Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

At the risk of derailing the thread into another Sisters rant:

Please stop lumping us in with the Inquisition. We really aren't an Inquisition army. If anything, the Ordo Hereticus are supplementing our own efforts to root out heresy, witchcraft and mutation - that's the reason we aid them so readily, after all.

 Tower75 wrote:

SYKOJAK wrote:

But to the OP, I do have a question. If it seems there are too few opposing armies to fight against, have you thought about expanding your travel to see more varied army builds?

Apologies, but can you explain? Sorry, I'm being a douche, I just don't get the question.

Also, apologies to all if I've come across as a prat, it's not in my nature to be a shitzzy, forum douche. I was genuinely just voicing my opinion that I just find it odd that most races seem to be Space Marines. I just find it strange.

No apologies needed. Let me rephrase my question in another manner. How big is your wh40k group that you play most of your games with?

If your local WH40K is only 4 players, and all but 1 player plays some form of Space Marine equivalent codex, then yes it will seem at first,
that most players/codices are all the same. that is when you really got to look at the codices in question, to see the sublties from codex
to codex.

In my local group of friends and family we have 7+ players with no repeats. IG (me), Chaos Space Marines, Space Marines,
Eldar, Dark Eldar, Tyranids, and Grey Knights, with Necrons also having a chance of showing up. That is alot of variety compared to a
group of 4 players, where 3 of them are playing from the regular Space Marines codex and 1 Chaos Space Marine player.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
At the risk of derailing the thread into another Sisters rant:

Please stop lumping us in with the Inquisition. We really aren't an Inquisition army. If anything, the Ordo Hereticus are supplementing our own efforts to root out heresy, witchcraft and mutation - that's the reason we aid them so readily, after all.

Fair enough! You are the militant arm of the Eccliarachy.

 Tower75 wrote:

True, but please see my additions. The addition of a few unique units in, say, Grey Knighs, or Chaos Space Marines doesn't make them a unique, stand alone race, well, it shouldn't anyway.
.

Why not? Just because you don't want to have it that way, shouldn't mean that's the way the rest of the world sees it. Power-armour and Bolter a piece of equipment used by various factions for the game, just as a sword and shield are pieces of equipment used by multiple factions in Fantasy.

Also, the "brother-war" / "civil-war" between Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines is the heart of the 40K setting. They've included a few things like Space Elves, non-Romulans, non-Borg and Giger-rip-off stuff to appease the more generalist sci-fi crowd, but those factions are hardly integral to the game.

As an outsider here I just have to chime in, space marines are the same army. Sure they will play differently but it's still the same stat lines, the same equipment and the same vehicles bar a couple here and there that are unique to each dex but if you are comparing the differences between a ravenwing list and a vanilla marine list and the differences between a Brettonian list and an Empire list from fantasy the idea that marine codices are different becomes laughable.

GW having made an improvement on it doesn't eliminate the original problem, which is that no matter what you do they are still stat lines of 4 for everything with a 3+ save.

I think that part of the reason for this is that in 40K, the "protagonist" is very much the Imperium. That's what a lot of the fluff is focused on, and what a lot of the material is about. Though I'm no expert on WHF, it seems to be a more balanced affair, with none of the races really taking the role of "protagonist", possibly resulting in a more diverse focus within the available armies.

 Troike wrote:
I think that part of the reason for this is that in 40K, the "protagonist" is very much the Imperium. That's what a lot of the fluff is focused on, and what a lot of the material is about. Though I'm no expert on WHF, it seems to be a more balanced affair, with none of the races really taking the role of "protagonist", possibly resulting in a more diverse focus within the available armies.

That is pretty much exactly how it works with fantasy.
I can count on one hand the number of books that star skaven but it still outnumbers the amount I can think of starring tau.

 jonolikespie wrote:
but if you are comparing the differences between a ravenwing list and a vanilla marine list and the differences between a Brettonian list and an Empire list from fantasy the idea that marine codices are different becomes laughable.

But that's not the reason to have different Codexes. They are not based on "in-game fluff", but on providing a best-possible spread for the player base.

If you have .. say ... 1.000.000 Warhammer 40K players, of which 600.000 play army A, 200.000 play army B and 100.000 each play army C and army D, you need to merge army C & D and split army A into two different armies of roughly similar appeal to split the huge block of players that do army A.

In-game fluff is irrelevant to a balanced spread of armies for a given wargame. What matters is that you spread the player-base as evenly as possible, without any one book being overtly dominant, and without any one exotic fringe book hogging too much development time for 3 or 4 special snowflake players at the expense of the rest of the game's fan-base.

Even as a CSM player I feel that most SM are pretty close compared to things like Brettonian and Empire.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
"Development Time". It takes time to update all those armies and just adding more means more time spent updating armies which means longer and longer between books.

Yep, and I have yet to see an Edition of 40k where every army book was brought into the current edition.

right now, the last 3 tournaments I have been too, there have only been 3-4 marine players (including GK's, but not chaos) at each one... often only 1-2.

I love this edition, marines are rare, while I play xenos most of the time (YAY!)

just as much choice in 40k as in fantasy, and much more then in most games I think. remember, half of what makes your army unique is how you fluff it up, the rules are just a framework, and while those "guard" allies with your chaos/demons list might technically be the same "army" as the good guys, in imagination land, they are EVIL TRAiTOR HERITIC GUARD!