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If the galaxy is a galaxy, why jump around a timeline, when literally anything could happen in the space we know, and don't know, for almost any reason imaginable? Even with warp travel, there could be millions of worlds and wars going on in a small puff of gas, that nobody's ever heard of (or forgot about). So why constrain the setting to the scale of a few characters in a few stories, whose paths even cross, when there's so much room for new civilizations and armies? The timeline doesn't even matter, because we already know the Imperium will always be at war, or there isn't a game.

It used to be like this, but as GW's fiction wing started to get bigger and more popular, they started to go down the comic book protagonist route of concentrating the story on individuals rather than the setting itself.

40k was always a setting, with no specific point of reference. This made it huge and gave it a 'historical' kind of authenticity, with a external narrator like you get in history text books.

By focusing on just a handful of characters, they've shrunk the scope down to a tiny piece of the setting, In addition they've made each species have their own point of view characters, which results in every aspect of the faction needing to revolve around the actions of those characters.

It shackles the setting, scope and imagination.

The Thraka vs blackmane fight is IMO possibly the epitome of this shoehorning contrivance. Which then has just continued in 1v1 fights between these important people and the narrative turns only on their actions.


GW forgot the tenet they've been writing in the front of their book for almost 40 years -


To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. [...]
But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed.



Apparently to be a man in such times is now to be super special and to have the plot revolve around you and where you will definitely be missed so much you can never actually die.

 Hellebore wrote:
Apparently to be a man in such times is now to be super special and to have the plot revolve around you and where you will definitely be missed so much you can never actually die.

No matter how big the galaxy is, there are always going to be a handful of people who have a massively outsized impact on it. Yes, you have someone like Guilliman who can make choices that impact entire segmentums. But for every Guilliman there are billions and billions (if not trillions) of souls who may as well be nameless as they toil in obscurity for an Imperium that doesn't care about them.

Hell, for every no-name individual Space Marine there are billions of people in the galaxy.

 ultimaratio wrote:
If the galaxy is a galaxy, why jump around a timeline, when literally anything could happen in the space we know, and don't know, for almost any reason imaginable? Even with warp travel, there could be millions of worlds and wars going on in a small puff of gas, that nobody's ever heard of (or forgot about). So why constrain the setting to the scale of a few characters in a few stories, whose paths even cross, when there's so much room for new civilizations and armies? The timeline doesn't even matter, because we already know the Imperium will always be at war, or there isn't a game.

GW had decided that story will make the game more attractive then setting alone. Many people enjoy a sense of motion, even if all you are doing is running on a treadmill. That's current 40K. Lots of things are going on, but little has actually changed.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Apparently to be a man in such times is now to be super special and to have the plot revolve around you and where you will definitely be missed so much you can never actually die.

No matter how big the galaxy is, there are always going to be a handful of people who have a massively outsized impact on it. Yes, you have someone like Guilliman who can make choices that impact entire segmentums. But for every Guilliman there are billions and billions (if not trillions) of souls who may as well be nameless as they toil in obscurity for an Imperium that doesn't care about them.

Hell, for every no-name individual Space Marine there are billions of people in the galaxy.

When the story is entirely focused on a handful of individuals, it doesn't matter at all that there are hypothetically trillions of other useless people dying horribly. They are as unimportant to the story as the rocks no one talks about the protagonists walking on.

for it to matter, it actually has to matter - ie take up space in the prose. It has to be a chunk of the story, people have to die, protagonists have to die.

Otherwise you've just steampunked it - used a veneer of 'trillions of meaningless people die' to try and make your story seem more grandiose than it is. It has no weight or value, it's just window dressing for Dragonball Z 1v1 fights between a handful of characters.


And there is a difference between a character having an 'outsized' impact, and what the Guillimans, Eldrads and Thrakas of modern 40k are doing. Before this era, Macharius had an outsized impact, which consisted of a small chunk of one segmentum being conquered. But it was still put in perspective as a small cog in the machine. The modern take has entirely disregarded the reality of the scale of the universe and literally made Guilliman the fulcrum on which EVERYTHING turns.

40k was so big no one character truly lynchpined anything, they had their impacts big and small in different parts of the galaxy, but on the whole, they were not galactic drivers. By turning characters into galactic scale drivers you shrink the setting.

The narrative provided by GW is for those that wish to use it, and you are absolutely free, as you always have been to say: "I'm in venting the Gloobglorb system. It exists in a far flung corner of space, cut off from the rest of the Imperium. No one in Gloobglorb is aware that Cadia fell, or even existed at all; nobody knows the rift happened, and no one knows Primaris exist.

Or you can choose to let Gloobglorb be affected by some parts of the story and not others. It's just as much an option as it always was... It's just that now you ALSO have the option of attaching your games to an ongoing storyline IF YOU WANT TO.

My system (the Desdaemona system) has been cut off from the Imperium since the Plague of Unbelief at the tag end of the Age of Apostasy- fiction which has existed since the 2nd ed Sisters dex. The only thing that has affected the system at all (so far) is that when the Blackstone Fortress woke up and started transmitting it's distress signal, it brought the larger galaxy closer, and depending on how the campaign plays out, Desdaemona may or may not be reunited with the larger Imperium.

Simple. It can be done, because we did it. If that's what you prefer, just do it. No one is forcing anyone to read BL, to buy campaign books, etc. And in fact, GW very much backed off packing extra Matched Play rules into campaign books to facilitate your ability to completely ignore them; they are now 100% Crusade content.

It is true that Centerpiece models like Primarchs are so powerful that people feel like they have to take them to win. It is also true that retiring some first born units to Legends made this harder for people who want to ignore that plot train. But these issues are separate from the issue of the progressive storyline. Which isn't to say I don't feel sorry for Ynarri fans who want that narrative to go somewhere; my pet theory is that the emergence of EC will reactivate Ynarri and push them marginally forward in their plotline for 11th.

The difference is that in the past, Macharius was an npc with their own gloobglorb system that was an example of what you can do while also being part of the setting.

Guilliman's actions are singular and unique, non replicable and influence things in binary ways that are clearly outside the realms of what you and your own creativity can do.

By making his actions extra special, it gives them a relevance and importance that can't be replicated by any players own actions without using him and his narrative.


protagonist narratives like Yarrick and Macharius are aligned with player narratives.

Protagonist narratives like Guilliman and Eldrad are above players and reduce the meaning of actions outside their own spheres.

The first Marneus Calgar Mini was released during Rogue Trader.

I think Dante has existed since second.

Heck I think even the sisters got Jacobus and Kyrinov in 2nd.

I think Eldrad was 2nd as well.

If not second, then they came in third? These guys have been around for a long, long time.

 PenitentJake wrote:
The first Marneus Calgar Mini was released during Rogue Trader.

I think Dante has existed since second.

Heck I think even the sisters got Jacobus and Kyrinov in 2nd.

I think Eldrad was 2nd as well.

If not second, then they came in third? These guys have been around for a long, long time.

"Being around for a while," is not the same as "Is worth keeping going forward."

 Hellebore wrote:


GW forgot the tenet they've been writing in the front of their book for almost 40 years -


To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. [...]
But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed.

The books I get in the USA haven't had that specific line since for over 30 years, I checked just before posting. GW didn't forget about it. Instead, a person made a deliberate decision to omit that line, and another line that uses the second person pronoun. (A universe you can enter if you dare)

To be wistful for a bygone time, and to indulge in a stabbed-in-the-back by an undefined entity narrative, I like to be specific. Back in your glory days of the 90s and 00s, the forgetting of that tenet had already been initiated.

 alextroy wrote:

 ultimaratio wrote:
If the galaxy is a galaxy, why jump around a timeline, when literally anything could happen in the space we know, and don't know, for almost any reason imaginable? Even with warp travel, there could be millions of worlds and wars going on in a small puff of gas, that nobody's ever heard of (or forgot about). So why constrain the setting to the scale of a few characters in a few stories, whose paths even cross, when there's so much room for new civilizations and armies? The timeline doesn't even matter, because we already know the Imperium will always be at war, or there isn't a game.

GW had decided that story will make the game more attractive then setting alone. Many people enjoy a sense of motion, even if all you are doing is running on a treadmill. That's current 40K. Lots of things are going on, but little has actually changed.

I get that, but I think the motion should come from pushing further into space, not falling into the personal dramas like Star Wars. If the setting is always 11:59 on the Doomsday Clock, jump to a new star, instead. Maybe the writers are too attached to their characters.

 PenitentJake wrote:
The first Marneus Calgar Mini was released during Rogue Trader.

I think Dante has existed since second.

Heck I think even the sisters got Jacobus and Kyrinov in 2nd.

I think Eldrad was 2nd as well.

If not second, then they came in third? These guys have been around for a long, long time.

and when they were released, they didn't have galactically shattering impacts on the setting. their protagonism didn't exist, they were just characters that did stuff, like every other character that did stuff.

 pelicaniforce wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:


GW forgot the tenet they've been writing in the front of their book for almost 40 years -


To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. [...]
But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed.

The books I get in the USA haven't had that specific line since for over 30 years, I checked just before posting. GW didn't forget about it. Instead, a person made a deliberate decision to omit that line, and another line that uses the second person pronoun. (A universe you can enter if you dare)

To be wistful for a bygone time, and to indulge in a stabbed-in-the-back by an undefined entity narrative, I like to be specific. Back in your glory days of the 90s and 00s, the forgetting of that tenet had already been initiated.

I don't know why they would print a different one - but the line 'to be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions' is front and centre in the 2nd paragraph of the plate in the current Leviathan rulebook.

In fact, the last line, 'whatever happens, you won't be missed' was still in the preface up to the 8th edition rulebook. It's only been since 9th that they removed that line.

 ultimaratio wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

 ultimaratio wrote:
If the galaxy is a galaxy, why jump around a timeline, when literally anything could happen in the space we know, and don't know, for almost any reason imaginable? Even with warp travel, there could be millions of worlds and wars going on in a small puff of gas, that nobody's ever heard of (or forgot about). So why constrain the setting to the scale of a few characters in a few stories, whose paths even cross, when there's so much room for new civilizations and armies? The timeline doesn't even matter, because we already know the Imperium will always be at war, or there isn't a game.

GW had decided that story will make the game more attractive then setting alone. Many people enjoy a sense of motion, even if all you are doing is running on a treadmill. That's current 40K. Lots of things are going on, but little has actually changed.

I get that, but I think the motion should come from pushing further into space, not falling into the personal dramas like Star Wars. If the setting is always 11:59 on the Doomsday Clock, jump to a new star, instead. Maybe the writers are too attached to their characters.

The Imperium is kinda set in its ways

And that also means the poor bastard GW writers don't have to flesh out all the hundred billion different stars in our galaxy...

It’s kind of the opposite. The galaxy is so vast, any story can only affect a small percentage of it.

Also keep in mind the Imperium isn’t akin to a large landmass. Its worlds are far flung, with significant “nobody knows” between them. It may well consist of a million worlds or more. But in truly galactic scale? That’s a drop in the water.

So we as players and fan fic writers can still do pretty much whatever we want, with only a few strict rules.

 Hellebore wrote:
The difference is that in the past, Macharius was an npc with their own gloobglorb system that was an example of what you can do while also being part of the setting.

Guilliman's actions are singular and unique, non replicable and influence things in binary ways that are clearly outside the realms of what you and your own creativity can do.

By making his actions extra special, it gives them a relevance and importance that can't be replicated by any players own actions without using him and his narrative.

protagonist narratives like Yarrick and Macharius are aligned with player narratives.

Protagonist narratives like Guilliman and Eldrad are above players and reduce the meaning of actions outside their own spheres.

Spot on. Should be tattooed to all GW writers. Harsh, but clearly necessary.

Macharius, GW's Alexander. Conquered 0.1% of the Imperium, got a tank named after him. Greatest Guard hero. Could write stacks about him, but leaves the setting intact for other writers. Honestly poor writers can't resist leaving 'their mark' but fundamentally changing established set ups but do that and you eventually run out of road. They should do their own settings if they want to do that...


As a side note, time.

The setting used to run with decades and centuries as units of time. New tank? 200 years of petitions and presentations. All that PowerPoint.

The new character based setting? Its a few months to set up, a year to get loads and then a couple of weeks travel to get them to the warzone.

 pelicaniforce wrote:
To be wistful for a bygone time, and to indulge in a stabbed-in-the-back by an undefined entity narrative, I like to be specific. Back in your glory days of the 90s and 00s, the forgetting of that tenet had already been initiated.

Tend to agree. 40k was maybe a "setting" in 3rd and maybe 4th, because from what I remember, the codexes were "thin" on lore, with lots of empty space to make up your own stories/alternate interpretations of any aspect of the fluff. (This was I think also the era where special characters required your opponents permission, or were regularly just banned at tournaments/in clubs etc).

I don't however think that really applied in 2nd or, perhaps more relevantly, from 5th onwards. (So... the past 16~ years.)

I don't think its surprising that GW try to keep things small, as yes, it provides some degree of narrative. I think people want to imagine that say Space Marine Chapters (or indeed any other meaningful character/subfactions) have long and storied histories. If every piece of lore focused on a different subfaction and different characters, with no continuity at all, the universe won't necesarilly feel bigger, just disconnected. Some incidents can be cool - I liked the Primaris vs Custodes fluff put out for Fabius Bile's release for instance. But I think you want some sort sort of linkage rather than everything official being a one-shot.

I guess my siding on this is that you don't need to make things as small as Saturday morning cartoons. Damocles Gulf and the Badab War are examples of things that happened, tied up certain factions/elements, but don't impose universe-changing effects. Then again I guess GW tried that with Vigilus and it all seemed a bit small/inconsequential. Then 9th sort of froze things up as "its just a setting, time is an illusion" and any interest disappeared.

I strongly disagree that "being a setting" means to be "thin on lore".

The difference is how the lore is focussed. I agree with Hellebore.

I don't get how the canon lore being centered around certain characters (which there are still a ton of) suddenly means that you can't narrative yourself a fight for x reason in y system.

Just because named characters are the focus doesn't suddenly mean the galaxy is a single neighborhood and that every system that isnt mentioned doesnt exist.

The galaxy is huge and it gives you scope to forge your own narrative and have really matter in that bit of the galaxy outside of the fiction gw writes. Look at the sabbat crusade. That was a setting in the galaxy that has been entirely self contained. It doesn’t impact the main story line at all, but in that bit of space it’s a huge all consuming crusade that has created a fantastic ongoing narrative. Use your imagination and use the official bits as inspiration not restrictions.

The response 'you can do x' kinda misses the point. The criticism is about the companies approach to its setting. We can obviously do anything at any time. Up to and including rewriting the rules and setting.

But for a commercial product that attracts customers that we play games with, if they move heavily towards 'massive galaxy altering actions of the skywalker family in no time at all', you doing your own thing diverges more and more into alternative fan fiction as with their customer base harder to engage others.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
The response 'you can do x' kinda misses the point. The criticism is about the companies approach to its setting. We can obviously do anything at any time. Up to and including rewriting the rules and setting.

But for a commercial product that attracts customers that we play games with, if they move heavily towards 'massive galaxy altering actions of the skywalker family in no time at all', you doing your own thing diverges more and more into alternative fan fiction as with their customer base harder to engage others.

Even the biggest things like Cadia falling or the cicatrix maledictum doesn't mean you can't narrative something in a rando system that is mostly untouched by those events.

Do you NOT want the story of 40k to have characters? Because every single story is centered around characters.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Do you NOT want the story of 40k to have characters? Because every single story is centered around characters.

The existence of stories does not require 40k being turned into a Saturday morning cartoon.

We had characters for multiple editions before this silly decision was made, and they were no lesser because of it.

They also didn't shrink the galaxy down by having the same few people appearing in pretty much every conflict within a very small window of time.

 Dysartes wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Do you NOT want the story of 40k to have characters? Because every single story is centered around characters.

The existence of stories does not require 40k being turned into a Saturday morning cartoon.

We had characters for multiple editions before this silly decision was made, and they were no lesser because of it.

They also didn't shrink the galaxy down by having the same few people appearing in pretty much every conflict within a very small window of time.

I just don't get it, it litterally gives MORE room to homebrew stories since the canon ones are so focused on a smaller scale, leaving more room for custom stuff.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
I don't get how the canon lore being centered around certain characters (which there are still a ton of) suddenly means that you can't narrative yourself a fight for x reason in y system.

Just because named characters are the focus doesn't suddenly mean the galaxy is a single neighborhood and that every system that isnt mentioned doesnt exist.

Right, but with a galaxy-sized milieu, wouldn't it be time better spent if the writers and artists were expanding the setting, instead of going deeper into personal conflicts and biographies? We recently got Leagues of Votann, but they're only rebooted squats. There's room for new races, armies, and worlds everywhere. I think the smaller focus ultimately comes back to production and shelf space. It must be easier to move familiar characters than new armies, but its also constraining the growth of the setting.

 ultimaratio wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
I don't get how the canon lore being centered around certain characters (which there are still a ton of) suddenly means that you can't narrative yourself a fight for x reason in y system.

Just because named characters are the focus doesn't suddenly mean the galaxy is a single neighborhood and that every system that isnt mentioned doesnt exist.

Right, but with a galaxy-sized milieu, wouldn't it be time better spent if the writers and artists were expanding the setting, instead of going deeper into personal conflicts and biographies? We recently got Leagues of Votann, but they're only rebooted squats. There's room for new races, armies, and worlds everywhere. I think the smaller focus ultimately comes back to production and shelf space. It must be easier to move familiar characters than new armies, but its also constraining the growth of the setting.

Isnt part of the complaint that the setting IS growing and evolving?

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 ultimaratio wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
I don't get how the canon lore being centered around certain characters (which there are still a ton of) suddenly means that you can't narrative yourself a fight for x reason in y system.

Just because named characters are the focus doesn't suddenly mean the galaxy is a single neighborhood and that every system that isnt mentioned doesnt exist.

Right, but with a galaxy-sized milieu, wouldn't it be time better spent if the writers and artists were expanding the setting, instead of going deeper into personal conflicts and biographies? We recently got Leagues of Votann, but they're only rebooted squats. There's room for new races, armies, and worlds everywhere. I think the smaller focus ultimately comes back to production and shelf space. It must be easier to move familiar characters than new armies, but its also constraining the growth of the setting.

Isnt part of the complaint that the setting IS growing and evolving?

No, where did I say that? I don't agree that its growing, but I guess its still changing.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Do you NOT want the story of 40k to have characters? Because every single story is centered around characters.

The existence of stories does not require 40k being turned into a Saturday morning cartoon.

We had characters for multiple editions before this silly decision was made, and they were no lesser because of it.

They also didn't shrink the galaxy down by having the same few people appearing in pretty much every conflict within a very small window of time.

I just don't get it, it litterally gives MORE room to homebrew stories since the canon ones are so focused on a smaller scale, leaving more room for custom stuff.

We're talking about a galaxy, so there's never going to be more or less room, but concentrating all the worldbuilding effort on a space opera seems like wasted potential. How long have the conflicts of certain two or three chapters of a thousand space marine chapters been the center attention?

 ultimaratio wrote:
Right, but with a galaxy-sized milieu, wouldn't it be time better spent if the writers and artists were expanding the setting, instead of going deeper into personal conflicts and biographies? We recently got Leagues of Votann, but they're only rebooted squats. There's room for new races, armies, and worlds everywhere. I think the smaller focus ultimately comes back to production and shelf space. It must be easier to move familiar characters than new armies, but its also constraining the growth of the setting.

In part yes, production and shelf space play a big part of it. But that is just a part of the core issue that creating fiction requires money and needs a monetary return of that investement. Even at its most basic, lore writers still need to be paid.

They could write about a war in an unknown corner of the galaxy bewteen unknown alien civilizations, and it would do nothing for 40k as a game and a comercially viable product.

Moreover the fanbase doesn't really want the true scale of the galaxy even if they claim they do, because at that scale humanity is irrelevant, a million world empire is nothing in a galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars and planets. Every war humanity has ever fought is like bacteria fighting each other over a square milimeter of your skin, utterly irrelevant. But that makes poor fiction and even worse sales, so we get a human centric narrative and even Space Marine centric narrative.

And while at it, 30k/HH is even worse at making the galaxy small, hell it manages to make the universe/multiverse small with the cancerous nonsense that is the Dark King.

 ultimaratio wrote:
Right, but with a galaxy-sized milieu, wouldn't it be time better spent if the writers and artists were expanding the setting, instead of going deeper into personal conflicts and biographies? We recently got Leagues of Votann, but they're only rebooted squats. There's room for new races, armies, and worlds everywhere. I think the smaller focus ultimately comes back to production and shelf space. It must be easier to move familiar characters than new armies, but its also constraining the growth of the setting.

The amount of work that was put into the "squat reboot" has been huge; there's been sooo much development that Votann don't really resemble the squats of old.

As a guy who LOVES a big sand box, I can agree that I would like new species and factions... But have you seen how many people on the forums say that there are already too many factions? We've got people saying Deathwatch and GK never should have been armies; we've got people who want everything chaos in one book; we've got people saying Agents shouldn't have received a dex.

I don't thnk the community at large is as behind new factions as you or I might be.

 ultimaratio wrote:
We're talking about a galaxy, so there's never going to be more or less room, but concentrating all the worldbuilding effort on a space opera seems like wasted potential. How long have the conflicts of certain two or three chapters of a thousand space marine chapters been the center attention?

I don't outright disagree with this, but it needs context, because the conversation here is mostly about how the storyline narrative that began with Gathering Storm in the transition to 8th is responsible for these conditions. But the question about how long certain factions have been involved in certain conflicts is WAY beyond the scope of how things changed in 8th. Wasn't Armageddon a conflict that took place from 2nd in the 90's to 7th in 2016?

The entire era of 8th-10th doesn't span as many years.

 Tyran wrote:
And while at it, 30k/HH is even worse at making the galaxy small, hell it manages to make the universe/multiverse small with the cancerous nonsense that is the Dark King.

Holy heck yes! The way you shrink a universe is not by having characters and an ongoing plot, but by removing more than half the factions from the game.

 PenitentJake wrote:

 ultimaratio wrote:
Right, but with a galaxy-sized milieu, wouldn't it be time better spent if the writers and artists were expanding the setting, instead of going deeper into personal conflicts and biographies? We recently got Leagues of Votann, but they're only rebooted squats. There's room for new races, armies, and worlds everywhere. I think the smaller focus ultimately comes back to production and shelf space. It must be easier to move familiar characters than new armies, but its also constraining the growth of the setting.

The amount of work that was put into the "squat reboot" has been huge; there's been sooo much development that Votann don't really resemble the squats of old.

As a guy who LOVES a big sand box, I can agree that I would like new species and factions... But have you seen how many people on the forums say that there are already too many factions? We've got people saying Deathwatch and GK never should have been armies; we've got people who want everything chaos in one book; we've got people saying Agents shouldn't have received a dex.

I don't thnk the community at large is as behind new factions as you or I might be.

The issue is GW isn't really able to keep up with their existing factions.
I think some Kill Team releases, usable as Mercenaries in some or any faction, would be a manageable addition that could expand the setting.

And of course, part of the issue is that Marines are such workhogs. If half the attention lavished upon them was spread to other factions...

 JNAProductions wrote:

I think some Kill Team releases, usable as Mercenaries in some or any faction, would be a manageable addition that could expand the setting.

And of course, part of the issue is that Marines are such workhogs. If half the attention lavished upon them was spread to other factions...

Yes! That mercenary concept rocks. Someone earlier in the thread talked about Aeldari Agents... and yeah! Another thing that has been float was now the jump packs are in KT, maybe an additional unit of Eldar Corsairs that jump- I know we're likely getting hawks instead, but think about it: GW could give the existing Corars an upgrade sprue for jumping and release Hawks in a five-box.

Also, on the mercenary front: Kroot can be an army now, but Vespids (despite their awesomeness) can't- they fall into the minor auxiliary concept. So give'em a Guev'sa team and a Demiurg team, then you've got four races to pull on for auxilliary support, and the Guev'sa represent essentially a second Xenos cult for the Hereticus to go after, while the Demiurg could be allies to some of the LoV.

Unfortunately, GW does seem to like throwing money away by not allowing any model to be used in more than one way right now (ie, way cooler on HH crossing into 40k than in the golden days of my beloved 9th ed).