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Not so long ago two books came out.

One of them made people on the internet flip their beards and go silly, perhaps veins popped out of their necks as they feared templates of death would rain from the sky and kill their beloved super unit.

Who knows?

Another book came out, and was mostly ignored.

The former book was of course "Escalation" the latter being "Stronghold Assault"

Most people for some odd reason felt these books were not standard 40k rules. Nowhere within the book does it say it is optional, albeit there is a section of optional rules within stronghold assault, just as nowhere under the flier rules for Death from the skies does it say optional [outside of dogfighting], just as nowhere in the Space Marine, Chaos Daemon, Tau, Eldar, Farsight, Iyanden, etc codex does it say optional.

These books were even printed and sold at stores, unlike dataslates, where you can purchase all of the other non optional standard 40k books.

Some people have stated that these rules should be optional because these models have no place in 40k. Prior to 6th edition many people made the same statements about fliers, which were only found in Apocalypse at that time, and are now found in standard 40k.

I am not going to try and discuss with anyone why these rules should be standard, they are standard. There is no basis of argument of whether the core contents of Escalation is optional or not, or Stronghold Assault for that matter.

Rather I would like to propose the idea that a large amount of the community [online at least] had such nerd rage that these rules came out, that they wanted them to be outside of standard 40k and optional.

GW however I propose felt a different way, they want the community to accept it and move on as they are now part of the direction of 40k.

I propose the Knights were sculpted and developed for the sole purpose of ending this sentiment among the internet community.

GW knew that releasing a model, without mentioning Escalation, that was available to all imperial factions [almost every person that plays 40k] and uses rules out of the Escalation book, without mentioning Escalation, would allow them to subvert the thoughts of the vein popping out of neck internet angry 40kers and slowly corrupt them and bring them into the empire of what 40k has become.

I further propose that Jervis Johnson is indeed a sith lord, and this was all his plot.

Completely agree that Escalation is, RAW, not optional, however I think it's a bit early to be making these statements about the Knights. We don't know who they can ally with, where they fit into the FOC, whether they are an Escalation unit or not, etc. etc.

Seems a really silly decision to hold back this information to me, as I'm not buying one until I know my Sisters can use it.

I wouldn't doubt it. I mean with Knights being a codex on their own, it's that much harder to say "no superheavies" because what if I had a Knight army (however it ends up working)? You'd preclude me from games or tournaments because you don't like my army... might as well say "No Tau" or "No Eldar" since those armies are broken too. I think the Knights were GW's way of saying "We don't care if you like it or not, it's here so deal with it" by making it that much harder to limit, in the same vein as Flyers are now - crazy broken but hard to limit since they're so ingrained into the "core" rules.

That said though, I think GW is making yet another mistake and in their arrogance just dismissing complaints with "tough, deal with it" instead of fixing the issues. Superheavies are broken. D-Weapons are broken. Escalation has no place in 40k. Instead of seeing that though, GW is just trying to force it on everyone.

blaktoof wrote:Rather I would like to propose the idea that a large amount of the community [online at least] had such nerd rage that these rules came out, that they wanted them to be outside of standard 40k and optional.

Well... yeah. When 40k changes, you either change what you play, or you are no longer playing 40k.

It doesn't mean that everyone will follow along with the changes, of course, nor does it mean that everyone will go out and buy new stuff to play with new rules. Nor does the existence of knights, of course, suddenly make escalation a good thing either.

It does mention escalation in the write up for Knights.

blaktoof wrote:
One of them made people on the internet flip their beards and go silly, perhaps veins popped out of their necks as they feared templates of death would rain from the sky and kill their beloved super unit.

This is a troll thread and I hope it gets locked.

Imperial Knights were not made in any way as a response to complaints about Escalation. Nothing is done that quickly, for Imperial Knights to be released now means they've been in the works for many months.

Without the ridiculous hyperbole, there might have been a worthwhile discussion to be had here.

Moving on.