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So in official material that has come out recently, is there anything that has really disappointed you? For example, I know a lot of people were disappointed with some of the stuff that happened in Kauyon and Mont'ka. I, for one, kinda wished they had done something more with Shadowsun. They made it a point to have her use a Ghostkeel, but we didn't get any stats for Shadowsun's Ghostkeel. What I wish had happened was that she would become reliant on her Ghostkeel. She is old and out of date, she needs the Ghostkeel to keep up with her peers. That or have her require a specially-equipped Ghostkeel following the injuries she received during the later part of the campaign.

Another example is in the Shield of Baal stuff. They make a point to state that every Blood Angels successor returns to help defend Baal, even the Knights of Baal (Renegade Chapter), EXCEPT the Lamenters. How cool would it have been if the defenders were slowly losing to the advancing hordes of Tyranids when suddenly yellow-armored warriors start descending from the sky with jump packs to save the day. It absolutely fits with the Lamenters fluff. They are insufferable heroes. Even when the odds are stacked against them, they still will jump at the opportunity to protect people. I get that they are almost completely wiped out, but not coming back at all is just not at all like them. Seriously, take out the stupid crap with the Sanguinor. Put in Malakim Pharos. Would be a lot cooler.

What fluff has been a disappointment to you?

Other than the general level of cringe that comes from the Matt Ward plots (Blood Angels being bros with the Necrons, GKs murdering sisters for their blood, ultrasmurfs being the spiritual liege to all other space marines, etc). I find the lack of good fluff development that makes me the most disappointed. Orks being my favorite faction has seen a reduction in their fluff and the omission of a lot of their more interesting aspects. GW seems to be downplaying their whole "believe it so it happens" bending of reality from their psychic gestalt field. Orks feel like they are being pushed into the generic bad race punching bag trope despite already having interesting background fluff and concepts which have been excluded as time goes on. Then again I think GW takes their fluff WAY too seriously and seem to shy away from the more humorous concepts that came about when 40K was designed to be more of a parody.

Lots of stuff

For no real reason they decided that Kinghts are only piloted by men (although there is a female pilot in the accompayning novel I believe)
I quite liked Kauyon/Mont'ka except that due to selling rules for only a couple of units they ignored everyone esel in the story..............Sheild of Baal was much better.

re Shield of Baal - I got the impression the Blood Angels were keeping back as much resoruces as possible for the defence of their Home System.

re humour - I was shocked how upset people got when GW put loads of humour into the recent AOS rules for the old factions - it was pure gold of the older style - where we had Skaven Daleks and lots of bad puns..........their humour is often badly received :(

Perhaps the fact that Fantasy was removed for that made some people a little bitter.

Pretty much all of the 40k fluff from 5th ed onwards I found disappointing.

I never bothered reading the WHFB fluff so didn't care too much when they canned it.

Destroying the Warhammer world was a bitter thing. I don't really 'get' the AoS universe, it seems very flimsy on background after all the years of the warhammer lore blowing up.

I tried reading a summary of AOS and I couldn't get into it.

The radical change to Necrons always rubbed me wrong. They needed a tweak but I think they changed to much and lost much of the mystery that made them cool.

A lot of the changes they made with the most recent editions rub me the wrong way. The need to make up stupid high gothic names for everything to skirt copywrite infringement means we get stuck with stuff like Astra Militarum or Tempestus Scions, which are obnoxious and not as cool as Imperial Guard.

Yea they will be imperial guard to me for life.

That said, I kinda like Tempestus scions more than storm troopers.

This. And Kaldor Draigo.

 chromedog wrote:
Pretty much all of the 40k fluff from 5th ed onwards I found disappointing.

I kinda feel the same. I was starting to buy back into the game with Space Wolves when the dex with the hover sleigh and MURDERFANG was released. I dropped it like the plague.

A codex release really should inspire you to start the army, not actively scare you away from it.

NewCrons. Just got done reading through their Codex, and they're basically just what would happen if the IoM had better tech and were space skeletons. We already have feudalistic empires, they should have, at the very least, capitalized on the Egyptian aspects of the Necrons.
Also, Priests of Mars. I found the pseudo-scientific talk to be poorly constructed, and they made Tech-Priests who had supposedly had the emotional centers of their brains removed acting like squabbling school children. I know it's old news, but...

Necrons, and I'm not referring to the old vs new debate (for the most part) but it's just that the way they describe them now with so little effort they could rule the galaxy

Most of Warhammer 30k.

Scions. Much of the fluff was written at the same time, for the same book... yet the authors couldn't make it internally consistent.
One moment the text will be telling us how they're mentally shaped through the addition of a drug that the Imperium is running low on, they're lavishly equipped with state-of-the-art weapons, their training is expensive and time-consuming. They are nigh-irreplaceable. The next moment we'll see that Command puts so little value on the lives of scions that the troops are killed in training accidents, executed as part of training, given suicidal orders that serve little or no strategic purpose, etc.
The fluff can't even decide how they're differentiated from marines. Sometimes the scions seem to be less flashy, more cost-efficient marines - kept in the field through discipline instead of gene-enhanced toughness, defeating their foes with ambushes instead of reckless charges. They lack the pride of a marine. Other parts of the fluff play up their fancy baroque armour and have the troops commanded by glory hogs.

The whole of what the Iron Hands have become fluff wise and in game. Worst of all Kardan Stronos. Whoever thought he was a good idea should have been stabbed in the eye with a bic pen.

Bloodtide

Imperial Knights.

Mallich wrote:
Scions. Much of the fluff was written at the same time, for the same book... yet the authors couldn't make it internally consistent.
One moment the text will be telling us how they're mentally shaped through the addition of a drug that the Imperium is running low on, they're lavishly equipped with state-of-the-art weapons, their training is expensive and time-consuming. They are nigh-irreplaceable. The next moment we'll see that Command puts so little value on the lives of scions that the troops are killed in training accidents, executed as part of training, given suicidal orders that serve little or no strategic purpose, etc.
The fluff can't even decide how they're differentiated from marines. Sometimes the scions seem to be less flashy, more cost-efficient marines - kept in the field through discipline instead of gene-enhanced toughness, defeating their foes with ambushes instead of reckless charges. They lack the pride of a marine. Other parts of the fluff play up their fancy baroque armour and have the troops commanded by glory hogs.

Well when you have a few million of them it's kinda like

Imperial General Dude Hammer: Yah! these guys are so great, we train them really hard and fit them with the best stuff "which is like the best old stuff we still kinda know how to make but not to good as the Cult of mars is still keeping the really cool stuff"
But we also have like a million million of them...We lost like 300 yesterday. Die? no no they did not die we just misplaced them. Now like 3000 of them did Die yesterday. But it's cool. We will make more.

They may be irreplaceable but so are those large Imperial battleships that people keep crashing into things like planets, other ships, bio ships, world engines, warp stuff and probably even each other.

Until the Emperor gets up from his nap The Imperium is kinda just stumbling around at this point. Im sure he will have a few choice words for Papa Smurf when he finds out that his legions have been dismantled and scattered and that after he worked so hard to get rid of religion he is now a god worshiped by all and those who don't are burned.

I found the Scions going in for Space Marine Lite baroqueness a bit underwhelming. For that matter, upping the ante with Space Marines Sternguard, Vanguard et al took away from the Loyalist = clean lines, Chaos = baroque approach I had liked.

I prefer my Stormtroopers being tough, well equipped/trained guardsmen. Even the name 'Tempestus Scions' has he same pretentiousness about it that A.M. (I can't write it out) does for the Imperial Guard. The Pseudolatinization of names generally leaves a bad taste in my mouth, even while I understand they did it to protect their intellectual property rights.

I disliked the dumbing down of Ork lore and the elimination of interesting named characters like Nazdreg ug Urdgrub, Wazdakka Gutzmek and Zodgrod Wortsnagga. I'm not into the whole "I believe dere fore it iz" thing, but I found Orks to be a satisfying mix of humor and savagery before fourth edition.

I generally loathe Space Wolves, mostly because they do everything just a little better than any other Space Marine. Nothing I've ever read has made me feel any better about them. Every Legion/Chapter should have an area of expertise, and no Chapter should have clear, measurable superiority across the board the way the Space Pups do.

I rather disliked the Tau going darkish. I liked things better when one faction could be more or less 'good' guys in an otherwise dismal universe (even though they're not 'my' boys).

I was particularly dismayed because many races are on the blackish side of gray as it is... Why not mix it up with a little more light?

Not really sure why GW decided to go all shades of gray all the time, but there you are. The decision to go monochrome just made the whole universe a little less interesting for me.

Matt Ward. From Cron/Angel battle bros to GK Sister Slaughter to Draigo, whose existence is an affront to Chaos players and fluffbunnies alike... nothing the man wrote was consistent with existing lore or even common sense. It's like he was just pushing boundaries and screwing with people's headcanon just to see what would happen. Like he was a Hollywood producer. In other words, his work is an abomination whose very existence should be expunged from the consciousness of humankind.

(Don't beat around the bush. Tell us what you REALLY think...)

Relegation of Soroitas, and indeed the Ecclesiarchy, to the back burner. <sigh>. But I like Angry Nunz wiv Gunz in bustier armor...! And I like em better when they have believable backstory, not as demonic blood sacrifice by supposedly incorruptible GKs or as punching bags for actual demons.

Newcrons did NOT bother me. Although I appreciated the old soulless enigma trope, it's hard to build a fleshed out codex off that. The change was necessary if the Necrons were ever to be more than a mysterious but ancillary raiding force. Given the choice to give them named characters with personalities and allow them to do more than execute millennia-old protocols I think GW did about as well as they could.

My two cents.

Knights can't have female pilots? As if 40k wasn't enough of a sausage fest.
The entire 5th Grey Knights codex. It's like it was written by a hyperactive twelve year old.
The HH books after Know No Fear. (I think that's what it's called, the Word Bearers attacking Calth) Everything after that, and a few before, were wastes of time. The HH series started off strong with a clear overall narrative. Then the big wigs wondered how they could stretch it out so they could keep selling books and now it's meandering without purpose.

I am often annoyed by GW's laziness in writing. Like whenever Eldar do just about anything 'we mon-keigh can't understand it'.

Lion'el Johnson having a 10,000 year in the Rock and MK7 being developed by the Siege of Terra was just stupid for me.

Every time a new unit is introduced and rather than move the plot forward, the new book pretends as if it was always there. Centurions and Dreadknights comes to mind. Hunters/Stalkers and Exocrines at least existed in the fluff before.

Also everything with Sammael's promotion. It felt like it was forced just so he could have the Ravenwing Rule and not the Deathwing Rule.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Every time a new unit is introduced and rather than move the plot forward, the new book pretends as if it was always there. Centurions and Dreadknights comes to mind. Hunters/Stalkers and Exocrines at least existed in the fluff before.

Also everything with Sammael's promotion. It felt like it was forced just so he could have the Ravenwing Rule and not the Deathwing Rule.

Agreed. Say what you will about new tau units, but at least they actually make them new in the fluff.

It disappoints me every time I see the term "fluff", I prefer "lore".

Fluff implies a frivolous, even irrelevant presence within the overall hobby, as though it's simply there to make the rules pretty. Really, it's the other way around. For example, a lot of the ideas came from the artwork of John Blanche, then rules are developed to bring the ideas to the tabletop. Even in terms of volume of published material, the lore far outweighs the rules. This kind of also explains GW's apprehensive attitude towards strong competitiveness. To them, it's less about outdoing opponents with rules but rather providing a means to explore a mythos.

But one example of lore that had me rolling my eyes was Mordrak's ghost knights. As if the Inquisition wouldn't remove him instantaneously... And how can the Grand Master of the Grey Knights lead if he's stuck in the Realm of Chaos 99% of the time? Ugh, a lot of that codex seemed like Ward's borderline childish way of leaving his mark. (That's right, I'm bringing him up.)

Mallich wrote:
Scions. Much of the fluff was written at the same time, for the same book... yet the authors couldn't make it internally consistent.
One moment the text will be telling us how they're mentally shaped through the addition of a drug that the Imperium is running low on, they're lavishly equipped with state-of-the-art weapons, their training is expensive and time-consuming. They are nigh-irreplaceable. The next moment we'll see that Command puts so little value on the lives of scions that the troops are killed in training accidents, executed as part of training, given suicidal orders that serve little or no strategic purpose, etc.
The fluff can't even decide how they're differentiated from marines. Sometimes the scions seem to be less flashy, more cost-efficient marines - kept in the field through discipline instead of gene-enhanced toughness, defeating their foes with ambushes instead of reckless charges. They lack the pride of a marine. Other parts of the fluff play up their fancy baroque armour and have the troops commanded by glory hogs.

You could swing it by saying different commanders, different orders, different units, really, makes the Scions more interesting than having every Scion be the same, no?

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
A lot of the changes they made with the most recent editions rub me the wrong way. The need to make up stupid high gothic names for everything to skirt copywrite infringement means we get stuck with stuff like Astra Militarum or Tempestus Scions, which are obnoxious and not as cool as Imperial Guard.

To be honest, I actually love the High Gothic names they've applied to stuff now, regardless of copywrite.

Personally, it's not really in 40k I found the most disappointing thing. Astra Militarum and high gothic names, campaign supplements and so were disappoing in some way but nothing is worst than the destruction of the Old World GW committed with AoS.

A big part of my teenage years Hobby memories went away with the End Times, like, really.. So many stories, places and great events were just utterly erased without discussion. I know many people have already whined about this but I can't find any stronger example.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Knights can't have female pilots? As if 40k wasn't enough of a sausage fest.
The entire 5th Grey Knights codex. It's like it was written by a hyperactive twelve year old.
The HH books after Know No Fear. (I think that's what it's called, the Word Bearers attacking Calth) Everything after that, and a few before, were wastes of time. The HH series started off strong with a clear overall narrative. Then the big wigs wondered how they could stretch it out so they could keep selling books and now it's meandering without purpose.

I think the all-male knight pilots thing was supposed to encourage Sweet Polly Oliver-ing.