Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Robin5t wrote:
They don't appear that often, but when they do, it's normally to hand out a beat-down. Death Masque was a real outlier in that regard.

I haven't gotten to read through Death Masque, but isn't their defeat there largely due to trying to negotiate with the Emperor's unthinking killers? Like, at some point the Death Jester has Artemis at his mercy, and instead attempts to parlay to explain they're not enemies, and are working toward a common cause. To which Artmeis says something pithy like "Battle Brothers? Come the Apocalypse!" and shoots said merciful Harlequin in the face.

For my part, I feel like Orks are the mook of the setting by a pretty good margin. In video games, they're always the opponent before the "real" enemy reveal themselves. I know there's the "beast" book series right now attempting to push Orks up in threat level, but I don't get the impression anyone really thinks of them as a galactic threat, as much as a nuisance to train the recruits on.

Still, they don't have it as bad as the Beastmen in fantasy/AOS. They appear in storylines as afterthoughts, like "The warriors of Sigmar's divine wrath walked a few more city blocks, killing zillions of civilizations of Beastmen, when suddenly they encountered a threat!" Poor lads...

the_scotsman wrote:
Death Masque's fiction, bar the part where the Death Jester shows up and kills a couple of the Deathwatch, is basically bolterporn. All the Harlequin troupers are taken out with almost no effort, and the Jester shows up when they're pretty much all dead. Despite the whole "it's the harlequins, allied with Eldrad!!!" thing, Eldrad doesn't do anything but stand there and wait for the dreadnought to stomp in, say a cool line, and shoot him with a plasma cannon.

Just like you would expect from a standard Call of Duty video game, the only reason for some of the heroes to die is to make the end boss seem threatening before the good guy dispatches them.

That's really disappointing. I'm not an Eldar player historically, but I've understood the story of Ynead to be that the billions of souls collected in Eldar soulstones since the fall, could essentially be cashed in at once. This would birth a new god of the Craftworld Eldar; a light mirror to Slannesh's depravity. Thus, one god would kill the other, and the few surviving Eldar left to rebuild their civilization without the predations of Chaos.

But, it's one of those things like Abaddon surmounting the Golden Throne and slaying the emperor, that you never expect will ever happen. When it does, you imagine it will be the big dramatic ending that draws the story to a close.

Instead, Death Masque seems a bit like writing a story about how Leman Russ returns from the Eye of Terror, and is immediately killed by a new box set of Tau that's going on sale that month. Talk about your anti-climax...

(I love the models though, cheers on that part!)