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 Peregrine wrote:

 Imposter101 wrote:
I dread to see what he thinks of Chaos...

Actually I like Chaos, as long as you get rid of most of the demon units and put them back in CSM instead of the stupid "use your WHFB army in 40k" system we have now. Chaos has an important role in the story, has lots of interesting artistic potential, and fights like a proper army on the tabletop. They might not be strictly realistic, but they mostly make sense as long as you accept the magic/corruption aspect. And since it's explicitly magic it doesn't have to obey the normal laws of reality.

My problem with Tyranids is that they have none of the redeeming qualities of Chaos. Their fluff is fundamentally stupid (no, an alien swarm from outside the galaxy is not going to eat our DNA and use it, nor will anything with any interest in eating us be able to grow armor that can deal with tank shots, and it certainly won't be able to ignore conservation of mass/energy to literally eat all the biological matter on a planet and turn it into more Tyranids). Their purpose in the story is minimal at best, since they're nothing more than a faceless devouring swarm with no characters, no heroes to identify with, no villains to hate, no goals to support or oppose, just mindless consumption*. From a story perspective they're about as interesting as writing a story about the weeds in your yard. And finally their models are just plain awful and don't fit the aesthetic of a 40k battle at all.


*This, by the way, is why the new Necron fluff is so much better than the old stuff. Yes, it has its stupid bits, but at least it's better than the old "metal Tyranids" version where they're just another mindless devouring swarm.

Chaos is also nice as it fits in nicely with the old Lovecraftian concepts with Daemons just being ideas and emotions incarnated as an extradimensional eldritch abomination. Just that some of the Daemon stuff is stupid. Eldritch abominations should not be using chariots. Daemon engines are cool as corrupted machines with the possible pilot (although not always) fused with the machine as a single living organism. But stuff like chariots makes no damn sense and belongs in Fantasy Battles.

 Peregrine wrote:

My problem with Tyranids is that they have none of the redeeming qualities of Chaos. Their fluff is fundamentally stupid (no, an alien swarm from outside the galaxy is not going to eat our DNA and use it, nor will anything with any interest in eating us be able to grow armor that can deal with tank shots, and it certainly won't be able to ignore conservation of mass/energy to literally eat all the biological matter on a planet and turn it into more Tyranids). Their purpose in the story is minimal at best, since they're nothing more than a faceless devouring swarm with no characters, no heroes to identify with, no villains to hate, no goals to support or oppose, just mindless consumption*. From a story perspective they're about as interesting as writing a story about the weeds in your yard. And finally their models are just plain awful and don't fit the aesthetic of a 40k battle at all.

Could not. agree. more.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
Ollanius Pius was not a Perpetual. He was just a man in the wrong place at the right time.

So then would you continue to potray him as a myth or would you bring his canonicity into the fold completely?

 BattleCapIronblood wrote:

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
Ollanius Pius was not a Perpetual. He was just a man in the wrong place at the right time.

So then would you continue to potray him as a myth or would you bring his canonicity into the fold completely?

The way I see it, it doesn't matter who Pius was. If you believe the story that he stood up to Horus when nobody else could, then he is fully deserving of the reverence bestowed upon him. If you don't believe the story, he was just a man, and it doesn't matter how he died anyways. It's the idea of Ollanius Pius that makes him iconic. Not because he was an immortal bro of the Emperor, but because he was the smallest being making the greatest sacrifice he could.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:

 BattleCapIronblood wrote:

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
Ollanius Pius was not a Perpetual. He was just a man in the wrong place at the right time.

So then would you continue to potray him as a myth or would you bring his canonicity into the fold completely?

The way I see it, it doesn't matter who Pius was. If you believe the story that he stood up to Horus when nobody else could, then he is fully deserving of the reverence bestowed upon him. If you don't believe the story, he was just a man, and it doesn't matter how he died anyways. It's the idea of Ollanius Pius that makes him iconic. Not because he was an immortal bro of the Emperor, but because he was the smallest being making the greatest sacrifice he could.

Soo... you're saying he's a symbol?

Like Batman?

It would retcon that horrible piece of fluff where some minor Tau world managed to out-adapt a Tyranid Hive Fleet.

I'd retcon:

-Anything written by Matt Ward
-50% of everything to do with the Ultramarines (Not everything, I still need a faction to hate)
-The Sanguinor
-The bit about GK being mini primarchs (wth, GK codex?)
-Enslaved C'tan (Living Gods were awesome )
-The Armless Failure (I want him to be badass, but he's just embarassing)
-The poorly constructed CSM codex (I would like some internal balance and competitiveness )

I think I'd retcon the Bloodtide slightly, so that the Sisters don't come off as sacrificial lambs for the GK.
Those Ork rockers would also be fun to have back.

 Selym wrote:
I'd retcon:

-Anything written by Matt Ward

But he wrote some good SoB fluff. :(

Not everything the guy wrote was crap. Some of it was, but not all.

Change the Necron's ancient enemy to the Orks.

Those guys seriously should be the antithesis and ultimate enemies of each other. Eldar have enough problems, and their history didn't need shoehorning of Space Khemri into it.

The decision to write the Heresy Series.

It would be left a dark time of legend and would also be a lot better for my bank account.

The change in necrons, they were alot cooler as minons of the star gods.

Honestly I'd change alot, for starters id keep the eldar pantheon alive to give the chaos gods actual competition in the warp, since eldar are essentially elves I would keep the dying race theme but put less emphasis on it. (were dying is all black library authors and codex writers ever seem to talk about and it gets so old.) for space Marines there fluff should be toned down from their current Mary sue standing to actually being a defeat able army struggling to keep the imperium alive. Take away the plot armour and make them fallible and perhaps more likeable and give them some serious defeats so I know when I pick up a book spacemarines don't win just because they're space Marines. Honestly chaos should make it beyond cadia and start attacking the galaxy at large too. Give abbadon some fresh succeses and make him someone to be feared.
going back to eldar id like to see their fluff expanded and id like to see them wih a bit more of a hopeful outlook (most eldar think they can beat slaanesh in the end and many youths are hoping to reestablish their empire which means some have to see hope.)
consistency in black library has already been addressed so no need to go into that. Though id like to say id retconn most of the 5th and 6th edition battle scenes as they're so aburdly over the top and one sided there's no excitement to them. The necron codex is a good example I think, where the necrons are able to beat impossible odds just because. And I shouldn't even have to say why GK fluff is over the top. I think that armies that suffer hard fought wins/losses are far more interesting than these stories gws been coming out with over the last several years. (sorry if this doesn't all make sense in really really tired. And I tend to ramble and blend thoughts together.)

Id fix the space marine training process because the time it takes to develop a Marine and train him and get him through the scouts dosnt add up to to the time it takes companies to recover.

I can only see the space wolves and Black Templars being able to make up battle losses in any resonable time. Id personal make all scouts similar to the space wolves because id want veterans doing my scouting not rookies and id have the neophytes trained like the . Master apappreciate style.

 PrinceRaven wrote:
It would retcon that horrible piece of fluff where some minor Tau world managed to out-adapt a Tyranid Hive Fleet.

Except it was rather clever, they used them to adapt to kroot, lured them out and then killed them with something completely different from what they were fighting for months on end.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
Ollanius Pius was not a Perpetual. He was just a man in the wrong place at the right time.

This. This! This, this, a thousand, billion, infinity times THIS!

gilamonster wrote:
Id fix the space marine training process because the time it takes to develop a Marine and train him and get him through the scouts dosnt add up to to the time it takes companies to recover. .

How so?

Training new Marines is a constant process. They don't start a new one when there's a dead Marine. Every matured Marine can create two Marines (one with his removed chest progenoid, and a second when he dies). Thus assuming the Chapter recovers at least half of its fallen Marines, it will always have more geneseed than it needs to stay at a constant rate of replacement. If the Chapter recovers more than half, it will slowly stockpile geneseed. Established chapters will probably have large stocks of geneseed.

We know it takes approximately 8-10 years to make a Marine (process starts at 8-10, finishes around 18). So there are more recruits than just what's in the Scout company. The Scout company is constantly getting replacements too, as the recruits reach the 16-18 year old age where they've physically matured enough to be combat ready. And the Scouts don't immediately get promoted to the line companies at 18 when they get the black carapace. That's just the earliest they might be promotable.

There's a fair amount of consistency to the recruitment process. Remember, Space Marines don't die as often as it sometimes seen. Chapters aren't fighting constantly. They still have to travel between warzones, or there may be a lot of low intensity conflicts that don't incur a lot of casualties. Plus, Space Marines are very resilient and can recover from pretty grievous wounds. What might "kill" them on the tabletop doesn't always kill them in the fluff.

I'd make it clearer in the fluff re: Black Crusades that the goal isn't always Terra, because quite a few people still struggle with that concept.

MarsNZ wrote:
I'd make it clearer in the fluff re: Black Crusades that the goal isn't always Terra, because quite a few people still struggle with that concept.

Yes, even I as a chaos player often miss the point of Abaddon the Armless' various excursions...

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

gilamonster wrote:
Id fix the space marine training process because the time it takes to develop a Marine and train him and get him through the scouts dosnt add up to to the time it takes companies to recover. .

How so?

Training new Marines is a constant process. They don't start a new one when there's a dead Marine. Every matured Marine can create two Marines (one with his removed chest progenoid, and a second when he dies). Thus assuming the Chapter recovers at least half of its fallen Marines, it will always have more geneseed than it needs to stay at a constant rate of replacement. If the Chapter recovers more than half, it will slowly stockpile geneseed. Established chapters will probably have large stocks of geneseed.

We know it takes approximately 8-10 years to make a Marine (process starts at 8-10, finishes around 18). So there are more recruits than just what's in the Scout company. The Scout company is constantly getting replacements too, as the recruits reach the 16-18 year old age where they've physically matured enough to be combat ready. And the Scouts don't immediately get promoted to the line companies at 18 when they get the black carapace. That's just the earliest they might be promotable.

There's a fair amount of consistency to the recruitment process. Remember, Space Marines don't die as often as it sometimes seen. Chapters aren't fighting constantly. They still have to travel between warzones, or there may be a lot of low intensity conflicts that don't incur a lot of casualties. Plus, Space Marines are very resilient and can recover from pretty grievous wounds. What might "kill" them on the tabletop doesn't always kill them in the fluff.

I find the fluff inconsistent when it comes to how many casualties space marines take its stated the dont fight frontline but most of the fluff ive read sees them doing the opposite. Taken in to account that some scouts die and only 100 scouts are training at a time and they have to supply 9 companies I just don't believe its possible to sustain a chapter using standard codex recruitment.

gilamonster wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

gilamonster wrote:
Id fix the space marine training process because the time it takes to develop a Marine and train him and get him through the scouts dosnt add up to to the time it takes companies to recover. .

How so?

Training new Marines is a constant process. They don't start a new one when there's a dead Marine. Every matured Marine can create two Marines (one with his removed chest progenoid, and a second when he dies). Thus assuming the Chapter recovers at least half of its fallen Marines, it will always have more geneseed than it needs to stay at a constant rate of replacement. If the Chapter recovers more than half, it will slowly stockpile geneseed. Established chapters will probably have large stocks of geneseed.

We know it takes approximately 8-10 years to make a Marine (process starts at 8-10, finishes around 18). So there are more recruits than just what's in the Scout company. The Scout company is constantly getting replacements too, as the recruits reach the 16-18 year old age where they've physically matured enough to be combat ready. And the Scouts don't immediately get promoted to the line companies at 18 when they get the black carapace. That's just the earliest they might be promotable.

There's a fair amount of consistency to the recruitment process. Remember, Space Marines don't die as often as it sometimes seen. Chapters aren't fighting constantly. They still have to travel between warzones, or there may be a lot of low intensity conflicts that don't incur a lot of casualties. Plus, Space Marines are very resilient and can recover from pretty grievous wounds. What might "kill" them on the tabletop doesn't always kill them in the fluff.

I find the fluff inconsistent when it comes to how many casualties space marines take its stated the dont fight frontline but most of the fluff ive read sees them doing the opposite. Taken in to account that some scouts die and only 100 scouts are training at a time and they have to supply 9 companies I just don't believe its possible to sustain a chapter using standard codex recruitment.

Agreed. possiably the best approuch would be to make the 10th company another reserve company and list scouts as an "Auxilleria" with unspecified numbers.

I would retconn:

Marines:
Their numbers. I would go with 10000 per chapter. Still silly, but way better than 1000 guys patrolling the galaxy.
Their personality. More zealot monks, instruments of the most brutal tyranny ever and killing machines. Less "we are the good guys".
Black Templars hating psykers because the Edict of Nikaea again.
White Scars getting back their self-mutilation and skull-collecting rituals
The Sanguinor. Out with it. It is a cheap copy paste of a Living Saint. With nipples.
Grey Knights being the army of all inquisitors. They should be the last resort for the Ordo Malleus.
Flesh Eaters having disappeared.
Super Mega Master Kaldor Draigo.

Chaos:
Getting Chaos Undivided back again. Minor Gods, independent daemons... the infinite ways of Chaos.
The Lost and the Damned should get more stuff. There are billions of them for every Chaos Space Marine. And some of them are really cool in the background.
No more Failabbadon. Most crusades didn´t involve Abbadon at all. Create some cool Chaos leaders (some of them human instead of Astartes would be even better) and let them fail for 10000 years.
Malice back to business.

Tyranids:
Getting Genestealer Cults and Zoats back again.

Necrons:
Back to third edition or, even better, getting both newcrons and oldcrons as different factions.
Some C´tan survived and are still free. The Dragon on Mars, The Outsider...
The Enslavers won (or ended) the War in Heaven again.
The Old Ones are still alive, yet hidden. The Slann are back

The story:
Another vote for "Ollanius Pious was a man". Making him a perpetual absolutely breaks the character. What´s the point? He "sacrificed" himself for the Emperor? He is immortal, he was back to life in ten seconds. It cheapens the story to the point of making it utterly meaningless.
Perpetuals. Never existed.
Signus Prime being an astartes victory. It was not! The fight between Ka´Bhanda and Sanguinous was amazing as it was orignally written. They have broken it.
Alpharius and the Cabal. Getting Alpharius back to the Index Astartes.
Corax surviving the Drop-Site massacre thanks to the Alpha Legion. Aaargh...
Corax being fooled by the Alpha Legion regarding his experiments. Aaaaarghhh....
Alpharius turning traitor following orders from xenos then killing the xenos´ representative for no reason. Aaaaaaargh....
Alpha Legionaries killing each other as idiots while blindly following orders of someone they do not even know who he is any longer. Aaaaaaaaaargh....
Anything ever written about the survivals of the loyal Legions of the Drop-Site massacre. It reeks of mary-sueism.
Everything we know about the Lion´s motivations.

The Codex Astartes. Especially the way in which chapters are organised. The organisation in the Codex is probably the least effective way to organise an army ever.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Except it was rather clever, they used them to adapt to kroot, lured them out and then killed them with something completely different from what they were fighting for months on end.

The two main problems I've heard are that the Tau developed Kroot rifles to use pulse weaponry anyway and that the Tyranids did apparently very little when the Tau were almost completely unable to harm them while they collected several thousand Kroot rifles.

Personally I'd retcon the Narvhals, non-Warp based FTL in general (I just don't like it), the C'tan (at least the other magical stuff uses the Warp), the power of the big Tyranid beasties so that they're weaker (a single Tyranid taking down a Titan Legion seems a bit excessive to me) and making Daemons harder to summon (i.e. less in number) but much more powerful.

I would delete the SMs. They aren't all that exciting or fun to read about and pulling them out would give a lot more room for other fractions. Like you could fit in a lot more sister fluff, IG fluff, or even admech fluff.

nomotog wrote:
I would delete the SMs. They aren't all that exciting or fun to read about and pulling them out would give a lot more room for other fractions. Like you could fit in a lot more sister fluff, IG fluff, or even admech fluff.

I'd just tone down the loyal SM's prominence. Proper CSM's are badass though - they have the whole "Humanity created the most evil thing in the universe" vibe.

I would retcon most of the new GK fluff, I'm all for this army and I think the concept of it is brilliant, the Inquisitions secretive highly trained army that are used to combat the most dire of demonic incursions and even then they only send a squad of 10 tops.

However the way they are written in the codex doesn't represent this, they definitely seem to suffer from being written by an ultimate fan boy, just look at draigos fluf, carving a name onto a demon primarch? please gimme something slightly feasible to believe in GW

 tomball0706 wrote:
I would retcon most of the new GK fluff, I'm all for this army and I think the concept of it is brilliant, the Inquisitions secretive highly trained army that are used to combat the most dire of demonic incursions and even then they only send a squad of 10 tops.

However the way they are written in the codex doesn't represent this, they definitely seem to suffer from being written by an ultimate fan boy, just look at draigos fluf, carving a name onto a demon primarch? please gimme something slightly feasible to believe in GW

I think draigo is thuper kewl.

gilamonster wrote:I find the fluff inconsistent when it comes to how many casualties space marines take its stated the dont fight frontline but most of the fluff ive read sees them doing the opposite. Taken in to account that some scouts die and only 100 scouts are training at a time and they have to supply 9 companies I just don't believe its possible to sustain a chapter using standard codex recruitment.

Well you're mistaken in ta few places.

First, the Scout Company is not limited to 100.
Second, Chapters are often understrength.
Third, again, there are recruits in the pipeline replacing the casualties and promotions within the Scout company. Scouts represent 2 years of a ten year cycle (though Scouts can potentially serve past those 2 years). Which means there are dozens, if not hundreds, of recruits who are ages 8-15 who aren't even counted yet towards the ~1,000.

But Chapter casualties are rarely that severe, even in the fluff. Look at Helsreach. 100 Black Templars held off hundreds of thousands of Orks for two months before finally being wiped out. That's literally at a cost of a single Space Marine, per day, on average. Against an entire Waaaagh. And that's in a mission profile that Space Marines don't often find themselves in, defending a static position. An entire Tau army couldn't destroy one Space Marine Battle Company on Taros. And that's a battle the Marines lost. If you look at the Siege of Vraks, by comparison, the Dark Angels show up with 500 guys and turn the whole war on its head. Their first assault takes three casualties, all of whom were able to recover from wounds and return to battle eventually. After 18 years of siege and millions and millions of dead, the Space Marine casualties, across five chapters, was in the "hundreds", total. And this was a battle where 9 Chaos Marine warbands, a pile of daemons led by a daemon prince, and the baddest Bloodthirster possible showed up, lol.

And again, these are the kinds of battles that are so significant, they are talked about. Most of them are probably like the first raid the Dark Angels engaged in. Show up, hit hard, take objective, minor casualties, most of whom recover.

But it's also true that Space Marine Chapters also spend a fair amount of time not fighting, exactly because they've taken heavy casualties. In the space of hundreds, if not thousands of years, what's ten years to refit? Several of the Loyalist chapters in the Badab War just bailed out because they'd taken too many casualties.

 Selym wrote:

nomotog wrote:
I would delete the SMs. They aren't all that exciting or fun to read about and pulling them out would give a lot more room for other fractions. Like you could fit in a lot more sister fluff, IG fluff, or even admech fluff.

I'd just tone down the loyal SM's prominence. Proper CSM's are badass though - they have the whole "Humanity created the most evil thing in the universe" vibe.

Ya that world work rather well. Maybe something along the lines of most or all of the SM legions going to chaos or being destroyed.

nomotog wrote:

 Selym wrote:

nomotog wrote:
I would delete the SMs. They aren't all that exciting or fun to read about and pulling them out would give a lot more room for other fractions. Like you could fit in a lot more sister fluff, IG fluff, or even admech fluff.

I'd just tone down the loyal SM's prominence. Proper CSM's are badass though - they have the whole "Humanity created the most evil thing in the universe" vibe.

Ya that world work rather well. Maybe something along the lines of most or all of the SM legions going to chaos or being destroyed.

*calm, wistful voice*
I'd like that.
That'd be nice.

*evil voice*
AND THEN THE GALAXY SHALL BURN!!


(Sorry, I'm a heretic )