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Manchu wrote:@L_I:

So you're saying that Ultramarines suck because they are too awesome?

No, I'm saying they suck because they're a Mary Sue.

Let's look at the Imperial Fists in comparison. Their fluff is full of the same Hollywood-grade face-punching tough-guy-itis and condensed awesome as the Ultramarines', so why don't you ever see Lysander on posters? Because the Ultramarines define Space Marines in 40k. Why? Because Rowboat wrote the book. Why? Because he was an Ultramarine, and they're the greatest of all the Space Marines.

Why? Because I like them and I write the fluff, now stop asking questions.

Yawn.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the point you're making. They're not space werewolves or space vampires or space emos or space crusaders. They're just Space Marines. There is clearly nothing cool about Space Marines, right?

Obviously you don't understand the point I'm making.

Would you feel less slighted if I told you I found the steering of the Space Wolves' fluff away from 'Viking' and down the road towards 'furry fandom' to be disturbing? Or that I actually used to run a Codex: Spess Mehrens army before I switched to the Yiff Brigade? Granted it was a Biker army, but it was still drawn from Rowboat's Codex. Technically, anyway.

How the greatest of all the Primarchs failed to realise Bike Squads were awesome Troops units I don't know, but apparently he did. Have fun with your Combat Squads in their Shaky vehicles, Rowboat!

Sure, they get a lot of attention in the rules. Of those SCs, however, how many get used in competitive lists -- you know, as opposed to Mephiston, Vulkan, and Njal (and others to a lesser extent)? Or --actually -- that doesn't really matter since this is a thread about fluff not crunch.

Njal? In MY competetive list? It's less likely than Tigurius or Sicarius or that Scout dude who can plant a Missile into your vehicles with BS6 certainty each and every turn from his 3+ cover save bunker of doom. How much does that guy cost compared to Narf Stormfailure, Lord Of Not Going Second? Is it 'a lot less'? It's a lot less, sin't it? I sure wish Njal let me put a guaranteed Missile into something every turn he was on the board. Then he might actually be useful, as opposed to 'very bad'.

If it's about fluff not crunch, then how do you explain the Ultrasmurfs having so much of the Codex dedicated to slurping them? Why do they have so many SCs? Do the other Chapters just have fewer characters worthy of note? Perhaps they're not as good at being Space Marines as the Ultrasmurfs? Is that fluff, that the Ultrasmurfs are actually better than the rest of the Chapters? That makes baby Lysander cry.

Perhaps you just mean "GW says they are cool, therefore they are not"? Fair deuce, I guess. I can't take that argument seriously but I'm certain many will.

GW doesn't, though. What do you think sells more models; boring bookish super-guy in blue armour who does things by the book, or crazy psychotic super-vampire in red armour who glues the book's pages together, sharpens the edges, then uses it to stab you in the eye because he has gone insane and thinks he is his own Primarch? Put either of these dudes on a poster and kids will wander into the shop, but give them a choice and they're going to buy the red guy's army.

It's not the fact that GW says they're cool; it's the fact some staffer decided he really liked the bookish blue guy and then wrote all the fluff accordingly. They were slated to be the whipping boys, hence the detour away from Terra during the Heresy, but suddenly someone likes them so now they're THE Space Marines, the only Chapter allowed to rule it's own realm, the guys everyone else wants to be like, and wakka wakka wakka. Oh, and their Primarch is the only one to have 'survived' the Heresy intact, and now sits in a stasis field on Macragge with his wounds miraculously healing whilst the Emperor's life wanes and his Golden Bog falls victim to the ravages of time.

Rowboat Girlyman; the next Emprah? I can see it, and it looks like fail. Maybe he IS a Marty Stu after all. Time will tell.

I'm sooooo glad I'm a Guard player

L_I: I think you're confused. What does the fluff have to do with which units are good or bad in any given edition of the rules? Also the blue bookish guys -- until just this past year -- outsold all other GW products combined. Now, I grant that they could be painted red or light blue instead of ultramarine (yeh I get it) but having one painted blue on ALL the packages -- something tremendously if irrationally offensive to you -- has not hurt sales.

Manchu wrote:L_I: I think you're confused. What does the fluff have to do with which units are good or bad in any given edition of the rules?

So fluff and crunch are completely seperate, then? No, they're not. Considering each and every unit in each and every Codex is designed, built and balanced around it's backstory I'd say the answer to your question is actually 'a lot'.

You can consider the fluff to be 'just a hook' if you like, but the fact is for the game system to have any depth beyond two people rolling dice to determine what happens to some pieces of plastic the backstory has to have some bearing on the factions. Would people still play 40k if GW decided the game was to have no depth beyond this? They would, and not only that but the Codices would become cheaper to print and buy because they wouldn't have 40-odd pages of garbage at the start. Not to mention the game designers would fall to their knees and praise the now-defunct Emperor because they no longer had to consider fluff when writing up special rules; Fire Warriors would be bad in CC to balance the fact they are good at shooting, not because the Tau are a physically weak race who rely on alien mercenaries for close combat despite their advanced technology.

Thing is, while some would still play it, a lot would stop, and the ability to attract new customers would be severely dented. Tell a kid he gets to play-pretend he is the commander of some super-soldiers fighting to save the human race from it's enemies and he buys models and paints and comes to the gaming club to defeat the evil Tyranids and elves. Tell him he is pitting his wits against other players in a game of strategy and luck, and he gets a Wii instead.

It's the fact that the fluff is so important to the game that makes the Ultra-Marys so annoying.

Also the blue bookish guys -- until just this past year -- outsold all other GW products combined. Now, I grant that they could be painted red or light blue instead of ultramarine (yeh I get it) but having one painted blue on ALL the packages -- something tremendously if irrationally offensive to you -- has not hurt sales.

I didn't say I found the packaging offensive. I said the Ultramarines were a Mary Sue, and that Rowboat and his Smurfs had had far too much recognition in the fluff already. Dunno how you managed to extrapolate that; mayhap you're trying to straw-man me?

As far as Space Marines being GW's best-selling product... You could probably put a picture of a big turd on every Space Marine product's box and they'd still outstrip everything else in terms of sales. Why? Because Space Marine kit is the most ubiquitous in the entire game system. If I buy a Rhino I can paint it black and white; then I can use it to transport my C:SM squads, or my Sisters of Battle squads, or my IST squads, or my Space Wolves squads, or my Chaos Space Marine squads, or whatever. Alternatively I can cut bits off it and call it a Trukk. Tactical Marines can be used for anything from Smurfs to kit-bashed Thousand Sons, and when you consider that the Tactical Marines sprue has more and better bitz on it than pretty much any other MEQ sprue the sense in buying one of those over a Thousand Sons/ Grey Hunters/ Chaos Space Marines box becomes clear.

It's not a sign that everyone loves Ultramarines, it's a sign that everyone needs Space Marine kit. The fact the guys on the box are blue is a sign that Matt Ward likes pushing his Mary Sue.

I dislike guilman alot, mainly beacuse he was a right d***head to lorgar, who punched him in the face. Guilman was so annoying he did'nt need to say anything and he still p***ed of lorgar. He had one of those faces that is just fun to punch (acording to lorgar) and he was reallly arogant when lorgar was being warned by the emprorer. Also he punched alpharius (the guy who saved humanity itself) and alpharius thought guilman hated him and ran off. In short guilman is a daddies boy who fought with all his brothers and was really arogant when he got away with it.

When did he punch Alpharius?

I think you're getting your Primarchs mixed up!

Also, this thread has come up multiple times but yes, Roboute is quite awesome, and really, Ultramar is pretty much the best place to live in the 40K Galaxy - if you can get past those pesky Tyranids and the periodic Word Bearer plots...

Alpharius wrote:When did he punch Alpharius?

I think you're getting your Primarchs mixed up!

Also, this thread has come up multiple times but yes, Roboute is quite awesome, and really, Ultramar is pretty much the best place to live in the 40K Galaxy - if you can get past those pesky Tyranids and the periodic Word Bearer plots...

he got into a violent dispute with alpharius, my memory went slightly i thought he punched him (though he probably did, during they're fight) even though ultramar is nice it's not the best place to live because of the bug problem

L-I: Consider how units get better or worse between editions and you might have a more complete picture regarding how fluff and crunch interact. I'm having trouble following the rest of your argument which is starting to read like " I didnt say UM get too much attention, I said that UM get too much attention." There's only so much I can get out of this style of internet debate and, frankly, I think that point has already been reached here. As I initially said, your argument seems silly to me and disconnected from the fluff itself (focusing instead on some kind of marketing criticism) but I know many people agree with you for the reasons you've expppressed.

Yes i'll agree that it really isn't fair to dislike the ultra marines beacuse they are the poster child and tbf they are a pretty cool chapter.

Hey I don't mind them at all, their fluff is fine. I just don't think Guilleman is really that cool a guy is all. If everybody were awesome and had no annoying quirks they would be boring characters in a story. As it stands, Ultramarines are interesting characters in a story, but not without their failings (like an obsession with detail and rigid worship of the number 10 being mistaken for logistical genius). He isn't meant to be some uber primarch, just another primarch like the rest of them, flaws and all.

And here is the other thing people need to get.

The whole codex astartes thing. It is basically a doctrinal manual on tactics and warfare. Why do people crap on that? Guilliman breaks up the legions into chapters. guess what? you need a new way of doing business. He sets that up. Go google Marius Reforms of the Roman Army and see the seeds of the Roman Legions at their height. Marius sets the guidelines of how legions should be organised by numbers, tactic and ways of fighting. In this modern age all professional fighting forces have doctrine and follow it. Here is how you react to ambushes, here is how you should prosecute an amphibious assault, this is the formation your mechanised infantry should adopt when on the advance. If you follow the basic principles and guidelines of a defensive position, it does not matter if they are trenches, fobs or a simple hasty defense, the principles and procedures and theories you folllow remain essentially the same.

So Guilliman reforms the marines. Adopts the best possible self sufficient tactical role for the job it needs to do in a now changed imperium. Russ was in no position to take the lead. Never could never will. Although in Russ' defense his legion was probably the only one that could not fit into the codex format and he ignored it anyway. Gulliman didn't go after him for it, he pretty much left him to it because at the end of the day, the Space Wolves were no longer the force they once were, and if the reform was to prevent another heresy, Russ was unlikely due to his canine loyalty (a fact that Gulliman probably recognised) and also because there were more than enough Ultramarine successors to stop him. Dorn, although capable just didn't have the skills to hold the Imperium together. Eventually he saw the light and probably was pleased to see half his legion follow sigismund (again, it is likely that this was overlooked as their potential threat was minimal and in the end served a purpose).

As for the other legions, had it not been for the reforms of the codex astartes they would have been relegated to insignificant roles due to the immense casualties they took. the ironhands, salamanders, RavenGuard etc were essentially non players had the legions kept their original make up. The Ironhands and Ravenguard could no longer prosecute the same types of operations that legions did. So what do you do with them? Absorbing them into the stronger legions was probably a worse idea in their minds than reforming into chapters.

So the heresy ends, the Ultras retake most of what was lost. Guilliman breaks down the legions into mobile strike forces able to responds to any threat to keep the imperium together because let's face it, they were not in any position to carry on any kind of crusade with the numbers they had left. Codex marines are the standard. Bloodangels are codex marines with a secret, so are the dark angels. they pretend to follow the rules but they really practice certain things in a secret way (and frankly those two chapters have issues). The Wolves are more overt and follow their own way.

The problem being that the codex astartes is followed in a rigid, dogmatic way - it is a religious text as much as it is a military one. Gulliman moved the Imperium from a force capable of prosecuting massive wars of conquest into an almost entirely defensive entity. Was spreading out some marines for such a purpose necessary at the time? Maybe, but he personally decided that that was the only way. Even his brothers disagreed with that, and did he listen, compromise, anything? No.

If he was so damn noble and self effacing, why not break his legion down for police duty and let the others maintain the ability to actually fight a war, y'know, have the benefits of both? Because he didn't want to. He was a brat, who needed everyone to do what he wanted; with the exception of Russ, because apparently even Roboute wasn't crazy enough to pick a fight with him. As far as the idea that Dorn was acting out of pride, or that he lacked the capability of running the Imperium while Gulliman did.... lies. Lies and filth.

Dorn and the Sigilite were running the Imperium while the Emperor was working on his webway project, a task Dorn was more than equal to. I suggest you read Nemesis, if you haven't, as it clearly shows Dorn as having honest and impeccable morals, upon which he refused to compromise even in the face of destruction. He did lose his gak when the Emperor died, because y'know, it was his father, who he loved and valued. Nice how roboute was able to just carry on, as if nothing happened...

Dorn couldn`t. He did lose his mind for a bit after the heresy and the iron warriors messed him up good. that in itself should tell you that he didn`t have what it took to hold it together because he couldn`t hold himself together. i read Nemesis, values and morals aside, he really wasn`t running the imperium, he was coordinating the defense of terra. The sigilite and Constantine were really the ones running things. Dorn was an excellent Praetorian, but he was not up to running the Imperium without his father. Yes Gulliman carried on, like most people that can deal with loss and perservere.

The reality is that only a few primarchs had the skill to administer something a big as the Imperium. Horus, Gulliman and maybe the lion but even then. And as I mentioned, only the Ultras were in any shape to prosecute legion sized ops. the others were decimated in one way or the other. The Imperium was and still is crippled. they reclaimed what they lost but the ability to carry on had been neutered by the traitors.

Crantor wrote:Dorn couldn`t. He did lose his mind for a bit after the heresy and the iron warriors messed him up good. that in itself should tell you that he didn`t have what it took to hold it together because he couldn`t hold himself together. i read Nemesis, values and morals aside, he really wasn`t running the imperium, he was coordinating the defense of terra. The sigilite and Constantine were really the ones running things. Dorn was an excellent Praetorian, but he was not up to running the Imperium without his father. Yes Gulliman carried on, like most people that can deal with loss and perservere.

The reality is that only a few primarchs had the skill to administer something a big as the Imperium. Horus, Gulliman and maybe the lion but even then. And as I mentioned, only the Ultras were in any shape to prosecute legion sized ops. the others were decimated in one way or the other. The Imperium was and still is crippled. they reclaimed what they lost but the ability to carry on had been neutered by the traitors.

Right on, I agree. Most of the Primarchs needed a direction to point their particular talents. Guilliman was one of the few primarchs that didn't need that direction (and didn't have a flaw). I really think he's meant to be a manifestation of the Big E's leadership/wise side.

Guilliman learned from the Heresy in a way that the others obviously did not. He learned that no one could be trusted with an entire legion of Space Marines. Put it another way: he learned that he couldn't trust any of his brothers with an entire legion and that they shouldn't trust him with one, either.

Furthermore, you guys are making it sound like Russ never complied at all with the Codex. Absolutely wrong. The Space Wolves did try. That's why they had successor chapters, too. But the Codex didn't really work for them thanks to their genetic instability. Do you really think Guilliman would not have brought Russ to heel (pun!) if he thought (1) it was possible for the SW to comply and (2) if he thought their non-compliance would endanger the Imperium? Moreover, there is no Space Wolves legion after the heresy. Whatever their organization, they are only about Chapter-sized. As to Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and their respective successors: the BA do comply in every way possible (the major exception being the Death Company) and the Dark Angels only diverge in secret -- even from their own lower ranks -- so I'd say Guilliman was pretty successful there as well.

What does that leave? The Black Templars -- surprise, surprise it's a Chapter founded by Dorn and led from the beginning by Dorn's most fanatical intimates. Whatever Dorn was before the Heresy, he was a changed man after the Emperor's enthronement. It is clear that he was in no way able to run the Imperium after the Heresy. He could not even manage his own Legion. Thankfully, the Emperor had a dependable son in Guilliman, someone who could safeguard what was left of His legacy and keep broken men like Dorn from squandering it.

Even so, Dorn managed to sew the seeds of his own mental breakdown into what would eventually become a new legion. If there is any Chapter of Space Marines whose beliefs and practices run more contrary to the spirit of the Great Crusade, I've yet to hear about it. Meanwhile, Ultramar is the realization of the Emperor's vision for all humanity. Those who follow the example set by Guilliman are still fighting the Great Crusade in a way.

I think people need to remember MOST Loyalist Space Marines after the Heresy were actual Ultramarines. Guilliman was hardly asking a terrible thing of his brother's decimated legions who barely had enough guys to make 3 chapters whereas he himself has hundreds of thousands of Marines.
Guilliman was all by himself the dominant military superpower in the galaxy and what does he do with it? Makes all of the Legions equal. What a douche.

But he did have a flaw. Too rigid, while appropriate and effective in the extreme circumstance of his time, can be detrimental after the dust settles a bit.

But can you blame Gulliman for that, or his followers long after he was gone?

Crantor wrote:Dorn couldn`t. He did lose his mind for a bit after the heresy and the iron warriors messed him up good. that in itself should tell you that he didn`t have what it took to hold it together because he couldn`t hold himself together. i read Nemesis, values and morals aside, he really wasn`t running the imperium, he was coordinating the defense of terra. The sigilite and Constantine were really the ones running things. Dorn was an excellent Praetorian, but he was not up to running the Imperium without his father. Yes Gulliman carried on, like most people that can deal with loss and perservere.

The reality is that only a few primarchs had the skill to administer something a big as the Imperium. Horus, Gulliman and maybe the lion but even then. And as I mentioned, only the Ultras were in any shape to prosecute legion sized ops. the others were decimated in one way or the other. The Imperium was and still is crippled. they reclaimed what they lost but the ability to carry on had been neutered by the traitors.

Administration and Leadership are different things. The bureaucrats were and did take care of 95% of the work. You basically have a choice between someone with passion - a gamble, that could have turned out either very well, or very badly; or Gulliman's dispassionate gradual slide into what the Imperium is now. Gulliman is tapioca, he is neutrality distilled into human form. An inspired leader could have had the chance of completing the Emperor's vision for humanity, Gulliman ensured that mediocrity became the norm, as that was his great talent. Implying that the Legions were shattered and could not have been rebuilt is illogical - it simply takes time. The Emperor's Children came back from a hundred to fighting strength in decades. I think Gulliman took all the wrong lessons from the Heresy. And enforcing his views on his peers was not the way to handle things.

To address the issue of the Wolves and the codex astartes - they created exactly one canon successor chapter, and creating successors isn't really the thrust of the thing. The codex mandates 10 companies of 100, and codified them as various squad types. The Wolves utterly disregard this, having none of the same organizations or tactics mandated by the codex. The Space Wolf books mention nothings whatsoever of Rangar and his pack mates poring over the codex and learning from the storied wisdom of Gulliman. They roundly denied Gulliman's decrees in every meaningful way, possible no doubt because Russ outlived Roboute. Currently the Space Wolves are organized into Great Companies, exactly as they were before the Heresy, and the smallest of these easily exceeds the 100 man figure mandated by the codex astartes. For all intents and purposes the sixth legion has endured to this day, with their only concession being that they started calling themselves a chapter. Gulliman didn't let Russ do his own thing because of the Canis Helix and their special circumstances; outside of Magnus I seriously doubt any of the other primarchs ever had a clue about any of that stuff. He didn't press Russ because he knew Russ would never, ever back down. Dorn was a civilized, relatively reasonable guy. Russ would not have hesitated to throw his entire Legion into Gulliman's face if his principles and sense of necessity demanded. And Gulliman was smart enough to realize that if the Ultramarines fought the Wolves, he would be absolutely wrecked, even if he won.

Crantor wrote:But can you blame Gulliman for that, or his followers long after he was gone?

Kind of both really. Followers definitely, but a leader has to be held accountable for the actions of his followers. He made rigid rules a thing of almost religious overtone for those who came afterwards, for better or worse. Hey I'm noot against Guilleman I think he's a great and important character in a story, but he, like all great and important characters in a story, is also flawed and not really better or worse for it, just different and characterful.

Bromsy, you ought to brush up on your fluff.

Regarding Codex Astartes, creating successors is exactly the thrust of things. The ten company template is not followed exactly by many Chapters that are not considered widely divergent -- the Salamanders, for example, have seven line companies. Yes, not every Chapter honors the Codex as fastidiously as the Ultramarines and the other 90% of Space Marines out there (including the Imperial Fists, known to be second only to the Ultramarines in terms of their adherence to Guilliman's teachings). You can look at the Codex on two levels. First, there is a the zoomed-in approach that focuses on the words of every paragraph. Second, there is the big-picture approach that prevents Space Marines from starting another Horus Heresy. However the Chapters honor the first level they all (minus Black Templars) honor the second.

Post-Heresy, Dorn was not a reasonable fellow. Go read Index Astartes. Actually, he was so fething unreasonable that he almost destroyed what was left of the Imperial Fists for basically no reason. Thankfully, Guilliman stepped in and saved both him and his Legion.

Guilliman could have easily handled the post-Prospero SWs.
The only real challenge for Guilliman would have been if every other loyalist legion (or what little remained of them) ganged up on him. And that wouldn't happen because several other legions agreed with the adoption of the Codex. As to Dorn being so "reasonable," please be aware that it wasn't Russ the "savage" but rather"civilized" Dorn who was going to start a civil war over it.

Furthermore, I defy you to ever come up with any actual number published by GW concerning how many Space Wolves are in a single Great Company much less exactly how many Space Wolves there are over all.

The act of creating successor chapters is not a central tenant of the Codex Astartes, and therefore creating one is not a sign of adhering to the codex, as you posited earlier. Having no space marine force collectively being larger than 1000 marines IS a central point, which the wolves never attempted to meet; Seeing as it states that

"The Space Wolves were divided only once, creating the ill-fated Wolfbrothers Chapter. Perhaps the High Lords recognized the problems of genetic instability that would plague the legacy of leman russ, giving rise in later times to the terrible curse of the wulfen. Perhaps Leman Russ had no intention of breaking apart his mighty legion so that they could be divided and conquered if necessary. What is known, however, is that the Space Wolves had and still have little regard for the dictates and military tradition of the Codex Astartes, instead holding sacred the teachings of Russ that are handed down..." Which is right there in the SW book. They have never cared a whit for Gulliman's ideas.

The two tier approach to the codex is as far as I can tell, your opinion. The definition I have been using is

The Codex Astartes is the doctrine of the Space Marine Chapters, governing all aspects of Chapter organization and battlefield tactics.

And the Space Wolves rejected that. Entirely. I've read all the Index Astartes. Dorn had a crisis. The sort of thing anyone would have in his place. Saying that he was unfit to lead because he made a mistake is ridiculous. He fought on Terra, at the Emperor's side. He was the Emperor's right hand man. When the Emperor died, it would hit him a little bit harder than it would Gulliman, because Dorn, for all of his merits, also had the flaw of having a personality, which was one that Roboute managed to avoid. Plus the inference that Gulliman could have easily handled the wolves seems ludicrous. Out of all the Legions, who did Horus through him the Ruinous Powers make a special effort to destroy? The Wolves, and the Sons, because they were a force all out of proportion to their numbers. The Wolves had a strength and purity of purpose. They were Executioners, and with Russ at their head they would have, as I said, wrecked the Ultras, either in victory or defeat.

.... I don't even know how to address the idea that Dorn was the one who wanted to start a civil war. The Emperor set up the Legions. The Legions defeated the traitors, not Chapters. Gulliman made a decision that they needed to be broken up basically on the sole reason that he thought so, Dorn disagreed. The Imperial Fists got fired upon because they wouldn't go along with Gulliman, and that is Dorn starting a civil war? ........ Gulliman thought that no one person should have control over that many people because Horus started the Heresy. Is it not an equally valid idea that it was only stopped because there were other people with that much power? Did none of that warrant discussion instead of a demand of obedience that none of the Primarchs owed to Gulliman? Even if every other primarch agreed with Gulliman does it still not behoove them to try to solve the issue peacefully, as they are all brothers, instead of attacking the Fists?

Manchu wrote:L-I: Consider how units get better or worse between editions and you might have a more complete picture regarding how fluff and crunch interact.

I think what you're driving at here is how fluff gets changed to accomodate improvements to units and factions. That's true in the case of individual units, but the core elements remain unchanged.

Hive Guard, for example. Where the hell did they come from? Never heard of them before the new book was released. Thing is, the Nids needed big tough shooty units - if fluff and crunch were completely divided they could've just given them Railheads or Devastator Squads and passed it off as some sort of mercenary arrangement. Fluff says no, so instead here's a new biomorph of Tyranid.

I'm having trouble following the rest of your argument which is starting to read like " I didnt say UM get too much attention, I said that UM get too much attention."

My argument: the Ultramarines and Rowboat are Mary Sues, and whenever a Mary Sue is allowed to run rampant through the carefully constructed backstory of anything it can only be detremental to said backstory. Ultramarines, case in point; other Chapters are cooler, have more depth and potential, but Matt Ward doesn't like them. He likes Ultramarines.

Hence, Rowboat doesn't deserve more praise, because he's already being set up as the next Emperor and his Chapter already dominates everything to do with the Space Marines fluff-wise. If anything he needs to be put on the back burner for a while so's the Fists, Salamaners, White Scars and other Codex bods can get a bit of fleshing out.

So there it is, nice and succinct for you.

I still like Magnus a lot.

It was the Emperor's fault things went so badly with Magnus in the end.

He was his "son" and if he had just explained what was going on then things wouldn't have been nearly as bad.

He did make a deal with the Daemons but then again so did the Emperor.

Bromsy wrote:The two tier approach to the codex is as far as I can tell, your opinion.

No, it's my analysis. Some people, like yourself, only see the Codex as an attempt by Guilliman to force all other chapters to adhere to the most minute of details regarding his ideas about orgnization, tactics, beliefs, etc. This is unequivocally false. It was never Guilliman's intent to do so and this is proven by the (fictional) fact that even Chapters considered to be staunchly adherent also follow their own traditions. The Imperial Fists even appended their own doctrines to the Codex. In truth, the most far-reaching effect of the Codex is to replace the Legion model with the Chapter one and this is mainly a question of numbers -- not, as you seem to think, what color a certain Marine paints the trim of his pauldrons. There is no Space wolf Legion anymore. It is not merely called a "Chapter," it is a Chapter. They are not Codex-adherent but neither did Russ totally ignore Guilliman.

Bromsy wrote:Dorn had a crisis. The sort of thing anyone would have in his place.

No, Dorn had a crisis unique to his own personality. Guilliman had no such crisis. You can say he "had no personality," fine, but that is merely an unfounded insult. What remains, however, is that Guilliman was able to pick up the pieces while Dorn was busy losing his mind.

Bromsy wrote:Plus the inference that Gulliman could have easily handled the wolves seems ludicrous.

Seems ridiculous until you consider their losses at Prospero. Your argument seems to be "I think Space Wolves are cool and I think Ultramarines are lame. Therefore, Space Wolves would win in any fight between them ." I don't find this convincing.

Bromsy wrote:The Imperial Fists got fired upon because they wouldn't go along with Gulliman, and that is Dorn starting a civil war? . . . Even if every other primarch agreed with Gulliman does it still not behoove them to try to solve the issue peacefully, as they are all brothers, instead of attacking the Fists?

That is the very point but you are looking at it backwards. We know that there were some Legions that didn't like Guilliman's ideas: namely, the Space Wolves and the Salamanders along with the Imperial Fists. But only Dorn's forces were ever fired upon. Only Dorn ever brought things to a head. We know that it is not in Guilliman's character to act irrationally, even when his dignity is insulted. We know the opposite about Rogal Dorn (at least, how he acted after the Heresy).


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Lictor_Interdictor wrote:My argument: the Ultramarines and Rowboat are Mary Sues, and whenever a Mary Sue is allowed to run rampant through the carefully constructed backstory of anything it can only be detremental to said backstory.

Please explain how the Ultramrines' fluff has damaged any other aspect of the of the 40k story. Again, your argument seems to be based on marketing: "if Ultramarines get 70% of the Codex pages, that only leaves 30% for Chapters I like better." Okay. That has nothing to do with the quality of the Ultramarines backstory itself or the effect of their backstory on the rest of the 40k universe.

TBH, your problems are with GW or, more specifically Matt Ward, than Guilliman and the Ultramarines. But I suspect you didn't mind them much before getting on the internet, anyway.

Guilliman firing on Allies that don't agree with him seems pretty irrational to me...

However I've still not read the book that came from.

Guilliman seemed quite thick skinned in the begging of first heretic.

Although...

obsidianaura wrote:Guilliman firing on Allies that don't agree with him seems pretty irrational to me.

Consider what was actually at stake and you may feel differently.

Spoiler:

He did blow up a City just to make a point to Logar

Those were the Emperor's orders.

If rowboat was so awesome then how come all the cool boys (Blood Angels, Salamanders, Wolves, Raven Guard etc..) flout the index astartes?

He was a cool though... for a smurf

Well, it's no surprise that first founding Chapters follow their own traditions. But that's not really "flouting" the Codex in the sense of my discussion with Bromsy. Flouting the Codex in that sense isn't the difference between having seven companies of 120 marines rather than ten companies of 100 marines but rather maintaining a legion instead of a Chapter. Again, the thing that is important is what has kept something like the Badab War from being another Horus Heresy-scale civil war. The only "Chapter" that really seems to flout the Codex in that sense is the Black Templars. Everyone else makes a semblence of comliance, with the Space Wolves being the least amenable.


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Think of it in terms of the spirit and the letter of the law. The spirit of the Codex is preserving the Imperium from Space Marine rebellions. The letter is company organization, camo patterns, squad tactics, religious doctrines, etc.

This is a really engaging thread. As a spectator, I'm enjoying L_I's passion and fire but agreeing more with Manchu and co.

Personally, I'm not that keen on the perceived overexposure of the Ultramarines but I respect what Guilleman managed to achieve during and post-Heresy.