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People believe that the Red Thirst and the Black Rage are the same thing!

Da Butcha wrote:

For a counter-example, here's my fluff idea for targeter squigs (as found on the Freebooter-looking Flash Git GW sells):

Targeter squigs are rotund, monocular, near-sighted squigs. They are reluctant to move, and prefer to sit immobile and wait for prey. When approached by a potential predator, the targeter squig emits a loud, piercing chirp, sounding much like an electronic ping or beep. If the predator continues to approach the squig, the targeter squig will continue to emit this unpleasant beeping, increasing in volume and frequency. If the predator approaches too closely to the squig, it will often vomit the contents of its stomach at the predator, void its bowels in the direction of the predator, or leap away awkwardly (and sometimes, all three).

Now, if an ork picks up a targeter squig, he's got a little pet that will sit on his shoulder. It's nearsighted, and has trouble with depth perception. If the ork is moving around, the squig will sometimes see something that alarms it, and emit a little panicked 'ping'. However, if the ork continues to move around, the squig might lose focus on the threat, and settle down, or see something else threatening. On the other hand, if the ork can muster up some concentration and stand fairly still, the targeter squig will focus on the prey and see it approaching. It will continue to ping and ping as the prey approaches. Ultimately, the squig will be emitting a panicked trill, if the enemy is fairly close. At this point, the ork knows that he had better shoot the enemy, or his pet will throw up or poop all over the place, so he shoots. As a result of standing still, the ork is actually in the best possible firing position (at least, for an ork), as he isn't running around, waving his arms, or generally being a boisterous ork.

So, even though the targeter squig doesn't actually 'target' the enemy, the behaviors that accompany the squig do benefit the ork's aim. As orks observe other orks using targeter squigs and being more accurate (for entirely the wrong reasons), a communal belief in the efficacy of targeter squigs arises in the orkish mind, to the extent that even in situations where the targeter squig should be of little help, an ork with one is measurably more accurate than one without.

See, it's not "Orks believe it so it's true!"

That is adorable.

 Silverthorne wrote:

How does outnumbering help if you have to have a 1 : 1 ratio to play a game between CSM and CWE? Did you invent a new type of math to make that possible?

The error you made is assuming that registered players were playing only against each other.

There was nothing requiring registered players to play only other registered players. A player could play an unregistered player (real or completely made up) and report only wins to the website, while not reporting any losses. There was no requirement that they had to play their designated opponent faction either, so an Eldar player could win against a Tyranid player but report the win to the Webway warzone claiming it was against Thousand Sons. Alternatively I know of some SM players playing SM vs SM and either way reporting it as an Imperial victory (since "obviously" the losing SM were heretical and Chaos). This means player population numbers in that campaign did matter, even if both sides had an equal proportion of cheaters.

For example, if there are 2000 Eldar players in the warzone and 1000 Thousand Son players, and 10% of all players cheated by reporting a false win, that would mean there would be 200 Eldar false wins and 100 Thousand Son false wins. Net effect: 100 extra Eldar victories reported that never really occurred. Taken over the course of a campaign, those repeated false wins would affect the course of the campaign. That is why player numbers mattered in the Eye of Terror campaign as GW only rooted out the blatantly obvious cheaters and there were many on both sides that surely slipped through.

However in the Eye of Terror campaign, there was another effect in place that allowed for the less numerous side to still win (though not in the Webway warzones). Search for my Eye of Terror campaign summary where I explain the campaign mechanics.

Who ever was saying the ork's phsychic ability bypasses physics; You cant really reference the laws of physics when talking about the 40k universe.

I personally believe the 'orks think it works and therefor it does' but i think its more that they have an inate ability to know what to do. In much the same way that painboys are born with the knowledge of which squirty tube connects to which wriggly bit. It means they have an instinct to know where the fighting is. To know how to shake the shoota in just the right way so that the next round goes into the chamber. To know how to make the crude rokkit fire in the general direction of the enemy. All things that someone from a lesser race would not be able to do makimg it appear like a phychic power from their perspective.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Salamanders, although it is doubtful that they created said families post-Marinification.

Salamanders maintain contact with their families post Marinification. AFAIK they don't produce offspring but every so often go home for a free meal off mum (Or Great grand Daughter as could be the case)

As I've said before, my take on the Ork latent psychic ability helping make weapons work is that it 'fills in any little gaps' as a result of non-standardised manufacturing processes, due to the imbued mechanical knowledge of Meks ensuring that they do things very much on the fly and on an individual basis. There's only so much it can fix but it will do a little bit within tolerances - the kind of behaviour gork & possibly mork describes is a good example of how it could work in practical terms for the more basic weaponry.

The stronger the belief among more Orks however, the larger the psychic effect becomes (as is seen with Weirdboys being focus points for the energy generated in a large Waaagh). This, imo in part explains the colour beliefs. There's no doubt that with for example Evil Sunz being obsessed with fast vehicles means that they would have them anyway, but the belief that painting their stuff red makes them go faster will be so strong it will likely have a minor effect too, whether in any particular instance it's because of behaviour via a placebo effect or taking on an actual physical nature. The 'problem' is in terms of the fluff, you could never hope to carry out an experiment to measure it in real terms of two identical trukks crewed by the same Orks other than the paint colour due to how anarchic they are, and as such it is suitably vague & open ended precisely how any observed effect comes about.

 Hordini wrote:
A question regarding Space Marines and reproduction: Aren't there a few chapters that allow older Space Marines to retire and have families? I'm like 90% sure I read that at some point.

Nah, some of them retire and perform other jobs for the chapter. Ultramarines use crippled or retired marines to perform duties across Ultramar.

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Salamanders, although it is doubtful that they created said families post-Marinification.

Salamanders maintain contact with their families post Marinification. AFAIK they don't produce offspring but every so often go home for a free meal off mum (Or Great grand Daughter as could be the case)

Great grand Niece.
The whole point is they stay in contact with those who are blood-related to them, but they're related through siblings and cousins who were not selected to be marines.

I suppose in some cases it would be possible for a Space Marine who was selected relatively late to have a son or daughter who was born prior to the parent becoming a Space Marine though.

Theoretically possible for Space Wolves, considering that they tend to be boozing and wenching in their early teens.

Yeah most chapters recruit those at the onset of puberty which does leave a window of opportunity (A very narrow one to be fair) for a Space marine recruit to father offspring. Also being male does mean you can knock up multiple people in a short period of time

 Silverthorne wrote:
Um, no it was 1k sons vs. Ulthwe, which had their own specialy list at that time. Eldrad is Ulthwe, and DE were allowed to put their wins in with CWE, since the battlezone was the freaking webway. Not allowing them to throw their wins in the hat is like not allowing imperials to participate in a battle fought on terra.

How does outnumbering help if you have to have a 1 : 1 ratio to play a game between CSM and CWE? Did you invent a new type of math to make that possible?

This is all over looking the hella-broke CSM 3.5 codex.

Even in 3.5 Thousand Sons were still awful.

Iracundus wrote:

 Silverthorne wrote:

How does outnumbering help if you have to have a 1 : 1 ratio to play a game between CSM and CWE? Did you invent a new type of math to make that possible?

The error you made is assuming that registered players were playing only against each other.

There was nothing requiring registered players to play only other registered players. A player could play an unregistered player (real or completely made up) and report only wins to the website, while not reporting any losses. There was no requirement that they had to play their designated opponent faction either, so an Eldar player could win against a Tyranid player but report the win to the Webway warzone claiming it was against Thousand Sons. Alternatively I know of some SM players playing SM vs SM and either way reporting it as an Imperial victory (since "obviously" the losing SM were heretical and Chaos). This means player population numbers in that campaign did matter, even if both sides had an equal proportion of cheaters.

For example, if there are 2000 Eldar players in the warzone and 1000 Thousand Son players, and 10% of all players cheated by reporting a false win, that would mean there would be 200 Eldar false wins and 100 Thousand Son false wins. Net effect: 100 extra Eldar victories reported that never really occurred. Taken over the course of a campaign, those repeated false wins would affect the course of the campaign. That is why player numbers mattered in the Eye of Terror campaign as GW only rooted out the blatantly obvious cheaters and there were many on both sides that surely slipped through.

However in the Eye of Terror campaign, there was another effect in place that allowed for the less numerous side to still win (though not in the Webway warzones). Search for my Eye of Terror campaign summary where I explain the campaign mechanics.

Interesting.

My position is that the Eldar players won their campaign, and by a lot. Then as a 'reward' Eldrard was killed. That was unfair, and it makes sense that it was retconned.

I'm not partically sympathetic to people saying Chaos got screwed. The definitely didn't get boned as hard as the Eldar.

I think aside from the moronic killing of Eldrad (when the Eldar should have been rewarded for their crushing victory, maybe by not killing their most important character) the big problem was that background wise, BFG had to be made way more important, although a much, much smaller fraction of people play it. It's kinda like Hollywood's treatment of Guadalcanal: everyone focuses on the Marines but the battles at sea were what really determined things. Since so many chaos players didn't play BFG, they felt like there was a deus ex machina moment where the Navy pulled everything out of the lurch at the last minute for the Imperials. But they should have considered that in their larger strategy. The forces of order won in space by a large margin, and space battles are ultimately many orders of magnitude more important than land battles.

 Silverthorne wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

 Silverthorne wrote:

How does outnumbering help if you have to have a 1 : 1 ratio to play a game between CSM and CWE? Did you invent a new type of math to make that possible?

The error you made is assuming that registered players were playing only against each other.

There was nothing requiring registered players to play only other registered players. A player could play an unregistered player (real or completely made up) and report only wins to the website, while not reporting any losses. There was no requirement that they had to play their designated opponent faction either, so an Eldar player could win against a Tyranid player but report the win to the Webway warzone claiming it was against Thousand Sons. Alternatively I know of some SM players playing SM vs SM and either way reporting it as an Imperial victory (since "obviously" the losing SM were heretical and Chaos). This means player population numbers in that campaign did matter, even if both sides had an equal proportion of cheaters.

For example, if there are 2000 Eldar players in the warzone and 1000 Thousand Son players, and 10% of all players cheated by reporting a false win, that would mean there would be 200 Eldar false wins and 100 Thousand Son false wins. Net effect: 100 extra Eldar victories reported that never really occurred. Taken over the course of a campaign, those repeated false wins would affect the course of the campaign. That is why player numbers mattered in the Eye of Terror campaign as GW only rooted out the blatantly obvious cheaters and there were many on both sides that surely slipped through.

However in the Eye of Terror campaign, there was another effect in place that allowed for the less numerous side to still win (though not in the Webway warzones). Search for my Eye of Terror campaign summary where I explain the campaign mechanics.

Interesting.

My position is that the Eldar players won their campaign, and by a lot. Then as a 'reward' Eldrard was killed. That was unfair, and it makes sense that it was retconned.

I'm not partically sympathetic to people saying Chaos got screwed. The definitely didn't get boned as hard as the Eldar.

I think aside from the moronic killing of Eldrad (when the Eldar should have been rewarded for their crushing victory, maybe by not killing their most important character) the big problem was that background wise, BFG had to be made way more important, although a much, much smaller fraction of people play it. It's kinda like Hollywood's treatment of Guadalcanal: everyone focuses on the Marines but the battles at sea were what really determined things. Since so many chaos players didn't play BFG, they felt like there was a deus ex machina moment where the Navy pulled everything out of the lurch at the last minute for the Imperials. But they should have considered that in their larger strategy. The forces of order won in space by a large margin, and space battles are ultimately many orders of magnitude more important than land battles.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/392010.page

Might want to take a read, considering Chaos went outside the Cadian gate by the end.

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
Yeah most chapters recruit those at the onset of puberty which does leave a window of opportunity (A very narrow one to be fair) for a Space marine recruit to father offspring. Also being male does mean you can knock up multiple people in a short period of time

The processes and implants a recruit goes through don't erase the normal developement of the body, and absolutely never in the stages castration or anything similar is included.

Iirc, in The Emperor's Gift the lady inquisitor (... Inquisitrix?) happens to see a GK marine in the common showers and sighs for the "lack of use" of what she sees.

And it is logical. A spacemarine needs testosterone levels, so he needs his gonads, for hormone levels affect also the muscle and fat distribution in the body.
And in the transformation stages there are just additions of cells and/or new organs.

The fact that space marines never engage in intimate activities is mostly for the monastic structure of their chapters (and I suspect they never had "the talk about bees and flowers")

Considering the pure physical size of marines (and I'm not even guessing or talking about the size of certain organs in that region) I can't actually imagine it being a pleasant experience for women anyway, it may actually leave them incapable of bearing children....

Pretty sure a GW employee on Reddit confirmed that Marines still have their equipment, they just don't have the desire to use it. Uriel Ventris and Ragnar in their respective books are noted as describing various women as attractive. Marines are indoctrinated to be borderline psychotic killing machines though and generally have little time for love.

In relation to ork's: that squig is absolutely brilliant.
Salamanders: I always assumed that they would "visit" relatives in the sence of meeting say neice or nethew + however many greats.
Marine gonads: he he he...
I would assume that there is nothing uhhh removed, but that marines have little to no communication with women. In HORUS RISING loken openly admitts that he has little experience with women.

 Formosa wrote:
The deceiver is a shard, that's a misconception too, thankfully the cypher dex cleared that one up

Can you elaborate on this for me please? The Deceiver is my favourite 40k character and my Necrons paint scheme is even based off of his colour palette! I haven't read the cypher data slate and no one around me has it (to my knowledge).

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Silverthorne wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

 Silverthorne wrote:

How does outnumbering help if you have to have a 1 : 1 ratio to play a game between CSM and CWE? Did you invent a new type of math to make that possible?

The error you made is assuming that registered players were playing only against each other.

There was nothing requiring registered players to play only other registered players. A player could play an unregistered player (real or completely made up) and report only wins to the website, while not reporting any losses. There was no requirement that they had to play their designated opponent faction either, so an Eldar player could win against a Tyranid player but report the win to the Webway warzone claiming it was against Thousand Sons. Alternatively I know of some SM players playing SM vs SM and either way reporting it as an Imperial victory (since "obviously" the losing SM were heretical and Chaos). This means player population numbers in that campaign did matter, even if both sides had an equal proportion of cheaters.

For example, if there are 2000 Eldar players in the warzone and 1000 Thousand Son players, and 10% of all players cheated by reporting a false win, that would mean there would be 200 Eldar false wins and 100 Thousand Son false wins. Net effect: 100 extra Eldar victories reported that never really occurred. Taken over the course of a campaign, those repeated false wins would affect the course of the campaign. That is why player numbers mattered in the Eye of Terror campaign as GW only rooted out the blatantly obvious cheaters and there were many on both sides that surely slipped through.

However in the Eye of Terror campaign, there was another effect in place that allowed for the less numerous side to still win (though not in the Webway warzones). Search for my Eye of Terror campaign summary where I explain the campaign mechanics.

Interesting.

My position is that the Eldar players won their campaign, and by a lot. Then as a 'reward' Eldrard was killed. That was unfair, and it makes sense that it was retconned.

I'm not partically sympathetic to people saying Chaos got screwed. The definitely didn't get boned as hard as the Eldar.

I think aside from the moronic killing of Eldrad (when the Eldar should have been rewarded for their crushing victory, maybe by not killing their most important character) the big problem was that background wise, BFG had to be made way more important, although a much, much smaller fraction of people play it. It's kinda like Hollywood's treatment of Guadalcanal: everyone focuses on the Marines but the battles at sea were what really determined things. Since so many chaos players didn't play BFG, they felt like there was a deus ex machina moment where the Navy pulled everything out of the lurch at the last minute for the Imperials. But they should have considered that in their larger strategy. The forces of order won in space by a large margin, and space battles are ultimately many orders of magnitude more important than land battles.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/392010.page

Might want to take a read, considering Chaos went outside the Cadian gate by the end.

Thank you for quoting my summary.

Silverthorne, you are still under misconceptions about the way the campaign worked. There was no requirement for playing BFG to post results to the sector (i.e. space) warzones. The bulk of the wins reported were 40K games. The actual number of BFG games was only directly reported in the BFG magazine and they were a tiny fraction of the whole, and didn't do much to affect the outcome as there were several space warzones that had Chaos advantage in terms of BFG games but overall Imperial Control results in the larger campaign that were overwhelmingly Imperial. In other words, the sheer number of 40K game results reported drowned out any effect from actual BFG games.

I do not think this was a conscious strategy either by the Forces of Order, but simply the result of many people not bothering to examine the campaign map further or zooming in to planetary wrazones and just dumping their wins into the highest level warzone which were the sector level ones. I have personally met players that were completely unaware there were even system or planetary warzones available or had just assumed posting to Cadia Sector meant the same as posting to Cadia the planet.

Also GW has defined the 40K warfare paradigm as one in which space is not more important than planetary battles. It has a role and that is why it was a Chaos minor victory not a major victory, but it was not enough to save the Imperials from defeat. In fact, during the campaign newsletters there was even a warning to Imperial players to take the initiative at the planetary level (as sector Imperial Control kept soaring while planetary ones kept plunging), so the weighting was favoring the planetary warzones. Black Library's 13th Black Crusade book even has a statement by the in-character writer stating that no space blockade is airtight and there would always be some smuggling through of supplies or reinforcements. In short, 40K space warfare is not the be all and end all of warfare.

The two sides that were most "screwed" were Chaos and the Eldar. The Eldar easily won against the Thousand Sons because the Dark Eldar players also chose to side with the Craftworld Eldar (despite GW lumping the DE with the Thosuand Sons), even to the point of posting only losses. This meant you had one of the most numerous xenos factions in terms of players against a niche less numerous Chaos faction in a series of warzones that had no room for the threshold effect (see my summary link for explanation of this). So of course they won. Nonetheless, the Eldar did deserve more considering the magnitude of their victory, and the only positive they seemed to get in the final writeup was the return of Altansar. Chaos was "screwed" because Andy Chambers had promised background change depending on which side won the campaign. The less numerous Forces of Disorder figured out the threshold effect and used it to enable the less numerous Forces of Disorder to win against the more numerous Forces of Order, yet GW then backed away from the promise of background change, and to this day there are Imperial players in outright denial either trying to downplay or whitewash the defeat into something else. That is just plain poor sportsmanship. If you lose, take it with some grace and try again next time just as one would with a regular 40K game. It is of note that there is nowhere near the same amount of "controversy" or denialism when it comes to the Armageddon 3 or Medusa campaign (draw leaning in favor of Imperials and Imperial win respectively). It is only with the campaign where the Imperials lost.

I think Silverthorne's point is that space battles should have a much bigger impact on something like that than they did. You can win ground battles when you can;t get to the ground, but i guess nothing gets in the way of forging the narrative.

 EmilCrane wrote:
I think Silverthorne's point is that space battles should have a much bigger impact on something like that than they did. You can win ground battles when you can;t get to the ground, but i guess nothing gets in the way of forging the narrative.

Considering how big space is, how are you going to police every sector 100% to keep them all safe from incursions, smugglers, and generally faster ships?

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 EmilCrane wrote:
I think Silverthorne's point is that space battles should have a much bigger impact on something like that than they did. You can win ground battles when you can;t get to the ground, but i guess nothing gets in the way of forging the narrative.

Considering how big space is, how are you going to police every sector 100% to keep them all safe from incursions, smugglers, and generally faster ships?

You don't have to, you only have to police shipping lanes and area around planets where you might actually get attacked, no point in policing cold space, nothing out there. Besides, its not like the Imperial Navy saild around like in the days of Nelson and visually acquires targets, they've got long range scanners and so forth.

There is no such thing as should when it comes to a fictional science fantasy universe paradigm of war. Past analogies to sea going paradigms are not indicative necessarily of how things would work. Paradigms of war change. Someone with only experience of medieval knight warfare could equally argue that depictions of warfare with infantry firing ranged weapons and overcoming cavalry is not how things should work. There was a time when infantry outmatched cavalry, then cavalry outmatched infantry, then infantry again overtaking cavalry. Weapons and defensive measures have equally been in competition throughout history with the balance changing over time.

In 40K, space power is not supreme because scanners are not foolproof, and because ships themselves are reliant on base facilities for resupply and repair. Planetary defense systems pack more firepower at a lower cost than spaceships, as shown by the BFG rules themselves. Then as Andy Chambers said to Imperial players trying to convince him at a convention why the Imperium should have been declared the official winner of the campaign, "Daemons and warp gates". Many of the races of 40K have unconventional means of travel, reinforcement, and supply so space power is not some automatic "I win" button.

Again none of these arguments of how things "should" be ever occur with all the other campaigns GW has run, as the Imperium as won all of the others. Only with the single one where the Imperium has lost do suddenly all these objections and rationalizations suddenly get raised.

Despite everything including the kind of lame Medusa campaign, I wish they would do another one. Now that BFG no longer exists they won't have to do any mental gymnastics to explain away various space related impossibilities. Which where even more ridiculous in Medusa than EoT.

 ace101 wrote:
They may be daemon princes, but the Greater Daemons are the Primarchs...

Well, no, I am pretty sure Mortarion, Angron, Fulgrim, Lorgar, Perturabo and Magnus are all daemon princes. And definitely not of the Emperor. The other primarch are certainly not demonic at all, since they died.
Saint Celestine seem to never ever die. Or rather, it seems to some people that instead of dying she is just temporarily banished into the warp, like daemons do when they are beaten into realspace, and then come back again.
And she is best compared to daemon princes than any other daemon because she, likely, in the same fashion as the daemon prince, was human before reaching her new daemon status.

Copied and pasted from a Tau thread here

"Tau have no presence in the warp"

I see this all the time for some reason. The actual statement is that they have very little presence in the warp, not no presence. No presence is what happens when you get a pariah or a blank, which Tau are absolutely NOT. It also would mean that Tau have almost no emotions at all, when in fact they are merely somewhat less emotional than everyone else.

There are several fluff pieces that simply couldn't have happened if the Tau had absolutely zero presence in the warp and were soulless. Their very first novel Fire Warrior delving into it quite a bit but it's still touched on here and there in other places. And there's a detailed article describing their souls as akin to "cookie crumbs" to a daemon, but again, there is a HUGE world of a difference between "cookie crumb" and "nothing at all".

 stargasm wrote:
they certainly have no sexual desire, thus rendering the cock and balls obsolete, so why not remove them? It doesn't really matter either way, but GW fluff will never directly address the issue. No need to be annoyed if someone says they don't, marines aren;t gonna be using ther cocks anyway even if they do have them.

Testosterone production which is a great hormone to keep around if you want aggressive warriors....


Automatically Appended Next Post:

TiamatRoar wrote:
It also would mean that Tau have almost no emotions at all, when in fact they are merely somewhat less emotional than everyone else.

That's a misconception right there as Blanks have been shown to have emotions (namely in Eisenhorn which had was used for fluffy flavor bits in Codex: Witch Hunters during 3rd so I count it as canon).

I think the misconception of Space marines having no reproductive organs stems from the original fluff pictures, where the black carapace covered the whole groin, and because the carapace is permanent, people assumed they must eunuchs.

 Veteran of The Long War wrote:

 Silverthorne wrote:
Um, no it was 1k sons vs. Ulthwe, which had their own specialy list at that time. Eldrad is Ulthwe, and DE were allowed to put their wins in with CWE, since the battlezone was the freaking webway. Not allowing them to throw their wins in the hat is like not allowing imperials to participate in a battle fought on terra.

How does outnumbering help if you have to have a 1 : 1 ratio to play a game between CSM and CWE? Did you invent a new type of math to make that possible?

This is all over looking the hella-broke CSM 3.5 codex.

Even in 3.5 Thousand Sons were still awful.

The eternal curse of Tzeentch loyal chaos space marines is to suck grox balls in every edition they appear in.

It's a sad thing really.