward to take his "rightful" place as new Emprah and Spiritual Liege, so the IoM is being led by a living, breathing superhero who will descend from heaven to right every wrong and reverse every success the evil aliens and Daemons manage to inflict.

Warhammer 40,000: Age of Girlyman. In stores summer 2017. I think I'll go and play Infinity.

Chapter size, its my biggest bugbear. 1000 of anything operating piecemeal in vast galactic war with their own space fleet was always going to be a failure lore-wise.

I know they are super heroic warriors,.... fine if the spend their days fighting cultists or rebels but they fight super villian deamon associating bad guys,... or planet munching space bugs. so it cancels itself out.

One major battle or missile strike or nuke and your chapter would be nearly wiped out, super hero or not. It was an idiotic design flaw.

Chapters should have been legion sized, while legions should have been in the millions.

If they were to retcon anything, it should be chapter strength.

OldSod wrote:
Chapter size, its my biggest bugbear. 1000 of anything operating piecemeal in vast galactic war with their own space fleet was always going to be a failure lore-wise.

I know they are super heroic warriors,.... fine if the spend their days fighting cultists or rebels but they fight super villian deamon associating bad guys,... or planet munching space bugs. so it cancels itself out.

One major battle or missile strike or nuke and your chapter would be nearly wiped out, super hero or not. It was an idiotic design flaw.

Chapters should have been legion sized, while legions should have been in the millions.

If they were to retcon anything, it should be chapter strength.

I've always just headcanon'd that that was absolutely the case, and any lower numbers espoused in the codices are just ignorance and misinformation.

40k's great like that

It's okay because they actually don't spend most of their time fighting alone. Usually there's guardsmen or pdf or skitarii fighting and they're the special forces.

OldSod wrote:
Chapter size, its my biggest bugbear. 1000 of anything operating piecemeal in vast galactic war with their own space fleet was always going to be a failure lore-wise.

I know they are super heroic warriors,.... fine if the spend their days fighting cultists or rebels but they fight super villian deamon associating bad guys,... or planet munching space bugs. so it cancels itself out.

One major battle or missile strike or nuke and your chapter would be nearly wiped out, super hero or not. It was an idiotic design flaw.

Chapters should have been legion sized, while legions should have been in the millions.

If they were to retcon anything, it should be chapter strength.

This post. X1000.


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 Melissia wrote:
It's okay because they actually don't spend most of their time fighting alone. Usually there's guardsmen or pdf or skitarii fighting and they're the special forces.

There's still not nearly enough. The Eldar and Tau can both wipe out multiple chapters of 1000 in a day with their shooting and don't get me started on Nids. Invasions of Nids would be counted in the billions or even trillions. Good luck, chief. The BA would have been trivially run over by the Tyranids in Shield of Baal.

This probably warrents its own thread but I always thought whole 1000 marine thing could work with a bit more thought.

First off figure they spend 99% of their time fighting rebel PDF, cultists, backwater Xenos races, feral orks and other armies that are lucky to have a missile launcher. The evenly matched table top games we see with marines against other marines, chaos marines, Necrons, Eldar, Nids, well-equipped IG would be rare, Superbowl battles they have once or twice a decade.

But second, and more important, Marines should always be attacking. If there's a million orks attacking a million guardsmen, the marines don't have to go through to the million orks. They slip into orbit, use librarians and surveillance to pin point the warboss, and drop on his camp. Could 100 marines win World War II? If they started in North Dakota sitting in Rhinos, no. If they start in Orbit and drop directly on Hitler's bunker, then yes. And that's how they should be written.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
This probably warrents its own thread but I always thought whole 1000 marine thing could work with a bit more thought.

First off figure they spend 99% of their time fighting rebel PDF, cultists, backwater Xenos races, feral orks and other armies that are lucky to have a missile launcher. The evenly matched table top games we see with marines against other marines, chaos marines, Necrons, Eldar, Nids, well-equipped IG would be rare, Superbowl battles they have once or twice a decade.

But second, and more important, Marines should always be attacking. If there's a million orks attacking a million guardsmen, the marines don't have to go through to the million orks. They slip into orbit, use librarians and surveillance to pin point the warboss, and drop on his camp. Could 100 marines win World War II? If they started in North Dakota sitting in Rhinos, no. If they start in Orbit and drop directly on Hitler's bunker, then yes. And that's how they should be written.

But marines aren't even that good. And there's WAY too much fluffl with them NOT being used that way. The 1000 marine thing can not work on a galactic scale no matter how you use them.

Martel732 wrote:
But marines aren't even that good. And there's WAY too much fluffl with them NOT being used that way. The 1000 marine thing can not work on a galactic scale no matter how you use them.

Dunno. Virtual invulnerability to any small arms requiring anti-tank weapons to even try to take one down...(And ignore the game stats. We are talking about fluff. Rules where basic marine has T5+, 2+ rerollable with 4+ FNP etc would result in model sales tanking so GW obviously scales down rules)

tneva82 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
But marines aren't even that good. And there's WAY too much fluffl with them NOT being used that way. The 1000 marine thing can not work on a galactic scale no matter how you use them.

Dunno. Virtual invulnerability to any small arms requiring anti-tank weapons to even try to take one down...(And ignore the game stats. We are talking about fluff. Rules where basic marine has T5+, 2+ rerollable with 4+ FNP etc would result in model sales tanking so GW obviously scales down rules)

Maybe, but for each bit of fluff about their invincibility, there is another of CSM being killed by far weaker weaponry, which presumably would work on the loyalists just as well. For Instance:

"Autocannon's and a Lascannon, they'll make a mess of us if they open fire." Sergeant Pausanius, Ultramarines Chapter, The Killing Ground Ch3. He says this while equipped in full, although dented, power armour, referring to sentinel mounted heavy weapons. From the same book we have Captain Ventris think "Individually, lasguns were a poor mans weapon, but gathered en masse they were formidable and only a fool would underestimate the value of their massed firepower" (Ch15), while two platoons of guardsmen drive back monsters that later in the book tear apart elite SM's individually.

I like this example, because it comes from a SM centric book. This is without even getting into examples from guard focused books.

 BBAP wrote:

 General Annoyance wrote:
Then forgive me if I have interpreted them as such. Kinda hard to interpret them as anything different when they are filled with memes/dismissive language though.

Is it really that difficult to pick content from between some low-ball wisecracks? I don't think so.

So the idea of a Space Julius Cesar doesn't appeal?

Whenever you see Caesar in fiction he's presented as a manipulative megalomaniac who bought, bartered and beat his way into the hearts of the masses with borrowed coin and other mens' blood. If that's the direction GW take with The Rowboat then fair enough - hackneyed as it is, it's more engaging than "lol designated hero prodigal son spiritual liege new emprah lol". That's what they're lining up for The Rowboat. No wickedness, no avarice, no complexity outside the odd internal monologue as he gazes wistfully out a window and laments the deaths of his soldiers in a way Julius Caesar wouldn't. None of that. Just "Spiritual Liege". See if I'm wrong.

The term Mary Sue seems pretty overused in 40k these days.

If the shoe fits, right?

I thought 40k allowed us to skip character development for more explosions and Chainsword noises, honestly.

I'm free as I ever was to build armies and play games without regard for the fluff. Problem is, GW have decided that the narrative backdrop to the game system they've maintained for 28 years has to "advance", and that means their characters can no longer be the unobtrusive, static scenery pieces they have been up to this point. They need to develop, GW needs to develop them, and the return of Primarch superheroes suggests to me they're going to develop them along the lines of a Rob Liefeld gak-comic. The fact they've chosen to bring back the Elminster of 40k says only bad things about the direction the narrative will take.

I stand to be corrected, of course, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

If Demi-gods are superheroes, what does that make the gods of 40k then?

... gods?

I'm still not seeing the superhero thing though. Superhuman yes, obviously, but none of them seemed to be strong enough to change the course of time for their advantage when it was time to take a side.

Batman's "superpower" is being very rich and going to the gym a lot. He loses sometimes too. He's still a superhero, yet the dude who submerges a metal dragon in lava and walks away with metal hands isn't. Likewise, Superman's super power is being invincible and better than a human being in every conceivable way (i.e. a Primarch, and before you say "thye can't fly though" - Sanguinius). He loses sometimes too. Still a superhero.

The distinctions are academic to me. The Primarchs are superheroes, and having them in 40k makes the galaxy one big superhero comic. Ask me how interested I am in playing the the bit-part Genestealer Cult villain or the Adepta Sororitas third-fiddle in "Rowboat-Force and The Primarch League". The answer is "not very". I'd rather go find a game system where my £800 army actually has a stake in the narrative.

Okay, so from what I see here the problem you have with Guilliman is that his path to glory was too straightforward, which created a bland character, yes?

... what? He's a genetically engineered superhero who fell from heaven in a meteorite and punched his way to the top in true superhero fashion. It's the same story as every other Primarch; there was never any danger he wouldn't make it to the top of anything because he can beat 1,000 men to death with his fists without breaking a sweat.

Now he's coming back to punch his way to the top at the head of The Primarch League and the Imperium. Zzzzzzz.

Disregarding past actions that made Guilliman an interesting character to me, such as personally questioning the Emperor's orders and underestimating two of his fellow Primarchs, both of which he was lucky to walk away from, don't you think anything might happen after this event that might provide such a flaw to run on with his character?

Sure it could. It won't, is what I'm betting.

Has he been repeatedly brought forwards, though?

They've been talking about the Rowboat popsicle forever and a day. I remember reading about it in the 4th Ed BRB. "All the Primarchs are either vanished, dead, or in Hell - except the Spiritual Liege dude who is slowly healing in stasis you guise omg HINT HINT!"

I think even with his return, he's likely going to be trumped by the return of the other Daemon Primarchs who have not yet come to light.

Fall of Cadia 2 mentions "a snake-bodied [REDACTED]" fighting alongside the Emperor's Children somewhere. if Fulgrim reappears and kills Robot Jellyman with a BDSM whip I would buy £2,000 worth of models just on principle.

Desperate enough to continue work on a 10,000 year old project to bring him back to life. I still have lots of questions on how it was done, honestly.

Continue work on? Belisarius Cawl has been sitting on a deus ex machina for 10,000 years, and now, with the Ynnari's help, he's about to deliver it to Rowboat so the Spiritual Liege can walk among us again.

If anything can save 8th Edition it'll be Yvraine and the Ynnari. They're up to something here, and it could be something awesome. Except it won't be because Spiritual Liege cannot lose due to being the new Emprah and zzzzzz....

I don't see how his return makes the Imperium of Man any better than they were before. He's going to be very influential, sure, but he's not going to change the way the IoM will fight this war, even if he wanted to.

The IoM has always had a superhero at its head. The Emprah was fine, because The Emprah was a sealed superhero in (or rather, on) a can. Now Rawbutt is stepping forward to take his "rightful" place as new Emprah and Spiritual Liege, so the IoM is being led by a living, breathing superhero who will descend from heaven to right every wrong and reverse every success the evil aliens and Daemons manage to inflict.

Warhammer 40,000: Age of Girlyman. In stores summer 2017. I think I'll go and play Infinity.

except, all you have are you're assumptions for what direction they'll take him, why not wait and see?

Just my personal opinion, but I don't necessarily mind the 1000 Marines in a Chapter, because I'm not sure (aside from some over-zealous authors), that they were ever intended to have the whole 'saviours of mankind' image. In the days of Legions, each Legion had an expeditionary fleet at it's back, which could include millions of Army personnel, Mechanicus forces and Titan Legions. The Legions, and by extension the Chapters they were broken into, are simply intended to be a killing edge to a much, much larger formation. I think what makes the number more unbelievable is the perpetuated 'fact' that SMs are 'Strike Forces' and are given an infallible aura of invincibility. In truth, if they were simply presented as Shock Troops, vanguards to the IG that we all know take the brunt of the work in the Galaxy, then a number of 1000 (Essentially a modern battalion) is not so outlandish. It's the concept that they just arrive in system, cut the head off the snake and miraculously win the day that makes it so jarring, because it's too much of a deus ex machina. Instead, as FW portray them, I prefer to think that their campaigns are a series of take and hold actions, be it aerial or armoured assault, to seize vital ground and then relinquish it to the IG - no different to the 24,000 Airbourne troops that preceded the much larger force of 160,000 men that landed on D-Day and the 875,000 that arrived over the course of June 1944.

It's also worth considering that the 'Galaxy' isn't perhaps as big as it seems. Sure, it's bigger than anything we can comprehend now, but in 40k terms, a lot of it is void, uninhabitable planets, enemy controlled sectors, covered by warp storms and space weather and even in 'Imperial' space, there are whole sectors that nobody has yet explored. Really, the space conquered by the Great Crusade an claimed by the Imperium exists on maps alone - de Jure they may control the Galaxy, but de facto more of it is uncharted than is known about. So the total area that the 1 Million marines have to cover is, in reality, perhaps only a fraction of the actual galaxy.

TLDR: Give us more stories about the IG! (or AM if your that way inclined )

tneva82 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
But marines aren't even that good. And there's WAY too much fluffl with them NOT being used that way. The 1000 marine thing can not work on a galactic scale no matter how you use them.

Dunno. Virtual invulnerability to any small arms requiring anti-tank weapons to even try to take one down...(And ignore the game stats. We are talking about fluff. Rules where basic marine has T5+, 2+ rerollable with 4+ FNP etc would result in model sales tanking so GW obviously scales down rules)

Hotshots are enough to make a mess of Marines. The current Marine stats line only misses night vision

Yeah I've always held that the most realistic depiction of a marine's actual resilience was how they perform on the tabletop (i.e. better than humans, but not by much). Anything in stories of Marines pulling superhuman feats is simply Imperial propaganda painting them as the glorious heroes of the Imperium.

It's a personal interpretation of course, but I feel like it really adds to the whole 'humanity facing down the eldritch terrors if the uniferse with nothing but sheer grit and determination' that the Imperium has.

It's more heroic if Marines are weaker, not less.

I'm still going with 1000 being outlandishly low. GW tries to make them special, but instead ends up invalidating them.

Martel732 wrote:
The Eldar and Tau can both wipe out multiple chapters of 1000 in a day with their shooting

I was gonna respond, then I read who was talking. Given your bizarre, unfounded views on the balance of the tabletop, plus your apparent insistence that the tabletop and fluff are the same thing, I see no reason to take your response seriously. I've seen no evidence that any given Eldar force can wipe out entire chapters in a mere day, nor can Tau, just your insistence because of your conflation of lore and tabletop. Space Marine chapters have gotten wiped out, but usually it takes a very, very long time-- the examples of it happening quickly are the rare exceptions, not the norm. And even then, they are usually depleted chapters by the time they receive the final crushing blow.

I just don't think you understand how fast casualties can pile up in a war. Especially wars with high powered energy weapons, and WMDs. And when potentially outnumbered by many orders of magnitude.

The only evidence we need about chapters being wiped in a day is the count of 1000. That's so incredibly low. It's a rounding error in historical human battles. It would not take a long time to cause 1000 casualties, and chapters wouldn't have to be depleted to lose everything. Just because authors don't have it happen doesn't mean it wouldn't logically happen.

As that doesn't even take into account marine transports getting shot down in route to their destinations, etc.

If anything, marines are worse off in the lore, because their opponents have no numerical constraints, and no point totals. Given the absurdly small number of marines, it's likely the Tau have more Ritpide suits than there are marines. I doubt the ion accelerator is any less forgiving in the fluff. I don't have to conflate table top and fluff for the marines to be completely useless.

And against a competent foe, the whole "cut the head off the snake" would work exactly once. The next such attempt would likely be trap, resulting in a massacre of Astartes.

And this also doesn't take into account battles vs trillions of nids or billions of Orks. All space marines in once place would lose in an afternoon against a Tyranid planetary invasion, and there would be no survivors.

Marine plot armor is absurd and breaks any remote suspension of disbelief. (Oh which I have little for 40K)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
But marines aren't even that good. And there's WAY too much fluffl with them NOT being used that way. The 1000 marine thing can not work on a galactic scale no matter how you use them.

Dunno. Virtual invulnerability to any small arms requiring anti-tank weapons to even try to take one down...(And ignore the game stats. We are talking about fluff. Rules where basic marine has T5+, 2+ rerollable with 4+ FNP etc would result in model sales tanking so GW obviously scales down rules)

I don't think they're that good in the fluff, even.

Most of the recent fluff. We went from grimdark/hopeless to:

Cawl: I have failed the imperium... *whimper*

Celestine: We don't deserve you! *cries*

Guilliman: Rawr! Guilliman strong!

Magnus: Magnus stronger! *Smash*

Cypher: Not on my watch! -deflect- *Makes a cool pose*

I like Dragonball Z as much as the next person but keep that gak out of my 40k. The entire setting is quickly turning away from mass scale warfare to a soap opera. How is notable character (x) feeling today? What did he/she eat for breakfast. Who gives a damn. Talk about the conflict. Talk about the mortal experience. When the only details that get fleshed out are the emotions of demi-god characters and the actual armies doing the fighting become a sidenote you ruin the setting. If this sh*t keeps up I am going to commission my own writers and fix all this garbage. I'm not joking. I've put thousands into this hobby and they are ruining it.

Mortal experience doesn't sell new model kits.

Yes, human casualties can pile up. Humans are fragile. Marines aren't. Marines are put as an equivalent toughness to orks, a race of beings so durable that they can be decapitated, and they will be perfectly fine as long as their head is sewn on within a week or so. Nothing about Marines makes them smarter or particularly faster than humans, but what they DO have is durability up the wazoo, including the ability to enter in to a near-death state instead of dying-- so many of the casualties in all but the most disastrous of battles are recovered, and the marines in question return to service within a few months without the need for cybernetics (though they would speed the process up)-- and a mere human, facing the same injuries, would simply die, or at best be crippled for life and be unable to serve without massive augmentations. Marines are able to endure casualties (because remember, casualties aren't equivalent to "deaths") so much more than any other factions other than Orks, Necrons, and Tyranids in spite of their limited numbers, because they are just that tough.

FFS stop making me defend Marines goddamnit.

Marines are fragile with the kind of weapons flying around in 40K. Especially Xeno weapons. 1000 would get chewed through like nothing. When you're just a hiroshima burn on the ground, there's not much discussion left.

The other angle to approach this is that if marines WERE all that you claim, they'd breach the Ogre limit and enemies would use nothing BUT strategic weapons them, again making their numbers absurdly low to withstand such weaponry.

" because they are just that tough."

I think it's laughable that you think anyone can win a 500 vs 1 X 10 ^15 battle. That's fanboy-itis at its worst.

"because remember, casualties aren't equivalent to "deaths"

They would be with the weapons as described in the game. Most of the time, there wouldn't even be a body.

Martel732 wrote:
Marines are fragile

No, they really aren't. Stop conflating tabletop with the fluff. This is hte background forum, not general discussion.

 Melissia wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Marines are fragile

No, they really aren't. Stop conflating tabletop with the fluff. This is hte background forum, not general discussion.

I'm not. High energy weapons and WMDs would vaporize their carbon-based targets, no matter how fancy marine physiology is. One of the rules of warfare: weapons escalate until they can do the job. Marines would not be a magical exception. You're conflating plot armor with realistic ranged combat. If marines actually were as good as you say, enemies would go straight to nuking them at every engagement rather than trying to fight them. They would stop a nothing to slag each and every marine homeworld. Again, the Ogre limit.

The scale is different between the game and the fluff. In the game, lasgun shots and bullets are nearly the same, with bolters being not much better. In the fiction, lasblasts are like Star Wars blasters that vaporize heads and cauterize fist-sized holes in torsoes and bolters basically fire rocket propelled grenades everywhere. The tabletop is WW2 and the fiction is far future space opera. There is a gulf of difference between table marines and book marines.

The original question was what piece of fluff do we hate the most. I was just trying to voice my agreement with a previous poster.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The scale is different between the game and the fluff. In the game, lasgun shots and bullets are nearly the same, with bolters being not much better. In the fiction, lasblasts are like Star Wars blasters that vaporize heads and cauterize fist-sized holes in torsoes and bolters basically fire rocket propelled grenades everywhere. The tabletop is WW2 and the fiction is far future space opera. There is a gulf of difference between table marines and book marines.

At least you didn't say Movie Marines, as that meme is just based on a ridiculous exaggeration heh.

Gonna have to agree with Martel here.

Even if they wouldn't all die, they would be very very quickly overwhelmed, even with some guard on the side. A gaunt is about equal to a guardsman, however, and there aren't trillions of respawning guardsman defending against tyranids.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Gonna have to agree with Martel here.

Even if they wouldn't all die, they would be very very quickly overwhelmed, even with some guard on the side. A gaunt is about equal to a guardsman, however, and there aren't trillions of respawning guardsman defending against tyranids.

... technically, there are, actually. It just takes a little longer. But I'd actually argue that a guardsman is superior to a gaunt or gant.

Superior enough to make for orders of magnitude in numbers?

While it wouldnt change how horribly out numbered the Guardsmen and Marines would be, you have to remember that a large portion of the Chapter shouldn't be sitting in several places defending. The First Company and the Battle Companies, should be launching counter attacks against the Largers Synapse Creatures and hive nodes, boarding the Hive Ships and crippling the Fleet's ability to command the swarm.

The reserve companies would be divided between that and assisting the Guard in holding the line.

Winning would come down to whether the strike teams could eliminate the command ability, and there is no doubt that would be near impossible and if they did pull it off the Chapter would need to rebuild. In a straight holding action though, there is no way they should be able to win.

Martel732 wrote:
The original question was what piece of fluff do we hate the most. I was just trying to voice my agreement with a previous poster.

I think we are in agreement, though. A thousand marines per chapter just raises ridiculous questions about who is driving the vehicles and how can they possibly make a difference on a galactic scale. Marines can be absolute superhuman badasses even in a universe where melta weapons exist, but that has almost no bearing on the number discussion when the number is so small that it doesn't even make sense on a planetary scale. It's like the Karen Traviss clone number controversy all over again, forever.


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 gummyofallbears wrote:
Gonna have to agree with Martel here.

Even if they wouldn't all die, they would be very very quickly overwhelmed, even with some guard on the side. A gaunt is about equal to a guardsman, however, and there aren't trillions of respawning guardsman defending against tyranids.

Conservative estimates based on 4th edition-era fluff put the number of guardsmen at around a quadrillion, although you could probably fudge that down to the tens of trillions for a particular segmentum if you don't like big numbers. With mixed genders and substantial logistic trains, including families and hangers on, they are almost literally respawning.


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Martel732 wrote:
Superior enough to make for orders of magnitude in numbers?

I haven't seen definitive numbers for gaunts, so if GW have given some, even indirectly, I'd love to see them. Besides, Tyranids in the fluff are pretty much an all or nothing threat. If you don't defeat them in space (allowing the guard to mop up any ground forces), the planet is doomed. Even if you do kill the fleet, the planet may still be lost. The Tyranids don't so much invade as Tyrannoform planets to aid in digestion.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
While it wouldnt change how horribly out numbered the Guardsmen and Marines would be, you have to remember that a large portion of the Chapter shouldn't be sitting in several places defending. The First Company and the Battle Companies, should be launching counter attacks against the Largers Synapse Creatures and hive nodes, boarding the Hive Ships and crippling the Fleet's ability to command the swarm.

The reserve companies would be divided between that and assisting the Guard in holding the line.

Winning would come down to whether the strike teams could eliminate the command ability, and there is no doubt that would be near impossible and if they did pull it off the Chapter would need to rebuild. In a straight holding action though, there is no way they should be able to win.

There are more hive ships than marines in a chapter. There are more synapse creatures on one planet than there are marines in the entire Imperium. The scale doesn't work.

Martel732 wrote:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
While it wouldnt change how horribly out numbered the Guardsmen and Marines would be, you have to remember that a large portion of the Chapter shouldn't be sitting in several places defending. The First Company and the Battle Companies, should be launching counter attacks against the Largers Synapse Creatures and hive nodes, boarding the Hive Ships and crippling the Fleet's ability to command the swarm.

The reserve companies would be divided between that and assisting the Guard in holding the line.

Winning would come down to whether the strike teams could eliminate the command ability, and there is no doubt that would be near impossible and if they did pull it off the Chapter would need to rebuild. In a straight holding action though, there is no way they should be able to win.

There are more hive ships than marines in a chapter. There are more synapse creatures on one planet than there are marines in the entire Imperium. The scale doesn't work.

The numbers of what the Tyranids have on planet also varies greatly though. How early in the invasion is it? How much time have they had? Have the spawning pools been hit all ready? How much of the fleet made it through initial contact? Where they expected or was it a sudden attack?

How many Astartes are there? Is it one Chapter or is it several? Are they fighting the way they should, with Rapid Strikes and withdrawls or are they fighting like "Heros" and holding the line. Its GW after all.

What happens when said lightning strikes don't go as planned? And lets not forget that any sentient foe can read codex astartes for themselves and have a massive leg up.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
there aren't trillions of respawning guardsman defending against tyranids.

Human life is the cheapest currency the IG possess. Trillions would be a low estimate.

Well as mentioned there are not really that many 'Big' fights that actually happen.

Spacemarines are used for surgical strikes and rarely hold a point against mass numbers, when they do have to hold... it tends to end badly for them.


And when it is a big fight of massed army vs mass army, you will normally find that there are several Spacemarine chapters in attendance... And with the fluff they are generally only a few companies from each. Fluff or even 'movie' Marines are a lot tougher and smarter then their table top equivalent, but in the same sense within the various tales there is a lot of inconsistency with how tough they are.

But there is a well established narrative for why there are generally only a 1000 per chapter and Gulliman is to blame... But this also means that it is quite easy to fluff up your own marines


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Martel732 wrote:
And lets not forget that any sentient foe can read codex astartes for themselves and have a massive leg up.

Do you think that it is publicly available?

Or do they put in a Freedom of Information request?

The massive amount of tyranids in a hive fleet is just as ridiculous logically as the 1000 space marines are a force to be reckoned with. Both can annoy me equally.

Martel732 wrote:
What happens when said lightning strikes don't go as planned? And lets not forget that any sentient foe can read codex astartes for themselves and have a massive leg up.

Then they lose, there is always the chance it goes that way, but it wont always go wrong and it wont always go right, thats just the way of things. I doubt the Codex is something that is easily gotten a hold of by any one or even carried around in a manner that it would be easily obtained, or else the Tau would be able (fluff wise not table top) to completely negate the more dogmatic followers of the Codex.

Earth127 wrote:
The massive amount of tyranids in a hive fleet is just as ridiculous logically as the 1000 space marines are a force to be reckoned with. Both can annoy me equally.

Well with the Tyranids it is a case of the idea is they are not a force to be reckoned with but completely overwhelming. The Tyranids making land fall is generally too late to save the target world, and it is normally get what you can off world and try to hurt as many as possible

It is only in the biggest of battles that you have Tyranids being beaten on a ground war

The most interesting thing about all of this debate is that nobody, not one person, has questioned the number of Astartes in a Legion. It's inconceivable to you that 1000 Astartes may accomplish anything of note, but nobody bats an eyelid at 100,000 in a Legion doing the same - because hey, that's 100 times more. However, the total number of Astartes in the Galaxy hasn't decreased - it's just got divided up a little. There are still 10 Legions worth of Loyalist Astartes knocking about, but somehow because they're divided up into smaller groups it's a breaks immersion more?

@Martel732 - I don't often find myself agreeing with Melissia, but it's all proportional. The enemy may have bigger weapons, but the Astartes also have better armour than almost anything in the Galaxy barring perhaps Necron living metal. Provided they're utilising their training and equipment in an effective manner, there's no reason they should be killed any easier than any other unit.

Similarly, it's quite naive to assume that an enemy would just nuke the Chapter and be done with it, because ultimately every 'enemy' race want's something from the person or planet they're attacking, be it Resources, Slaves, Territory, Food or even just a good fight. Simply nuking a planet from orbit eliminates any chance of getting at that - that's why Exterminatus is a last resort weapon and a weapon of denial rather than offensive action (Same as real world nukes). If the Eldar want a relic back, nuking defending Astartes risks destroying that relic. If the Tau want territory, then a ball of rock in space is no use to them. Rarely do any of these races fight each other just because they want to destroy each other - usually there's a motive behind the desire to destroy. Even Abaddon/Chaos wants more than to destroy the Imperium. He wants to rule over a twisted version of it and the Gods want the worship of all those human souls - destroying said souls serves no purpose to them.

Your argument can be turned on it's head by hypothesizing that the IoM could just as easily Exterminatus all the Tau, all the Orks, all the Eldar - but doing so destroys worlds with Tech, Resources and Living Space that the Imperium wants.

I read 'Promethean Sun' recently and in it

 Warpig1815 wrote:
The most interesting thing about all of this debate is that nobody, not one person, has questioned the number of Astartes in a Legion. It's inconceivable to you that 1000 Astartes may accomplish anything of note, but nobody bats an eyelid at 100,000 in a Legion doing the same - because hey, that's 100 times more. However, the total number of Astartes in the Galaxy hasn't decreased - it's just got divided up a little. There are still 10 Legions worth of Loyalist Astartes knocking about, but somehow because they're divided up into smaller groups it's a breaks immersion more?

I believe it was pointed out earlier that the Legion should also be made larger, but that isn't the point you are making.

And if you go on the old fluff GW used, there wouldn't be the same number of Marines today as there was then, because there were only "One thousand Chapters of One thousand Marines." Where all those extra Legionaries went is anyone's guess.

"Similarly, it's quite naive to assume that an enemy would just nuke the Chapter and be done with it, because ultimately every 'enemy' race want's something from the person or planet they're attacking, be it Resources, Slaves, Territory, Food or even just a good fight. "

I don't buy this argument at all. The galaxy is huge, and automatons can be used to mine out radiated planets. If the marines are really "movie marines", I'd use strategic weapons without hesitation. There is nothing valuable enough to justify trying to fight such mary sues in a straight fight. Don't forget that there are non-radiation WMDs like thermobaric weapons.

100,000 K legions are likewise far too small.

"but the Astartes also have better armour than almost anything in the Galaxy barring perhaps Necron living meta"

Evidently not as good as Tau armor, either.

Could it have conceivably been the case that there weren't many more Loyalists left post-heresy? Even if there were more, the calculation could have been that "you're going to have 1000 bodies in future, no recruitment till you're no more than x% above that".

I don't buy this argument at all. The galaxy is huge, and automatons can be used to mine out radiated planets. If the marines are really "movie marines", I'd use strategic weapons without hesitation. There is nothing valuable enough to justify trying to fight such mary sues in a straight fight.

To answer that, the games we play - whatever scale - are presumably the ones when you can't. Ye olde Warhammer Siege said something similar when it came to the 40k section; that the galaxy had plenty of weaponry capable of annihilating any particular position. What you played were the times when you had to Take That Hill, so to speak.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Gonna have to agree with Martel here.

Even if they wouldn't all die, they would be very very quickly overwhelmed, even with some guard on the side. A gaunt is about equal to a guardsman, however, and there aren't trillions of respawning guardsman defending against tyranids.

Conservative estimates based on 4th edition-era fluff put the number of guardsmen at around a quadrillion, although you could probably fudge that down to the tens of trillions for a particular segmentum if you don't like big numbers. With mixed genders and substantial logistic trains, including families and hangers on, they are almost literally respawning.

Really? I stand corrected.

@VictorVonTzeentch - Ah, well if so, my apologies - I thought nobody had raised the point. I can guarantee though, that if you raised both Legions and Chapters by a magnitude of 10 - people would complain about Legions being too big.

As for the same no of Marines - if each Legion were 100,000 approx (Going by FW's numbers) - then 100,000 x 10 = 1 Million. 1000 Chapters x 1000 Marines = 1 Million. The only difference is that the IoM no longer has the other 10 traitor Legions on their side.

@Martel732 - If you nuke every agri-world, every garden-world, every hive world and every cardinal world because there's humans on it - where do the Tau live? What happens to Eldar Relics? Who do the Orks fight? What do the Tyranids eat? How the Chaos gods get souls?

If it makes sense to use strategic weapons on hard or difficult targets, then why isn't all of the world awash in Nuclear fallout after the Cold War - because strategic weapons don't leave behind habitable worlds.

EDIT:

Martel732 wrote:

Warpig1815 wrote:"but the Astartes also have better armour than almost anything in the Galaxy barring perhaps Necron living meta"

Evidently not as good as Tau armor, either.

If you're seriously suggesting that Tau body armour is superior to Necron Living metal, then respectfully I'm done. It's well established in 40k Lore, that the Necron's tech is far above anything any other race has accomplished to date. Ever.

Pilum wrote:
Could it have conceivably been the case that there weren't many more Loyalists left post-heresy? Even if there were more, the calculation could have been that "you're going to have 1000 bodies in future, no recruitment till you're no more than x% above that".

There is always that chance, thoough to have 1000 of 1000, they would have needed a million Marines to have survived the Heresy. Which thinking about it actually makes the 1,000 of 1,000 seem big at least Immediately post Heresy.


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 Warpig1815 wrote:
@VictorVonTzeentch - Ah, well if so, my apologies - I thought nobody had raised the point. I can guarentee though, that if you raised both Legions and Chapters by a magnitude of 10 - people would complain about Legions being too big.

For sure.

@VictorVonTzeentch - I doubt a full million Astartes survived, but after the Great Scouring, there did exist a period of relative peace. It takes roughly 55 years to build a SM Chapter, so even a few centuries peace could significantly boost SM numbers to around a million. Any more than that would be unlikely though due to the Codex and the declining state of the Imperium.

I would say rather than fluff itself, I hate mostly the retons that are inevitable in such a long running setting.

The Black Templer being codex-compliant is boring and accomplishes nothing.

Necrons... plenty of people have addressed that in this thread.

Tau moving away from sensible doctrines to Pacific Rim units. Next thing you know they will have a GMC with a sawblade melee weapon.

Eldrad being the master Eldar puppetmaster. They could have made his accomplishments be spread out over a couple of characters.l, rather we get a hero hammer vibe.

But abobe all, I hate about half of the Grey Knight fluff.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
@VictorVonTzeentch - I doubt a full million Astartes survived, but after the Great Scouring, there did exist a period of relative peace. It takes roughly 55 years to build a SM Chapter, so even a few centuries peace could significantly boost SM numbers to around a million. Any more than that would be unlikely though due to the Codex and the declining state of the Imperium.

Its possible that Dorn, when he initiated the 3rd Founding, made the 1k of 1k addendum to the Codex. Though with out the exact numbers of Marines that survived, I think its safe to say the Bulk of the Ultramarines and Dark Angels, its hard to say how many were left.

Also there are two unnumbered Foundings listed on Lexicanum between the Second and Third.

 Warpig1815 wrote:
I don't often find myself agreeing with Melissia

I know right? I think I hate Martel mostly for making me actually defend Space Marines.

 Quickjager wrote:


The Black Templer being codex-compliant is boring and accomplishes nothing.

They arent though, they were just bundled into the book.

I do believe that people are also forgetting that not every Chapter follows the codex to the letter.

the biggest example was the Imperial Fist were completely opposed to it so they made the Black Templars, who then went on crusades, don't have a standing base and don't adhere to the codex (especially on troop limits)

There isn't a lot of oversight for Spacemarines they are like the Mechanicum in that sense. While the Codex does exists there isn't really anyone to enforce it

 Melissia wrote:

 Warpig1815 wrote:
I don't often find myself agreeing with Melissia

I know right? I think I hate Martel mostly for making me actually defend Space Marines.

Hell must be pretty chilly lately.

Melissia wrote:

 Warpig1815 wrote:
I don't often find myself agreeing with Melissia

I know right? I think I hate Martel mostly for making me actually defend Space Marines.

Ha - I just about bloody choked when I realised we were on the same page. Heh, next thing you know, they'll be bringing back Primarchs! Wait a moment...

@VictorVonTzeentch -

Lexicanum wrote:Note: The Black Templars were stated to be 5,000-6,000 strong in the 4th Edition Codex. However in the 2014 Novel Eternal Crusader, they were stated to be Codex compliant, with 1,000 Battle-Brothers. Author Guy Haley went on to state on his blog that the Black Templars numbers are variable depending on the time of the setting and story requirements.

Source: Guy Haley's blog. This sucks - being huge was what made the BTs interesting :(

But that's the thing though. I mostly hate the parody of themselves that Space Marines have become, mostly because of 30k (though there was some of this before that became a big thing).

Space Marines are living weapons, shaped by the culture of the chapter or warband. As much as I like to mock the Grey Knights and their baby carrier and will continue to do so for the forseeable future, one thing that came from their lore is, what I feel, to be the most Space Marine thing ever said:

We do not know what our chances of survival are, so we fight as if they were zero. We do not know what we are facing, so we fight as if it was the dark gods themselves. No one will remember us now and we may never be buried beneath Titan, so we will build our own memorial here. The Chapter might lose us and the Imperium might never know we existed, but the Enemy - the Enemy will know. The Enemy will remember. We will hurt it so badly that it will never forget us until the stars burn out and the Emperor vanquishes it at the end of time. When Chaos is dying, its last thought will be of us. That is our memorial - carved into the heart of Chaos. We cannot lose, Grey Knights. We have already won.

At their best, Space Marines are living weapons. They will fight the enemy as if they had both nothing to lose for death in the emperor's name is no disgrace, and as if they had everything to lose for victory in the Emperor's name is sacred. They will fight the enemy as if there was no chance for victory for who knows what horror they will face next, and yet also fight as if victory was assured for they know no fear.

They know victory is not assured. That death in service to the emperor is inevitable. They are doomed to fight and die in His name. And they know it. The point isn't how badass their victories are. But how they face each and every battle.

 Warpig1815 wrote:


@VictorVonTzeentch -

Lexicanum wrote:Note: The Black Templars were stated to be 5,000-6,000 strong in the 4th Edition Codex. However in the 2014 Novel Eternal Crusader, they were stated to be Codex compliant, with 1,000 Battle-Brothers. Author Guy Haley went on to state on his blog that the Black Templars numbers are variable depending on the time of the setting and story requirements.

Source: Guy Haley's blog. This sucks - being huge was what made the BTs interesting :(

ADB puts their numbers at around 6,000, so I am more inclined to go with his estimates in this world of ever differing author opinions.

 Warpig1815 wrote:

@Martel732 - If you nuke every agri-world, every garden-world, every hive world and every cardinal world because there's humans on it - where do the Tau live? What happens to Eldar Relics? Who do the Orks fight? What do the Tyranids eat? How the Chaos gods get souls?

If it makes sense to use strategic weapons on hard or difficult targets, then why isn't all of the world awash in Nuclear fallout after the Cold War - because strategic weapons don't leave behind habitable worlds.

Strategic-level warheads do not necessarily entail uninhabitable results in the 41st millenium, just widespread destruction. It may change the landscape, or it may not, but the limitations of 20th century strategic weapons are an odd thing to presume for the likes of 40k technologies/biologies.

Martel732 wrote:

Warpig1815 wrote:"but the Astartes also have better armour than almost anything in the Galaxy barring perhaps Necron living meta"

Evidently not as good as Tau armor, either.

If you're seriously suggesting that Tau body armour is superior to Necron Living metal, then respectfully I'm done. It's well established in 40k Lore, that the Necron's tech is far above anything any other race has accomplished to date. Ever.

I think you're misreading him. The comparison he seems to be making is between Astartes and Tau armor.

Per the Warhammer 40k wikia (yes, not the best of sources):

When it comes to damage deflection and mitigation, Fio'tak is comparable to the ceramite used in Space Marine Power Armour, but weighs substantially less on a per unit basis.

Actual fluff interactions tend to strongly suggest that the entry is incorrect, however - Astartes ceramite has a better track record of shrugging off the likes of Bolters and such, while even Tau Battlesuit armor, well... not so much.

Krieg wants a word with you.

@Unusual Suspect - Well, again my apologies if I misunderstood Martel's point. I'd still point out that Tau armour, whilst it may have properties similar to ceramite, is not powered and does not have the same coverage as PA. It may be as durable, granted, but in terms of battlefield effectiveness that's irrelevant if the blade/bullet goes into an unprotected area.

As for strategic weapons - I guess that's a matter of scale. I assume that like all other weapons, 'Nukes' are more potent in 40k than now, even if they function the same way (Which is a big If, I know).

Yeah I'm going to have to agree with Martel here. Even if Marine physiology and armour is every bit as tough as the fluff makes out to be, 1000 bodies is an utter drop in the ocean on a galactic scale conflict.

Lets break it down really basically. Even if Marines are are tough as the books make them out to be, you have to also agree that the enemies they face possess weapons formidable enough to kill Marines in a reasonable quantity. Otherwise there'd be no story at all and the Marines would just steamroll over the galaxy.

So, we can at least say that roughly the weapons each faction possesses are near enough to equal to make them comparable on a battlefield. In the Battle of the Somme, two roughly technologically comparable forces fought each other in the sort of total-war scenario that 40k faces on a daily basis. There were 57,470 British casualties on the first day.

57,470. In a single day.

Now, before you go on saying 'but that's was just normal humans, Marines are tougher', the enemies they face are comparably worse enough to even the odds, as we've explained earlier.

Then, you consider that The Somme was a single battle, occurring on a single planet. There are multiple battles occurring daily on probably millions of different planets all across the Imperium. That is why the '1000 Marines per chapter' thing is utterly ridiculous, regardless of how tough they are. Unless you had a million different chapters, they'd be utterly insignificant. Even if they were for 'surgical strikes', the casualties they would sustain in order to make a dent on any of the galactic-scale battles occurring in 40k would wipe them out in fairly short order.

The only reason I can think of why '1000' was chosen as a number is as a historical reference to the composition of Roman Legions.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

Spoiler:

Yeah I'm going to have to agree with Martel here. Even if Marine physiology and armour is every bit as tough as the fluff makes out to be, 1000 bodies is an utter drop in the ocean on a galactic scale conflict.

Lets break it down really basically. Even if Marines are are tough as the books make them out to be, you have to also agree that the enemies they face possess weapons formidable enough to kill Marines in a reasonable quantity. Otherwise there'd be no story at all and the Marines would just steamroll over the galaxy.

So, we can at least say that roughly the weapons each faction possesses are near enough to equal to make them comparable on a battlefield. In the Battle of the Somme, two roughly technologically comparable forces fought each other in the sort of total-war scenario that 40k faces on a daily basis. There were 57,470 British casualties on the first day.

57,470. In a single day.

Now, before you go on saying 'but that's was just normal humans, Marines are tougher', the enemies they face are comparably worse enough to even the odds, as we've explained earlier.

Then, you consider that The Somme was a single battle, occurring on a single planet. There are multiple battles occurring daily on probably millions of different planets all across the Imperium. That is why the '1000 Marines per chapter' thing is utterly ridiculous, regardless of how tough they are. Unless you had a million different chapters, they'd be utterly insignificant. Even if they were for 'surgical strikes', the casualties they would sustain in order to make a dent on any of the galactic-scale battles occurring in 40k would wipe them out in fairly short order.

The only reason I can think of why '1000' was chosen as a number is as a historical reference to the composition of Roman Legions.

Then you remember that this is a fictional universe with superpowers and daemons, that requires a good deal of suspension of disbelief in order for it to apply at all.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:
Yeah I'm going to have to agree with Martel here. Even if Marine physiology and armour is every bit as tough as the fluff makes out to be, 1000 bodies is an utter drop in the ocean on a galactic scale conflict.

Lets break it down really basically. Even if Marines are are tough as the books make them out to be, you have to also agree that the enemies they face possess weapons formidable enough to kill Marines in a reasonable quantity. Otherwise there'd be no story at all and the Marines would just steamroll over the galaxy.

So, we can at least say that roughly the weapons each faction possesses are near enough to equal to make them comparable on a battlefield. In the Battle of the Somme, two roughly technologically comparable forces fought each other in the sort of total-war scenario that 40k faces on a daily basis. There were 57,470 British casualties on the first day.

57,470. In a single day.

Now, before you go on saying 'but that's was just normal humans, Marines are tougher', the enemies they face are comparably worse enough to even the odds, as we've explained earlier.

Then, you consider that The Somme was a single battle, occurring on a single planet. There are multiple battles occurring daily on probably millions of different planets all across the Imperium. That is why the '1000 Marines per chapter' thing is utterly ridiculous, regardless of how tough they are. Unless you had a million different chapters, they'd be utterly insignificant. Even if they were for 'surgical strikes', the casualties they would sustain in order to make a dent on any of the galactic-scale battles occurring in 40k would wipe them out in fairly short order.

The only reason I can think of why '1000' was chosen as a number is as a historical reference to the composition of Roman Legions.

There's those that understand scale and those that don't.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

Spoiler:

Yeah I'm going to have to agree with Martel here. Even if Marine physiology and armour is every bit as tough as the fluff makes out to be, 1000 bodies is an utter drop in the ocean on a galactic scale conflict.

Lets break it down really basically. Even if Marines are are tough as the books make them out to be, you have to also agree that the enemies they face possess weapons formidable enough to kill Marines in a reasonable quantity. Otherwise there'd be no story at all and the Marines would just steamroll over the galaxy.

So, we can at least say that roughly the weapons each faction possesses are near enough to equal to make them comparable on a battlefield. In the Battle of the Somme, two roughly technologically comparable forces fought each other in the sort of total-war scenario that 40k faces on a daily basis. There were 57,470 British casualties on the first day.

57,470. In a single day.

Now, before you go on saying 'but that's was just normal humans, Marines are tougher', the enemies they face are comparably worse enough to even the odds, as we've explained earlier.

Then, you consider that The Somme was a single battle, occurring on a single planet. There are multiple battles occurring daily on probably millions of different planets all across the Imperium. That is why the '1000 Marines per chapter' thing is utterly ridiculous, regardless of how tough they are. Unless you had a million different chapters, they'd be utterly insignificant. Even if they were for 'surgical strikes', the casualties they would sustain in order to make a dent on any of the galactic-scale battles occurring in 40k would wipe them out in fairly short order.

The only reason I can think of why '1000' was chosen as a number is as a historical reference to the composition of Roman Legions.

Then you remember that this is a fictional universe with superpowers and daemons, that requires a good deal of suspension of disbelief in order for it to apply at all.

Just because its fiction, doesn't mean it has to be total nonsense. 1K marines per chapter is total nonsense.