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 Sir Arun wrote:
so when there's no change to the fluff, people complain about everything stagnating.

and when there is change to the fluff, people complain it is ruining the setting.

That's not it all.

Altering the fluff to be something it hasn't been is what gets people upset. As da001 explained, there seems to be a change from the usual 'grimdark' the writing used to have. The Imperium was never the 'good' guys; it was just an empire of humans that were doing all they could to survive. There was never really a good or evil, or right or wrong. The Imperium is as evil as Chaos, and Chaos as good as the Imperium. Now, that appears to not be the case, which is not a positive change, as far as I'm concerned too.

You can add to the fluff while keeping with the established theme. Forge World does this quite well.

People do complain when the fluff stagnates; not adding anything or recycling the same battles every time is also not good.

Don't make it out to be an issue of everyone will always complain no matter what. Had they written new fluff for new battles, or expanded upon the time of ending, or discussed more of mankind's earlier history, or went into more details about factions that weren't Space Marines, or...anything really, people would likely be happier.

when was chaos ever portrayed as good? Chaos has always been about corruption, mutation, bloodshed and destruction.

I'll agree that in a traditional 40k grimdark setting the Imperium should be a place you definitely do not want to live in, but it has always been the lesser of two evils and never on par with chaos.

I still believe the official GW stance is pro-Imperium and not just this edition onward but has always been. Otherwise they wouldnt have gone to such great lengths to always portray the Imperium as winning big conflicts - they stopped hive fleet Behemoth on Ultramar; they won all 3 Armageddon Wars, they thwarted 12 Black Crusades, they had Lord Solar Macharius conquer several thousand worlds in a short timespan....no other race has made significant territorial gains upon post-heresy Imperial territory in the past 10k years

 Sir Arun wrote:
when was chaos ever portrayed as good? Chaos has always been about corruption, mutation, bloodshed and destruction.

No one ever said Chaos were a "good" faction. There are no "good" factions in 40K. That's the entire point.

Oh, except fething Captain Space Marine and his merry Astartes who happen to save puppies from the diabolical Dr.Xenos and gak rainbows.

Fan fething tastic.

 Sir Arun wrote:
when was chaos ever portrayed as good? Chaos has always been about corruption, mutation, bloodshed and destruction.

All the chaos gods have a positive aspect to them.

Slaanesh is the pursuit of perfection, and I guess pleasure; Khorne is honour; Nurgle is renewal; and Tzeentch is knowledge.

Plus, chaos is actually fairly liberating for many after living in the Imperium. But that's the whole point behind it all; nothing is black and white, but rather a confusing medley of greys.

 Sir Arun wrote:
no other race has made significant territorial gains upon post-heresy Imperial territory in the past 10k years

Hive Fleet Leviathan wants a word with you.

 Sir Arun wrote:
so when there's no change to the fluff, people complain about everything stagnating.

and when there is change to the fluff to the worse, people complain it is ruining the setting.

personally, I like the imperium driving back the evil instead of collapsing in on itself, so take that, heretics!

however, I do find the lack of Goge Vandire in the fluff appaling.

Fixed your post. I am yet to find someone complaining about the background section in Forgeworld´s Horus Heresy III, released a couple months ago, which added a lot of new well thought, well written goodies.

And our tastes differ a lot. I don´t want a 'good guys always win' child-friendly setting. I started playing after listening to a Death Metal band singing about the setting, not some Disney songs.

By the way, this is not about the Imperium winning. It is about the Imperium winning easily all the time, and about the Imperium no longer being a brutal, totalitarian regime, but a bunch of heroic good guys. It can not get more boring than that.

 Sir Arun wrote:

 kronk wrote:

- Terrain rules have changed, in that they've removed the whole terrain density deployment process. The book basically says to set the board up in such a way that both players are happy with it (good luck with that). In addition, you now deploy fortifications with your army, not when you put terrain on the board, meaning that you can deploy your ADL without having the opponent plop an obstacle right in front of it. (i felt the old rules were fine and more tourney friendly, but as always GW wants to give tournaments the finger)

I don't think you went far enough with this explanation. Area terrain is gone. Poof. No more. With the exception of Craters, ruins, and rubble, (which each grant a specific save for just being in it) this are no generic "Area Terrain" rules anymore. So, my old forests and such that we'd designate as area terrain will only grant cover saves if the model is 25% obscured.

This change is HUGE for my gaming group, and for tournaments I've played in.

Thanks. Have added your point to the list.

The rules for mysterious forests are still there though, arent they? No idea why GW omitted the one-liner of having all types of forest confer a 5+ cover save.

There's a datasheet for the GW forest in the book, which could be adapted to all forests. It's basically a 5+ cover save for touching the base, regardless of being obscured.

Using that to get effective "area terrain" back is our groups intent.

The Imperium has to win, otherwise the setting collapses and the game is over.

I read all the "Emperor's glorious Space Marines slaughtered the heretics" stuff as the increasingly desperate propaganda of a failing despotic regime. Look at some of the stuff the Nazis put out about their brave soldiers defeating the eastern barbarians that couldn't quite hide the fact that the Russians were busy beating them senseless on the Russian Front. Or that nut in Baghdad claiming that the Iraqi army was crushing the American invaders as American tanks drive past in the background.

Don't take it at face value. It's all just Imperial propaganda. It makes the setting a lot richer than a toneless documentary-style recitation of facts.

office_waaagh wrote:
The Imperium has to win, otherwise the setting collapses and the game is over.

I read all the "Emperor's glorious Space Marines slaughtered the heretics" stuff as the increasingly desperate propaganda of a failing despotic regime. Look at some of the stuff the Nazis put out about their brave soldiers defeating the eastern barbarians that couldn't quite hide the fact that the Russians were busy beating them senseless on the Russian Front. Or that nut in Baghdad claiming that the Iraqi army was crushing the American invaders as American tanks drive past in the background.

Don't take it at face value. It's all just Imperial propaganda. It makes the setting a lot richer than a toneless documentary-style recitation of facts.

So the BRB was written by Bagdhad Bob? I was wondering where he got himself to after the war.

Looks like Ruins got a nice boost. If you are in ruins it is a flat 4+ cover save.

office_waaagh wrote:
The Imperium has to win, otherwise the setting collapses and the game is over.

I read all the "Emperor's glorious Space Marines slaughtered the heretics" stuff as the increasingly desperate propaganda of a failing despotic regime. Look at some of the stuff the Nazis put out about their brave soldiers defeating the eastern barbarians that couldn't quite hide the fact that the Russians were busy beating them senseless on the Russian Front. Or that nut in Baghdad claiming that the Iraqi army was crushing the American invaders as American tanks drive past in the background.

Don't take it at face value. It's all just Imperial propaganda. It makes the setting a lot richer than a toneless documentary-style recitation of facts.

Bullgak. The best thing they could do would be to advance the story some 100 years and have the Imperium collapse in on itself, with various Astartes groups forming their own factions, various planets throwing off the Imperial yoke to become independent, and the like. That would allow for Marine vs. Marine or Marine vs. IG without playing "Who's the Heretic?" and actually make things look dire, while still keeping the feel of 40k. Uneasy alliances and stalemates since the Imperium can't hold things together, with the promise of a second Crusade to reclaim everything (that never materializes) while the barbarians are at the gates. The Imperium is basically the Later Roman Empire, it's time to move things up just before the Fall of Rome. Let the Ultramarines have their own dominion as the Neo Imperium as a nod to the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire and maybe position them as actual "good guys" since that's the UMs modus operandi anyways. Your other Marine chapters could either go rogue and claim their own areas, stay loyal to the Imperium, become what amounts to mercenaries (Wolves come to mind here) or whatever.

The appeal of 40k was always that the closest you had to the "good guys" was a tyrannical regime that was something like the bastard child of Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church during the middle ages with a healthy dose of the Salem Witch Trials, and it was painfully clear that they were oppressive racists who committed genocide simply because a race wasn't human, and one that treated its military as expendable fodder almost deliberately while its elite warriors were superhuman religious fanatic knights that had no qualms gutting someone for disagreeing with them, coupled with a priesthood that considered free thought to be heresy. Part of the appeal was that the Imperium was basically a facade of nobility to mask the corruption - it was obvious that the Emperor was long dead and being kept as a figurehead while everything slowly rotted from the inside, and even the most noble Space Marine was a genetically enhanced killer with absolute loyalty to the Imperium who wouldn't shed a tear at being asked to wipe out an entire planet.

If they've really changed it to be the heroic Imperium versus the evil Xenos, then I don't know what to say. Way to go appealing to 12 year olds, I guess. 40k isn't meant to be Saturday morning cartoon "Noble Autobots vs. Evil Decepticons" kind of crap. Instead that seems to be what they're going for.

barnowl wrote:
Looks like Ruins got a nice boost. If you are in ruins it is a flat 4+ cover save.

wasnt it the same last edition?

More than 3 months on and having had several games under my belt, I am actually liking 7th edition.

Almost all of the stuff I mentioned earlier in the ugly section can be mitigated when players simply decide to agree beforehand on simple things like playing battle forged and taking 1 CAD and perhaps 1 Allied detachment and malefic daemonology should only be available to CSM & Chaos Daemons - anything else is only worth playing in narrative campaigns etc.

while there are some tidbits that annoy me, like the changes to sniper or the over simplification of ruins, I think 7th actually ended up fixing a lot more things than it broke, and is pretty much the first 40k edition that relies on the goodwill and sportsmanship of all players involved than writing a tight ruleset that leaves little room for powergaming.

So if people agree on the conduct of "the golden rule", I think 7th edition is a very good ruleset despite the scope 40k has taken in recent years.

What about you guys? Does the list of changes still look the same to you or are several points completely moot by now?

I actually like it almost as much as 5th ed. In some ways, I actually like it more. Never thought I'd say those words. The healing has certainly commenced after the massive gak pile that was 6th.

If only my two favorite codexes hadn't had half ass releases, I'd be pretty content. My fault for not just cherry picking the top Imperium units, I guess.

random_man wrote:

In short, 8th will either include random movement for everything, random shooting range, random armour save value, random attacks and random leadership or it will be a pretty good edition - I guess we'll find out in a few months.

That's a whole lot of random. Man.