Saturday should se many new owners of those books. Got 3 "soon enough", ( Friday..) so let me share what I think... and I'd like to hear your Opinions if good,bad or ugly is the verdict of the Background in any of the first 5 books.
Sorry if I won't talk about Xenos 2 + 1 , didn't order those, same for chaos.
The new main Rulebook.
Thinner than I was used to from Edition 3 - 6 . 7th was split in 3 books, so maybe its fairer to compare this 8th to 3rd edition ? 3rd was the time when the Main
BRB had lists for everyone inside ( stopgap until codices ) like 8th seems to go, just with extra softcover Indices instead of 1 big tome.
If you don't want/need all of them its surely less expensive this way.
A colorful Hardcover, the usual recycled art, etc nothing special. But the first good news is, they kept the First page, the main introduction into
40k.
The Imperium of Man, structure, history etc
pp, some basics about the forces. The usual start of any of these
BRB.
Now, wasn't there "movement" in the rumors? No longer stuck in M41.999?
.... maybe?
The
BRB isn't the place for great revelations it seems. We have warzones and those may contain what you seek. The
BRB suffers (
IMHO ) a bit from not enough space ( layout / pagecount ) and silly structure like: "and then.... and then.... and then...." . A lot of the events felt condensed into
small blurbs where "million..billlions..die " , whole factions are beaten without much info about it, and .....space elfs as taxi which always arrives "just in time" to provide an escape if neccessary.
We got "a new hope" and Roboute Gulliman. And
RG is going to be the main actor here.
We got a Map of the Galaxy, split by the Cicatrix Maledictum. ( and I hope its only a localized thing to add Worlds called : "Neu Drekhafen", but who knows ?
GW mixed 2 languages already because of: "names MUST be english ( IP?) not matter if we localized the rest of the text. " )
Many worlds aren't shown on that Map. In the East, we have Ultramar, the Sautekh-Dyn of the crons, the T'au and the "new colonies of Nurgle" as I would call them. Funnily the T'au are encircled... so the Warprift or the Crons or Nurgle are now their "neighbours..."
Not so different from Macragge, except the Ultras still got a chance to move around.
The events, aren't placed in an order. The warp rift opened, Terra was under attack by Khorme ( beaten by..you guess it ...
RG ) , Cadia under attack ( supported by the LoD ) and obviously there is
RG's crusade too. Armageddon is twisted in a fight between Khorne and tzentch, but finally the return of Angron is stopped. ( so maybe no model? ). Shield of Baal...yes this too has a place and Tyranids are removed by Ka'bandha "because he can" ??? and
BA saved by... yep
RG. Could
RG act as he pleases? NO, because here comes is brother, Morty and invades Ultramar.
Sure they fight. Sure we don't get to know who would have won, because the fight ends without a victor.
The faction specific part is bound to Models
GW offers, not sure if there is a single thing we havent seen before. Nice Pics, known models, the usual fluff.
The Galaxy at war... and next step is warzones.
1. Ultramar. Gulliman vs Mortarion.
2. Cadia . Chaos busy fighting for the glory of taking that prize... and the defenders reorganize at the sourrounding systems. Oh another...draw?
3. Stygius. Magnus and tzentch plan to claim the systems close to Mordian. So everyone wants a piece of the cake....
4. Rampage of the followers of khorne. Tomb worlds, imperial worlds, tyranid fleets, whoever was in their path was slaughtered.
5. Iyanden. Slanesh & co vs Aeldari. Obviously the combined space elfs won....
6. Armageddon. Demons vs Orks&Humans. Really
GW??
7. war in the rift. Chaos does as it always does. All out war between the 4 .....
So if your are not an Ultramarine...
SOL..no win or draw for you. So if you are a flavor of space elf, congrats win / draw or job as taxi for somebody else is yours. Chaos? good news, you can win or keep on fighting yourself. Not sure how
GW wants to motivate anyone who isn't one of these 3.
Index Imperium 1
Space Marines
The good news is, the Black Templars are recognized as fleet based crusaders ( again? ) and fielding many crusades with thousands of marines ( as it always was ? ).
Bad news is, the poor Iron Hands got no special model, so they got almost ignored. Only 2 Pics. No fluff, no rules. I mean sure
GW based the index on models and pics and snippets of text, but we get 8 out of 9 legions, we get grey knights, death watch and Legion of the damned. couldnt they just remember they had a model of an iron father once ( metal) and give the
IH just a few lines of text ?
The surprise is, the Primaris stuff is limited to the boxed set contents, no dread and no transport to be seen.
Index Imperium 2
all the non-space marine parts of the
IoM, plus Custodes.
The good news first: the
SoB are back to "millions", limits like 6 orders of x each arent mentioned... soo ( all we need is plastic models,
GW! ).
The bad news is, they try to Smurf the Cadians. Cadians are like 10x better than any other regiment now....same nonsense that got Ultramarines in trouble
didn't they learn?
Plus, only Catachan gets a little bit of screen time, Tallarn and Valhalla and Mordian are just a pic of 1 trooper somewhere...
Characters? Guess the is no one from the planets not starting with a "C" and marbo is still "undercover"..
Would I suggest to base an entry into the
40k verse on these books? The new
BRB and the Index of choice ( one or as many as needed? ) ?
NO. Too much is missing and the new fluff has issues.
I'd recommend previous Material, could be inexpensive too if you don't have to have new stuff but accept used books.
Would I jump right in if this 8th ed was my first contact? I am not sure, it doesn't pull you in
IMHO.
