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I think the "we are a mini company, not a gaming company" was more of an excuse/justification for their god-awful ruleset. I don't think they care enough about the background material to actually comment/offer justification on it. The closest we get to the matter is BL authors commenting on it.

He's just one unfortunate incredibly competent dude that has been sucked into something he has absolutely no comprehension of, and yet somehow, continues to survive and succeed, due to unbridled effectiveness and the lucky fact that his soundness of mind and character is incredibly influential on the whacky powers that are acting on him.

I just think we aren't supposed to ask too much about it, but he's ward's attempt at bringing a little more of that golden age of the impeium into the dark future. Harkening back to the heroes we hear about, but only in an echo.

Hunterindarkness wrote:Which is more or less mismanagement. In the long run, it will bite them.$0k sales more by word of mouth then anything, and as A new player myself I see the issues , the creaks and the growing heated hate over conflicting fluff and bad management In time it will no longer be enough "Just to sale miniatures" as the setting is what sells them.

And here we come to the heart of the matter no?

It really boils down to how "replaceable" the company views a long term player.

Allow me to draw an analogy - I don't collect comic books but my friends who did once told me that apparently the character Spiderman was married to his long time sweetheart. And that occurred in the real world around the 1970s.

Recently, I guess the managing director of content for Marvel, decided to hack this bit of Spiderman lore to death. Why? Because "a married character is not going to be able to connect to the concerns of the target market (i assume young teenagers)."

That provoked a bit of a firestorm in that particular groups Fandom. Folks who had literally grown up with Spiderman since the 70s - who had gone on to careers and raised their own families in parallel to the character - felt like it was a swift kick in the ...well i guess you know where i'm going with that.

And you know what? It didn't matter to Marvel - at least not economically.

Because the Replacement rate of people just new to the character - who didn't have time/interest/inclination to sift through 30 years worth of lore - is greater than the diehards who continued to collect comic books well into their 30s or 40s.


The same exact thing can (and has) happened with 40K. For every one person who throws their hands up in the air because GW has frustrated them some how - there are probably a higher percentage of kids and teens going "Oh cool a war game!"

They are going to grow into a specific version of the 40K universe, like it alot, and either

a.) Exit the Hobby due to other considerations - Job, Spouse, change in Interest

b.) Grow into the Hobby but not care about the Fluff/Fiction (we have those folks on Dakka Dakka already)

c.) Grow into the Fluff/Fiction (a particular iteration of it) and either defend that version against all oncomers OR go down the "i'm too frustrated with GW!"

....only to be replaced by yet another set of kids going "oh cool, a war game!"


After all - what does it matter at the end of the day? You paid for that army of (insert favorite faction), you bought all the BL novels that interested you.

GW has already made its money off of you.

And that's why I fly the Jolly Roger. Arrr!

GW has made, very, very little money off me. FFG has made money and they from them, My Models are mostly 3pp stuff as the issue is cost. Who does GW think buys those pricy minis?

They live off an older fan base, not a teenage one. And the older the fan base gets, the more upset they seem to get at the horrible mismanagement of the setting. In time it will catch up with them. No company stays making money forever with out at lest pretending to give a damn about what they are selling.

Well according to the ordo mallus anyone who even knows about demons must be killed. The only exceptions are space marines who are mind wiped of the time they were fighting them and the grey knights who are allowed to remember because they are so pure. So the sisters needed to die. Making use of their holy blood was just not being wasteful.

I am a cheapskate who has managed to blag most of his army for free. I am about the only one in my local group of 10 who has really done this. Everyone else has invested around £500 each into the hobby. And none of them particularly care that the fluff is being 'butchered'. Anecdotal evidence, yes, but, well, there are people buying the models. And they are putting in a lot more money than me, someone who actually cares, is.

White Ninja wrote:Well according to the ordo mallus anyone who even knows about demons must be killed. The only exceptions are space marines who are mind wiped of the time they were fighting them and the grey knights who are allowed to remember because they are so pure. So the sisters needed to die. Making use of their holy blood was just not being wasteful.

Nope, your simply viewing 40k in white and black. In fact the Grey Knight Codex disagrees with you. Guardsmen are usually killed but sometimes they will be quickly mind wipe if they fought well (although this causes a high death rate).

Necrosis wrote:

White Ninja wrote:Well according to the ordo mallus anyone who even knows about demons must be killed. The only exceptions are space marines who are mind wiped of the time they were fighting them and the grey knights who are allowed to remember because they are so pure. So the sisters needed to die. Making use of their holy blood was just not being wasteful.

Nope, your simply viewing 40k in white and black. In fact the Grey Knight Codex disagrees with you. Guardsmen are usually killed but sometimes they will be quickly mind wipe if they fought well (although this causes a high death rate).

That is the exception rather then the rule. Normal humans are not allowed to know chaos even exists. They sure as heck are not allowed to know that demons exist. So the purging of Armagedon after the first war was just common practice. So the fact that the sisters were killed is not uncommon. Also it is Individual Inquisitors that make that call not the Grey Knights and some inquisitors are more then willing to break the rules for their own gain or to get an edge over their foe. When the grey knights get called in the world is about to be purged. Once they show up there will likely be few survivors that are not marines.

White Ninja wrote:That is the exception rather then the rule. Normal humans are not allowed to know chaos even exists. They sure as heck are not allowed to know that demons exist. So the purging of Armagedon after the first war was just common practice. So the fact that the sisters were killed is not uncommon. Also it is Individual Inquisitors that make that call not the Grey Knights and some inquisitors are more then willing to break the rules for their own gain or to get an edge over their foe. When the grey knights get called in the world is about to be purged. Once they show up there will likely be few survivors that are not marines.

Do you have sources to back up your claim? The reason guardsmen are killed in the grey knight codex is cause they are plentiful and easily replace, a sister of battle on the other hand is not. Also sisters of battle are highly resistant to daemons corruption sometimes it is even harder to corrupt a sister of battle then a space marine. Also there are exorcists, humans who specialize in fighting daemons who are members of the Adeptus Ministorum.

Randomonioum wrote:I am a cheapskate who has managed to blag most of his army for free. I am about the only one in my local group of 10 who has really done this. Everyone else has invested around £500 each into the hobby. And none of them particularly care that the fluff is being 'butchered'. Anecdotal evidence, yes, but, well, there are people buying the models. And they are putting in a lot more money than me, someone who actually cares, is.

Emphasis on the --> And none of them particularly care that the fluff is being 'butchered'.

Its all about where one puts value on the Fluff/Fiction. There are folks who participate on DakkaDakka, Librarium, Warseer, DarkReign, etc.etc. who never set foot into the Background/Fiction forums.

All they do is just play the wargame - and that's how they have fun.




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Omegus wrote:And that's why I fly the Jolly Roger. Arrr!

LOL! that's the spirit.

Draigo being a daemon is an explanation that makes sense, but I have an even better one: Ward writes terrible fluff. Hence, I ignore it. Draigo only exists to me as one more guy in shiny armour that need to be sacrificed to the dark gods.

I cannot remember where i read that from but I think it might have been the old demon hunters codex. And well as you said there are some exceptions to the kill all witnesses rule they tend to fall solidly under the realm of the inquisition which is who exorcists work for the ordo malleus. And I am not quoting the current grey knights codex. I'm not saying that everyone who witnesses daemons are killed but unless the inquisition has a reason not to they have a habit of making sure you have no chance of being tainted. Although after having just read the actual page talking about killing the Sisters it does sound like they did it for no other reason then needing the blood. As for other source after having read through most of the new grey knights book most of the fluff has them doing eterminatus on every planet that had daemons with every space marine chapter being mind wiped after the fighting.

Please get this back on topic, this is about DRAIGO not IF OR IF NOT PEOPLE ARE MINWIPED/KILLED IF THEY KNOW ABOUT DAEMONS

woops, capslock

Draigo is a jumped-up arrogant upstart donkey-cave who pissed off the Grey Knights enough that four Grand Masters and 2,200 Grey Knights up and left when he became Supreme Grand Master (no, seriously, read the old GK Codex compared to the new one: 3,000 then v. 800 now, twelve Grand Masters then v. eight now, the only other major organizational difference was the addition of the rank of Supreme Grand Master).

He's a massively divisive figure amongst the fandom, is there any reason he shouldn't be a massively divisive figure amongst the Grey Knights? And what could make the 40k universe darker and grimmer than an ideological schism that led to a splinter faction of the Imperium's most elite defenders breaking off and leaving the direct control of the Ecclesiarchy/High Lords/whoever holds Draigo's leash?

purplefood wrote:Imperial Daemon!
The first of many to fight the increasing numbers of Chaos Grey Knights!

Good question

Durza wrote:Draigo being a daemon is an explanation that makes sense, but I have an even better one: Ward writes terrible fluff. Hence, I ignore it. Draigo only exists to me as one more guy in shiny armour that need to be sacrificed to the dark gods.

I wouldn't say Ward fluff is inherently bad, I particularly like that Necrons have been humanized instead of being slaves to the Ctan with no special characters. I would probably say it is hit or miss, some of his fluff isn't bad, and some isn't inherently bad, but simply gives a very fanboyish feel to it.

Buttons wrote:

Durza wrote:Draigo being a daemon is an explanation that makes sense, but I have an even better one: Ward writes terrible fluff. Hence, I ignore it. Draigo only exists to me as one more guy in shiny armour that need to be sacrificed to the dark gods.

I wouldn't say Ward fluff is inherently bad, I particularly like that Necrons have been humanized instead of being slaves to the Ctan with no special characters. I would probably say it is hit or miss, some of his fluff isn't bad, and some isn't inherently bad, but simply gives a very fanboyish feel to it.

The Necron stuff seems to have divided the fanbase a bit. Some can't stand it, some love it. I just meant that Ward could do with a bit of practise writing fluff, and I'm not going to treat him as a serious fluff writer until he stops being blatantly on one side when he's meant to be giving an unbiased view.

Well...Codexes aren't necessarily meant to be an unbiased look at the army, every Codex's fluff is written in order to gush about how wonderful the army is. That's not the part of Matt Ward's fluff that I object to, it's when he starts dictating how groups as a whole think/feel about his characters. How do we know Draigo is universally beloved? Remember all the missing Grey Knights? Maybe they didn't like Draigo and left. Who is Matt Ward to say that all Space Marines worship the Codex Astartes and Robute Gulliman? How do we know that the Raven Guard don't think Gulliman was a stuck-up rule-bound prig who couldn't write a sensible document on tactics if the Emperor Himself commanded it? Maybe there's a Space Wolves Wolf Lord who keeps a copy of the Codex Astartes at the bottom of his toilet. At the end of the day, he can write whatever the hell he wants about his characters, but he should really stop trying to insert things about our characters into the fluff.

Yes, he does love to make his characters the awesomest!, although how so many people can be the awesomest! at the same time is beyond me.

Anyway, regarding Draigo, he unfortunately is not a daemon or anything else. There's a line in the new codex about how some Grey Knights are so powerful they can "stave off death itself". So yes, at least as far as Matthew Ward intended it, Draigo is alive and well in an environment where nothing can live, somehow literally kicking metaphysical daemon god butt and taking names (or carving them into hearts as the case may be). Ward probably had to go to ...erm... relieve himself after he finished writing that particular fluff piece.

If all guardsman who know about chaos are killed, how does Cadia exist? Or Gaunt's Ghosts, or the entire Crusades that fight Chaos? There are way to many fights going off against chaos for the inquisition to be able to learn a battle took place before the ones involved retired, died of old age, and their kids grew up and died of old age. And the church regulary preaches about the dangers of chaos. Where the heck in this info coming from?