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 d3m01iti0n wrote:
BT has a book, and the fans want to keep it. End of story. GW practically owes it to use after all this time collecting dust. Lumping into the UM book with a couple chapter traits, to me, is quite frankly insulting. Not to mention Im insulted whenever I read a post suggesting my army become redundant, when I have spent countless dollars and time into something I love.

How would having the BT lumped with C:SM be insulting?
Why would it make your army redundant? Could you not still play it? Especially if you swapped chapter tactics for the BT ability to rush into the maws of death?

If it were me? We'd have Codex: Space Marines, Codex: Chaos Space Marines, and if they weren't merged with a larger INQ book, Codex: Grey Knights.

Honestly, anyone saying that Space Wolves or Black Templars or Blood Angels or Dark Angels are as distinct from Codex: Space Marines as Codex: Imperial Guard or Codex: Orks is, is being delusional, and if they aren't that distinct, they really have no business being their own book. Likewise, trying to argue that any of those loyalist SM armies are for some reason more distinct than the Traitor Legions and Chaos renegades are from each other is also quite silly, and if those don't warrant their own codex, then the loyalists certainly don't.

Most of what makes these variant SM codex's "unique" is silly stuff like wargear/weapon/option swaps, with relatively few truly unique units. Much of the variation in these books came long after their initial spin-off to simply justify their continued existence but really not quite making it. Codex: Blood Angels for example is still about 85% Codex: Space Marines (with much of the rest of the 15% being, well, weapon/wargear/option swaps, such as the Baal predator), and, barring characters, you really could fit everything that makes Codex:BA into a two page supplement for Codex: SM (yes, really), character entries may take another couple pages, but that's about it.


There's justification for a differentiation between Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines and Grey Knights (if they must be their own book), but beyond that, no, nothing *needs* its own codex, you could fit everything for most of the variants (barring character entries) in 1-3 pages in a sub-codex ala-CSM 3.5.



Honestly, I think variant SM books is something that Forgeworld should handle, not the core studio unless they're just 3.5-esque sublists. They're no different than say, the IA Krieg or Elysian lists, and they should be treated as such. As is, we've got a quarter of the armies as loyalist variants taking up release/marketing pipeline that, until recently as GW has now started putting out releases much faster, was effectively adding ~2 years to the cycle to revisit the entire line.

 Griddlelol wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Has ~300 pages, retails for $150 and Has ~300 pages, retails for $150.

I hope you're being sarcastic, it's difficult to tell. Good luck getting new players to spend $150 on a book before they can even use their $150 of models.
I know I'd never spend $150 on a book.

Never played an RPG, have you? We don't buy hundreds of minis (usually), but the price in books alone can reach $1000. I have, easily, $600 in Dark Heresy books, and probably ~$200 each in each of the other 40K RPGs (Deathwatch, Rogue Trader, Black Crusade, Only War). People are currently paying $100 for the AOBR boxed set. Give them an option for the rules to half a dozen (or more) armies in one book? Hell, yes, people will buy that.

Why is it that people think that a 300 page codex would be $150?

Flames of War, the FFG 40k RPG's, Warmachine, etc all put out ~300page hardcover and full-color books for $50, the gigantic and overcosted 40k core rulebook is only $75.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Why is it that people think that a 300 page codex would be $150?

Flames of War, the FFG 40k RPG's, Warmachine, etc all put out ~300page hardcover and full-color books for $50, the gigantic and overcosted 40k core rulebook is only $75.

I think we just assume that GW = Money Grab and thats how they value stuff. If GW were to make something as cool as a Codex Astartes it would be an astronomical cost

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
The numerous posts Ive read stating "I dont see why BT couldnt be rolled, theyre just an EC and casualty movement" obviously havent done their homework and probably shouldnt be arguing with the people who actually have a clue.

If I was a jerk, I'd point out that I've been playing 40k longer than you, have a 10,000+ point army of Black Templars, and they're my favorite chapter/army/whatever and that it's you that don't have a clue. However, that would be a jerk thing to say. EVERYONE is entitled to their own opinions. I want the BT to get their own codex. That's my first preference. If they're rolled into the Space Marines codex, then I'll just have to deal with it.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
BT has a book, and the fans want to keep it. End of story.

Fans do want to keep it. I certainly do. But that's not the end of the story. The end of the story is what does GW want to do with them?

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
GW practically owes it to use after all this time collecting dust.

GW doesn't owe anyone anything. Except whomever they rent their property from, their share holders, and their vendors. And what, exactly, is collecting dust? My Templars get used all of the time. Mostly as Black Templars. Sometimes as Sons of Dorn (Codex: Space Marines). If you shelve yours, that's your decision I suppose.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
Lumping into the UM book with a couple chapter traits, to me, is quite frankly insulting. Not to mention Im insulted whenever I read a post suggesting my army become redundant, when I have spent countless dollars and time into something I love.

How exactly is this insulting? You'll have to explain this one to me. Did GW come to your home and slap your mother?

Also, how does using them via the Space Marine codex destroy the countless dollars and time you've put into them? You'll still be able to play them. Guess what? Armies change all of the time. What's effective today might be less than stellar with the next up date.

 d3m01iti0n wrote:
Im surprised at this website, when a mod can start a thread that (when monitoring General and seeing similar threads pop up every month) will knowingly get the unpopular army trashed and start 4 pages of argument in a day.

Not a single person has trashed the Black Templars. Not one. Any insult you perceive is exactly that: YOUR perception. You are getting entirely too riled up over this thread and it isn't healthy. No one here wants them to get "squatted". Don't be so close minded. Further, the mod that started this is simply asking people's opinions of what people would cut. That's far different from saying "Which codex sucks the most? OMG LOL!"

Finally, if you think anyone in this thread is trolling you or attacking you personally, use the little yellow triangle with the exclamation point in the upper left corner of their post.

 Vaktathi wrote:
As is, we've got a quarter of the armies as loyalist variants taking up release/marketing pipeline that

Actually, it's about half.

Half are Imperial, yes, but only about a quarter are variants - Sisters, Inquisition, Guard and 'nillaMarines are all legitimate codices.

 kronk wrote:

No one here wants them to get "squatted".

Wouldn't be so sure about that.

I know the OP loves the Black Templars, right Mr Manchu?



Is it really changing the order of releases or the speed of GW if a codex or multiple codices are 'cut' ?
Maybe they just need someone to put them on "full ahead" instead of wasting time with limited stuff.

Codices are of a certain price range, size and layout per edition.
Would the "omni-super-special-dex" fit into this?
If not and thats likely to happen, things are getting "squatted"...

 1hadhq wrote:
I know the OP loves the Black Templars, right Mr Manchu?

I do really like the BT because I think they are extremely interesting. As you know, I see them on the edge of falling to Chaos. That doesn't mean I don't like them -- just that my own interpretation is different than yours.

For the record, I voted that GW already has it right. I want a separate BT book in 6E with some cool exclusive options for them. They are one of the few SM chapters I seriously consider playing.

I remember when every founding chapter had its own rules. I still own the Index Astartes series. (Every chaos legion had special rules too).

How is it more insulting to a Black Templar player, whose army was originally a tack-on in a campaign supplement to have to go back to being part of the general Marine system, than it was an insult to take away the White Scars special rules, the Iron Hands special rules, or the Death Guard, or Emperor's Children, or Alpha Legion's?

If all of those can do without special snowflake rules, then so can Black Templar, Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Space Wolves.

Why should it be all or nothing? I don't know how folding any of BA, BT, DA, or SW back into the vanilla codex makes up for or justifies taking away special rules for WS, IF, RG, etc.

Also, Black Templar are the best looking chapter!

That's a very Orky land raider.

One can never have too many lascannons.

Unless you roll too many ones and suffer a power overload... Terminus Ultra Data Sheet

 Manchu wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Yes, it was.

No, it wasn't. Of course SoB are not SM. His point was that if I was going to have CSM and GK on the list then I might as well have SoB because the only thing CSM and GK have in common with other SM is power armor. That was his point. It is incorrect. Take the power armor off a GK and you have a naked SM. Take the power armor off of a CSM and you have a naked (perhaps mutated) evil SM. Take the power armor off a Sororitas and you have a naked human being.

Ummmmm lol no? Take the armour off a cultist, you have a human. Take the armour off a plague you have T5 feel no pain mutation. Take the armour off a thousand son....well......

Regular CSM are not even really used as much as cult marines and cultists I find.

Take the armour off a grey knight and you have a psyker. Take the armour off a henchman and you got a human.

Grey knights and chaos are far to gone from SM to warrant them really being them any more.

There are two ways of looking at this.

Either you cut any non-first founding chapters and roll those into the big SM book or you break out the books to cover certain ideologies and group chapters together.

 Manchu wrote:
Why should it be all or nothing? I don't know how folding any of BA, BT, DA, or SW back into the vanilla codex makes up for or justifies taking away special rules for WS, IF, RG, etc.

Yes, one of if not the most loyal chapter to the emperor, forbids psykers, takes an 8 tons of vows to the emporer and and even has a unit called the emperors champion is about to fall to chaos

 Manchu wrote:
Why should it be all or nothing? I don't know how folding any of BA, BT, DA, or SW back into the vanilla codex makes up for or justifies taking away special rules for WS, IF, RG, etc.

I think idea that these armies *need* their own book in and of itself is an issue personally. They don't really, almost everything unique about them as an army (that can't be attributed to edition/design studio shifts) could be included as a 1-3 page sublist to C:SM barring characters. Much of the "unique" stuff is relatively new for these factions, created to justify their existence as a distinct codex when otherwise not really required, and that really makes one question why these armies need their own books, especially when lots of other subfactions are far more diverse and will never in a million years get their own book (e.g. there will never be a Codex: Thousand Sons or Codex: Ulthwe)

If the Catachans could be successfully reintegrated into a single book after having their own codex, so can (and should) SW/BA/BT/BA.

 Manchu wrote:
the only thing CSM and GK have in common with other SM is power armor.

That's not true.

They also have the fact that they're space marines in common.

You know, instead of being human.

Disclaimer: I'm not advocating anything in this thread. Just contradicting a false assertion.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:
Add DC into C:SM, bam, there's Blood Angels done. Special Bikes/Terminators for DA, slight FOC change for SW. Don't see why they need 3 codicies worth $50+ each just to cover a couple niche units. The World Eaters Legion is represented by a single elite choice and a special character. Even worse is the marine fanboys who cry for more specials in their own homebrews /facepalm

Notice the part where pretty much every World Eater player hates it? Or, you know, the part where your suggestions would completely gut BA?

Why should BA exist as a niche of an army that already exists in the game 4 times? Also, why should I care? When I got into playing BA shared a codex with DA and there were no problems.

clively wrote:
There are two ways of looking at this.

Either you cut any non-first or second founding chapters and roll those into the big SM book or you break out the books to cover certain ideologies and group chapters together.

Fixed that. Second Founding Chapters have the same history during the Heresy as the Legions, it's only from 3rd founding onwards that they start making new Chapters without the heritage of having been a Legion.

It doesn't make up for it, it's just a continuation of a design ideal.

It doesn't make sense to say four chapters are super-special, and all others can be governed by one set of rules. Especially when it can (easily) be argued that the differences between the chaos legions who are dedicated to specific gods are far greater than the relatively minor differences in how the blood angels or dark angels designate their squads.

It really seems to come down to GW's schizophrenic approach to game design, and inability to stick with any one ideal for more than three or four codexes. Obviously at some point, they said, we don't want different armies for every little thing. They took craftworlds away from the eldar, they took legions away from chaos, and they took klans and kults away from orks.

In terms of competitive play, this both reduced the variety of what we actually see at tournaments, but also made it easier to plan for what you might be expected to face. Playing against Iron Warriors was very different from playing against World Eaters, even if they did come from the same book. At one point there were over 30 different army lists you could pick from.

Someone, somewhere, decided this was too much, and so the great consolidation began. And, in a way, it was a good thing. The difference between an Ulthwe guardian and a Biel-tan guardian shouldn't be that important. But, as others have predicted if any current armies get rolled into the Marine codex, we also lost variety. Chaos armies all seemed to morph towards Plague Marines and Obliterators. Eldar Armies all took on a Sam-Hein look (for a while), yet all had Eldrad too.

From a "fun" perspective, I actually would prefer to see 40 different army lists, each one with distinct limitations. But from a game-design perspective (and, with some hope of ever having a balanced game), I think consolidating the armies that are essentially power-armoured soldiers of the Imperium into a single book makes more sense. It should be up to the Marine players to design armies that fit the theme of their chapter, not up to the rules-teams.

As an aside, here's a (probably incomplete) list of armies that used to have distinct army lists, and got rolled into one generic one:

Eldar: Biel-tan, Ulthwe, Iyanden, Alaitoc, and Sam-Hain (And possibly non-official Harlequins and Exodites)

Orks: Bad Moons, Evil Suns, Goffs, Blood Axes, Snakebites, Deathskulls, Kult of Speed, and Feral Orks

Chaos: Emperor's Children, Death Guard, World Eaters, Thousand Sons, Night Lords, Alpha Legion, Word Bearers and Iron Warriors, Lost and the Damned

Marines: White Scars, Iron Hands, Crimson Fists, Salamanders, Imperial Fists, Deathwatch, Flesh Tearers, Raven Guard

IG: Armoured Company, Catachans, Cadians

So, before the Space Wolf, Dark Angel, Bood Angel or Black Templars players get so bent out of shape about how awful this would be, remember, it's happened before. I've got three armies from that list that got rolled in before. It's not the end of the world.

What about putting the Dark Angels and Blood Angels together (Angels of ___), and the Space Wolves, Black Templars, and Space Sharks together (Codex: Abhorrent, yet Loyal).

 Ozomoto wrote:
Grey knights and chaos are far to gone from SM to warrant them really being them any more.

Even if this is true, which it is not (or at least it is not necessarily true), it is irrelevant: no matter what, one has to be a SM in order to be either a GK or CSM. This is not the case for SoB. I don't know why you people are being so obtuse on this issue.

 Melissia wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
the only thing CSM and GK have in common with other SM is power armor.

That's not true.

They also have the fact that they're space marines in common.

That was my point.

 Vaktathi wrote:
If the Catachans could be successfully reintegrated into a single book

I'm not sure that they have been, honestly.

 Ozomoto wrote:
Yes, one of if not the most loyal chapter to the emperor, forbids psykers, takes an 8 tons of vows to the emporer and and even has a unit called the emperors champion is about to fall to chaos

Nice litany of overcompensation. Meanwhile, none of the First Founding chapters -- which proved their loyalty in the HH itself (including the IF, who defended the Palace) -- feel the need to do any of that. Anyway, my theory is that Dorn was on the knife's edge after the HH. It came to a head during his stand off with Guilliman. He formally relented and turned the IF into the chapter second only to the UM in codex-adherence. Meanwhile, all his bitterness, rage, insecurity, and regret were split off as the super-noncompliant BT. This isn't really the thread to debate that theory but I thought I'd explain it a bit more as an example of both why I personally find them to be extremely interesting and why I think they should have their own dex -- to my mind, they represent the Legion-model rather than the Chapter-model. It's not exactly what a Legion was like in M31 but it is closer, generally, than what any other chapter (including the SW) is doing in M41-42.

The breaking point of any "condensed" codex debate is when the design throughout an edition is ignored.

3rd had a space marine codex and multiple sub-codices. Some additonal mini-dex and even campaign lists, a index astartes series all make sense with this approach.

6th ed and 5th ed before, got nothing like Index Astartes or Chapter approved.
There was a period with expansions, maybe a return to a Main Astartes codex as the "home-base" and expansions to detail the former Legions and their successors in M41 could keep the cost down and the minimum of Books to play affordable. The fluff-nuts could still fork over their income directly to have it all..
Secondly, they don't need to stop with marines.

As a theory:
- Main Rulebook
- Main Codex of xyz
- Expansion of xyz

Means anyone can do fine with just the rulebook and a codex. Want more? Expansions are your friend.
A chapter based on the main "SM" dex and the specified data of the "astartes" expansion could provide a lot. Same for everyone else.
Orks? codex orks and "ork klans" , codex Eldar and " craftworlds ( or a combined craftworlds, commoragh and the exodites book ), etc.
The core rulebook provides the rules and a short run down of the background.
A codex provides the specific rules and a basic overview of the background.
Expansions give the details, multiple lists and in depth background.
Sounds complicated but if the company has the basic codices running before the edition is out in the public, timed releases of expansions and models can keep the fanbase busy. Could balance the game too if the foundation is made at once.

But actually its a mess of codices, i-codices ( not localized ! ), limited release nonsense.
I believe the transfer to digital publications is the right spot to move from limited access towards expansions.

 Manchu wrote:

Melissia wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
the only thing CSM and GK have in common with other SM is power armor.

That's not true.

They also have the fact that they're space marines in common.

That was my point.

You made it out as if they didn't have anything in common but power armor.

Except that they have more in common than that.

 Melissia wrote:
You made it out as if they didn't have anything in common but power armor.

Except that they have more in common than that.

Try again. The part you quoted is in blue; the part you didn't read/understand is in red:

 Manchu wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Yes, it was.

No, it wasn't. Of course SoB are not SM. His point was that if I was going to have CSM and GK on the list then I might as well have SoB because the only thing CSM and GK have in common with other SM is power armor. That was his point. It is incorrect. Take the power armor off a GK and you have a naked SM. Take the power armor off of a CSM and you have a naked (perhaps mutated) evil SM. Take the power armor off a Sororitas and you have a naked human being.

Do you see how I characterized what you misattributed to me as someone else's point in that very post? And then distinguished it from my own?

 Vaktathi wrote:
Honestly, anyone saying that Space Wolves or Black Templars or Blood Angels or Dark Angels are as distinct from Codex: Space Marines as Codex: Imperial Guard or Codex: Orks is, is being delusional, and if they aren't that distinct, they really have no business being their own book.

I'm not saying that the different chapters are as different from vanilla marines as tau are from necrons, but I am saying they are different enough. To paraphrase my previous point, I proposed one separate supplementary dex to contain BA/DA/BT, that would be used with C:SM. I really don't see an issue with this approach.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Likewise, trying to argue that any of those loyalist SM armies are for some reason more distinct than the Traitor Legions and Chaos renegades are from each other is also quite silly, and if those don't warrant their own codex, then the loyalists certainly don't.

I'm not going to argue either way if they are more of less different than certain traitor legions because it has no baring on my point of view on this thread. But I will agree with you that there should be something similar to my above proposal for CSM. A separate supplementary book that lets you run your CSM as one of the specific legions.

But if they were to do both those things, then they would have only reduced the number of codex books by 1, and people would still complain about unrealistically cramming all the SM armies in one book, and then start on cramming the legion book, CSM, and CD into one book again.

 Manchu wrote:
Do you see how I characterized what you misattributed to me as someone else's point in that very post? And then distinguished it from my own?

Yes. Sorry about that.

I'm just used to people trying to act like space marines aren't space marines.