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Oh man, If I didn't have all these errands to run I could have responded to all this viking/cultural relativism brouhaha going on in a timeley matter

"If you want to say "vikings did horrible things so they're not cool", then there is no such thing as a cool people.
Christian knights? Yep, they did plenty of horrible things. Mongols? Oh yeah. THe germanic tribes? Yep. The Arabic armies under the likes of Saladin and other such heroes? Yes. And so on and so forth. All modern armies have their occasional fuckups, and medieval armies were certainly no exception. "

This is irrelevant, I'm not claiming one culture is cooler or better than another, just that vikings were not.

@1hadhq, Lost Vikings is an awesome puzzle video-game that has little to do with actual vikings

Most people aren't history majors so while the actual vikings may have been x,y,z they now are percieved as the death metal, horned-helmeted wackos we all love/hate today. So when people say they like vikings they usually mean that. Same sort of thing has happened to the ninjas.

On topic: I would take orks seriorusly as the grimdark menace to civilization, yadda yadda yadda if they didn't talk like idiots. That pretty much instantaneosuly makes them silly rather than fearsome techno-barbarians.

LOLvikings.

I never could take the Space Wolves seriously (Or any space marine faction, for that matter). Of course, I did start WH40K after the release of the 5th edition codex. I really have to read the books, since apparently those flesh them out well.

Melissia wrote:Orks ARE dark. You're just not looking beyond the surface to the true horror of the Ork menace.

This I DEFINITELY agree with.

Seriously, Orks are effing terrifying when you actually consider what they do. They swarm all across the galaxy in huge hordes, killing for no reason other than fun. If you fight them, they kill you; if you don't, they kill you trying to get you to fight them. If you run away, they kill you for being boring. Oh, and they'll kill you for not being Orky enuff. You think you can avoid them? Think again, they're the most numerous and widespread faction in the Milky Way. Think you can fight them? Good luck with that, since Orks are so numerous and physically powerful; if you manage to kill one, another will pop up to take its place with a grin.

From an Orky or outsider point of view, Orks are hilarious. From an average Imperial citizen's? They're worse than the Tyranids, Eldar, and Tau combined.

"Seriously, Orks are effing terrifying when you actually consider what they do. They swarm all across the galaxy in huge hordes, killing for no reason other than fun. If you fight them, they kill you; if you don't, they kill you trying to get you to fight them. If you run away, they kill you for being boring. Oh, and they'll kill you for not being Orky enuff. You think you can avoid them? Think again, they're the most numerous and widespread faction in the Milky Way. Think you can fight them? Good luck with that, since Orks are so numerous and physically powerful; if you manage to kill one, another will pop up to take its place with a grin."

I feel like all this terrifying-ness is shattered as soon as an ork opens his mouth, but you are right, to an imperial citizen, eldar, tau, etc that doesn't really matter.

So . . . there is a part of 40k that you take seriously?

I have this to say about ork 'language'. Its always shown as orks speaking low gothic. Okay, now take any place, do they speak say english the same way as where you are standing? No. Now phoneticise what you hear them say. Eventually you'll find a way of making them translate to something similar to orks. Given that orks are a seperate race to the imperium... the fact that they are speaking an 'imperium language' is impressive in of itself.

Manchu wrote:So . . . there is a part of 40k that you take seriously?

I guess not actually. Maybe silly is a better word? Or more silly than usual? I mean for example do you think a necron is as much of hooligan as an ork?


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the_ferrett wrote:I have this to say about ork 'language'. Its always shown as orks speaking low gothic. Okay, now take any place, do they speak say english the same way as where you are standing? No. Now phoneticise what you hear them say. Eventually you'll find a way of making them translate to something similar to orks. Given that orks are a seperate race to the imperium... the fact that they are speaking an 'imperium language' is impressive in of itself.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here, orks speak the way they do to make us (the players) laugh, what the guardsmen actually hears doesn't really matter. I hope claiming orks can be comedic isn't considered a crazy assumption...

Orks ARE a comic relief. At face value. But once you read a few pages on them, you start realising that there's more to them than meets the casual gamer's eye. I'll laugh at their silly names and the fact their most famous Doctor put dynamite into people's heads while he was performing surgery...but at the same time, I realise just how inspired a society whose commerce is made solely on regenerating teeth actually is.

Orks are satire.

I've always liked the wolves. I've got a trio of very old Techmarines (wearing standard Mark IV armor with molded hands on the shoulderpads) painted up as Space Wolves, and I keep meaning to go ahead and fill the rest of the army out.

Unfortunately I never quite seem to get started...

Araenion: So making sure your notoriously backstabbing customers don't backstab you is hilarious.... Man you have some twisted humor.

Yeah seriously, TBH that was a pretty smart move.

Remember, the reason he activated said bombs? Because those nobz ganged up on him and beat him nearly to death, only his faithful (And surprisingly loyal) grot servants saving his life, but at the cost of his sanity.


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asimo77 wrote:I feel like all this terrifying-ness is shattered as soon as an ork opens his mouth, but you are right, to an imperial citizen, eldar, tau, etc that doesn't really matter.

You think that just because they can't pronounce the letter H makes them less terrifying?

You think that, somehow, the shout of "WAAAGH!" echoing across an entire world is somehow not terrifying?

Want to know something frightening about an Ork? Ork Kommandoz are as sneaky as, if not sneakier than a Lictor.

Want to know something frightening about an Ork? Tankbustas know as much or more about blowing vehicles up than Astartes devastator squads.

Want to know something frightening about an Ork? For every Ork you kill, a dozen more orkoid creatures will pop up sometime within the next year.

Want to know something frightening about an Ork? Exterminatus is the only way to permanently remove Ork presence from a world.

Want to know something even more terrifying about Orks? They outnumber all other sentient races in the galaxy combined. This includes the teeming, countless masses of humanity, the unnumbered empires of smaller races like the Tau, the various mutant and xeno servants of Chaos... all of them.

They are the unstoppable, unending barbarian hordes pounding at the gates... blasting at the gates... sneaking around and digging under and flying over the gates. Ramming THROUGH th gates. And goddamn you people for making me talk about them before I got to their position in the list.

the_ferrett wrote:Araenion: So making sure your notoriously backstabbing customers don't backstab you is hilarious.... Man you have some twisted humor.

To be honest, my horrific sense of humour notwithstanding, it was pretty hilarious reading that part of the Ork codex.

Suffice it to say, that for me there is no 40k without Orks.

Melissia wrote:Yeah seriously, TBH that was a pretty smart move.

Remember, the reason he activated said bombs? Because those nobz ganged up on him and beat him nearly to death, only his faithful (And surprisingly loyal) grot servants saving his life, but at the cost of his sanity.

He planted dynamite into his patient's heads. If that's not comical, I don't know what is. Meanwhile, it was indeed a pretty smart move, as you say. I found lots of things like this in the Ork codex. Funny stuff that actually made perfect sense when one but looks at it twice.

@ Melissia I agree that all that stuff makes them terifying, but then they say "Oi let's go krump da humies!" and then some serious cognitive dissonance kicks in.

Imagine if all that stuff you said was true about the teletubbies, they rampaged around slaughtering everything in their path, all the while singing some baby gibbersih song. Kinda makes you re-evaluate the situation.

asimo77 wrote:but then they say "Oi let's go krump da humies!" and then some serious cognitive dissonance kicks in.

Not at all for me. That's just an accent, and a funny accent doesn't change one's ability to destroy everything that one sees. And when I imagine that in a deep, throaty voice as described in the codex, it's not funny, it's the sound of a barbarian talking in his distinct accent saying he's going to brutally murder you.

asimo77 wrote:@ Melissia I agree that all that stuff makes them terifying, but then they say "Oi let's go krump da humies!" and then some serious cognitive dissonance kicks in.

Imagine if all that stuff you said was true about the teletubbies, they rampaged around slaughtering everything in their path, all the while singing some baby gibbersih song. Kinda makes you re-evaluate the situation.

Dear god, that would just make it scarier!

asimo77 wrote: Imagine if all that stuff you said was true about the teletubbies, they rampaged around slaughtering everything in their path, all the while singing some baby gibbersih song. Kinda makes you re-evaluate the situation.

Scary stuff.

Fair enough I can see why one would think of orks like that. At the very least they bring something new to 40k.

Also maybe the teletubby example was a bit too frightening, I was considering Barney as well but I don't know if that would be worse.

No, the only way Barney would exist in my imagination is if he was being flayed alive by a Necron.

A necron with a malfunctioning Gauss Flayer which caused him to flay alive extremely slowly and excruciatingly painfully.

My god why such hate for Barney!?!? What did he ever do to you?!?! D:

Okay, edited the last two into the first post, and now starting on number five.

Asimo, I think you just don't understand 40k well enough quite yet.

Melissia wrote:Suffice it to say, that for me there is no 40k without Orks.

This is absolutely correct. They are as essential as Space Marines.

Care to elaborate on not knowing what 40k is all about? I previously said that orks add something new to 40k, and while I don't like them I would never want them removed.

I guess if I like different armies I don't know anything about 40k?

It also doesn't help that SW, Orks, and GK are my least favorite armies (and the only armies I don't like) so the last huge chunk of my posts probably appear very antagonistic.

5: SPACE MARINES


And here it is. The big one, in GW's eyes. It pretty much defines what a fifth edition codex is-- no unit is truly useless, there's multiple competitive builds and a huge variety of builds period, a huge variety of units to choose from, representing a very large variety of forces in a single codex. This is, in part, the reason why fifth edition rocks.

While it has its limitations (such as no all-terminator armies, for example), it's still the ideal by which all other fifth edition codices are compared to, and indeed by which all other non-fifth edition codices are compared to when it comes to playing them in fifth edition. While I'm iffy about using special characters-- and I really wish they just used something like Sagas as previously mentioned-- they're still at least an easy way to ensure that people know what your army can do just by looking at it (in this case, by looking at its HQ models). While many people miss fourth edition's customization, very few people would argue against the inclusion of such units as Thunderfire cannons, Ironclad Dreadnaughts, Land Speeder Storms, Sternguard and Vanguard (okay, the Vanguard are hard to use properly, but not everything can be a perfect hit), cheap TH/SS terminators, the inclusion of the Master of the Forge and his bringing back of hte Conversion beamer, etc. It brought a lot of new stuff in, as well as some of the older stuff that was missing.

The army can be built around scouts, or tacticals, and provides a huge amount of support options for these units. Or alternatively one could minimize their scout/tactical purchases (which I dislike seeing, but it does add to variety) and focus on the support functions themselves, leading to a Space Marine list that doesn't have to look the same twice every time you play it while still being quite competitive even with dramatic changes to the list. It's also part of the reason why fifth edition sucks, but I blame that on Matt Ward more than anything else. But marinewank aside, it's viable fluff and offers a huge amount of customization with widely varying DIY chapters that let you completely bypass the spank and produce something completely of your own (this compared to Space Wolves, who in the fluff don't have any descendant chapters, or Dark/Blood Angels, whose limited descendant chapters tend to be cursed like the Lamentors).

All in all, as I said, this is the codex every other fifth edition codex is going to be compared to. And there's a reason for this-- because it's a damned good codex with one of the most balanced and interesting army lists yet released. So yeah, Space Marines of all factions gets the fifth slot.

asimo77 wrote:@ Melissia I agree that all that stuff makes them terifying, but then they say "Oi let's go krump da humies!" and then some serious cognitive dissonance kicks in.

Imagine if all that stuff you said was true about the teletubbies, they rampaged around slaughtering everything in their path, all the while singing some baby gibbersih song. Kinda makes you re-evaluate the situation.

Yea, that pretty much sums it up. They are indeed horrifying monsters, but they sound ridiculous. I need proper spelling and grammar for me to take something seriously, and Orks seem to be incapable of doing that. As for your arguments for why they are scary, all the codices have that. The Necrons have the whole "ancient beyond imagining with tech so far advanced it looks like magic to the AdMech, out to harvest your soul for the gods", the humans have "most powerful empire in the history of existence that is out to exterminate anybody who doesn't worship a decaying corpse," and so on. Everybody is terrifying, but Orks try to be funny while doing it, and it doesn't work. Yes, I can accept that they do talk like that, but there is no need to write the codex in that language, name everything with ridiculous titles, and generally treat what should be a true menace to galactic security like a joke.

asimo77 wrote:Care to elaborate on not knowing what 40k is all about?

You seem to lack understanding about the factions that you claim are your least favorite. Maybe they are your least favorite nonetheless. But that dislike doesn't seem to be based on much knowledge.

Why should an alien species with widely different biology speak the exact same way we do? Their mouths aren't actually capable of pronouncing all of the sounds that ours are (or at least they find it very difficult), and are capable of pronouncing sounds we find difficult. And their priorities when it comes to language are far different from ours.

Melissia wrote:Why should an alien species with widely different biology speak the exact same way we do?

They shouldn't, but the codex should not be written like that. Their unit names should make sense and be spelled correctly, and their fluff is ridiculous.

Space Mreens are fifth, eh? I like your comments on the codex itself, but it really would have been nice to see more of what you thought of the fluff.

Can't wait for the next few armies, of course.

Manchu wrote:

asimo77 wrote:Care to elaborate on not knowing what 40k is all about?

You seem to lack understanding about the factions that you claim are your least favorite. Maybe they are your least favorite nonetheless. But that dislike doesn't seem to be based on much knowledge.

Ok I don't like orks because of their comedic slant, and ramshackle appearance- Would you disagree that they do not look ramshackle and do not have a comedic slant?

I don't like SW because of the viking and party/drinking all the time thing- Would you disagree that vikings and parties are not part of SW?

I don't like GK because they are the elite of the elite and nearly infallaible- Would you say GK are not the most elite of the imperium?