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"The Wolf of Fenris" has generated a lot of hate. Because it makes no sense. It doesn't even attempt to make sense, really. I prefer to think of it as being told from the Red Corsair's "poin of view" (heretical lies).

Melissia wrote:You can play Orks as comic relief all you want.

I, however, will not do so. I believe Orks are FAR more interesting when taken completely seriously. And therefor that is what I do. If you think Orks would be more interesting if they were taken seriously and yet you're not able to do so, that is your failing, not the faction's.

It's too bad you've decided to not read Brothers of the Snake. The most menacing depeiction of Orks I've ever seen is in that. Waves upon waves of orks - and not one speck of green.

The Orks were pretty scary in 15 Hours, IIRC.

The only "amusing" thing they did was make the Gretchin poke their heads up to see if there were Snipers about...

Seaward wrote:

asimo77 wrote:
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?

Probably not in the way you imagine it to be. They're not doing keg stands and inviting the local Sororitas over to the dorms. They've got a strong Northern European/13th Warrior feel to them. Drinking's about ritual and tradition as much as it is tying one on. It's celebration of victory, mourning of loss, etc.

There was a thread in the Background forum recently that, in addition to getting extremely heated, discussed whether or not Space Wolves are as intelligent as other Space Marines. They do things a little differently, and they make some dumb calls about certain minor things like not wearing helmets or whatever, but overall, they wouldn't have won a lot of their battles if they were idiot frat boys instead of highly intelligent tacticians.


Though I will say that, honestly, GW missed the boat, in my opinion, by narrowing Space Wolves down to just a Nordic, rather than a pan-European "barbarian", theme. Just due to my own personal preferences, I'd be on Space Wolves like white on rice if there were room for Germanic Fenrisians rather than all of them being members of the male chapter of the Swedish bikini team.

If done right. A lot of the time they're just portryed as druken morons. In "Battle of the Abyss" the SW captain is just a druken idiot.

I never thought space wolves to be dumb, they just have short attention spans sometimes.

Melissia wrote:

For me Space Marines still qualify as humans

Yeah, I don't agree with that.

At all.

Space Marines aren't human anymore. They're living weapons. They don't participate in human society in any way, shape, or form, save to kill humanity's enemies. They aren't human biologically speaking, arguably they aren't human genetically speaking, and even psychologically speaking they're alien to us.

I would go so far as to say Marines are Homo Sapiens Astartes, while humans are Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

I suppose it really depends on how you define 'human'. In 40k there are lots of strange deviations from the basic human. Psykers, Cyborgs, Ratlings, Ogrynes, squats, astrates...

I wouldn't say that someone stops being human because they have bionic leg, or bionic eye, or because they are genetically different, like in the case of ratlings or Psykers. The least human from my perspective are the servitors. Even though they might be genetically closer to the 100% human, and they might have far less bionics than a Tyranid Wars vet. What separates them is not that their body has been replaced, it is that their mind has been replaced; completely robbing them of their humanity.

Astrates were born and lived as humans, many were brave heroes before they were ever marines. They have physical enhancements, most are biological instead of bionical, but I think in their minds they are still very much human, and uphold human ideals. Some times better than regular humans.

Also, the Imperial Guard is FAR more heroic than the Astartes in my eyes. Why? Simple. The most basic definition of bravery... Bravery is a very important part of being a "hero". Overcoming challenges is another-- and killing a Carnifex is a far greater challenge for Guardsmen than it is for Astartes.

For me a hero is really someone who achieves great things... I don't prescribe much to this idea that the more pathetic someone is... The less they have to do to be a hero. Hero gets thrown about a lot now by the media, someone calls for an ambulance "he's a hero", pulls a cat out a pond "hero"...

I don't see the point in giving guardsmen the special-needs award. Just because one time they didn't wet their pants and run away, suddenly they are heroes... While GK and SM are off doing the Emperor's work killing MCs and Greater Daemons, yet they are not heroes because they have trained to deal with their fear?

This reeks of discrimination

Wiglaf wrote:I think Ork "accent" is supposed to be northern (rural) Scottish or English ghetto. I met once in London a guy from some isolated village of Scotland and I swear to god i couldn´t understand half of what he was saying ( as some of the english natives I was partying with, apparently).

It's Cockney, the official accent of soccer hooligans.

SmackCakes wrote:
I don't see the point in giving guardsmen the special-needs award. Just because one time they didn't wet their pants and run away, suddenly they are heroes... While GK and SM are off doing the Emperor's work killing MCs and Greater Daemons, yet they are not heroes because they have trained to deal with their fear?

This reeks of discrimination

I sort of understand the point that's being made: Space Marines are genetically enhanced, given all sorts of advanced tools, training, etc., and taught how to master their fear and win at all costs. Guardsmen aren't. So Space Marines taking down a daemon or something is, more or less, thought to be par for the course for them. Guardsmen doing it is pretty incredible. That's all in fluff terms, of course; the nature of the actual tabletop experience is balanced so that anybody can win against anybody.

On the other hand, in fluff terms, that's not the usual Guard vs. something big and scary experience. I specifically recall that, when Gaunt's little crew of super badasses fought Chaos Marines on whatever planet they were doing that infiltration mission on, Gaunt thought about how entire regiments of Imperial Guard would break and flee at the sight of just a handful of Chaos Marines, because fighting CSMs was the Astartes' job, not the Guard's, and they weren't up to it.

Manchu wrote:I think SM have certainly "lost" or "transcended" some of their humanity, depending on your viewpoint. For "theological" purposes, however, they are still very much human. Remember that the inhumanity of Space Marines compared to normal humans is nowhere near so yawning a chasm as the inhumanity of daemons and xenos compared to any humans, including Space Marines. Let's not confuse "humanity" with being a member of the human species here.

Yes, exactly. It depends on the chapter too. There's a lot of humanity in the Salamanders and many other less famours chapters. Grey Knights not so much.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Wiglaf wrote:I think Ork "accent" is supposed to be northern (rural) Scottish or English ghetto. I met once in London a guy from some isolated village of Scotland and I swear to god i couldn´t understand half of what he was saying ( as some of the english natives I was partying with, apparently).

It's Cockney, the official accent of soccer hooligans.

Oddly enough, it works very well for any accent perceived to be "extreme." For example, it's hilarious imagining Orks speaking in an American Deep South or Bronx accent.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Melissia wrote:The Space Wolves are the most loyal of all chapters aside from the Grey Knights themselves. Despite their misgivings, the Ecclesiarchy would have a hard time supporting a protracted war against the Wolves.

I think Codex Choas Space Marines specifically mention a whole group of Space Wolves betraying their brethren. I thought it was a terrible piece of fluff in a codex with a lot of terrible fluff but there it is.

iirc, it's in Codex: Space Wolves as well. There's also mention in the Space Wolves codex about a group of raiders running around that appear to be former Space Wolves, but no one's quite sure if that's true or when exactly they might have turned traitor.


As far as the heroes debate is concerned, I remember something written in the now old rulebook for Mekton Zeta that fits with this debate. To paraphrase it and adapt it for the 40K setting, a guardsman that takes on and defeats a group of ork boyz is a hero. He's done something spectacular and persevered despite severe odds. A titan crew that takes out that same group of orks isn't. Instead, the members of the titan crew are - in essence - bullies. Sure, they're well-meaning bullies. And I'd be grateful for what they'd done if I were on the same battlefield as them because orks should be killed just on general principle. But here you're basically looking at the strong "picking on" the weak (even if it's for the best of causes). Being a hero requires an actual challenge to overcome (which, as one poster noted, does not mean calling an ambulance - unless the trip to the phone was unusually dangerous).

Manchu wrote:"The Wolf of Fenris" has generated a lot of hate. Because it makes no sense. It doesn't even attempt to make sense, really. I prefer to think of it as being told from the Red Corsair's "poin of view" (heretical lies).

That codex really messed up the 40K narrative IMO. Before that book I would say post heresy there had been another 1000-5000 traitor marines. Then that book made it seem like Marines were going traitor all the time. Perhaps as many as 30,000 traitors post heresy. I don't know, I guess going from 99.9% loyalty to 99% or whatever isn't the end of the world.

For the hero debate, one needs look no further than the classic LotR tale. Aragorn or Gandalf are certainly more "heroic", but it is Sam and Frodo who are the real heroes.

Necroman wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Wiglaf wrote:I think Ork "accent" is supposed to be northern (rural) Scottish or English ghetto. I met once in London a guy from some isolated village of Scotland and I swear to god i couldn´t understand half of what he was saying ( as some of the english natives I was partying with, apparently).

It's Cockney, the official accent of soccer hooligans.

Oddly enough, it works very well for any accent perceived to be "extreme." For example, it's hilarious imagining Orks speaking in an American Deep South or Bronx accent.

Hmmm, gonna have to try that... Cajun Orks? yup. Jersey Shore Orks? definitely.

I can totally imagine an eight-foot-tall muscle-bound brutish fungus man telling me I have a purty mouth.

A hero is someone who achieves greatness at great risk. I understand that Space Marines are more capable fighters than Guardsmen but they are expected to struggle against proportionately greater odds. And again: Space Marines are not born Space Marines. By the time a human has become a Space Marine Scout he has undergone and overcome greater challenges than most Guardsmen can even dream of. A Space Marine Scout is already a greater hero than 99.999% of all Guardsmen. By the time he has a long service stud in his forehead his feats would be near-mythical by the standards of an average Guardsman.

And yet,they're still not human to me. They're just a bunch of roided up, genetically modified, chemically enhanced biological weapons. So Marines being heroic is nigh-on impossible compared to a normal human. That's the last I'm gonna say on the subject...

Ok, but you haven't really addressed the struggle to become a Space Marine in that argument.

No, because I don't care.

The less I talk about Space Marine fluff, the better mood I will be in and the more I will actually give a gak.

The core concept is really, extremely, ludicrously uninteresting to me. Reading it makes me question my desire to actually play 40k, as the core concepts behind Space Marines in genearl are some of hte most boring, overdone, uninspired things I have ever seen in 40k and science fiction in general. So I ignore it in favor of other, less dull concepts, such as the "Space Vikings in Space" concept of the puppies, or the "tragically doomed heroes" concept of the blood angels, or the "secret daemon hunters driven by duty" concept of Grey Knights. Hell even Ultramarines are more interesting than just "Space Marines". Heck I even like Fulgrim to an extent, poor schmuck that he is caught in a daemon prince's body and trying to fight it.

edit: This also effects my rankings, I should note. By ignoring the gakky gak-gak mcgakkerton of a gakstorm that is the core SM fluff, I can instead focus on what doesn't suck. The codex itself, from a competitive and design standpoint, is one of the best, if not the best, ever produced by GW. Its fluff prevents it from going any higher than the next four despite this, but because of the quality of the codex it deserves to be higher than I would have otherwise put it. Because it's a damned good book, fluff notwithstanding.

You seem to be pretty taken with the "up against impossible odds" theme, too, so I don't really get your attitude toward SM. Even if you don't think SM are in danger when overwhelmingly outnumbered (which they nearly always are) or facing opponents that are even more dangerous than them (this happens all the time, too), you still have the struggle of a regular human trying to prove himself worthy to become one of them. And that journey is much, much more difficult than the sock-folding, bed-making, lasgun-twirling life of a Guardsman. And in a fight, nine times out of ten, it's the enemies of the IG who are up against impossible odds. Now I'll give you that the lone Guardsman who stood against Horus was a saint. But Sanguinius is a much more significant saint.

((double post glitch))

I think this sums it up pretty well:

Melissia wrote:No, because I don't care.

I don't care. I don't like Space Marines as a concept, they bore me. "Space Wolves" are interesting. "Blood Angels" are interesting. "Salamanders" are interesting. Hell, even "Ultramarines" have their good side every now and then. And I actually liked "pre-heresy Death Guard" too from the limited descriptions we were given. However, "Space Marines" are dull, uninteresting, uninspired, and completely unlikable. That's just how it is to me.

Melissia wrote:I think this sums it up pretty well:

Melissia wrote:No, because I don't care.

Yeah, that sums it up all too well.

Read the edited version


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It's not like I can perfectly explain how I feel about everything. I'm just human. But Space Marines, truly and honestly, bore me as a concept. It's when one gets beyond "Space Marine" to something far more interesting and less overdone that they actually begin to interest me.

...but you like the most boring marines of all GKs?

*shrug* I never claimed to not have peculiar tastes. I like Grey Knights, whereas I don't like Space Marines. There's no real logical explanation that I can give, save that of simple appeal-- Grey Knights appeal to me while Space Marines in general don't, and why I don't know how to express.

Edit: ninja'd
Never mind

So the things that make the Chapters unique are interesting to you but you find the concept of power-armored, biologically-enhanced, super-warrior-monks a little too OTT? I can understand that as far as I can articulate it and no farther. For me, the particular capacity of the Salamanders for melancholy and compassion, the Space Wolves for fidelity and humilty, the Ultramarines for nobility and inflexible justice, etc etc etc, are all bound up with their idenity as set apart from humanity. For example: A compassionate Guardsman is not interesting; a compassionate Space Marine is interesting.

Also, to me they aren't the most boring Marines. That tends to be Ultramarines second company for me. Sicaruis' company or however his name is spelled this year (I can't really quite keep up with it, they keep changing it around).

Melissia wrote:*shrug* I never claimed to not have peculiar tastes. I like Grey Knights, whereas I don't like Space Marines. There's no real logical explanation that I can give, save that of simple appeal-- Grey Knights appeal to me while Space Marines in general don't, and why I don't know how to express.

It's because you think they look cool! just admit it.