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The Imperium is certainly a hodgepodge of a variety of different ideas, as befits a kitchen sink sci fi setting. It is probably closest to the Holy Roman Empire, IN SPAAAAAAACE!
But it uses fascist eagles in it's iconography. The Commisars are dressed up as Gestapo agents. It "purges" mutants and heretics. It wipes out entire planetary populations. It's foreign policy is explicitly genocidal. It worships it's leader as a literal God. It manufactures a state of constant war. It rails against free thought. It suppresses the individual in favour of the collective in all things.

It is obvious that from the start the Imperium were not meant to be "the good guys" and were more of a pretty dark political satire, and what was being satirised was in many cases fascist regimes. There is a good bit of winding up socialism in there too, what with the vast bureacracy of the Administratum and so on, it really is a grab bag of concepts.

What I find funny is that people really feel this horrible organisation are "the good guys" because "the ends justify the means". I mean that is proper villain talk right there. And modern Games Workshop (or at least, the Matt Ward era) seemed to not "get" that the Imperium were the baddies, and tried to write them as the heroes, which resulted in some pretty uncomfortable, dissonant writing.

It goes along with the Flanderisation of Chaos from a bunch of anarchist punks to MurderMurder from Planet SlaughterKill and his band of Bloodfethers.

GW forgetting that the Imperium weren't the good guys was the sole reason behind all the bad writting we have the past 10 years.

Commissars have more in common with the Soviet Union. The summary execution of retreating soldiers and penal legions is a direct reference to Order 227, and the the term Commissar is direct reference to the USSR's Commissariat.

And that twin headed eagle isn't fascist, its Byzantine. Hitler wasn't the first to use eagles as part of his iconography.



I mean, you're not wrong, the IoM are not the good guys and they take plenty of inspiration of various despotic real world governments and empires.

Its just that it's not mostly fascist or mostly communist, its a bit of everything. You got a bit of Third Reich, a bit of the Eastern Roman Empire, a bit of the USSR, a bit of the Holy Roman Empire, a bit of the Western Empire, a bit of the British Empire (oh hello Praetorians!) etc.

Chikout wrote:
It's kind of weird that the article ignores the new ceo, the community site, the community interaction, the refocusing on competitive events, warhammer TV etc. Whether it is actually meaningful in the long term it has caused a big shift in customer perception of GW.

It's a bit of a puff piece from a guy who used to play, then dropped out, and came back recently. So, not to be taken too seriously.

Of course the points you are make are very true. GW was actually in pretty dire straits a few years ago.

The new guy has turned the company around partly by following my advice, and also by the significant fall in the value of the £ in the past two and a half years, which raises GW profits significantly.

 Da Boss wrote:
The Imperium is certainly a hodgepodge of a variety of different ideas, as befits a kitchen sink sci fi setting. It is probably closest to the Holy Roman Empire, IN SPAAAAAAACE!
But it uses fascist eagles in it's iconography. The Commisars are dressed up as Gestapo agents. It "purges" mutants and heretics. It wipes out entire planetary populations. It's foreign policy is explicitly genocidal. It worships it's leader as a literal God. It manufactures a state of constant war. It rails against free thought. It suppresses the individual in favour of the collective in all things.

It is obvious that from the start the Imperium were not meant to be "the good guys" and were more of a pretty dark political satire, and what was being satirised was in many cases fascist regimes. There is a good bit of winding up socialism in there too, what with the vast bureacracy of the Administratum and so on, it really is a grab bag of concepts.

What I find funny is that people really feel this horrible organisation are "the good guys" because "the ends justify the means". I mean that is proper villain talk right there. And modern Games Workshop (or at least, the Matt Ward era) seemed to not "get" that the Imperium were the baddies, and tried to write them as the heroes, which resulted in some pretty uncomfortable, dissonant writing.

It goes along with the Flanderisation of Chaos from a bunch of anarchist punks to MurderMurder from Planet SlaughterKill and his band of Bloodfethers.

Commisars are a direct reference to the Soviet Commisary, who fulfilled much the same purpose in real life as Commisars do in 40k by ensuring political and ideological homogeneity and the loyalty of individual military units to the State. There are just as many references to Communism as Fascism in the Imperium. It certainly is authoritarian and genocidal, but those are not synonyms for fascism, they're characteristics of centralized power blocks in general throughout human history.

I do agree that they're not supposed to be the good guys and that it's way less interesting when they're represented as such, especially when the conflict between the Imperium and Chaos is shown in a black and white context.

I think I have a broader definition of fascism than some of you, or perhaps the fascist elements stand out more to me, but I am willing to accept (because it is obvious!) that the Imperium is a hodge podge of elements which includes communism and feudalism as well as fascism. To me, those fascist elements always stood out more clearly as the most evil parts of the Imperium (the eugenics, the genocide of those deemed different, and the constant and total war).

I quite like that the Imperium can be many different things because it makes it a much more interesting game setting with a wider appeal.

 Galas wrote:
GW forgetting that the Imperium weren't the good guys was the sole reason behind all the bad writting we have the past 10 years.

Yeah, pretty much.

Okay guys, let's take the "What is the Imperium really?" discussion elsewhere.

Can we talk about other things the article gets wrong? Because this also stood out: "ridiculous, over-the-top pastiches, created by people who were bored and angry". The people who created Warhammer and Warhammer 40k never struck me as being very angry people channeling their rage. In fact they seemed to like creating rather tongue-in-cheek, even silly stuff.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Can we talk about other things the article gets wrong? Because this also stood out: "ridiculous, over-the-top pastiches, created by people who were bored and angry". The people who created Warhammer and Warhammer 40k never struck me as being very angry people channeling their rage. In fact they seemed to like creating rather tongue-in-cheek, even silly stuff.

Yeah, that is a pretty big gross misunderstanding behind the creators' intent. They didn't make the setting because they were angry nor bored, they made the setting because they were having a laugh.
How could you look at Inspector Obiwan Clouseau and think "man, whoever created this guy must have been fething pissed"?
Bad journalism is bad.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Can we talk about other things the article gets wrong? Because this also stood out: "ridiculous, over-the-top pastiches, created by people who were bored and angry". The people who created Warhammer and Warhammer 40k never struck me as being very angry people channeling their rage. In fact they seemed to like creating rather tongue-in-cheek, even silly stuff.

That's how British people show anger.

Source: every British comedian from the 80s. See also; Spitting Image.

Removed - BrookM

As for the angry creators? I mean obiwan clouseau, seems more like a joke someone would make for jokings sake not when someone is angry.
On the other hand gazhkull thraka is supposed to satirically represent Thatcher, and ofcourse a whole lot of other shenanigans that especially in earlier editions were found.
Orkz btw were brown once, pithhelmeted laslock guardsmen existed, etc.
The Thing is 40k started out as a satire and still is in many ways, "the end justifies the means" behaviour of all parties involved parodies perfectly real world utopian ideologies, etc.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
It "purges" mutants and heretics. It wipes out entire planetary populations. It's foreign policy is explicitly genocidal. It worships it's leader as a literal God. It manufactures a state of constant war. It rails against free thought. It suppresses the individual in favour of the collective in all things.

And as already stated, that's far too limited a description of the Imperium. There is so much variety in the planets and their methods of government (assuming they even have government at all) that simply saying "Imperium = Fascist" doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what they are.

I think considering the scope and target audience of the article, it serves as a description.

 BrookM wrote:
Okay guys, let's take the "What is the Imperium really?" discussion elsewhere.

I'm loving all the references to Bob Mortimer's Athletico Mince podcast in the comments section, Roy Hodgson and the Crystal Palace boys playing Warhammer is one of the funniest things that I've heard in recent times!

Crimson wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Primaris to space marine what marine is to human

I don't think that is true. In the art the Primaris are only a tiny bit larger than old marines, and when you compare the models to the newer non-primaris marine models such as Death Guard or BSF Black Legion, they're only slightly taller. Compared to GWs normal humans, Primaris models are about seven and half feet tall, eight at most.

How about non-primaris marines who are not chaos? Are those also bigger? It feels to me like GW is size adjusting chaos marines to be comparable to primaris (influence of chaos over 10000 years, blahblah) while slowly phasing out anything that fits the old "normal" marine sizes so that at some point in the future all Marines will be Primaris sized.

Not Online!!! wrote:
As for the angry creators? I mean obiwan clouseau, seems more like a joke someone would make for jokings sake not when someone is angry.
On the other hand gazhkull thraka is supposed to satirically represent Thatcher, and ofcourse a whole lot of other shenanigans that especially in earlier editions were found.
Orkz btw were brown once, pithhelmeted laslock guardsmen existed, etc.
The Thing is 40k started out as a satire and still is in many ways, "the end justifies the means" behaviour of all parties involved parodies perfectly real world utopian ideologies, etc.

I think it was satire a long time ago, then went grimdark over the top satire, and then started taking the idea of grimdark way too serious. There's not much left of the early funny/joke satire.

A surprisingly good article from the Guardian. What's most interesting to me is the note about how GW's steamrolling its competition, and the fact that GW is 'press-shy'.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Commissars have more in common with the Soviet Union. The summary execution of retreating soldiers and penal legions is a direct reference to Order 227, and the the term Commissar is direct reference to the USSR's Commissariat.

This is a historical myth. Soviet 'Commissars' (Commissar also referred to many posts, what you're looking for is NKVD) did not have the power to 'summarily' execute soldiers. Blocking Detachments were used after Order 227 to ensure soldiers could not retreat without permission. Officers who were found to have ordered retreats without permission could be court marshalled and shot (something that would happen in any army, and still does to this day).

Those blocking detachments were authorized to execute retreating soldiers too

b) Form within the limits of each army 3 to 5 well-armed defensive squads (up to 200 persons in each), and put them directly behind unstable divisions and require them in case of panic and scattered withdrawals of elements of the divisions to shoot in place panic-mongers and cowards and thus help the honest soldiers of the division execute their duty to the Motherland;

It is true that Order 227 doesn't authorize soviet commissars to execute on sight, though it did give them permission to remove commanders from their posts to be court martialed at a later date.

3. Commanders and commissars of corps and divisions should;

a) Unconditionally remove from their posts commanders and commissars of regiments and battalions who have accepted unwarranted withdrawal of their troops without the order of the corps or division commander, take from them their orders and medals and route them to military councils of fronts for court martial;

One could say that the Imperial Commissar simply skips the trial aspect of a court martial and goes straight to the shooting.

40k tends to copy people's perception of history rather than what actually happened, anyway, so the fact that Soviet commissars didn't actually shoot retreating soldiers themselves doesn't really matter. The inspiration is still there.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Those blocking detachments were authorized to execute retreating soldiers too

b) Form within the limits of each army 3 to 5 well-armed defensive squads (up to 200 persons in each), and put them directly behind unstable divisions and require them in case of panic and scattered withdrawals of elements of the divisions to shoot in place panic-mongers and cowards and thus help the honest soldiers of the division execute their duty to the Motherland;

It is true that Order 227 doesn't authorize soviet commissars to execute on sight, though it did give them permission to remove commanders from their posts to be court martialed at a later date.

3. Commanders and commissars of corps and divisions should;

a) Unconditionally remove from their posts commanders and commissars of regiments and battalions who have accepted unwarranted withdrawal of their troops without the order of the corps or division commander, take from them their orders and medals and route them to military councils of fronts for court martial;

One could say that the Imperial Commissar simply skips the trial aspect of a court martial and goes straight to the shooting.

40k tends to copy people's perception of history rather than what actually happened, anyway, so the fact that Soviet commissars didn't actually shoot retreating soldiers themselves doesn't really matter. The inspiration is still there.

Blocking Detachments did have the right - the extent to which they executed it (no pun intended) isn't really well known - while '''''''''historical''''''''' films like Enemy at the Gates which is written as if straight from the pages of some Prussian Junkers memoirs have muddled the image.

It's undeniable 40k takes from it though - which is unfortunate because it perpetrates a historical myth based partly in post-war German apologist literature. Ironically what might be more fitting for the Imperial Guard would be something that became commonplace in late-war Germany, where Heer and Waffen SS soldiers would take it upon themselves to act as judge, jury and executioner of any man they found behind the lines without official sanction.

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
I like how Spikeybits fell ver their indignation so fast they managed to miss the humour and context in the article.

How can anyone continue to insist Warmachine isn't dying because no one has stats ? PP themselves has dumped stock on customers via mystery boxes twice in 6 months at massive discount m numerous online retailers have had massive discounts and clearance etc

Spikeybits lost all credibility when they went on a personal crusade against GW because they weren't picked to beta test 8th Ed.

 EnTyme wrote:

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
I like how Spikeybits fell ver their indignation so fast they managed to miss the humour and context in the article.

How can anyone continue to insist Warmachine isn't dying because no one has stats ? PP themselves has dumped stock on customers via mystery boxes twice in 6 months at massive discount m numerous online retailers have had massive discounts and clearance etc

Spikeybits lost all credibility when they went on a personal crusade against GW because they weren't picked to beta test 8th Ed.

Wait really? Is there any source to that claim?

Blocking Detachments were also composed of roughly 500 of a formation's worst soldiers and were expected to police six or seven thousand soldats.

In reality they rounded up malingerers. That's it.

The rest is just the usual anti-Soviet nonsense that gets passed off as history in the Colonies.

Something I love about playing with my Night Lords legion is that they have it coming when they're smeared across the board in a bloody streak by a passing Knight or whatever. Playing the bad guys means them getting horribly killed isn't so bad.

Kindly take the Officio Prefectus and historical discussion elsewhere.

 blood reaper wrote:

 EnTyme wrote:

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
I like how Spikeybits fell ver their indignation so fast they managed to miss the humour and context in the article.

How can anyone continue to insist Warmachine isn't dying because no one has stats ? PP themselves has dumped stock on customers via mystery boxes twice in 6 months at massive discount m numerous online retailers have had massive discounts and clearance etc

Spikeybits lost all credibility when they went on a personal crusade against GW because they weren't picked to beta test 8th Ed.

Wait really? Is there any source to that claim?

Well, shortly after 8th ed. dropped, the owner of Spikey Bits went on an anti-GW rant on his podcast, everything focusing on how much better 8th Ed. would have been if he'd been one of the beta testers. Since then, the site's coverage of everything GW does has been notably more negative. If you want evidence, just look at how much attention they gave to the whack job who tried to sue GW under anti-trust laws. Every article about it seemed so hopeful that the guy would succeed.

Well, maybe Spikey Bits is just trying to be more like the big mainstream media outlets.

 Da Boss wrote:
The Imperium is certainly a hodgepodge of a variety of different ideas, as befits a kitchen sink sci fi setting. It is probably closest to the Holy Roman Empire, IN SPAAAAAAACE!
But it uses fascist eagles in it's iconography. The Commisars are dressed up as Gestapo agents. It "purges" mutants and heretics. It wipes out entire planetary populations. It's foreign policy is explicitly genocidal. It worships it's leader as a literal God. It manufactures a state of constant war. It rails against free thought. It suppresses the individual in favour of the collective in all things.

It is obvious that from the start the Imperium were not meant to be "the good guys" and were more of a pretty dark political satire, and what was being satirised was in many cases fascist regimes. There is a good bit of winding up socialism in there too, what with the vast bureacracy of the Administratum and so on, it really is a grab bag of concepts.

What I find funny is that people really feel this horrible organisation are "the good guys" because "the ends justify the means". I mean that is proper villain talk right there. And modern Games Workshop (or at least, the Matt Ward era) seemed to not "get" that the Imperium were the baddies, and tried to write them as the heroes, which resulted in some pretty uncomfortable, dissonant writing.

It goes along with the Flanderisation of Chaos from a bunch of anarchist punks to MurderMurder from Planet SlaughterKill and his band of Bloodfethers.

This.

I liked the article, sure it got a few things wrong here and there. However it is nice to see that GW have managed to turn around from where they were a few years ago to where they are now. So many highstreet retailers have recently gone, GW bucked that trend. GW do very little advertising, they don't have anymore TV adverts, and they no longer sell their products in Argos. That they can do this and still prosper is brilliant.

My only annoyance with the article is that I am far from Middle-class (North English Working Class), so it isn't just for the Middle class. However I guess that was meant as a joke and not to be taken seriously.

I thought the article was quite lazy and out dated in its views of GW. I would suggest that the writer had done no research, other then to walk into his local store and chat to the red shirt and locals, as he failed to mention key points in their store growth or GW’s improved communication with the hobby community. It also offers no answer to its title headline. It felt as though it was written for people who play, or once played, as anyone outside the hobby would be lost in the terminology but still left wondering how games workshop conquered wargaming.