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I last read the books when the Horus Heresy line was in full swing and last played the game in 5th edition.
I'm not going to be reading the new novels to catch up, just don't have the time, but I'm hoping there are vids or a wiki or something that can catch me up on all the changes.

For example:
What happened to the army known as the "Imperial Guard" Astra what?
Papa Smurf is alive?!?!?!?!

Let me catch you up on a few things to get you started, since i've spent the last year and half also catching up on whats changed. Last game I played was 3rd/4th.

So here it goes.

Imperial Guard got renamed Astra Militairum which is the high gothic name for Imperial Guard. I still call them the Guard as does a lot of older players around. I've read a few different reasons for the name change, but lawsuit seems to be the most consitant reason as to why it happened. I can not confirm if this is the truth as I haven't really spent much time investigating.

Papa Smurf is indeed back, below is a very quick over view of how we have got to the now.

Remeber Abaddon who was the one who unified the Chaos warbands multiple times to go on holiday in Imperial space? Well over his 12 different holidays which GM made out that they all failed and other than causing a ruckus not much was really done. Well fast forward to the 13th crusade (Current times) and we find out that he didn't fail. Each crusade completed thier objective set out and each one had been leading to the big 13th bash. I suggest reading the story behind the 13th for the exact details. Cadia has been wrecked in only a way Chaos can (Chucked a blacktone fortress at it) and doesn't exisit anymore. In doing this the Necron Pylons that were there holding the Warp back (Eye of Terror) have been destroyed. This is turn caused a massive rip in real space which has split the Imperium in two by massive warp storms etc.

While all of this was happening on Cadia, a dude called Crawl and his band of merry men & women teamed up with some Eldar and with some gifts from a Necron went on a pilgram across the galaxey to the UltraMarines home world. Once there they stuck Guilliman in a new suit of armour, the Eldar did some dances and said a few kind words then proceeded to bring the main man back from near death in the statis field. This gang then went on another pilgram across the Galaxy to Earth so that Guilliman could have a chat with his Dad.

Oh and thier is two different types of Space Marines now. Space Marines of old (being fazed out) and Primaris Marine's. The new ones are just bigger/better versions of Space Marines. But most players are still crying about it, but it makes sense since a space marine should be bigger than a guardsman and well they weren't.

Almost every army has a new name. I'm 99% sure it's because the old names couldn't be trademarked: "imperial guard" is a generic name. You can't trademark generic names, otherwise someone could trademark (for example) "waffles" and ask royalties every time someone sells waffles under the name "waffles"... "Astra Militarum" is just bogus latin, so it can be trademarked with no problem.

So now the eldar are the Aeldari, the dark eldar are the Drukhari, the guard is the Astra Militarum, marines are the Adeptus Astartes, etc. and anyone selling stuff with those names without GW's permission can be sued.

There are a few wiki that are mostly up-to-date on the lore. Lexicanum summarizes stuff pretty well.

Warhammer Fantasy > Age of Sigmarines

Old 40K > New 40K.



#getoffmylawn #dontlikechange #oldmangrumblegrumble

I like and dislike aspects of both, myself.

Yeah, if you try to catch up on the whole Primaris SM thing and the impact that's had on the lore, be prepared for some salt. Best case, it's some lazy lore writing done to justify a big modeling update that would have survived and been welcomed without it.

Many players were wondering - what will happen when they try to introduce Primaris into the Blood Angels? The Dark Angels? Space Wolves? Proud chapters each with their own unique genetic heritage and chapter secrets, suspicious of outsiders, already non-Codex compliant? Surely something intricate and interesting.

... and in just about every case, GW hand-waved it away by having a big battle that killed 37 chapter-masters you'd never heard of before, the important named characters getting grievously wounded and volunteering to become Primaris, which is super dangerous but never kills anyone you've heard of, and the surviving chapters being so weak and depleted that they accepted their (probably) loyal brothers with open arms! Thank goodness Bobby G. rolled up with that Primaris factory just in time! Back to killing!

So now we're in the awkward in-between where all the unique chapter units are non-Primaris, but Primaris are superior in every way, so SM players are just waiting for the rest of the updates to be rolled out while their former heavyweight champions are slowly made irrelevant or discontinued, which is way better than just saying "We're updating your model range! The new models will be bigger!"

Man, I'm not even an SM player, and I'm bitter. End

For me the bitterness doesn't come from the story advancing, because I think the Imperium is in even more desperate straits than before - it's that non-Marine lore hasn't seemed to advance with the times. A lot of other "5-Minutes to Midnight" plots haven't been developed. Which named characters are still alive 200 years later, especially the human ones? Have Tyranids made significant inroads in that time? That sort of thing. I also feel like the interesting things about the new setting (old marines worrying about becoming the new Thunder Warriors, intra-chapter conflict, Blood Angels without the Black Rage, the Imperium literally being cut in half and daemon invasions reaching Terra itself) are not being represented on the tabletop - generic guard troops are still Cadians, the Primaris tech is new and shiny and not millenia-old relics of forgotten construction, that sort of thing.

It's not an issue with the narrative or with the models, it's that they don't quite match up. And although in the lore the theo-fascist oppression that makes the Imperium a miserable dystopia is still very much present, humanity is still on the wrong end of a long, slow decline, I feel like those elements are being toned down in the public face of GW. I think so that they can have some clear, marketable good guys. Once again, dissonance between the lore itself, which has stayed more or less true to the tone of classic grimdark 40k, and the way it is presented in the game (including lore snippets in the Codecies, PR, and similar).

But hey, salt is subjective. And eighth edition saw some pretty cool releases for GSC, Chaos Marines, and the Necron updates for 9th look pretty great.

Everyone's horses now! Horsehammer 40k! The emperor is a shetland pony!

(also what everyone else said)

Archebius wrote:
be prepared for some salt.

What's salt? (aside from sodium chloride)

Horla wrote:

Archebius wrote:
be prepared for some salt.

What's salt? (aside from sodium chloride)

People fracked-off at changes essentialy. Getting mouthey due to frustration/bitterness/disapointment/changes to the game that don't make it feel like the game they knew.

I see, thanks for explaining.

I'm entirely out of touch with the lore. I started reading in on it and was like "oh, hey, the galaxy has been torn in half. neat." then stopped digging!

I still refuse to see Necrons in their new light, I started with the "new army" necrons of old who walked slowly forwards and then disappeared because larry fell over and didn't get up.

Mortarion, Primarch of the Death Guard, and Magnus of the Thousand Sons are running around kickin butt, and their armies have full dexes. This has lead many to speculate about Fulgrim and Emperor's Children (see below) and Angron and the World Eaters being on the table for development in 9th.

Another big development that is connected to Papa Smurf is what was going on with the Eldar who helped bring him back to life.

An Eldar woman named Yvraine walked all the paths of the Eldar and came across some lore suggesting that Ynead, the Eldar God of Death, is prophesied to awaken once most Eldar are dead, and she figures that god could go toe to toe with Slaanesh and save the Eldar from her once and for all.

She hooks up with Eldrad, and they figure out a ritual to convince Ynead that lots of Eldar are dead. In the middle of the ritual, the Deathwatch show up and Crowe shoots Eldrad in the face, flubbing the ritual. So we have a Shardof the god, but not the whole deal.

Now Yvraine has to convince Eldar of all stripes to get behind her, rescue a crone sword from the palace of Slaanesh and finish what they started. It's a big, big deal, because it is uniting some Eldar from each of the 3 Eldar factions, if they pull it off, it would be the end of Slaanesh, and finally, if we're lucky, it's a plotline that could bring Exodites, Eldar Corsairs and Emperor's Children models into the game.

As for nids, Genestealer Cults are back as a playable army! And there's some weirdness about that too, because there's a planet that the tyranids control rather than devour; this plot thread has been more of a hint than anything meaningful, but with a new edition and the potential for a new nid dex, GW may be acting on that soon.

I don't know enough about Tau, Crons or Orks to help you with that; but Farsight and Ghaz are back, and the Silent King is coming.

Tau reverse engineered an Imperial Warp Engine. Made the mistake of using it, the humans in the fleet created a Greater Good warp entity out of their strange religious view of what the Greater Good means, and now there's a section of the Tau that are just as genocidal and xenophobic as the Imperium as they seek to eradicate non-Tau auxiliaries due to their first real experience with warpcraft.