In the vast universe of Warhammer 40k, every faction has its die-hard fans and its detractors. But some factions seem to evoke a collective groan from the community. Is it the overzealous Space Marines, with their countless chapters and seemingly endless lore? Or perhaps the Necrons, whose ancient, robotic nature can feel a bit stale? Maybe it’s the Tau, with their emphasis on ranged combat and a more "friendly" approach to warfare that just doesn’t sit right with some players.

Let’s dive into the factions that make you roll your eyes or skip past their articles. What is it about these groups that turns you off? Is it their playstyle, their lore, or just the sheer number of models you see on the table? Share your least favorite faction and why they make you want to flip the page or scroll past!

I understand the game/fluff is set in stone at this point and that it's all representative instead of 1:1 etc etc etc.... but it will always irk me to see dozens of SMs fighting/dying against 100-odd orks/guardsmen/whatever on the tabletop. They should have custodes sized armies at most!

For me there's always been 2 factions in 40K that never interested me

Space Marines and Orks

Now let me first say I LOVE both those armies as concepts. In Lore, Artwork, Video games, Battle reports etc.... I love them. I play them in video games; I enjoy the childish love of war that the Orks bring; I love the grim dark military style of the Marines.

But as table top armies neither one gets my attention. For some reason I don't want to collect either army as a force for the tabletop in 40K.
They aren't bad models nor designs overall; they aren't poorly sculpted or lacking in details/interest. There is nothing "wrong" with them in a generic sense that I can put my finger on and say "that's the problem right there." They just don't spark joy for me as armies I'd want to spend money on and build.

Even though I know if I played them I'd surely find them both fun in their own ways.




For Marines I can actually say that I think part of the issue is that they aren't gothic enough. You get the odd Chaplin with skulls and baroque/gothic inspired armour; but everything else is sleek clean mechanised war.
For this reason whilst marines spark no interest I'm 100% down for building a Sisters of Battle army. I've also a passing interest in the Custodes - again they have just that slight edge in gothic design elements; plus they are a super-elite army so small on model count.






I should also note that this barrier is only in 40K. Epic/LI is entirely different because the troops are tiny and it focuses much more on titans and tanks and massed infantry. For me that's enough of a difference that I enjoy them in that scale*



So there the two armies I dislike the most in 40K are basically doing nothing wrong and actually catch my interest in quite a few fronts; just not as a 28-35mm models.
Otherwise SoB; Imperial Guard; Eldar; Dark Eldar; Tyranids; Tau - 100% all for them!

Squats I'm leaving out purely because I've really not seen enough of their range in reality as actual models. They have a good few design elements shared with the marines, but a very different styling to them at the same time. If that's enough for me or not I can't say - again they don't do anything wrong; but they are new and I've just not really "seen" them in the wild to appreciate the models.


*fun fact Titan Legions boxed set was my first ever wargaming model purchase. That was Marines VS Orks

World Eaters. They're just so boring.

Don't get me wrong - there's a certain appreciation for running forward and hitting things, but when that's pretty much all you do? Ugh.

It's one thing to pick up a box of Berzerkers to include with a CSM army, but I can only tolerate them in small doses.

Bonus anti-points for Angron being essentially required.

I should also reiterate my stance of being comically anti-Nurgle.

 BorderCountess wrote:
World Eaters. They're just so boring.

Don't get me wrong - there's a certain appreciation for running forward and hitting things, but when that's pretty much all you do? Ugh.

It's one thing to pick up a box of Berzerkers to include with a CSM army, but I can only tolerate them in small doses.

Bonus anti-points for Angron being essentially required.

I should also reiterate my stance of being comically anti-Nurgle.

I thought you were also anti-Space Wolf to.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I just can't get into the Genestealer Cults. It's an army that can't last long, because even of you win, you still get eaten at the end of your conquest.

Leagues of Votann, I like some of their ideas (fluff wise) but I just don't understand how they are supposed to fit in to the galaxy, or on the tabletop.

Overall I think my least favorite 40k force would be.... Mono-Nurgle Demons.

They're slow,
lack virtually any shooting (I like shooting things!),
and I really don't like most of the model range.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

I just can't get into the Genestealer Cults. It's an army that can't last long, because even of you win, you still get eaten at the end of your conquest.

Leagues of Votann, I like some of their ideas (fluff wise) but I just don't understand how they are supposed to fit in to the galaxy, or on the tabletop.

For the Cult - they don't actually have to get eaten. Cult's do last without being eaten up and they just spread to other worlds; other sectors and grow in power and influence.
Sure you can argue that, in the end, they should all be eaten, but then you can say that for all the races of the Galaxy - Tyranids are the never ending hunger that will devour all

Swings between Space Marines and Orks.

SMs with the way the lore centers so much around them at the expense of all the other factions, even moreso to the detriment of allied factions.

Orks just embody about everything I don't like in the way they play or look, and their humour never worked for me.

 Overread wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

I just can't get into the Genestealer Cults. It's an army that can't last long, because even of you win, you still get eaten at the end of your conquest.

Leagues of Votann, I like some of their ideas (fluff wise) but I just don't understand how they are supposed to fit in to the galaxy, or on the tabletop.

For the Cult - they don't actually have to get eaten. Cult's do last without being eaten up and they just spread to other worlds; other sectors and grow in power and influence.
Sure you can argue that, in the end, they should all be eaten, but then you can say that for all the races of the Galaxy - Tyranids are the never ending hunger that will devour all

I liberated this from the Grotmas Detachment introduction on the GW site. This does not sound like an army that I want to play.

Final Day
Every Genestealer Cultist longs to witness the arrival of the Star Children, and then ascend to join them in blessed oneness. This will be a transcendent experience, a sublime reward for their devotion, or so they believe. The reality is altogether more hideous: as the Tyranids approach, the utterly alien Hive Mind assimilates the more nuanced Broodmind of the Cult.

Many of the faithful die from psionic shock, while others are freed from Tyranid mind control only to go mad with horror as the truth is revealed. The rest become short‐lived puppets for the first waves of Tyranid vanguard organisms descending on their world. Exerting its will to make them fight harder and move faster, the Hive Mind swiftly burns out those who survive, harvesting each flicker of bioenergy to reinvigorate its more valuable Tyranid organisms.

They may be fun to play, but I can't get past that hurdle.

I had the dame hang up about the Necrons back in 2001 Chapter Approved - when they had the personality of an automated sentry gun. They were super fun rules wise to play against, It was their character that didn't hold my interest.

I have a grudge against Necrons, ever since their debut White Dwarf battle report back in 2nd edition where the Sisters against them were wildly badly chosen (as is often the case, because it's what they had painted up) and Team Robot rolled over them with depressing ease, earning my ire; it's a comedy grudge though, it doesn't really splash over to thinking Necrons are bad, or shouldn't be there.

The 'shouldn't be there' award actually goes to Custodes for me, because I don't care what lore they cooked up to justify it, to me the Custodes belong on Terra, not gallivanting around the galaxy being 'proactive'. I don't care for the miniatures either - I'm not saying I want an absolute hard reset to the bare-chested leather pants and pointy helmet brigade (no matter how much I love them just for nostalgia's sake), but I took a good look at their range when I was starting to play games again (just because the fewer minis there are the easier it is to carry them around), and not one of their varieties looked like anything I could see myself spending time on, with their ungainly poses and mountains of ornamentation; I feel like if I tried to paint one it'd be a case of using the colours to fight against the sculpt and salvage it, rather than showing it off, and that's no mood to take into painting an army, even a tiny one. No dislike to Custodes players though, your kink is not my kink and that's fine - if my heretics wind up fighting them, I just assume they're some hallucination cooked up by the Eye of Terror, weird things happen all the time so why not.

Literally Space Dwarves. I know that they were already in some old editions, but I can believe that GW could finally add Dark Mechanicum army and Kelbor-Hal model and decided to add Space Dwarves.

There are a bunch of factions I wish just stayed as single units. Grey Knights, Imperial (and chaos) Knights. Scions, Deathwatch. These did not need to be spun up into full armies. Nothing against them, but they should have been a single unit you splash into another list, not a stand alone faction. Custodes are similar, but I wish they never even hit the table-top. Keep them in the fluff, but off the battlefield. If we are moving the fluff forward I could see them maybe sending a single guy, or a squad to someplace important, but army strength? I’d rather not.

I think it's loyalist Marines for me. The only faction that makes me eyeroll whenever they get something new - but often it's because they again get something new.
But their fluff is also stupid with 1000Marines per chapter being anywhere and doing everything, totally overshadowing the guard that should be doing what they do. Add to that the whole Primaris problems, ugly grav tanks, ugly nerf guns, them stealing specializations from many other factions and nevertheless being just a plain boring Version compared to Chaos Marines.

Runner up probably Votann. It took them 30 years to rerelease Space Dwarfs as just another Space Marine lookalike with shorter beards than Space Wolves. What a waste.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
But their fluff is also stupid with 1000Marines per chapter being anywhere and doing everything, totally overshadowing the guard that should be doing what they do.

Main Character Syndrome. Being the poster boys means getting to hog the limelight. My complaint here is the lack variety in which Chapters keep getting screen time, which then translates into which Chapters/characters get models. How many Chapters have multiple named Captain models - three? And then you have the Raven Guard who only have a single Chapter-specific model.

 BorderCountess wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
But their fluff is also stupid with 1000Marines per chapter being anywhere and doing everything, totally overshadowing the guard that should be doing what they do.

Main Character Syndrome. Being the poster boys means getting to hog the limelight. My complaint here is the lack variety in which Chapters keep getting screen time, which then translates into which Chapters/characters get models. How many Chapters have multiple named Captain models - three? And then you have the Raven Guard who only have a single Chapter-specific model.

There are enough chapters scattered across the galaxy that having marines show up at major battles is not unreasonable. But having the named ones? Nope. Big events in their backyard, yes, but they should not be everywhere at once.

I like how in 5th they encouraged you to file the names off the characters and make them your own. Sure, the examples (and fluff) were mostly for the poster boys, but they would serve for any chapter you wanted. We are kind of heading back there in 10th, but there are still some chapter-locked things.

There are a few I dislike:

Squats (or whatever pretentious name they have now). In a system bloated to the gills with power-armour, GW gives us . . . more Power Armour.

And the Power Armour isn't even interesting or different. They just look like one of the bazillion variants of Primaris Marines (or possibly Centurions).

Oh and their vehicles look like tat someone bought in Poundland, albeit for a far heftier price.


Tau. Never cared for their aesthetics and they're rarely ever fun to play against.


Space Marines. Partially for the same reason as Overread:

 Overread wrote:

For Marines I can actually say that I think part of the issue is that they aren't gothic enough. You get the odd Chaplin with skulls and baroque/gothic inspired armour; but everything else is sleek clean mechanised war.

But mainly because I'm just sick of them at this point. They may always have been the poster-boys, but for many years they still felt like just one faction among many. Now their book is long enough to merit an intermission and refreshments midway through. To say nothing of the endless chapters, sub-chapters, spin-offs etc. Going by the models, it seems that the 'rare, elite, best-of-the-best' Space Marines make up roughly 90% of the entire population of the galaxy.

Imperium - 'Oh woe is us for we face an entire galaxy of dangerous and hostile races! What can we do against such horrors? All we have is three billion trillion super-super-super-super soldiers, who grow in power every day, led by super-super-duper-ultra soldiers who are each larger than a tank and able to eat Imperial Knights for breakfast! Truly there is no hope for mankind.'

Least favourite is a good way to put it, because I don't hate any faction for 40K.

But I'm similar to Nevelon - I don't like "unit as faction" factions. My most disliked is actually Grey Knights because I think they should have stayed a special squad for Space Marine armies.

And I kinda believe that the special space marine chapters should mostly be a special unit for the vanilla space marine book too.

Knights are a unit, not a faction, and Custodes should be sitting on Terra.

I also dislike Custodes because they feed into the "Bigger Supersoldier" spectrum that we now have which I just find kinda ridiculous even for 40K. Sisters of Silence are cool though.

But I could see myself painting a unit of any of these and as single units they're all cool models. I just don't like them extended into armies.

Votann just don't work for me on a visual level.

Knights and custodes range from mediocre to great visually, but they shouldn't be their own factions and rather allied contingents to imperial factions.

I really don't get why GW hasn't fleshed out Sisters of Silence at the very least in 30K

A tie between Grey Knights becoming boring space marines, chaos becoming boring space marines, and squats kind of leaning the same way.

Honestly not sure I have one.

In terms of model range? Thanks to recent efforts to give Xenos some much needed attention, I don’t think any faction is looking particularly left behind. And as someone largely background driven, I can find something to appeal from every current army.

Game wise I’m so long out of practice I can’t offer a valid opinion.

Though I would say it’s high time Mechanicus forces got some more Automata.

ccs wrote:
Overall I think my least favorite 40k force would be.... Mono-Nurgle Demons.

They're slow,
lack virtually any shooting (I like shooting things!),
and I really don't like most of the model range.

Rude.

I'll echo Mad Dok-there's no model range I really dislike, and while I don't always jive 100% with any given faction's themes and aesthetics, they're all fun in their own way.

It might be Adeptus Mechanicus for me, just because their tabletop (and thus background) representation has been so badly crippled by GW's 'models first and only' approach.

Original half-Codex has no transports? No problem! lets just say that the Skitarii walk everywhere and that's why they have bionic legs!
Need to release some new vehicle units? No problem! Now the Skitarii have hovercraft and chicken fliers! What, you though they walked everywhere? Idiots.

Whatever happened to Ryzan Skitarii's extensive use of Leman Russ Executioners? Oh yeah, we need to make sure we keep the sales figures for Guard nice and clear.

Etc.

Oh, I forgot one - Imperial Knights.

If I wanted to play Mechwarrior or Battletech, I wouldn't be playing 40k.

I also find their aesthetics boring beyond measure. If you showed me a picture, and I didn't already know they were from 40k, I'd assume they were some sort of Warjack from Warmachine.

Honestly I don't hate any faction in the game, but there are definitely some I'd never want to collect a whole army of for various reasons.

-Craftworld Aeldari. Their models just for the most part don't spark joy for me, other than things like the Wraith constructs (which are pretty cool).
-Adeptus Mechanicus. Firstly, they are nearly twice as expensive as many other armies in the game in terms of dollars/point. They also look really painful to actually sit down and assemble/paint.
-Necrons. Similarly to Aeldari, the models just don't grab me. They do have some cool individual models (Skorpekh Lord/Destroyers, Silent King, Void Dragon), but overall I think their range is kind of boring.
-Chaos Daemons. I actually used to have quite a few of these guys, before I sold all my Chaos stuff. I do have certain personal reasons for not wanting to play this army anymore, but also I feel like their range is just overall so old and tired. The new(ish, holy crap the Bloodthirster is 10 years old this year!) Greater Daemons do look pretty cool though.
-Thousand Sons: These models just look painful to paint, similarly to AdMech. They are just overly busy models IMO. Magnus is pretty cool, but even he's a bit too busy.
-Genestealer Cults: This army just doesn't seem like it would be fun to play, at least for me. The mental load would be pretty high; that's actually part of the reason I decided to sell my Sisters of Battle last year. The models just aren't anything special to me either.

There's not any that I actively dislike but Death Guard have no interest for me.
I've got quite a few but every time I think about painting them I always think of something more interesting to do like pull my nails out or listening to politics.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

I just can't get into the Genestealer Cults. It's an army that can't last long, because even of you win, you still get eaten at the end of your conquest.

They're the Karma Reincarnation Pulling the tail off a lizard army. If you win, you get subsumed, and then "reincarnated" on the next planet, and whatever individuality you had will either be retained by the Hive Mind or discarded because it didn't matter any more than a tail breaking off for escape matters. At least that's how I picture it.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

I had the same hang up about the Necrons back in 2001 Chapter Approved - when they had the personality of an automated sentry gun. They were super fun rules wise to play against, It was their character that didn't hold my interest.

Even though they're "just space tomb kings" the change to Necron fluff etc in 5th was such a fantastic and necessary move. Even more fun is the folding in of the old fluff to the new "oh yeah the first few centuries of necrons appearing were the EXTRA derranged/insane lords which is why they were all silent actors with unfathomable motives. don't worry the sane kings and princes of old finally woke up and man are they PISSED little divas!"

Genestealer Cults aren’t necessarily One And Done.

There are Cults out there which, through the Imperium’s trade routes have spread themselves far and wide. So even if the first planet infected is consumed, some part of the Cult still remains, spreading further and further.

 RustyNumber wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

I had the same hang up about the Necrons back in 2001 Chapter Approved - when they had the personality of an automated sentry gun. They were super fun rules wise to play against, It was their character that didn't hold my interest.

Even though they're "just space tomb kings" the change to Necron fluff etc in 5th was such a fantastic and necessary move. Even more fun is the folding in of the old fluff to the new "oh yeah the first few centuries of necrons appearing were the EXTRA derranged/insane lords which is why they were all silent actors with unfathomable motives. don't worry the sane kings and princes of old finally woke up and man are they PISSED little divas!"

Nah, can't stand that at all.

The ctan went from gods that enslaved an alien race desperate for immortality to Pokemon to make the newcrons look the coolz.

It makes 0 sense that the ctan were the reason the necrons got to where they are and defeated the old ones and somehow were then humbled by their slaves, despite being even more powerful than they were when they first met the necrontyr...

Modern necrons are imo in some ways more Mary su than marines with their galaxy ending buttons and stuff that undermines the setting as a whole, just so they look cool. The necrons shouldn't be able to defeat the Ctan any more than anyone can defeat chaos gods, they are real-world gods and are not beholden to physical laws.

The necrons gained their supremacy from allying with the ctan, all their advancement comes from them. Their uber tech galaxy ending stuff is some of the most on the nose ward era one-upmanship background that still hangs around.

Necrons should still be slaves to the ctan and there should be rebellious elements that maintain their dynasties free from ctan dominion, but the inexplicable power flip of necrons somehow defeating gods should never have happened and is dumb and makes no sense. I ctan could have been that easily and comprehensively defeated they wouldn't have posed a threat to the old ones or been a useful ally in the first place.

 Hellebore wrote:

It makes 0 sense

The entire 40k setting in a nutshell.

But putting on my neck beard hat and... beard - why should the setting still have the c'tan as active, ultrapotent gods? That makes just as little sense in the current setting and power levels to have gods active that need little tin men to march around for them and do their deeds. I think it's fair game for gods to rise and fall in 40k backstory, given the eldar effective created one.

 RustyNumber wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

It makes 0 sense

The entire 40k setting in a nutshell.

But putting on my neck beard hat and... beard - why should the setting still have the c'tan as active, ultrapotent gods? That makes just as little sense in the current setting and power levels to have gods active that need little tin men to march around for them and do their deeds. I think it's fair game for gods to rise and fall in 40k backstory, given the eldar effective created one.

And those gods don't rise and fall, they're just always there as threats. The ctan were no different and allowing the necrons to defeat them undermines the power level of the setting. As I said before it was done purely in the age of Ward's one-upmanship style of writing where every one had to be betterer than everyone else and it undermines the very things it's trying to achieve.

The man himself discusses that here, the whole interview is well worth a listen
https://youtu.be/2iWfxcYF7FI?si=a6l5I-Fo6YqSZe_U&t=2133

I'm referring to what was printed and it's effects in the setting, not what his intentions, directions or GW decision making was.

The style of 40k background writing is very distinctive in that era with rather juvenile comic book esque concepts like THE sanguinior carrying a bloodthirster into the air, marneus punching out an avatar, Draco carving a name into a daemon primarchs heart, or necrons being the bestest Eva with i win magic space buttons to detonate anything they want but somehow never do, either making it a useless weapon that can't do anything and therefore is pointless or the end of 40k in its entirely just waiting to happen.

It was all style over substance and the setting suffered from it.

Pretty much everything from that era has been walked back except the necrons because it was intertwined with their redevelopment making it harder to remove.

 BorderCountess wrote:
World Eaters. They're just so boring.

Don't get me wrong - there's a certain appreciation for running forward and hitting things, but when that's pretty much all you do? Ugh.

It's one thing to pick up a box of Berzerkers to include with a CSM army, but I can only tolerate them in small doses.

Bonus anti-points for Angron being essentially required.

I should also reiterate my stance of being comically anti-Nurgle.

I'll second WE here. They're just so one-note and really don't lend themselves to interesting stories. Kind of like Angron himself. He *had* a cool story, but it's basically over now. Now he's a stale, one-note screamy guy. It's like an army of toddlers having a collective tantrum.


I'll also throw custodes out there. No shade to those who like them, but I feel like they never should have been a full army. Their whole identity is basically being a +1 version of marines, and marines already struggle to be interesting once you get over their paper doll gimmicks and tired child super soldier thing. Custodes are like an army invented for that guy whose marines didn't feel special and unique enough, so GW rolled out the super-duper transhumans that are like marines except their stats are all a little better.I feel like this has also made it really hard to sell marines as the "elite super soldier" faction. Because no matter how much you pump up their stats, they're always just, by definition, going to be less strong, less tough, less elite versions of custodes. Custodes would have just worked way better as imperial agents that you get like, 1 of in your army. Maybe 1 character and a single small infantry squad. This would make their presence feel more notable/impressive (the same way having an assassin is impressive) and help preserve their mystique. They're *rare*. They're *special*. They're not an army with a dozens strong death pile at the end of a 2k game.

And as touched on earlier, marines are kind of boring. I don't hate them, but their lore is a dry well. Most of their stories boil down to them just being whiny idiots who clearly missed some very important lessons in kindergarten. The other stories are just them yelling, "Vengeance!" and "Honor!" at eachother for a few hundred pages while miraculously taking way fewer casualties than they probably should.

 RustyNumber wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

It makes 0 sense

The entire 40k setting in a nutshell.

But putting on my neck beard hat and... beard - why should the setting still have the c'tan as active, ultrapotent gods? That makes just as little sense in the current setting and power levels to have gods active that need little tin men to march around for them and do their deeds. I think it's fair game for gods to rise and fall in 40k backstory, given the eldar effective created one.

I'm with Hellebore on this one and the NuCrons are totally lame.

As for gods ... the setting already has the big four warp gods doing their thing. The C'tan I saw as the mirror of those (because there were originally four named) but in realspace.

Also the older lore hinted at the Necrons sort of being "life energy harvesters" for the C'tan. Gauss weapons were seen to pull the victims to the gun, and that "essence" would in turn be later given over to either Monoliths or the Pylons, which would then beam that harvested energy into space and an orbiting Necron ship. I have only vague memories of this. Some combo of the 3rd ed codex, BFG and maybe an Imperial Armor book.

I dont really dislike any faction per se, and in fact, the more the merrier would be my stance for their existence, both in lore and on the tabletop.

If there is something which rubs me the wrong way is what has happened to Orks since the glory days of "Ere We Go", "Waargh The Orks" and "Freebooterz". I dont like the way modern ork miniatures look, everything besides the KT21 Kommandos look wrong. Also, whatever happened to all those cool things we had back then, like Tinboyz and stuff? Bring them back!

On the Necron? The two backgrounds aren’t mutually exclusive at all.

In achieving biotransference, the Necrontyr swapped their fleshy bodies for metallic ones. And their minds for programming, allegedly based on their neural engrams and that. The lower down the pecking order, the less fancy your new bod was, and the more simplistic your programming. Of particular interest is The Silent King having a command protocol which rendered his entire species utterly subservient to his will.

In the original background, the C’Tan were greatly reduced in number when The Deceiver convinced them to start cannibalising each other, until only four remained. The Nightbringer, The Deceiver, The Dragon and The Outsider, with the last one devouring so many of his kin he went completely insane as lingering facets remained within his essence.

In the new background, the Necron, at massive cost, turned their wonder weapons on the C’Tan. Most were shattered and the shards kept in Tesseract Labyrinths. Some were eradicated entirely. And this is what the Necron believe.

But revisit my first observation. The bodies and minds of the now Necrons are programmed. And at one time, The Silent King’s whims were obeyed without question because of that programming.

How easy would it be for some cunning sod, perhaps a star god who’s idea it was in the first place, and perhaps who’s name suggests you really can’t trust him, to retain the option to alter the memories, in a cascade download starting with The Silent King.

That can get us to the same status. Most, but not all, C’Tan gone, with only shards of the majority of the unlucky ones left. Which could be scraps from a feast. And any surviving ones have gone into hiding, even in plain sight having used the same technique to just sort of tell the Necron “this is definitely a shard, we’re totally in control”.

Unfortunately, Grotsnik, the omniscient narrator is a thing.

Like a few others have said, there aren't many factions I dislike, though probably a few I wouldn't personally collect.

The overall problem for me is Marine Ubiquity. I don't dislike Marines, and certainly wouldn't want them cut. But the other factions really do need the chance to catch up.

Every edition, there's a brief moment where I think: "What if THIS is the edition where GW realize that marines don't need to be in the launch box and don't need to be the first dex, and don't need to be the main characters of licensed IP."

I feel like steps have been made: Kill Team has facilitated the expansion of non-marine armies on the sly. Craftworlds are, at last, getting some MUCH needed attention...

But we have father to go.

As for other factions:

Harlequins- I would love to see some expansion here, but I lack the painting skills to do Harlequins well.

Nurgle- Don't want it to go away, but the aesthetic has limited appeal to me.

Ok yeah, if we start nitpicking, I wish Necrons leaned way more into Canoptek stuff. At one point, I was seriously considering collecting a Canoptek-only Necron army, but the model selection is pretty nonexistent unless you addd the FW resins to the mix..

I basically detest the whole Necron warrior look and feel like they should have stayed in someone else's IP

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Unfortunately, Grotsnik, the omniscient narrator is a thing.

Yes and no in 40K.

The way I see it? The original Necron background is their history viewed from outside. The newer one is their history viewed from the inside. The overall beats are the same (jealousy, war, a bad deal struck, regret), but the motivations and agency after The Old Ones are defeated is where we see it drift. And we’re only ever a single revelation, hinted or blatant, that both are indeed true, and the manipulations of the C’Tan continue to this day.

I'm perhaps in the odd position of not loving the 5th edition Necron re-write - but hating the "C'Tan are behind everything in 40k" world we were heading to before that. The C'Tan should never have been on the scale of the Chaos Gods, and I'm much happier with them being reduced to Pokemon.

I've never liked Grey Knights and Space Wolves. I used to actively hate them about a decade ago, but its softened since then. Not sure why these two alienate more than other Marines - but suspect its just that I don't get the theme. Like others I think Grey Knights should have been a squad - or rather a handful of characters like Assassins - that you slotted into Imperial Armies.

I don't really like Knights either. Nothing really to do with the lore or models, but the boring decade long complaint but I just don't think they belong in 40k as a game system.

I can't see myself ever collecting Custodes or Voltan - but I don't dislike them at the same level.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On the Necron? The two backgrounds aren’t mutually exclusive at all.

In achieving biotransference, the Necrontyr swapped their fleshy bodies for metallic ones. And their minds for programming, allegedly based on their neural engrams and that. The lower down the pecking order, the less fancy your new bod was, and the more simplistic your programming. Of particular interest is The Silent King having a command protocol which rendered his entire species utterly subservient to his will.

In the original background, the C’Tan were greatly reduced in number when The Deceiver convinced them to start cannibalising each other, until only four remained. The Nightbringer, The Deceiver, The Dragon and The Outsider, with the last one devouring so many of his kin he went completely insane as lingering facets remained within his essence.

In the new background, the Necron, at massive cost, turned their wonder weapons on the C’Tan. Most were shattered and the shards kept in Tesseract Labyrinths. Some were eradicated entirely. And this is what the Necron believe.

But revisit my first observation. The bodies and minds of the now Necrons are programmed. And at one time, The Silent King’s whims were obeyed without question because of that programming.

How easy would it be for some cunning sod, perhaps a star god who’s idea it was in the first place, and perhaps who’s name suggests you really can’t trust him, to retain the option to alter the memories, in a cascade download starting with The Silent King.

That can get us to the same status. Most, but not all, C’Tan gone, with only shards of the majority of the unlucky ones left. Which could be scraps from a feast. And any surviving ones have gone into hiding, even in plain sight having used the same technique to just sort of tell the Necron “this is definitely a shard, we’re totally in control”.

The concept of both being true isn't a problem for me, it's which one takes the lead position and the way the c'tan function that does.

Wardcrons turned c'tan into mcguffins for the necrons, and eventually literally pokemon. The omniscient shenanigans of the deceiver are now but playthings for the wardcrons. The technological dominance of the dragon is now a cute historical footnote. it was c'tan retconning that I objected to through the necron retcons.

You shouldn't be retconning corporeal gods into plot points after they were already established as galactic players.

Ergo, the default necrons ARE the oldcrons, because you can't actually defeat the c'tan like they believed. Thematically newcrons are like the world eaters breaking khorne and firing bits of him at their foes, no one would like that change. Khorne can't be defeated by mortals, it's one of the cosmic horror elements that you can't conquer chaos. You shouldn't be able to conquer the c'tan either - their ability to ignore the rules of reality make the idea you could technology your way to victory pretty dumb. Everything the necrons have was from them, they could easily ignore or reabsorb it.

As I said earlier, the dynastic necrons are totally fine, so long as they are the exception and not the rule. Tomb worlds that woke up without a c'tan's control or presence (for whatever plot reason) that regained some of their consciousness and then attempted to rebuild what was lost, hoping in terror their literal gods didn't show up at their door and demand obeisance.

You then actually create two faction of necrons, one cosmic horror and one grey and potentially allyable, that could be seen as freedom fighters from their enslavers. A much more narratively satisfying concept than one super robot dude had a magic control that his gods couldn't do anything about and singlehandedly undid omnipotent power and then necrons through.... robo fists and gauss flayers? defeated star gods? The silent king's creation is classic wardian era GW - super character that has the special abilities to do stupid things so he looks cooler than the others.


They could have totally reinvented the necrons and added dynasties etc, without needing to massively retconn the puissance of the c'tan and make the necrons stupidly powerful as a result. It turned the war in heaven from the gods clashing (old ones and c'tan) with their followers dragged along, to a boring normal war where the necrons seemingly did everything and the c'tan were just.... there.

Tyel wrote:
I'm perhaps in the odd position of not loving the 5th edition Necron re-write - but hating the "C'Tan are behind everything in 40k" world we were heading to before that. The C'Tan should never have been on the scale of the Chaos Gods, and I'm much happier with them being reduced to Pokemon.

That wasn't a problem of their power, it was a problem of GW not being creative with their writing. When all they had was chaos, it were behind everything as well, because it was the only big bad they had. This was no different.

The c'tan were an interesting concept because they were gods of reality, which was just another way of saying they were creatures that ignored physics, giving them massive advantages over everyone else. They weren't depicted as being on par with the chaos gods in the current setting (at the height of their power during the war in heaven yes, but they were literally striding the galaxy fighting a god war so what do you expect? and the chaos gods weren't really a threat then because even they grow in power and aren't constant). They actually harken back to the chaos vs law concept that GW dropped, which I think is really interesting because they managed to find a way to grimdark Law in the form of realspace gods that consume energy to survive. Realspace vs Warpspace, rather than law vs chaos.

Modern 40k they were the equivalent of Cegorach, Khaine or Ynnead, able to affect reality and exert their influence, but not at the scale of Tzeentch or nurgle.

Their 'behind everything' thing was really only a couple of things that were done in the past when they WERE literal gods, not the half starved shadows they are now. the two that come to mind are the fear of death and the pariah gene, both of which were implemented millions of years ago and not some new machination.


It's clear GW prefer their new incarnation and I doubt we'll see this change any time soon. But there was a time in 40k when the cosmic horror was ratcheted up a lot higher and the world seemed a lot more frightening. The necrons have imo become a bit of comic relief due to the infinite and divine and other stories, which is a bit sad.



Ultimately, the 'c'tan behind everything' was replaced with 'wardcrons behind everything' - they alone in the setting are responsible for more things than any other, and possess other stupid things they shouldn't have. It Also screws with the other factions by having them be this powerful - literally galaxy ending buttons and god pokeballs and yet they went to sleep? Eldar and orks clearly not going to win against that, but 60 million years of the galaxy being in their hands.

The logic of - c'tan and necrons defeat old ones, warp goes nuts, enslavers kill people, c'tan slaughter one another in desperation to not starve, eventually all necrons go to sleep to hope for a better harvest, everyone is left alone to repopulate (60 million years is now filled with an indeterminate post apocalypse that means the necrons are mostly forgotten), necrons wake up and are like yay our gods will eat everyone and not us.

makes a lot more sense than - necrons defeat old ones, then defeat c'tan, then decide to go to sleep because being god killers it's still too hard to fight eldar and orks (but they're not tough enough to actually wipe out the sleeping necrons for 60 MILLION YEARS), apparently instead of expecting life to flourish they expect it to whither? wake up and wonder why leaving life around means it's still there... and just exist.

I disagree.

The original Necron army had zero agency of its own. No character, no agenda beyond “feed the C’Tan”.

Now? There’s at least the suggestion of independent agency, though it could be an illusion.

They also serve to give some kind of hope in the background that, ridiculously powerful as the entities are? Maybe it is possible to Avatar the Chaos Gods, shattering their spiritual cohesion into smaller, hopefully less individually malevolent chunks. How do you do that? Seems nobodies figured it out beyond “well, Slaanesh kicked Khaine’s arse hard enough for it to happen”

Naturally that’s not to say “therefore you am the big wrong”. Just that we’d not going to agree on this one, and fair enough.

As for the rest? The Necron were all but exhausted. Sure, there are still untold billions, possibly trillions of them - but we don’t know what percentage of their original populace that represents, because all such things are relative.

It could even be The Silent King, disgusted with himself for agreeing to biotransference, ordered his people to sleep so as few as possible would be destroyed entirely before they found a way to reverse biotransference. That the gamble was that the races created by The Old Ones, now bereft of their guidance and leadership, would hubris themselves into obscurity given enough time.

And that’s at least partially played out.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I disagree.

The original Necron army had zero agency of its own. No character, no agenda beyond “feed the C’Tan”.

Now? There’s at least the suggestion of independent agency, though it could be an illusion.

They also serve to give some kind of hope in the background that, ridiculously powerful as the entities are? Maybe it is possible to Avatar the Chaos Gods, shattering their spiritual cohesion into smaller, hopefully less individually malevolent chunks. How do you do that? Seems nobodies figured it out beyond “well, Slaanesh kicked Khaine’s arse hard enough for it to happen”

Naturally that’s not to say “therefore you am the big wrong”. Just that we’d not going to agree on this one, and fair enough.

As for the rest? The Necron were all but exhausted. Sure, there are still untold billions, possibly trillions of them - but we don’t know what percentage of their original populace that represents, because all such things are relative.

It could even be The Silent King, disgusted with himself for agreeing to biotransference, ordered his people to sleep so as few as possible would be destroyed entirely before they found a way to reverse biotransference. That the gamble was that the races created by The Old Ones, now bereft of their guidance and leadership, would hubris themselves into obscurity given enough time.

And that’s at least partially played out.

By that argument all chaos armies have no agency, all requiring that they feed their gods more chaos and souls. It's literally the same thing.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I disagree.

The original Necron army had zero agency of its own. No character, no agenda beyond “feed the C’Tan”.

Now? There’s at least the suggestion of independent agency, though it could be an illusion.

They also serve to give some kind of hope in the background that, ridiculously powerful as the entities are? Maybe it is possible to Avatar the Chaos Gods, shattering their spiritual cohesion into smaller, hopefully less individually malevolent chunks. How do you do that? Seems nobodies figured it out beyond “well, Slaanesh kicked Khaine’s arse hard enough for it to happen”

Naturally that’s not to say “therefore you am the big wrong”. Just that we’d not going to agree on this one, and fair enough.

As for the rest? The Necron were all but exhausted. Sure, there are still untold billions, possibly trillions of them - but we don’t know what percentage of their original populace that represents, because all such things are relative.

It could even be The Silent King, disgusted with himself for agreeing to biotransference, ordered his people to sleep so as few as possible would be destroyed entirely before they found a way to reverse biotransference. That the gamble was that the races created by The Old Ones, now bereft of their guidance and leadership, would hubris themselves into obscurity given enough time.

And that’s at least partially played out.

By that argument all chaos armies have no agency, all requiring that they feed their gods more chaos and souls. It's literally the same thing.

Not really. Chaos Marines still have individual agency. 3rd ed Necrons, much as I liked them, were basically mindless slaves

Astra Militarum / Imperial Guard


Just go play Bolt Action or something. That gak just doesn't fit 40K. Story. Theme. Rules. Visuals. It's just a stain that feels off in every conceivable way. But I guess it makes sense from a business perspective to catfish the more historical wargame / model kit minded into 40K.

As Facebeard said, Chaos forces do have agency. Up until the point you take a God’s Mark, you can, to some extent, pick and choose who’s name you’re doing what in.

And unlike the Necron? Chaos Marines and Cultists tend to follow that path willingly.

There is a question of how freely of course. No cult expands with “Smash Face and Eat Babies, Khorne R Grate” or what have you. They’re a good bit more insidious than that, it being a typically long road to damnation. The Gods and their mortal agents having ways to encourage going ever further.

But Necrons in the original? From the moment of biotransference, zero personal agency. They became remote control toys of minimal sentience.

Not to say that doesn’t have an appeal. But they just kind of felt like mechanical Tyranids, constructs used by an overruling intelligence with no say in their actions or instincts.

 Hellebore wrote:
You shouldn't be retconning corporeal gods into plot points after they were already established as galactic players.

Ehhhhh, they decided to make up/retconn/open a mystery box. There's nothing to stop them next year starting a new faction and saying "surprise! remember that *weird space mystery thing* we mentioned in passing in the 6th era BRB fluff section because it's fun to have mysterious throwaway lines? well turns out it's a god and it's connected to THIS FACTION which is actually a big deal!" Which is why I never see much of a point in getting wrapped up how things were in their IP, outside of your own personal preference of the setting of course.

 Cap'n Facebeard wrote:


Not really. Chaos Marines still have individual agency. 3rd ed Necrons, much as I liked them, were basically mindless slaves

They had varying levels of sentience and free will. In the great GW tradition, it depends. It was not a static value across all of them. But in the great GW fandom tradition, it was flanderised down to 'lol zombie robots' and that was then used as a strawman against them.

All chaos worshippers have pledged their souls to chaos. What they are free to do is limited by whether it helps chaos or not. They can't become farmer hermits, because that doesn't further the cause of chaos (unless you're tzeentch and there's some plot afoot...). They have agency within the limitations of their enslavement (literally slaves to darkness). They willingly do this for temporal power. But they are not free and never have been.

The necrons willingly underwent biotransference in all versions of the story. And just as with many chaos followers that aren't astartes, some regretted the decision to damn themselves for temporal power but it was too late.

Necrons with a c'tan present were just as restricted in action as berserkers with Angron present, they MUST do what the deceiver/khorne wants. But without a c'tan they were more free to pursue the goals of their lords. In fact a c'tanless necron lord had far more discretion than an angronless berserker lord, because the berserker lord's overriding need was to spill blood for Khorne, while the necron lord's sentience gave them the ability to do anything until a c'tan showed up.

So yeah, I would argue that even in 3rd ed, a necron lord had more freedom to command his troops to do what he wanted than a berserker or plague lord had.

Chaos Cultists can be literally anyone. That’s what makes them so dangerous.

Granted sooner or later it’s Loony Tunes everywhere when the uprising hits. But cult members can live their entire life out before that day comes, and to most seem like productive citizens.

Ritual here, marking there, the odd sacrifice of some sort. It’s not 0-100 in 2.5 seconds.

Whilst I don’t think it’s come across to 40K, we see this in the Tzeentch Arcanite Cultists in AoS. The models are all ripped, Greek Adonis types. But that’s part of their magic. Outside of battle? They look like any other citizen, only hulking out when it’s action o’clock.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The original Necron army had zero agency of its own. No character, no agenda beyond “feed the C’Tan”.

I think you could have rectified this without reducing C'tan to Pokemon, though.

Have some Necrons retain some of their personality (or even gain new personalities/awareness). Maybe it's not even clear why it's happening - only that some Tomb Worlds seem to awakened with much more sapience than others of their kind.

It would allow for Necron special characters and for players to give their lords distinct personalities, without completely wrecking the Star Gods in the process.

As a bonus, it also sets up a potential mystery of why some Necrons have retained their personalities.

My point is if Khorne berserkers and plague marines with narrow focuses and an inability to deviate from them, are acceptable, then limited freedom necrons should be no problem.

And tyranids can't do anything BUT tyranid and they're fine. Necrons having limitations being a problem seems pretty arbitrary in the scheme of 40k factions.

and as I said, the range of sentience amongst even the warriors was varied, GW loves to avoid standardisation and they said that necrons all had varying levels of consciousness.


C'tanless necrons? Well they look just like Wardcrons.

Necrons with a c'tan? Well no one can truly break a c'tan and their control was built into the fabric of the necrons, no shenanigans can avoid that so they must do what their c'tan wants.

The advantage? There are only 4 c'tan left, meaning that there are plenty of tomb world without a c'tan to control them, who only fear one of the 4 showing up to take control of them.


No faction in 40k should literally hold i win buttons or be considered capable of defeating things like C'tan and expect the setting to matter. the existence of wardcrons destroys the power balance of the setting.

My 2 cents - Custodes/Sisters of Silence (just put them with the Sisters of Battle) - both really don't need their own army. Grey Knights are the same, Deathwatch too.

Although that being said, I'm really sick of every starter box being 'Ultramarines vs _____'

Not sure why GW doesn't just...idk, make TWO different starters sets - with 4 armies involved, I wouldn't be against one being space marines, but do tyranids vs orks or guard or tau. You could literally even do the same terrain, rules, etc. I find the absolutely least value in the starter sets that are space marines vs chaos space marines.

Pardon my ignorance on the subject, since I'm not up to date on the Necron lore, how did a player in the Atlanta GT run a 6 C'Tan Necron List, if there aren't that many C'Tan total?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Pardon my ignorance on the subject, since I'm not up to date on the Necron lore, how did a player in the Atlanta GT run a 6 C'Tan Necron List, if there aren't that many C'Tan total?

Newcron C'Tan are the pieces of the original C'Tan, which the Newcrons smashed into shards. So each C'Tan became a whole bunch of shards.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Pardon my ignorance on the subject, since I'm not up to date on the Necron lore, how did a player in the Atlanta GT run a 6 C'Tan Necron List, if there aren't that many C'Tan total?

You're mixing up 2 things

1) Game and lore

2) Old and new Lore

The game and the lore are separate. Thus its possible to do things in the game that are impossible in the lore. Like having characters who would never meat (geographically and temporally too far away from each other). Or having multiple heroes in the same place which would never happen in the lore etc.... Heck the fact that Marines appear in a VAST number of real world games already goes against the lore of them being the super rare super elite. Many worlds and many Guard regiments will fight and hold and conquer many worlds and never see a Space Marine.

Secondly the Old Lore had the Ctan as still alive gods of the Necrons so they were all named with limited numbers. The new lore has the Necrons defeating them and shattering them into shards. So what you get on the table isn't an entire Godlike Ctan, but a shard. That's why there's the generic one in the Obelisk and how the Emperor was able to bury a shard on Mars to help form the Mechanicum and later the mechanicus cult (Also pretty sure this is something no one barring the Emperor and readers/narrators know about and might even only be heavily hinted at)

That last bit about the Emperor, is that another retcon, seeing as the Mechanicus had Machine God worshipping WAY before the Emperor's unification.

Heck, when they came across Ryza, it didn't believe the Emperor was the Omnissiah.

That's why I never understood this Dragon bit, as you had Mechanicus units from the Dark Age of Technology and the Age of Strife out and about in the galaxy. That wouldn't be reinstated to Humanity for a very long time, but had the Machine God thing.

This C'tan stuff is all very confusing.

The lore has both ret-cons and "stuff we added later that was never elaborated on before."

Also don't forget that we as readers often know more than most in the setting. The Mechanicus have the Omnissiah - the Machine God.

We as readers understand what they think of as that Machine God is the result of the influence of the one of the Shards of the Dragon Ctan, that the Emperor found and buried deep on Mars.


The lore is touched by Chaos - its a bit wibbly wobbly crazy
Add onto that the fact that most of us have NOT read anywhere near all the lore. So we all have BITS of it from various sources that we've read over the years and miss rememberd; then read online from places that might have reported accurately or made it up etc... So it all becomes one big confusing melting pot. Remember as a hobby most of us are not studying the lore formally - we read bits; remember them as best we can and chat about it

My question is about timing. Did the Emperor drop the Dragon shard on Mars during the Dark Age of Technology? Or the Age of Strife?

Because the Mechanicus had a Machine God then that they took with them to the stars on Sleeper Ships (The Knight Houses) and set up distant forgeworlds during the Age of Strife, which is 10k years before the Emperor's Unifcation.

And when the new Imperium came a knocking, the Mechanicus was already working, and some were none to pleases to have to swear loyalty to Mars.

Space Marines. I wish they were more Gothic in Design and less obviously Heroic good guys. Also i wish primarch were not a thing, Xenos support can only suffer from the primarch focused narrative that is being pushed on 40k.

Adeptus Custodes. Should have stayed in 30k. I feel they and Grey knights occupy the same elite slot to the Detriment of GK support.

Genestealer Cults. They belonged in Necromunda, maybe kill team. Not 40k.

The whole skitarii angle of the mechanicus. Its ugly, and boring. We wanted 30k robots.

Knights. They are in the wrong game mode, making infantry lists kind of non desirable (as do all super heavies to be fair)

Flyers of all factions. They do not belong in a game that Was supposed to be an infantry skirmish game with some vehicles.

Oh shoot. How did I not say imperial/chaos knights earlier? They're just... fundamentally flawed as a concept. They automatically bring a skew list to every game. Their very existence in the meta makes non-anti-tank units less desirable. If I had to cut a faction from the game, I'd absolutely cut both knight factions. And then someone would have to take the scissors from me before I reached the custodes.

(Knight lore is cool though. They seem like a great concept... for Titanicus or Legions or whatever.)

Most definitely GSC, they just don’t feel like they belong as an army in 40K but more of an opponent in some specialist game. They do literally nothing for me.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Oh shoot. How did I not say imperial/chaos knights earlier? They're just... fundamentally flawed as a concept. They automatically bring a skew list to every game. Their very existence in the meta makes non-anti-tank units less desirable. If I had to cut a faction from the game, I'd absolutely cut both knight factions. And then someone would have to take the scissors from me before I reached the custodes.

(Knight lore is cool though. They seem like a great concept... for Titanicus or Legions or whatever.)

The only issue with that is that you also have to kill all the hopes and dreams of treadheads and their Armoured Companies also if you follow that train if thought.

I would be willing to accept an AdMech/Knight Combined arms list.


But beyond the table, are there any forces you don't like reading about?

Groups that you can't imagine Black Library novels being written for?

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Oh shoot. How did I not say imperial/chaos knights earlier? They're just... fundamentally flawed as a concept. They automatically bring a skew list to every game. Their very existence in the meta makes non-anti-tank units less desirable. If I had to cut a faction from the game, I'd absolutely cut both knight factions. And then someone would have to take the scissors from me before I reached the custodes.

(Knight lore is cool though. They seem like a great concept... for Titanicus or Legions or whatever.)

I'd keep them around as the Add-One-To-Imperial/Chaos lists, and on the backburner try and create some sort of chaff + Knight list with nothing in the middle faction. Repair/Support Crews that run around with almost negligble weapons and armor next to the supersize knights for the Objective game...

I think Knights and other superheavies should be part of a special game mode where each side gets a superheavy.

So taking a superheavy would be built in to that game mode, and each faction would have one.

I understand why they don't do that from a sales POV, and I understand people who've shelled out for an expensive centrepiece wanting to be able to use it, but I think the game would be better if it was restricted like that to let the "normal" game breathe a bit. But at this point the core rules seem to have been changed to accommodate superheavies quite a lot so maybe it's pointless without also re-writing the whole game.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
My question is about timing. Did the Emperor drop the Dragon shard on Mars during the Dark Age of Technology? Or the Age of Strife?

Because the Mechanicus had a Machine God then that they took with them to the stars on Sleeper Ships (The Knight Houses) and set up distant forgeworlds during the Age of Strife, which is 10k years before the Emperor's Unifcation.

And when the new Imperium came a knocking, the Mechanicus was already working, and some were none to pleases to have to swear loyalty to Mars.

The implication was that the Emperor defeating the Void Dragon (shard) was the inspiration for the story of St George and his dragon, so while presumably it wasn’t immediately taken to Mars (or even for millennia), it could have been quite early in the scheme of things. Early in the DAoT (or even immediately prior) is quite possible.

Breton wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Oh shoot. How did I not say imperial/chaos knights earlier? They're just... fundamentally flawed as a concept. They automatically bring a skew list to every game. Their very existence in the meta makes non-anti-tank units less desirable. If I had to cut a faction from the game, I'd absolutely cut both knight factions. And then someone would have to take the scissors from me before I reached the custodes.

(Knight lore is cool though. They seem like a great concept... for Titanicus or Legions or whatever.)

I'd keep them around as the Add-One-To-Imperial/Chaos lists, and on the backburner try and create some sort of chaff + Knight list with nothing in the middle faction. Repair/Support Crews that run around with almost negligble weapons and armor next to the supersize knights for the Objective game...

So... the Grotmas detachments they got?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Pardon my ignorance on the subject, since I'm not up to date on the Necron lore, how did a player in the Atlanta GT run a 6 C'Tan Necron List, if there aren't that many C'Tan total?

There are 3 named unique Epic Hero CTan in the Codex.
There's also a unit called Transcendent Ctan - basically a shard of one of the destroyed ones. It's not unique/Epic, so you could run 3 copies.
So, pts permitting, you can run 6 CTan.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

But beyond the table, are there any forces you don't like reading about?

All of them? I don't really find 40k lore all that interesting to read about beyond "Read new version of Codex: ____ about every 3 editions." And even then I'm not studying it in depth like so many of you.
I just need the armies overview refreshed now & then.
But I essentially quit caring about 95% of 40Ks lore a looong time ago. So 2eCrons (virtually no lore) Oldcrons (3e+), Newcrons (5e?+), FutureCrons.... Doesn't matter to me. I play Necrons simply because I like the models.

I don't really bother ranking factions. I collect the faction that I like (pretty much just Orks nowadays and Necrons in the past), and move on with my life.

That said, Games Workshop's restoration of the Squats was really poorly done. They got a small codex at the end of an edition, had some overpowered beam abilities that forced people to change the entire movement phase, got nerfed in 10th Edition, and not a single book or tie-in or anything about them since 2022.Gameplay-wise, they have absolutely nothing unique about them now that the OP beam cannons are gone and story-wise they aren't interesting either. Literally Deep Rock Galactic but 40k.You couldn't have made their introduction worse if you tried.

I also wish Loyalist Space Marine Chapters didn't get their own codexes. It just makes the fans of other Space Marine chapters jealous and hog even more of Games Workshop's attention. The Chaos Space Marine codexes should be bundled with the demons for that god.

Knights are an odd fit for 40k both lore-wise and gameplay-wise, but I'm glad that an all-titanic army is in the game; it adds a lot of variety to matchups you won't get in other games.

Custodes fighting all across the galaxy is strange fluff-wise, but I like Custodes from a gameplay perspective and they're a great starter army due to how few models you need.

FYI Calbear, the Leagues got their first novel released last year.

You’ll also want a copy of Necromunda, Halls of the Ancestors.

My take on Votann is that they are just weirdly normal.

There's lots of stuff in their new fluff that could be played on to make them... idk, Grimdark. Or at least unique.

But the mini range - and army rules - is painfully "Dwarfs in Spaaace".

As examples:
"We are all clones" - it doesn't matter.
"We have self-aware robots" - it doesn't matter.
We obey/worship hyper advanced machine intelligences that are breaking down - eh... it doesn't matter.

 BorderCountess wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Oh shoot. How did I not say imperial/chaos knights earlier? They're just... fundamentally flawed as a concept. They automatically bring a skew list to every game. Their very existence in the meta makes non-anti-tank units less desirable. If I had to cut a faction from the game, I'd absolutely cut both knight factions. And then someone would have to take the scissors from me before I reached the custodes.

(Knight lore is cool though. They seem like a great concept... for Titanicus or Legions or whatever.)

I'd keep them around as the Add-One-To-Imperial/Chaos lists, and on the backburner try and create some sort of chaff + Knight list with nothing in the middle faction. Repair/Support Crews that run around with almost negligble weapons and armor next to the supersize knights for the Objective game...

So... the Grotmas detachments they got?

Closer to the inverse. The army is ~75% Guard or Mechanicus, and ~25% knight. The Knight is just the big bad centerpiece option for that faction instead of being its own faction. The faction wasn't designed for objective play, and they haven't figured out how to make it work yet.

Tyel wrote:
My take on Votann is that they are just weirdly normal.

There's lots of stuff in their new fluff that could be played on to make them... idk, Grimdark. Or at least unique.

But the mini range - and army rules - is painfully "Dwarfs in Spaaace".

As examples:
"We are all clones" - it doesn't matter.
"We have self-aware robots" - it doesn't matter.
We obey/worship hyper advanced machine intelligences that are breaking down - eh... it doesn't matter.

My problem with them is they're not even dwarfs in space. Nothing about them tells me dwarfs in space. They're as much dwarfs as the elves were elves in that aweful witcher spinoff series. They're old scale Space Marines with runes and Tau guns.

Mechanic wise all the type of uppy down list, which would include GK. Closely followed by the "I shot at your from behind LoS blocking terrain and you can't do nothing about it". Mechanic wise, too good or too bad, I can more or less accept the existance of it most of the time.

Pure faction wise, eldar. The existance of the faction warps how editions are played, and when unfixed, which sometimes takes GW a lot of time, they generate more NPE then any other too good to be true army. Because with every other faction you know that, they probably will suck next time around. With eldar, you know that a codex or edition reset will make them more unfun to play.

Breton wrote:

 BorderCountess wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Oh shoot. How did I not say imperial/chaos knights earlier? They're just... fundamentally flawed as a concept. They automatically bring a skew list to every game. Their very existence in the meta makes non-anti-tank units less desirable. If I had to cut a faction from the game, I'd absolutely cut both knight factions. And then someone would have to take the scissors from me before I reached the custodes.

(Knight lore is cool though. They seem like a great concept... for Titanicus or Legions or whatever.)

I'd keep them around as the Add-One-To-Imperial/Chaos lists, and on the backburner try and create some sort of chaff + Knight list with nothing in the middle faction. Repair/Support Crews that run around with almost negligble weapons and armor next to the supersize knights for the Objective game...

So... the Grotmas detachments they got?

Closer to the inverse. The army is ~75% Guard or Mechanicus, and ~25% knight. The Knight is just the big bad centerpiece option for that faction instead of being its own faction. The faction wasn't designed for objective play, and they haven't figured out how to make it work yet.

The old Mechanicus Codex was like what you want, where you could take Lord of War Knight Detachment.

About the OC issue, all lists that focus on small elite forces will suffer from this... AC, GK, IG:AC, etc.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

My problem with them is they're not even dwarfs in space. Nothing about them tells me dwarfs in space. They're as much dwarfs as the elves were elves in that aweful witcher spinoff series. They're old scale Space Marines with runes and Tau guns.

Grudge tokens are pretty on brand for GW Dwarves.

Not Grimdark?

A genetically engineered slave species, programmed to gather and export resources. And without the free will to care even if you pointed this out to them?

That’s pretty gnarly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thinking about it? I’m probably least fond of Grey Knights.

In 2nd Ed, they were a powerful allied unit. Good shooting, excellent close combat, excellent armour, and psychic powers to boot. And that’s largely how they were described in the background. Heading out in small numbers for precision damage control against Daemons, such as Teleporting in near the locus of the invasion, be that a possessed Psyker, a Warp Breach or powerful Daemon, and kicking its teeth down its throat.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Not Grimdark?

A genetically engineered slave species, programmed to gather and export resources. And without the free will to care even if you pointed this out to them?

That’s pretty gnarly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thinking about it? I’m probably least fond of Grey Knights.

In 2nd Ed, they were a powerful allied unit. Good shooting, excellent close combat, excellent armour, and psychic powers to boot. And that’s largely how they were described in the background. Heading out in small numbers for precision damage control against Daemons, such as Teleporting in near the locus of the invasion, be that a possessed Psyker, a Warp Breach or powerful Daemon, and kicking its teeth down its throat.

Back in the day, I had 5 classic metal GK Terminators to go with my Inquisitor in Terminator armour; he was from 2nd ed, though I'm less certain about the GK- I think they arrived in 2nd, but it might have been 3rd. The terminator connection implies to me that the GK were seen as the Chamber Militant of the Malleus as far back as those models go even if it wasn't explicit.

When the Daemon Hunters dex dropped in 3rd, the chamber Militant concept was made explicit for all three Ordos, but since I never owned a copy of Daemon Hunters, I don't remember what did or didn't exist for the GK part of the range beyond the Terminators, or what it said about them as an independent army. Sisters from the Witch Hunter dex could be fielded with or without Inquisition forces, but I don't remember if GK could.

I like the new Squats, and I like the Guard and even the Tau. Having some relatively normal factions is good and when everyone is "grimdark" nothing is grimdark.

Imagine the game was just Chaos v Necrons v Tyranids v Dark Eldar v Arco-flagellants, to maximize "grimdark". Oh no the Dark Eldar might kidnap that Necron and torture him! Oh no Lord Skullripper might get eaten by a Carnifex! Not very scary is it? If everyone is evil and/or living in endless suffering then who cares if everyone dies?

As far as my least favorite factions, they're all basically the same thing: some group from the Imperium that can't justifiably be a 40k army but has been shoehorned into being one anyways. Knight Titans (inc Chaos), Custodes, and Grey Knights specifically. AdMech and Sisters I'm okay with because they could field large numbers of troops.

Lore-wise the Necrons and the C'Tan are a complete mess, with two totally different narratives that are both terrible. They're a fine faction otherwise though.

They could have also gone the other way with the c'tan and instead of trying to keep them as gods that somehow how get defeated by a race they completely control and whose technology is derived from them, they could have made them more atavistic predatory creatures with godlike power but no intellect to use.

so the necrons see them and their power and try to catch them to use as a power source to fuel their own biotransference science, which succeeds with a cost they didn't realise.

the core issue is the intelligence and power of the c'tan and the inexplicable ability for necrontyr who couldn't even defeat the old ones, to be able to defeat the creatures that enabled them to defeat those enemies they couldn't defeat...

Either the c'tan become a lot dumber in comparison, or the necrons lose the control they shouldn't be able to have. Trying to run both at the same time just makes the whole thing look dumb.

Just keep in mind that most "Gods" in 40K are not actually what we'd call true Gods. They are more god-like

As for the Necrons defeating them. The C'Tan gave the Necrons a huge tech boost in one massive leap. That allowed them to beat the Old Ones, but also meant that they could turn those same weapons on the C'Tan. The C'Tan just figured the Necrons wouldn't do that.

And if that doesn't sound believable then consider that has happened in history more than once. Those rebels that an outside nation armed and trained to defeat one opponent can certainly then turn those same weapons and training on the ones that gave them to them in the first place.

 Overread wrote:
Just keep in mind that most "Gods" in 40K are not actually what we'd call true Gods. They are more god-like

As for the Necrons defeating them. The C'Tan gave the Necrons a huge tech boost in one massive leap. That allowed them to beat the Old Ones, but also meant that they could turn those same weapons on the C'Tan. The C'Tan just figured the Necrons wouldn't do that.

And if that doesn't sound believable then consider that has happened in history more than once. Those rebels that an outside nation armed and trained to defeat one opponent can certainly then turn those same weapons and training on the ones that gave them to them in the first place.

The scope is nothing like the wholesale species wide victory and breaking of godlike creatures. From slave to god in one move is just bad narrative.

The deceiver isn't that stupid and was never described as such nor has his background been changed. So we are left with genius deceiver being dumb so necrons look cool. But the main point about those weapons is that the c'tan shouldn't actually be threatened by them - using necrodermis against a c'tan would be an exercise in futility. It's like firing nukes at nuclear man...

The problem is that the rebellion was there to serve necron coolness, not to make sense. The brief was clearly, we need to sell the new necron army, please create the most Wardian levels of coolness you have done for everyone else and damn the consequences. We aren't doing anything with the two existing c'tan models, so don't need to worry about those.

It would have been like the eldar create slannesh, but through their magic asspull psychic powers they use the souls eaten to break slannesh and turn them into avatars, all in the span of a single event so the damning consequences of their actions have no chance to impact, they just side step them. If GW wrote it, it would be official, but that wouldn't make it good. And it would treat eldar players the same way OG necron players were treated - a central core identity of your faction has been upturned.

Had the necrons needed 60 million years to weaken the c'tan to break them that would be one thing, but to go from crap, to slaves to masters to sleepy in one single event was just terrible writing. Especially in the context of godkillers now needing to sleep making less sense than the original story.

 Overread wrote:
Just keep in mind that most "Gods" in 40K are not actually what we'd call true Gods. They are more god-like

But no other "god" in 40k has anything to do with the C'Tan. They're all warp entities that obey the rules of warpspace.

The C'Tan are... people made out of "electromagnetism" I guess? And they were born during the Big Bang, and are like an animal that evolved(?) instantaneously(??) and is made out of photons(???) and they eat stars. But watch out because they don't just eat stars anymore, they also eat your "soul". But not your supernatural warp-soul because they're not from the warp. They eat all the electricity(?) from your body(??). And you may think that's only like 100 Watts but it makes them super powerful, way more powerful than when they were eating entire stars.

And that to me is a bigger problem than them dying like chumps in the Newcron lore though I agree that's stupid. I don't even understand what they're supposed to be or what they're supposed to be doing to you. Because their entire concept of "well they're exactly like the Chaos Gods but with real physics instead of magic" fundamentally doesn't make sense. And that's why GW had to kill them off I guess.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Just keep in mind that most "Gods" in 40K are not actually what we'd call true Gods. They are more god-like

But no other "god" in 40k has anything to do with the C'Tan. They're all warp entities that obey the rules of warpspace.

The C'Tan are... people made out of "electromagnetism" I guess? And they were born during the Big Bang, and are like an animal that evolved(?) instantaneously(??) and is made out of photons(???) and they eat stars. But watch out because they don't just eat stars anymore, they also eat your "soul". But not your supernatural warp-soul because they're not from the warp. They eat all the electricity(?) from your body(??). And you may think that's only like 100 Watts but it makes them super powerful, way more powerful than when they were eating entire stars.

And that to me is a bigger problem than them dying like chumps in the Newcron lore though I agree that's stupid. I don't even understand what they're supposed to be or what they're supposed to be doing to you. Because their entire concept of "well they're exactly like the Chaos Gods but with real physics instead of magic" fundamentally doesn't make sense. And that's why GW had to kill them off I guess.

There were explanations for that, but they were all inferred from the limited background rather than spelled out. Their origin was as massively spread out energy waves that were the size of stars and worked at larger scales, they didn't need to react on a microsecond timescale. When they condensed down into something as small as they became, it concentrated and overlapped their energy multi dimensionally (in a similar way to enough mass in one spot creates a black hole) and that vast intellect was concentrated and brought out at 'human' scale. It would be like our brains being compressed down to an atomic scale so we could react to quantum reality from higher orders.

The concentration of their energy is also where a lot of their power came from, being in a single point rather than spread across millions of kms.

The consumption of bioenergy (they never ate souls in the oldcrons as the warp was anathema) was not for temporal power, it was basically an addiction. The unique EM signature of sentient life was like crack, it didn't give them any power it just tasted really good (although at a large enough scale consuming quintillions of lifeforms would eventually add up and that scale is what happened during the war in heaven). A sun was nutritious but flavourless. Their increase in power came mostly from eating each other, concentrating that power down into 4 individual c'tan rather than uncounted millions.

It was quite an interesting psychological study on the scale of consciousness and how changing it affected their sense of self and personality, making them more 'human' with cravings they didn't comprehend in their giant state. It's almost like they started in nirvana and fell from grace by being dragged down to the level of mortals and were forever tainted by it.

The system they built with their necron slaves was basically a giant crack factory, farming lifeforms to feed the need for that taste of strange. But now they were tainted by the mortal world they were also interfering with it in a way that wouldn't have occurred to them in their floaty glowy state. The need for pleasure now extended into machinating by the Deceiver, slaughter by the nightbringer, tech madness by the dragon etc.


Now you can find all sorts of things to change or improve in that area, but the concepts were there already. People not being able to tell the difference between a soul as a warp reflection of consciousness tethered to realspace by your mind and the literal EM field of a brain was the reason the confusion of c'tan eating souls happened.

I would have loved to see an evolution of that original story, rather than a total upending of it.

They could even still salvage all of this with the current paradigm by having the c'tan split themselves deliberately as a protective measure to ensure some of themself survived and the stasis tombs and unbound c'tan were never actually enslaved. The necrons in their hubris thought they had contained them but the c'tan were setting it all up for their return to the galactic stage.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Oh shoot. How did I not say imperial/chaos knights earlier? They're just... fundamentally flawed as a concept. They automatically bring a skew list to every game. Their very existence in the meta makes non-anti-tank units less desirable. If I had to cut a faction from the game, I'd absolutely cut both knight factions. And then someone would have to take the scissors from me before I reached the custodes.

(Knight lore is cool though. They seem like a great concept... for Titanicus or Legions or whatever.)

The only issue with that is that you also have to kill all the hopes and dreams of treadheads and their Armoured Companies also if you follow that train if thought.

Honestly, the game would benefit from some anti-skew rules for armies like that too. Knights are just extra annoying because they're skew lists by default. There are lots of ways to run a guard army without it being a skew list. The closest you can come to running a non-skew knight list is to use the grotmas detachmenet to take a handful of admech guys. (Who will generally be spending their time healing your knights thus making the durability issues of a skew list even more severe.)

I like freedom in army building, but it might be a good idea to frame skew lists as an "ask your opponent in advance" type thing. Normalize letting your opponent add a bunch of lascannons into his list last minute so that he can have a good matchup against your all-vehicles-all-the-time list.

But beyond the table, are there any forces you don't like reading about?

Groups that you can't imagine Black Library novels being written for?

I don't think there are any factions that can't have good stories written for them, but I think marines have had a lot of their more intuitive stories told a dozen times over at this point. We still get good, distinctive marine stories from time to time, but there's always like a 50% chance that a new marine novel is just going to be another copy+paste of,

"Brother! Grr. I hate these xenos-and-or-heretics, brother, but the very slight differences between the two of us annoy me, brother! Brother! I have fallen to chaos for my petty dickishness! Avenge me brother!"

Similarly, I just don't think custodes have a ton of interesting intuitive stories to tell in the first place.

 Overread wrote:
I really don't get why GW hasn't fleshed out Sisters of Silence at the very least in 30K

to be fair, they have a pretty sizable army in 30k. some weaknesses, like a lack of true heavy support, but there's a good amount of variety that can even support several different playstyles

models for that army? that's another issue

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

Tyel wrote:
My take on Votann is that they are just weirdly normal.

There's lots of stuff in their new fluff that could be played on to make them... idk, Grimdark. Or at least unique.

But the mini range - and army rules - is painfully "Dwarfs in Spaaace".

As examples:
"We are all clones" - it doesn't matter.
"We have self-aware robots" - it doesn't matter.
We obey/worship hyper advanced machine intelligences that are breaking down - eh... it doesn't matter.

My problem with them is they're not even dwarfs in space. Nothing about them tells me dwarfs in space. They're as much dwarfs as the elves were elves in that aweful witcher spinoff series. They're old scale Space Marines with runes and Tau guns.

I think Age of Wonders Planetfall did Space Dwarves aesthetics much better:



The new Squats look like someone found a bunch of generic 80s sci-fi toys and tried to make them into a faction.

Grey Knights- Annoy me as they dont belong in standard games. In lore they only appear when daemons are present. If no daemons are there, the Grey Knights are not showing up. Chaos Marines might make them perk their ears a bit but if they arent summoning daemons and are just doing mundane stuff, "Oh its just Night Lords flaying people, why are you calling us? Send the Astartes, we are busy." I liked them better many editions ago when they were an allied unit you could bring a squad of IF you were playing against daemons and it actually gave bonuses like reinforcements to the daemon player. Tanks? Thats the guards job, we dont carry anti-tank weapons.

Any faction where you pick their ability prior to a battle but after you see their list. I hate list tailoring and being able to see your opponent and go, "My army is anti-tank and gets lethals against tanks this game/round with everything, or anti-infantry etc...." is pretty broken. It should be if you pick X detachment then you get lethals vs X for the game before you see what your opponent is fielding.

 Hellebore wrote:

The system they built with their necron slaves was basically a giant crack factory, farming lifeforms to feed the need for that taste of strange. But now they were tainted by the mortal world they were also interfering with it in a way that wouldn't have occurred to them in their floaty glowy state. The need for pleasure now extended into machinating by the Deceiver, slaughter by the nightbringer, tech madness by the dragon etc.

Now you can find all sorts of things to change or improve in that area, but the concepts were there already. People not being able to tell the difference between a soul as a warp reflection of consciousness tethered to realspace by your mind and the literal EM field of a brain was the reason the confusion of c'tan eating souls happened.

But not just a conflation by the readers, there were numerous pieces published by GW saying that they ate "souls" and that the Necrons were "soulless" because their souls were eaten by the C'Tan. And in the Newcron lore that seems to be the entire grievance the Silent King has against the C'Tan, if the Necrons weren't "soulless" then everything would have turned out great. Necrons are immortal and powerful and retain their old minds and personality.

It doesn't help that there's no intuitive connection between wanting to experience the unique electric signature of a creature's brain and shooting them in the chest with a disintegration ray or cutting them into pieces with giant claws. Whatever it is that the C'Tan "feed" on is something they can apparently only consume by killing you, which definitely implies a warp-soul and not the electric patterns in their brain. It really feels like the original Necron lore was written by multiple people who weren't communicating with each other.

If the Oldcron lore were to be redone it would be better if the Necrons weren't trying to kill you, they were instead trying to entomb you in some sort of electro-coffin like The Matrix and put you in a ziggurat connected to a C'Tan. That would not only help to differentiate the C'Tan from the Chaos Gods but also distinguish the Necrons from the Tyranids which was sorely needed. Then if they wanted to keep the Silent King maybe he does just want to kill everyone out of spite for the C'Tan, so players can keep that angle if they prefer it.

 vipoid wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

Tyel wrote:
My take on Votann is that they are just weirdly normal.

There's lots of stuff in their new fluff that could be played on to make them... idk, Grimdark. Or at least unique.

But the mini range - and army rules - is painfully "Dwarfs in Spaaace".

As examples:
"We are all clones" - it doesn't matter.
"We have self-aware robots" - it doesn't matter.
We obey/worship hyper advanced machine intelligences that are breaking down - eh... it doesn't matter.

My problem with them is they're not even dwarfs in space. Nothing about them tells me dwarfs in space. They're as much dwarfs as the elves were elves in that aweful witcher spinoff series. They're old scale Space Marines with runes and Tau guns.

I think Age of Wonders Planetfall did Space Dwarves aesthetics much better:

Spoiler:

The new Squats look like someone found a bunch of generic 80s sci-fi toys and tried to make them into a faction.

Even Mantic's Forgefathers have a very clear Design language that makes you go: ah, it's space dwarfs. Votann are... something. Maybe GW simply shouldn't have presented them as successors to Squats but as something else entirely so you wouldn't wonder where the dwarfs are in that supposedly dwarf army. If they weren't interested in doing dwarfy stuff they should have just taken them as Demiurg and clear Tau allies with no connection to squats whatsoever.

I disagree with the idea that Votann isn't "dwarfy" enough and that their models should be these extreme Gimli caricatures that all have giant beards and are standing on anvils and drinking ale out of steins. Votann looks a lot more "dwarfy" than the Eldar look "elfy". If you were to show a Votann and an Eldar army to someone unfamiliar with 40k there is a decent chance they would figure out the Votann are supposed to be space dwarves but almost zero chance they would figure out the Eldar are supposed to be space elves. They would need to find one of the few Eldar models that isn't wearing a helmet and then closely look at its ears to get it.

So the Eldar shouldn't have guns they should have laser-bows. And none of them should wear helmets and their pointy ears should be at least 6" long. They should have leaf patterns all over their armor and their Warlocks should play psionic techno-harps in battle. Because they're supposed to be space elves and that means they need to be a pastiche of elf memes from D&D and Warcraft.

Yet that criticism is never levied against the Eldar because they're a long-standing faction that has developed its own identity which isn't just a pastiche of pop-culture elf memes. And that's what Votann should become, and could become with enough time and background lore fleshing them out.

Actually I'd love to see Eldar with superlong ears (done well). One thing I can argue against them is that, esp with their cone helmets, they really don't stand out enough as alien/nonhuman in 40K

But the Leagues of Votann are successors to the Squats. Real world and background, that’s exactly what they are.

A technologically proficient species doesn’t stand still for 10,000 years.

Certain technologies may well plateau, once you get to high efficiency. Like the scientific method and its resultant laws and theories, to replace say, FRL Travel, any alternative to that must perform the same task at least as well as the current method. That means speed, safety, reliability and energy consumption and what have you.

Yet when we compare the Ironhead Squats (newly covered in decent depth in Halls of the Ancients for Necromunda), a League which has existed largely in isolation from its contemporaries for 10,000 years, we see the difference.

They’ve been planetside for that period. And despite the challenges of living on Necromunda, those challenges don’t really change. This is different to the star faring Leagues, which will see comparatively rapid change in the pressures and challenges faced in mining the next world in their way. And as Necromunda has been, as such things are measured, relatively peaceful? Any potential enemies have also remained more or less set for the Ironhead, with the main change in 10,000 years being the Malstrain.

But they’re not everywhere on Necromunda. Wider spread than might be admitted, sure. But still largely confined to the ruins of Hive Secundus, with only the Jarland hold having regular run ins with them (and eventually falling).

And so, those twin barreled Autoguns and Bolters have remained plenty good enough for shredding anyone stupid enough to try and grab your riches. Especially when your Holds were originally built from your Bastion Starship. And yes, they’ve retained their Macro Weaponry. Is that speculation?

Halls of the Ancients wrote:

712 M32

Uranthi Silverhand, Lord of the Calypso Hive Cluster, attempts to conquer the Anglish after hearing of the wealth horaded within their holdfast. Riding atop a great tracked War Runner, Uranthi approaches the gate of the Anglish fortress, his thousands strong army at his back. He is met by the Charter Lord Horngir, who thanks him for his tribute of scrap and steel, before turning the Macro Guns of the Anglish bastion ship upon the startled gang

Given the Ironhead hold rights on Necromunda agreed with the Adeptus Terra (so not even the Imperial House can change that), and that their efforts help ensure the Tithe is met? There just aren’t many credible threats to the Ironhead as a whole. No gang has access to dedicated, purpose built and designed war machines. Certainly nothing that can dent a void ship in any meaningful manner.

Anyways, sorry. Got away with myself.

The Ironhead are Kin. Just Kin that haven’t had to rapidly adapt in the past 10,000 years in the way other, migratory Leagues have.

 Overread wrote:
Actually I'd love to see Eldar with superlong ears (done well). One thing I can argue against them is that, esp with their cone helmets, they really don't stand out enough as alien/nonhuman in 40K

I'm really not an Eldar fan. There are a lot of elements about them I do like, but the helmets really don't work for me at all.

Maybe I should add a caveat here: I have a small Votann army and I've only used the heads with beards (except for women obviously). I also have shovels and pickaxes on their backpacks and my Kahl has a power axe and I like the runic designs and the crests. So I do like the dwarfy elements in the range and I wouldn't want them to look like Primaris marines or something.

That said a lot of the Mantic range is going too far with it in my opinion. I don't want every helmet to have a stylized beard-plate, I don't need stylized beards on robots, and I don't want every single melee weapon to be a big mallet. I don't want a bunch of special characters with names like "Aleforge Minehammer" and I don't want a new unit of squats riding big floating anvils into battle. Basically I want them to stay what the Space Wolves were early on and not what the Space Wolves eventually turned into. A sci-fi army foremost with fantasy elements where they can comfortably fit.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

Tyel wrote:
My take on Votann is that they are just weirdly normal.

There's lots of stuff in their new fluff that could be played on to make them... idk, Grimdark. Or at least unique.

But the mini range - and army rules - is painfully "Dwarfs in Spaaace".

As examples:
"We are all clones" - it doesn't matter.
"We have self-aware robots" - it doesn't matter.
We obey/worship hyper advanced machine intelligences that are breaking down - eh... it doesn't matter.

My problem with them is they're not even dwarfs in space. Nothing about them tells me dwarfs in space. They're as much dwarfs as the elves were elves in that aweful witcher spinoff series. They're old scale Space Marines with runes and Tau guns.

I very much like the Votann, their lore is definitely Space Dwarf and their DAOT explorer theme is great, but the one thing I really don't like is the lack of Dwarf apparant on their miniatures. They barely have it, beyond their proportions. The weird thing with them is that the designers said they didn't want them to be "Dwarfs in Space", but that just comes across to me as them not really understanding what that even meant in the first place, because the Leagues...are Space Dwarfs. That's the whole point of them.

Beingt "Space Dwarfs" did not mean they to literally take the WHF designs and put them in 40k, gromril and chainmail and horned helmets and all, doing "X in Space" means to take the archetype and its key elements and put in a sci-fi suitable version and that's what the Eldar, Orks, Necrons, Ratlings etc do. The Leagues do that with their lore, but not so much the models. It's as if for some reason they thought Dwarfy beards were fantasy dwarf specific elements rather than just a part of the Dwarf archetype in general that should be present regardless of setting so removed them, making them feel less like the thing they're meant to be.

The background for LoV is pretty cool. I prefer the old Squat background but I'm aware it's probably purely nostalgia - I loved fantasy Dwarves and the idea of Dwarves in Space was really cool to me as a kid. I read the background section for the Squats in Codex Imperialis over and over.

But they did a good job of integrating, expanding and updating the background with the new book. I can't complain. They even folded the Demiurg idea into it in a clever way.

I don't really like the models that much, but they're not bad. I didn't like the old Squats that much either, model wise. I much prefer Mantic's take on Space Dwarves, I think the armoured Forgefathers look great and I don't mind the beards on the walkers and tanks. I'm likely in a minority there but it's great after so long with no Space Dwarves that we have such a variety to choose from now in hard plastic. We're in a proper golden age.

Deathguard. If they had a theme song it would be Filthy Gorgeous...their sculpts are possibly the best in the whole range but yee gods are they DISGUSTING!!!

 LunarSol wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Actually I'd love to see Eldar with superlong ears (done well). One thing I can argue against them is that, esp with their cone helmets, they really don't stand out enough as alien/nonhuman in 40K

I'm really not an Eldar fan. There are a lot of elements about them I do like, but the helmets really don't work for me at all.

Same.

It's a shame because DE do have some nice helmets - the Scourge ones, the Incubi ones, the Wych ones - basically all the ones that get away from the cone-head look.

Maybe that's the real reason DE are so eager to rise up the ranks. Would you want to spend the next thousand years going into battle dressed like a complete pillock?

funny thing is the cone helms work on Banshee. If they were all like that I think GW would be onto something but its just how the core guardians are so - basic with them

Maybe its just that its hard to escape from... 1990s nostalgia, but I've always loved the Eldar and yes, loved their pointy helmets. Give me that weird bug-eyed Farseer.

I think you'd pick out they are meant to be Space Elves pretty quicky - but the lore in the 2nd edition Codex was dense enough to make them their own thing rather than a carbon copy of WHFB.

I can sort of see the issue with LoV "model range" being between "Classical Dwarf" and "Slight Squat Mini-Marine". Some models suffer from this more than others. Maybe its moving towards "guys drinking while riding Anvils" - but I'd prefer if the Ironkin were more explicitly "Fantasy Golem" style minis.

But as I said my real issue the lore. "They are genetically programmed to do cliched dwarf things" - truly the greatest tragedy you could imagine for a race of not- exactly-dwarfs. "No, you see they have to upload their lives to the cloud, and they are running out of memory so they eventually won't be able to". Okay - so what happens if/when they can't do that? "Idk, they get a bit sad?"

I mean its not like if you die without a spirit stone - or you fail to keep yourself alive via grotesque acts of pain vampirism - then a Chaos god you brought into existence will drink your soul.

Tyel wrote:
Maybe its just that its hard to escape from... 1990s nostalgia, but I've always loved the Eldar and yes, loved their pointy helmets. Give me that weird bug-eyed Farseer.

I think you'd pick out they are meant to be Space Elves pretty quicky

Let's assume I know nothing about the faction & haven't read any of their lore yet.
So unless I see a picture or a mini of some without their helms, how exactly am I supposed to do that? Am I supposed to maybe divine that from their name? Eldar/Eldari sharing the EL with the word Elf??

And yes, I agree, the Farseer in his baroque bug-eyed helm IS a great model.

ccs wrote:
Let's assume I know nothing about the faction & haven't read any of their lore yet.
So unless I see a picture or a mini of some without their helms, how exactly am I supposed to do that? Am I supposed to maybe divine that from their name? Eldar/Eldari sharing the EL with the word Elf??

Kind of?

I want to link photos - but I can't see a way to do it without them turning out huge. And not sure what the forum policy is even if you hide them with Spoilers.

So you'll just have to imagine.

If you walked into a GW in around 1995 and were faced with
[2nd edition plastic Guardian box where the Guardians have tall pointy weirdly skull/angler fish style helmets and Lasguns] then okay - I can see why you'd potentially not instantly get it. (Although I think if you put those models next to say 2nd edition Marines, Orks, Guard, Tyranids... they'd seem further along the "elf spectrum".)

But if you looked up and saw
[2nd Edition Eldar Codex] then I think you would start to think "these are the elves of the setting" from the cover alone - never mind anything else inside it.
I feel this is especially true if you then turned to the other side of the GW store and saw
[4th Edition High Elf Army Book]. Which would I think make certain.. commonalities of how GW make Elves/Eldar obvious. (Its also perhaps bias, because that book probably influenced me more on "how fantasy elves are" than say frolicking in Lothlorien or Legolas in particular. (There's probably a wider point to be made separating elves into high/wood varieties here.)

Old Rangers are I guess cheating as half of them don't have helmets - but the ones that do felt very "elf like" to me. Warlocks always seemed very elf-like in terms of their proportions/robes. I guess Dark Reapers not so much - but most of the Aspect Warriors fall somewhere on the elf spectrum. I feel especially so once you put them next to Marines/Orks/Guard etc.

I remember my Mom's least favorite 40k faction came from Necromunda. House Cawdor models with their pointy hoods looked like "Klansmen," thus that game was off the table for the foreseeable future.

So I went back to 40k. Where to this day, she refers to the game as: "That game with the tanks."

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I remember my Mom's least favorite 40k faction came from Necromunda. House Cawdor models with their pointy hoods looked like "Klansmen," thus that game was off the table for the foreseeable future.

Presumably you mean Redemptionists.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I remember my Mom's least favorite 40k faction came from Necromunda. House Cawdor models with their pointy hoods looked like "Klansmen," thus that game was off the table for the foreseeable future.

So I went back to 40k. Where to this day, she refers to the game as: "That game with the tanks."

Ha my mum was pretty cool about not banning things she disapproved of unless it was full on just not at all suitable for children but i remember getting some sideways looks when i was reading a magazine with a pic of the old boob harpies and after I'd painted up my witch elves.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

If the Oldcron lore were to be redone it would be better if the Necrons weren't trying to kill you, they were instead trying to entomb you in some sort of electro-coffin like The Matrix and put you in a ziggurat connected to a C'Tan. That would not only help to differentiate the C'Tan from the Chaos Gods but also distinguish the Necrons from the Tyranids which was sorely needed. Then if they wanted to keep the Silent King maybe he does just want to kill everyone out of spite for the C'Tan, so players can keep that angle if they prefer it.

Except the OldCron fluff had that covered. The very last page of the 3rd ed codex is a short story detailing an Eldar vision of what would happen if the Necrons win; all life in the galaxy enslaved and bred to feed the C'tan.
The idea that they are just metal nids is a gross oversimplification.
The nids just want to eat you.
The Chaos gods want your worship to fuel their power.
Necrons want to farm you for eternity, and no warp entity, be it the Emperor or the Dark Gods, will save you because the C'tan will seal off the warp for good. Absolute omnicide was never the Necron goal. The idea what they wanted to kill everything is a meme.

As for Necrons not having personality, the third ed codex also mentions that Lords still have some and Dawn of War had Pariahs and Necron lords that could speak. Just because they aren't mustache twirling skeletor wannabes who steal anything that's not nailed down or Don Quixote knock-offs doesn't mean they were completely mindless.

Pariahs weren't just bodyguards either, they were meant to be next generation of necron based on human stock, that they were evolving and becoming something more terrifying. That's another aspect I see a lot of people miss. They weren't just a bunch of spooky robot skeletons, they were a threat that was slowly waking, growing in power, and more terrifyingly, evolving and adapting to kill and subjugate humans more effectively.
Hell, the Necrons would raid vessels and use their phase tech to steal organs for study, leaving victims with no visible signs of injury until an autopsy.

The Wardcron fluff is dumb because the C'tan are still lords of reality; having advanced tech (that the C'tan provided) doesn't help if they could just, I dunno, open a space rift or manipulate time so that the attack has a 0% probability of doing anything or never happened to begin with. The Enslaver plague made much more sense because it literally starved them into hiding and involved their greatest weakest; the Warp.

Not to mention that the C'tan gave the Silent King control of the entire Necron race for...reasons. With no caveats to ensure loyalty. You meant to tell me that a race of incredibly cruel, vampiric eldritch horrors are just going to give away control to one of their slaves? And not expect the possibile betrayal? Really? That's not hubris, that's just being incredibly stupid.
Hubris would be not expecting the Silent King or even the Eldar (to rob them of their armies) to hack into the command protocols and seize them that way. Just giving away protocols or whatever they are called is just an act of cosmic idiocy.

There's a reason why Ward was so thoroughly mocked back then. He's not a good writer and everything he comes up with reeks of poor quality fan fiction with not much thought of what the implications could be.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I remember my Mom's least favorite 40k faction came from Necromunda. House Cawdor models with their pointy hoods looked like "Klansmen," thus that game was off the table for the foreseeable future.

Presumably you mean Redemptionists.

Yeah, my mistake.

Yea maybe Slaanesh should be on the list for me here, as an army which is very cool... but impossible to collect without being branded as a deviant for painting all the naked demon women XD

Just collect Khorne as well then you're balanced as you've painted all the naked demon hermaphrodites of Slaanesh and all the naked men of Khorne

Eldar will always be special to me, as in the early days they were a very striking army, one arguably best suited to the more artistic gamer.

Where Marines, Guard and Orks tend to have a set, primary colour set? Thanks to Aspect Warriors, an Eldar army was always pretty colourful by comparison. Not a mind melting Slaaneshi clash of colours. But a shared scheme for Guardians, flowing robes for Psykers, a big burny daemon, and uniquely schemed Aspects has always looked great, and distinctive, from across the table.

I’ll always remain miffed we’re yet to get anything quite like Realms of Chaos and Waaaargh! The Orks covering the Eldar. I’d even settle for a single volume covering Craftworld, Commorite, Exodite and Harlequin societies, if one each is too much to ask.

I've always never really liked elves in fantasy settings, and it's no different for Eldar IMO. So they get a runner up honorable mention because even though I'm not a personal fan of them I wouldn't remove from the setting since they're a faction I like to dislike.

Space Wolves on the other hand are a different story. Out of all the marine factions, I feel like they're one of the marine sub-factions that got flanderized the most with all the wolf stuff, they're incredible hypocrites for a lot of the things they did in the Heresy and in 40k they're not much better since GW moved away from badass vikings to Wolfy McWolf Face. Also doesn't help that outside the Wolf Guard/Long Fangs that their aesthetic is not great IMO and with the tacticool shift to primaris I'm not sure how well GW will do to update them in primaris armour given how iffy the new Sanguinary Guard look.

Space Wolves was my army back in 2nd edition before they got silly. I just couldn't bring myself to use them now no matter how cool I thought they were before.


My least favorite in the 40K scale is the Knights (and other super heavies). They are great in an Epic scale game but seem completely counter to the 40K scale and are game breaking. But then I've always favoured the smaller infantry skirmish side of things than carparkhammer so maybe I'm an outlier.


Dishonourable mention goes to Orks - I love the wackiness of orcs and goblins in general, and love painting me some grots. But somehow that fun didn't carry over into 40K so you've just got a stupid, clunky horde army that just feels lacking somehow.



I won't say I dislike Space Marines either, I just feel somewhat underwhelmed and oversaturated with them. There's no drama about super soldiers who can withstand anything and have super super variants and 4 million captains. That's more of a 40K scale creep thing in general though.

I notice that no one has mentioned:

Sisters of Battle, Alien Dinosaurs Tyranids, or Black Legion.

They either blend into the background or everyone is fine with them.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I notice that no one has mentioned:

Sisters of Battle, Alien Dinosaurs Tyranids, or Black Legion.

They either blend into the background or everyone is fine with them.

Sisters pretty much took the mantle of what space marine should be : gothic space fanatics. They fit seemlessly into the historical background of 40k.

Tyranids are the only monstrous looking race, and while some of their design are not that good, they are very evocative of eldritch horrors from outer space, and pretty much the only faction occupying that design space in 40K.

Black Legion are the poster boys chaos marines, and they embody the setting perfectly. Their miniature refresh is fantastic, which helps.

I 'd argue that Eldar, visually fit seemelessly into the 40k background as the clean faction, but it is a shame that they have been relegated to not-really-protagonists and their lore evolve very slowly, if at all, as a result.

Eldar spent a long time with old models and GW doesn't push old armies (outside of Old World) until they get modern models. So yeah I figure with Eldar now updated to an almost entirely new model range we might well start to see them do something.

It also hinges a lot on what the next editions protagonist non-marine faction will be (since its on a 3 year cycle)

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I notice that no one has mentioned:

Sisters of Battle, Alien Dinosaurs Tyranids, or Black Legion.

They either blend into the background or everyone is fine with them.

Well, I thought about mentioning tyranids because I find they're probably the ugliest range in the game, a poor man's Giger Aliens with guns in their hands... but then again I bought GF9 Giger Aliens and use them as tyranids, so there's nothing about their background or rules I dislike, it's just the official models, and even they can shine with proper paintjobs (so... not GW's ugly Leviathan scheme).

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Alien Dinosaurs Tyranids,

Tyranids have the refreshing distinction of being the only non-humanoid faction represented on the tabletop. What's more, they're a different *scale*. Everybody else is two arms, two legs, and roughly human sized.

It's a low bar for a real alien diversity in 40k, but Tyranids are at least making a go for it.