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They own the IP. They can do what they want with it. Space is huge, yet 40K was founded on the idea that it was tiny. Ie, 1000 man marine chapters.

Martel732 wrote:
They own the IP. They can do what they want with it. Space is huge, yet 40K was founded on the idea that it was tiny. Ie, 1000 man marine chapters.

That's true, they own the IP. Just like Disney owns the IP of Star Wars, and they can do what they want with it. . . .

They havent done nearly that poorly. The 90s grimdark cant last forever and satirical elements are mostly gone. Primaris is no more stupid than anything else theyve done. Its just unfortunate they suck in practice.

Martel732 wrote:
They havent done nearly that poorly. The 90s grimdark cant last forever and satirical elements are mostly gone. Primaris is no more stupid than anything else theyve done. Its just unfortunate they suck in practice.

I am still convinced Primaris are only not powerful to appease classic marine players. I very much expect them to be in the good category in 9th. 13 point tactical are bad, 19 point intercessors are better but still weak. change those intercessors to 16 points each though... and yea suddenly good. 15 and you'd take as many as you can get

Imo the Grimdark is beautiful, and is what makes the 40K setting great. IMO it's absurdity is what gives 40K it's greatest defining character.

Also, I found the "stagnation" refreshing. As there is no drama. Or more precisely, the drama doesn't matter. It might matter in a little system in the corner of the galaxy, for a few years, or maybe even a thousand years. But on the galactic scale it doesn't matter. This is the 41st (or maybe 42nd) millenium. And There Is Only War.

I'm not convinced GW is that clever, but you might be right.

Intercessors at 17 are actually pretty good, it's the T5 soap bubble gravis units that are really poor imo.

@OP:

I can´t argue with that. But I don´t care much at all because my collection of models are complete. Though I will still stand at the sideline and watch in amusement how the suits in Nottingham will ruin the setting with their ineptitude like they did with WHFB.

 G00fySmiley wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They havent done nearly that poorly. The 90s grimdark cant last forever and satirical elements are mostly gone. Primaris is no more stupid than anything else theyve done. Its just unfortunate they suck in practice.

I am still convinced Primaris are only not powerful to appease classic marine players. I very much expect them to be in the good category in 9th. 13 point tactical are bad, 19 point intercessors are better but still weak. change those intercessors to 16 points each though... and yea suddenly good. 15 and you'd take as many as you can get

Primaris aren`t powerful because the underlying mechanics of 8th Edition simply aren`t kind to "medium-quality" stuff in general and 3+ armour and 2 wounds in particular. The game is so lethal, it skews towards the extremes of either flooding the table with bodies or stacking survivability with allt he invuls, negative modifiers, FNPs, extreme Toughness/Saves you can find.

Most people these days worry about singular Knights or Mortarion/Magnus being one-shotted too easily if there´s no threat saturation, etc.. There´s just not much design space for medium infantry until there is either a new edition or a "reverse engineering" where a second edition of Codexes adds defensive potential with more minus-hit modfiers to hit and wound, more minus-activations, more negate-rerolls/force the re-rolls of success for every bonus to hit/wound, every double activation order/strat/spell, every re-roll of failed hits/wound etc.. they introduced in the Codexes.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Imo the Grimdark is beautiful, and is what makes the 40K setting great. IMO it's absurdity is what gives 40K it's greatest defining character.

Also, I found the "stagnation" refreshing. As there is no drama. Or more precisely, the drama doesn't matter. It might matter in a little system in the corner of the galaxy, for a few years, or maybe even a thousand years. But on the galactic scale it doesn't matter. This is the 41st (or maybe 42nd) millenium. And There Is Only War.

The absurdity gets boring. And the stagnation presented in 40K is likely not possible, no matter what excuses they provide. God Emperor of Dune did this much better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They havent done nearly that poorly. The 90s grimdark cant last forever and satirical elements are mostly gone. Primaris is no more stupid than anything else theyve done. Its just unfortunate they suck in practice.

I am still convinced Primaris are only not powerful to appease classic marine players. I very much expect them to be in the good category in 9th. 13 point tactical are bad, 19 point intercessors are better but still weak. change those intercessors to 16 points each though... and yea suddenly good. 15 and you'd take as many as you can get

Primaris aren`t powerful because the underlying mechanics of 8th Edition simply aren`t kind to "medium-quality" stuff in general and 3+ armour and 2 wounds in particular. The game is so lethal, it skews towards the extremes of either flooding the table with bodies or stacking survivability with allt he invuls, negative modifiers, FNPs, extreme Toughness/Saves you can find.

Most people these days worry about singular Knights or Mortarion/Magnus being one-shotted too easily if there´s no threat saturation, etc.. There´s just not much design space for medium infantry until there is either a new edition or a "reverse engineering" where a second edition of Codexes adds defensive potential with more minus-hit modfiers to hit and wound, more minus-activations, more negate-rerolls/force the re-rolls of success for every bonus to hit/wound, every double activation order/strat/spell, every re-roll of failed hits/wound etc.. they introduced in the Codexes.

It's simpler than that. 3W units work. 2W units don't. It's about the common weapon profiles.

Martel732 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Imo the Grimdark is beautiful, and is what makes the 40K setting great. IMO it's absurdity is what gives 40K it's greatest defining character.

Also, I found the "stagnation" refreshing. As there is no drama. Or more precisely, the drama doesn't matter. It might matter in a little system in the corner of the galaxy, for a few years, or maybe even a thousand years. But on the galactic scale it doesn't matter. This is the 41st (or maybe 42nd) millenium. And There Is Only War.

The absurdity gets boring. And the stagnation presented in 40K is likely not possible, no matter what excuses they provide. God Emperor of Dune did this much better.

I love that book.

It's been noted, Martel, that there is much about this game that you don't like.

Given that, I truly don't understand why Primaris is being singled out.

I'm not sure how anyone who loves God Emperor can give any kind of positive review to GW's half ass ripoff fiction.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Imo the Grimdark is beautiful, and is what makes the 40K setting great. IMO it's absurdity is what gives 40K it's greatest defining character.

Also, I found the "stagnation" refreshing. As there is no drama. Or more precisely, the drama doesn't matter. It might matter in a little system in the corner of the galaxy, for a few years, or maybe even a thousand years. But on the galactic scale it doesn't matter. This is the 41st (or maybe 42nd) millenium. And There Is Only War.

Stagnation takes new form at every turn. One can only mine Thatcher-era material as much as Grant Morrison and Alan Moore. At some point things must change to reflect their modern times and considering all the political stuff going on now it would be fantastic if they'd implement some of it into the current setting. It would at least be true to form to the origin.

I would also argue that the stagnation is rampant still in the setting. It's just that when individuals - lest they be human, Aeldari, or biomorphs - will often go for broke when pushed into a corner, which is what I see in the current setting.

Martel732 wrote:
Given that, I truly don't understand why Primaris is being singled out.

I'm not sure how anyone who loves God Emperor can give any kind of positive review to GW's half ass ripoff fiction.

Because it's possible to like different things for different reasons.

Primaris are singled out because there is appears to be a very real threat that traditional marines may soon no longer be a part of 40K. I also find them really. . . dumb. IMO they make even less sense than Marines.

Compared to starship troopers or starcraft marines, GW marines already make zero sense. You can't fall through the floor.

Putting them back into legions might make them slightly more relevant. But 200K is still pitifully small.

I forget the author now, but I've read a story where the casualties for a planet with rare thing X went into the billions. For one planet. Yeah, your marines don't matter. They end up a statistic in the butcher's bill.

And a few BA chapters can't hold out against trillions of bugs. No matter what GW says.

 Eldarsif wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Imo the Grimdark is beautiful, and is what makes the 40K setting great. IMO it's absurdity is what gives 40K it's greatest defining character.

Also, I found the "stagnation" refreshing. As there is no drama. Or more precisely, the drama doesn't matter. It might matter in a little system in the corner of the galaxy, for a few years, or maybe even a thousand years. But on the galactic scale it doesn't matter. This is the 41st (or maybe 42nd) millenium. And There Is Only War.

Stagnation takes new form at every turn. One can only mine Thatcher-era material as much as Grant Morrison and Alan Moore. At some point things must change to reflect their modern times and considering all the political stuff going on now it would be fantastic if they'd implement some of it into the current setting. It would at least be true to form to the origin.

I would also argue that the stagnation is rampant still in the setting. It's just that when individuals - lest they be human, Aeldari, or biomorphs - will often go for broke when pushed into a corner, which is what I see in the current setting.

It's possible it will stabilize in a new form of stagnation. I'll give you that.

I'm not sure that the setting of 40K necessarily have to reflect "modern times". I think that, although 40K was founded in a particular era, it has long since outgrown the need to "reflect modern times". I think it can exist as it's own thing. Like, you wouldn't go back and re-write Tolkein to "modernize" it. And the movies have shown that it can still be relevant, even though it was spawned from a post WWI paradigm.

Except Tolkien is brilliant and 40K was always a hack job.

Martel732 wrote:
Compared to starship troopers or starcraft marines, GW marines already make zero sense. You can't fall through the floor.

Putting them back into legions might make them slightly more relevant. But 200K is still pitifully small.

I forget the author now, but I've read a story where the casualties for a planet with rare thing X went into the billions. For one planet. Yeah, your marines don't matter. They end up a statistic in the butcher's bill.

And a few BA chapters can't hold out against trillions of bugs. No matter what GW says.

Marines control fleets of warships with nukes. It's fine. Marines can make enough sense for the universe of 40K.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Compared to starship troopers or starcraft marines, GW marines already make zero sense. You can't fall through the floor.

Putting them back into legions might make them slightly more relevant. But 200K is still pitifully small.

I forget the author now, but I've read a story where the casualties for a planet with rare thing X went into the billions. For one planet. Yeah, your marines don't matter. They end up a statistic in the butcher's bill.

And a few BA chapters can't hold out against trillions of bugs. No matter what GW says.

Marines control fleets of warships with nukes. It's fine. Marines can make enough sense for the universe of 40K.

Tiny fleets that also don't matter. 40K ignores scale completely except when they don't want to. It's the worst combination of Mary Sues and deus ex machinas.

Martel732 wrote:
Except Tolkien is brilliant and 40K was always a hack job.

I think 40K is brilliant, to be honest. A phenominal setting, far more interesting than Tolkein. 40K sorta grew into that organically, rather than spring from one mind. But I love it.

I *do* think 1000 Marines to a Chapter is stupid small. Like, humanity is comprised of billions of billions of people. If we assume just 0.0001% (1 in every 1 million) of those people are Marines, that should still be, at least, 1 trillion Marines. So either there would have to be 1 billion individual Chapters, or they should be MUCH larger.

Martel732 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Compared to starship troopers or starcraft marines, GW marines already make zero sense. You can't fall through the floor.

Putting them back into legions might make them slightly more relevant. But 200K is still pitifully small.

I forget the author now, but I've read a story where the casualties for a planet with rare thing X went into the billions. For one planet. Yeah, your marines don't matter. They end up a statistic in the butcher's bill.

And a few BA chapters can't hold out against trillions of bugs. No matter what GW says.

Marines control fleets of warships with nukes. It's fine. Marines can make enough sense for the universe of 40K.

Tiny fleets that also don't matter. 40K ignores scale completely except when they don't want to. It's the worst combination of Mary Sues and deus ex machinas.

Thousands of tiny nuke-carrying fleets. Millions of them, really.

A thousand Chapters is four thousand "standard battle fleets" of a marine Battle Company, reserve elements, Strike Cruiser and potential support fleet. And that functions as a small arm of a larger Imperial Fleet with probably millions of nuke-carrying vessels. In the universe they've created, that's enough for me.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They havent done nearly that poorly. The 90s grimdark cant last forever and satirical elements are mostly gone. Primaris is no more stupid than anything else theyve done. Its just unfortunate they suck in practice.

I am still convinced Primaris are only not powerful to appease classic marine players. I very much expect them to be in the good category in 9th. 13 point tactical are bad, 19 point intercessors are better but still weak. change those intercessors to 16 points each though... and yea suddenly good. 15 and you'd take as many as you can get

Primaris aren`t powerful because the underlying mechanics of 8th Edition simply aren`t kind to "medium-quality" stuff in general and 3+ armour and 2 wounds in particular. The game is so lethal, it skews towards the extremes of either flooding the table with bodies or stacking survivability with allt he invuls, negative modifiers, FNPs, extreme Toughness/Saves you can find.

Most people these days worry about singular Knights or Mortarion/Magnus being one-shotted too easily if there´s no threat saturation, etc.. There´s just not much design space for medium infantry until there is either a new edition or a "reverse engineering" where a second edition of Codexes adds defensive potential with more minus-hit modfiers to hit and wound, more minus-activations, more negate-rerolls/force the re-rolls of success for every bonus to hit/wound, every double activation order/strat/spell, every re-roll of failed hits/wound etc.. they introduced in the Codexes.

Think about how many armies have access to shoot twice abilities and then ask how that dynamic shifts when you apply it to a 30 man unit of termagants loaded out with devourers. The lethality of the game is so big that a lot of the mid tier armies just cant handle it. On the knight thing, it's a real concern. I saw my friend today destroy his opponents Warden with two basilisks and a hellhound. The Warden didn't get to shoot at anything.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Ah, I see someone's wheeled out the old "stale" argument.

10,000 years of history to play in on untold thousands of worlds with trillions of inhabitants is "stale"? Ten. Thousand. Years. This is longer than recorded human history so far. Do you know how much scope that gives you?

Instead we get a shoehorned in "story" to no-one asked for (well, someone did as apparently they have no imagination to make their own...) that revolves around a few big characters and no-one else. Now that is stale. 40k was a setting, a fething massive one with the scope for untold amounts of potential stories to be told in it. Who gives a feth if they're not "canon", we got along perfectly well with our own campaigns for the last 2 decades, what makes it any different now?

except we DON'T have 10 thousand years of history. first contact with the Tau was sometimes in the 700s M41, the first recorded contact with the Tyranids was likewise in the 700s M41. the Necrons had been stirring for awhile but Sanctuary 101 which is considered to be the "first battle" occured in the late 800s M41.

basicly well the IoM and Chaos have been around awhile. MOST of the armies in 40k, have actually only been active for a few hundred years.

 Grimtuff wrote:


It IS GW's fault though. They've come in "armed with canon" and started up a storyline that was never there to begin with. 40k was a setting. A setting to make your own stories in, occasionally GW made "official" ones such as Armageddon and EoT campaigns but they were added to the mix and never changed with a march of time. You could still do your own thing and not be constricted by canon. Now, the whole storyline thing would work IF GW had made 40k a storyline from the very beginning, you see it work in WMH and AoS as the writers knew what they wanted out of it from the get go. You can't just pull up a static setting and make a story out of it with a few dozen characters (like, why is Gulliman everywhere? Even though he is a Primarch he should be a insignificant blip in the grand scheme of things) in an unfathomably massive setting. Space is HUGE, indescribably so, yet we get the same characters bumping into one another again and again.

So you're complaining that instead of artificially injecting story material in between pre-existing story material, they added more on the end, forcing you to play with this new story material on the end in mind, instead of letting you pick some artificial story material they just added in the past which would allow you... to ignore... the story material... that comes after... the new stuff... in the past... you want to play... while ignoring everything after it....

BrianDavion wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Ah, I see someone's wheeled out the old "stale" argument.

10,000 years of history to play in on untold thousands of worlds with trillions of inhabitants is "stale"? Ten. Thousand. Years. This is longer than recorded human history so far. Do you know how much scope that gives you?

Instead we get a shoehorned in "story" to no-one asked for (well, someone did as apparently they have no imagination to make their own...) that revolves around a few big characters and no-one else. Now that is stale. 40k was a setting, a fething massive one with the scope for untold amounts of potential stories to be told in it. Who gives a feth if they're not "canon", we got along perfectly well with our own campaigns for the last 2 decades, what makes it any different now?

except we DON'T have 10 thousand years of history. first contact with the Tau was sometimes in the 700s M41, the first recorded contact with the Tyranids was likewise in the 700s M41. the Necrons had been stirring for awhile but Sanctuary 101 which is considered to be the "first battle" occured in the late 800s M41.

basicly well the IoM and Chaos have been around awhile. MOST of the armies in 40k, have actually only been active for a few hundred years.

Absolutely this.

Yes, you did have 10,000 years of history between M31 and M41, and you could play games set in any time between but only if you play Imperium (with no special characters other than Bjorn or maybe Dante if it's set in M40, and no Custodes or Sisters of Silence, unless it's set on Terra or the War of the Beast!), Chaos (but not Huron Blackheart!), Eldar (but not Prince Yriel), Dark Eldar, Orks (but no special characters!) and *maybe* just pure Genestealers as Ymgarl natives.

Basically, you can play anything that isn't Tau, Necrons, Ynnari, Primaris, Tyranids, or a special character. If you've got the people who are willing to play that, great, but for inclusivity (which is probably important for GW to consider when fleshing out their setting), moving the timeline onwards is a good move.

Most importantly, you can STILL do things in that 10,000 year time period even now, no-one's forcing you to play your narrative campaigns in M42.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:


Most importantly, you can STILL do things in that 10,000 year time period even now, no-one's forcing you to play your narrative campaigns in M42.

Pretty much this. GW has no control over when/where you set your stories around so.......

I think it would have been neat if GW had introduced a document, even a simple, completely optional one which detailed the time frames that certain units/equipment/characters were alive/used.

I always enjoyed that small facet of Battlefront's WW2 games - the use of "periods" or "eras". A group aimed at narrative gaming should have no problem playing games throughout the recent 40K history - but that's asking a lot of meta-players, to knowingly set aside new or future units if they're doing a historical campaign, etc.

BrianDavion wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
surte various codices put little side bars with new stuff there but let's face itm, it was never going anywhere. it's like that special box the grey knights have described in their 5E codex. sure it's fun to speculate, but it's clear that GW had no plans to go anywhere with it, it was meaningless

You mention 5th edition, which is ironic... as that is when 40k died.

The change to Necron background and models, Centurions, Tau Riptide, Grey Knights Dread Knight, etc. That was the start of the rot, the old guard had left, and the new blood wanted to put their stamp on it. That stamp showed a creative bankruptcy, which has only increased and been built upon.

GW learned from the death of WFB that a big dramatic change is too much of a risk, especially with their cash cow (40k), so instead, we'll see slow gradual changes... like all the old marines going to Direct Only, then not being restocked, then rules not being written for old models. Space Marines, namely Primaris Marines are the test bed, if they go well, we'll see the equivalent happen to most if not all the races... my money is on Eldar Aspect Warriors being the next thing GW replace with a new unit(s), then fade the old ones into history.

A bit overly dramatic there. Clearly you don't like change.

No, I like change, what I don't like is change for the sake of change and/or to sell new models. Case in point, when 5th edition hit the shelves Space Marines were already a complete product line, however GW's policy is to add something new to each faction for each edition, as Space Marines are always first inline, we got Centurions. They are just awful, from the models to the way they were shoehorned into the background, and also due to serving no role that was lacking. That is the sort of change I don't like, it adds nothing of value and just cheapens the overall product.

If those creative resources had been focused on fleshing out a previously mentioned race, say the Hrudd, that would have been much better, and kept within the pre established background, while also advancing the game.

centurions where 6th edition not 5th edition. 5th edition IIRC gave us vanguard and sternguard veterns. Also yes GW was putting out new units for an army when a new codex came out. they've shifted that but they still need to put out new units for popular armies. (I've said it before but space Marines pay for everyone else's army) thing is had GW not gave use Primaris Marines, Centurions would be the way of the future. GW's a company first and foremost.

My mistake, I honestly thought they were introduced in 5th edition, been playing since 2nd, so the editions tend to blur after a while.

 Strg Alt wrote:
@OP:

I can´t argue with that. But I don´t care much at all because my collection of models are complete. Though I will still stand at the sideline and watch in amusement how the suits in Nottingham will ruin the setting with their ineptitude like they did with WHFB.

I dunno brother, I think AoS is far superior and I adore it.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Ah, I see someone's wheeled out the old "stale" argument.

10,000 years of history to play in on untold thousands of worlds with trillions of inhabitants is "stale"? Ten. Thousand. Years. This is longer than recorded human history so far. Do you know how much scope that gives you?

Instead we get a shoehorned in "story" to no-one asked for (well, someone did as apparently they have no imagination to make their own...) that revolves around a few big characters and no-one else. Now that is stale. 40k was a setting, a fething massive one with the scope for untold amounts of potential stories to be told in it. Who gives a feth if they're not "canon", we got along perfectly well with our own campaigns for the last 2 decades, what makes it any different now?

except we DON'T have 10 thousand years of history. first contact with the Tau was sometimes in the 700s M41, the first recorded contact with the Tyranids was likewise in the 700s M41. the Necrons had been stirring for awhile but Sanctuary 101 which is considered to be the "first battle" occured in the late 800s M41.

basicly well the IoM and Chaos have been around awhile. MOST of the armies in 40k, have actually only been active for a few hundred years.

Honestly, nobody I've ever played with has ever really seemed to care about "timeline accuracy".

And there's always the "They're not Tau, they're civilization 30012 in subsection 235 of quadrant B Sector Latinus. Encountered and warred with in millenia 34, prior to being cut off by warp storms four centuries later after stalemate brought about by Imperial bureaucratic error in fleet assignment."

10,000 years is a long time, and 250 billion stars is a lot of area to cover.