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 Kanluwen wrote:

 DarkStarSabre wrote:

Note, I do NOT want the Wulfen to fall flat - I loved the whole concept for them with Eye of Terror...but they've moved completely away from it. They seem to think that geneseed flaws result in LOL WOLF FEET. No. I liked the hulking, brutal degenerate appearance of the original Wulfen. I loved the fact they looked bestial with just enough to show that they weren't. They could have been a bit bigger or bulkier...but they certainly didn't need to literally become wolves.

Imagine they did this for Raven Guard...and gave us BIRD MEN. People would flip. The description from the HH books and background describes Corax's failed experiments as being grotesque and inhuman, with just enough to indicate their true nature...but BIRD MEN with bird feet and BIRD faces would look like they escaped a Saturday morning cartoon in the 90s.

Not to be rude, but remember that since the introduction of the Wulfen in the Eye of Terror campaign we got the "Prospero Burns" line of "There are no wolves on Fenris"; which has been expanded/elaborated upon to indicate that the creatures we see as wolves are fully succumbed Wulfen/failed Aspirants.

I haven't really kept up with the Horus Heresy(I find the novels to be really boring/dry at times and I just can't be excited for something where I 'know' the final outcome), but wasn't the whole "Raptors" thing shut down fairly fast after the mutations first appeared?
Assuming these are meant to be specifically the Lost 13th Company(they probably are but just bear with me a bit here), they have been heavily exposed to the Eye of Terror and were known to have a large number of Wulfen even before their disappearance. Something the Eye of Terror fluff made a point of elaborating upon was that the Guardsmen and even an Inquisitor who encountered the Wulfen? They thought they were dealing with Chaos forces because of the mutations they observed the Wulfen possessing.

If anything, I kind of felt that the Wulfen models were a bit too plain after reading the fluff again. They were described as having "matted pelts" and sharpened talons, stalking their prey like beasts.

But if there are "no wolves on Fenris", how exactly was Russ raised by wolves? Unless they've changed his fluff, he was raised by wolves until the high king sent an army to take out half the pack, and he retaliated, impressing everyone. Unless the Wulfen travel back in time, or being a Wulfen is a Fenrisian thing and not a Space Wolf geneseed flaw, the "no wolves on Fenris" is a mistake, or Russ's fluff had to have been changed drastically.

Wasn't he raised by Fenrisian Wolves? You know, the rhino sized things?

Unfortunately, like Schrodinger's Cat, Saturday morning, the confirmed Wulfen models became visually confirmed into something...rather underwhelming. So I didn't have but a few days of thinking of what they would look like. Only to see what at least 3 of them did look like.

While I agree that better pictures are required before writing these off (the shield guy may be promising), it isn't looking great.

The 13th are such a great concept, and are still my army of choice. Without dedicated rules, I just play them as SW. I always liked the Storm Claws and Grey Slayers anyway, but I think you need a unit or two of Wulfen to complete the visual. The metals from 2003 were okay, and these look a little worse so far.

Hopefully, the sprues have some great bits, and that a particularly nice Wolf Priest sprue is lurking around the corner.

Dare to dream...

Oh GW you are so silly, you never disappoint in your disappointments.

Clearly the first sign of Age of the Emperor. Looking forward to see the ueber character for a measly 80 dollars.

Money for the money god!

 kodos wrote:
the question is, if the 13th returns, is this the first 40k EndTimes book?

It wasn't the last time they returned...

 kodos wrote:
the question is, if the 13th returns, is this the first 40k EndTimes book?

It does seem like it; they've been more obvious about hinting that the end of the Imperium looms nigh.
We'll see if they learned from AoS on pulling the trigger, and what comes after.

If it's not apparent, I DON'T have high hopes.

Sad Panda wrote:

 kodos wrote:
the question is, if the 13th returns, is this the first 40k EndTimes book?

As in everything gets wiped out like Fantasy? No.

As in the story is moving? Kauyon was probably first (Chapter Master Shrike), but 40K is on the move.

Calling it now. The 13th Company locates the Planet of Sorcerers and kills Magnus the Red, a True Death. Then they return to the Imperium triumphant. The handful of survivors join Ahriman.

 insaniak wrote:

 kodos wrote:
the question is, if the 13th returns, is this the first 40k EndTimes book?

It wasn't the last time they returned...

It's was actually, they just backed out of the result.

It would be interesting to see them re do the end times jn 40k though, as end times Warhammer did well commercially from what I've been told, doesn't mean they have to nuke the 40k universe.

End times was well received until the 3rd book, when it became apparent that what comes after is going to be very, very different (incarnates of the winds of magic, Sigmar returning and combined elves). Book 4 continued the trend as the Lizardmen fethed off on their spaceships, then Book 5 I'd where the hate became truly widespread.

Tl;Dr The end times was popular, the result wasn't

Warhammer 40k is GW's money pig. They offed Warhammer Fantasy due to its poor performance AFAIK. I doubt there will be an End Times 40k, but this Return of the Wulfen could be another of GW's efforts to move the time line by increments, not wholesale destruction (well, as far as entire IPs go).

 Formosa wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 kodos wrote:
the question is, if the 13th returns, is this the first 40k EndTimes book?

It wasn't the last time they returned...

It's was actually, they just backed out of the result.

It would be interesting to see them re do the end times jn 40k though, as end times Warhammer did well commercially from what I've been told, doesn't mean they have to nuke the 40k universe.

Forgive me, but it does. Unless they're willing to substantially retcon or ignore most of the hints/prophesies/predictions from the fluff over the years, there's no way to put 40K through its own "end times" without the result being so radically dissimilar to the present setting as to mean it has effectively been nuked. The end of the Imperium isn't just the end of the Imperium, it's the end of mankind and, through that end, the end of Chaos. At best both would be given "dying race" status like the Eldar, with the disadvantage that human lifespans are so short you'd only have a handful of centuries of storytelling left, and it's already bad enough with the studio cramming practically everything of note that's happened since the Age of Apostasy into the last five years of 999.M41.

GW have written themselves into a corner - the 40K "end times" equivalent has been talked up as so apocalyptic, such an utter shattering of the status quo that they would only really have two choices; big bang, everything dies, fast forward a few eons and do Age of Sigmar 2; Space Marine Boogaloo, or else advance the story so incrementally and ineffectually that nothing would actually change very much. The first is a giant risk to take given the apparent reception of AoS and the fact 40K is their golden goose, and the latter rather makes you ask why bother then if you're just going to establish a new untouchable status quo where things are only superficially different?

I mean, consider the total minefield that just one aspect of the 40K "end times" would be; the return of the Primarchs. Word one, before they've even started, you're annoying Iron Hands players yet again. Then you've got all the vanished Primarchs; do they all come back? Will they have been changed by their experiences? Russ, as a nice topical example, has just spent 10 millennia in the Eye, so unless they're going to pull that "oh naw brah, time totes didn't pass, for him the Heresy was, like, yesterday!" nonsense the experience can't have failed to change him in some way - will SW players like those changes? What if they decide not to bring back Dorn or Jaghatai, are those fans going to take it well? How will Space Wolf players take it if Russ is killed off as part of the story? But then consider if they just decided to sidestep that one and not bring them back at all, then they're disappointing everyone who, quite reasonably based on the existing fluff, would be expecting their return. There's no path for them to take that doesn't piss off a lot of people, and that's just one part of one faction's fluff.

They could just about make the argument that doing such things didn't matter for Fantasy because so few people played it relative to their projections on how AoS would sell the losses would be irrelevant compared to the gains, but that logic simply won't work for 40K.

We'll see when we get the fluff in the new book, but I would suspect if they don't retcon the 13th Co returning as no longer being the precursor to Russ & the Wolftime, they'll advance things so marginally that we'll be at 10 seconds to midnight, rather than 30 as we are now, or 60 as we were a few years back, and do so in such a way that functionally nothing changes beyond people being able to play 13th Co. armies.

EDIT: And in addition to Rygnan's comments; it can be plausibly argued that the End Times was a commercial success because it's the most attention GW had paid to the system in terms of new models and the setting in terms of new fluff in years. If you're dying of dehydration even a stagnant muddy puddle will suffice, it doesn't mean you wouldn't prefer a nice chilled bottle of spring water.

 Rygnan wrote:
End times was well received until the 3rd book, when it became apparent that what comes after is going to be very, very different (incarnates of the winds of magic, Sigmar returning and combined elves). Book 4 continued the trend as the Lizardmen fethed off on their spaceships, then Book 5 I'd where the hate became truly widespread.

Tl;Dr The end times was popular, the result wasn't

I don't agree with that. Right from the first book they were ruining the Tomb Kings by lumping all Undead under Nagash - including the ones who despise him.

Well received =/= 100% liked, and them being ruined is nothing more than your opinion. Also, it wasn't "all Tomb Kings being lumped under Nagash" he fought throughout Nehekhara against those who opposed him, enslaving or destroying them in the process (see Settra the Imperishable) and also claiming the souls of the Nehekharan dead by becoming the God of death

 Yodhrin wrote:

 jah-joshua wrote:
@Yodhrin: remember though, as much derision as Murderfang deserves, the kit does make an awesome Bjorn, and the axe and shield Dread looks pretty badass...
two out of three isn't bad on that kit...
new plastic Bjorn is an improvement on my old metal Bjorn, though they are both great minis...

cheers
jah

The kit isn't the issue, the issue is the fluff. The actual composition of the Logan Claus model, for example, isn't that bad, the problem is that the concept even occurred to anybody, and that when it did they weren't immediately laughed out of the room and told to sober up. The problem is that the guys who gave us Murderfang succumbing to his Murderlust and committing murder with his Murderclaws on the planet Omnicide as an idea, regardless of what that model ended up looking like, are now going to be responsible for writing down the "future" of 40K, which really wasn't supposed to exist in the first place but be a prophesied mythical apocalypse that hangs over the "present day" setting of 40K like the sword of Damocles to provide a general sense of impending doom.

Even if I liked the basic idea of advancing the timeline, which I do not, I would never trust this current bunch to handle writing something that grand without descending into unintentional self-parody.

oh, i know where you are coming from, as i have read your posts for the last six months...
i wasn't specifically addressing you, so much as you gave me a convenient "in" for my observation without it seeming completely random, as you were the last one to mention Murderfang before i posted...
i just wanted to be sure to remind people that his kit also makes two good minis, since i see people slamming Murderfang, but not bigging up Bjorn...
fluffwise, they may have dropped the ball with Murderfang, but Bjorn was awesome in The Emperor's Gift...
just wanted to point out that his option is there...

cheers
jah

I like the murderfang miniature, but I call it a spacewolves dreadnought. Any one else find it weird you can get a space wolves murderfang, but there's no way they'd do a Slaanesh rapebanger?
Geez GW, murder is still a brutal crime....

Deadawake1347 wrote:

But if there are "no wolves on Fenris", how exactly was Russ raised by wolves?

The fist humans on Fenris changed their DNA to survive. The first fails build up the wolf population over 20.000 years.
So not every wolf on Fenris is a space marine, but every wolf can be tracked back to a mutated human.

In regard to the new 13th company models: i have a few old ones and like them better.
Reading about the 13th company returning DID remind me that i have about 30 Wolfen miniatures from Rackham i still have to paint. THOSE are impressive models of things turned into big wolves.

In regard to 40k end times.
I don't like the concept, does also not fit the setting at all.
There are a lot of forces in 40k, mankind is one of them and not on the brink. Much of the systems and universe is not even used, allhough there are several complete legions missing that could return (a 30k legion is more then all 40k chapters combined) and the other forces like chaos, orks, tyranids, necron are just about undestroyable too. In space you can also run/flee forever, what is what the Eldar have proven. And there should even be some squats rogue trading about, just as they did more than other humanoids.

A 40k end times is very hard to write into something fitting the background.

 kodos wrote:

Deadawake1347 wrote:

But if there are "no wolves on Fenris", how exactly was Russ raised by wolves?

The fist humans on Fenris changed their DNA to survive. The first fails build up the wolf population over 20.000 years.
So not every wolf on Fenris is a space marine, but every wolf can be tracked back to a mutated human.

Really? I took it to mean the colonists gave familiar names to the animals found, so they weren't actually wolves, but were called wolves. Like in that black library novel where the character kept calling one of the space wolves Bear, though that wasn't his name.

To anyone suggesting that the return of the 13th is equal to a 40k endtime: nah, 99,999% of the setting do not care for, what, about 100 more, slightly different space marines. Worst case scenario (and that is really worst case), an Inquisitor decide to purge all the space wolves, and dark angels throw a big party (I heard Dark Angel parties involve not dancing, not drinking, not talking and not having fun!). And the rest of the 40k universe stays basically the same.

Joyboozer wrote:

Really? I took it to mean the colonists gave familiar names to the animals found, so they weren't actually wolves, but were called wolves. Like in that black library novel where the character kept calling one of the space wolves Bear, though that wasn't his name.

It is one of those mysteries in 40k, but the wolves on Fenris are no alien beasts (such as the kraken or trolls) and there are some hints that they were the first human settlers. But we know for sure that there are various stages a recruit can fail and spend his live as beast. If the Canis Helix turns too much into wolves, they live as such on Fenris. If they later lose control, the turn into wulfen and live there. If they lose control after their recruitment phase they are either killed or kept bound to their lord in their great company.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
To anyone suggesting that the return of the 13th is equal to a 40k endtime: nah, 99,999% of the setting do not care for, what, about 100 more, slightly different space marines. Worst case scenario.

Worst case scenario is that this is the beginning of the next black crusade and that chaos wins this time (fantasy end times was the new version of the storm of chaos book and chaos won) but kills itself after and a new galaxy is born.

Holy gak that wolf champion in the back must really love Karate Kid.

I shall name you Daniel!

 kodos wrote:
Worst case scenario is that this is the beginning of the next black crusade

Then this is not about the wulfen themselves, and we can safely ignore them…

I gotta wonder if GW is actively trying to destroy their best brands now, with model kits like this. What happened to just making badass looking space marines that players bought millions of? No one needs wolves with snowballs or insane karate kid poses..

I don't see why 40k endtimes need necessarily be a bad idea. A big problem with the warhammer end times was that it waa rushed. A book focusing on the brettonian civil war and another on the orcs would have improved things considerably and left people a lot more satisfied.
With a universe as big as 40k they could drag the end times out for ten years. Games workshop needs to keep 40k fresh if they want to keep selling books and minis for the next ten years. As hated as the fantasy end times were, it sold extremely well and generated a lot of interest in the community.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 kodos wrote:
the question is, if the 13th returns, is this the first 40k EndTimes book?

It wasn't the last time they returned...

It's was actually, they just backed out of the result.

It would be interesting to see them re do the end times jn 40k though, as end times Warhammer did well commercially from what I've been told, doesn't mean they have to nuke the 40k universe.

Forgive me, but it does. Unless they're willing to substantially retcon or ignore most of the hints/prophesies/predictions from the fluff over the years, there's no way to put 40K through its own "end times" without the result being so radically dissimilar to the present setting as to mean it has effectively been nuked. The end of the Imperium isn't just the end of the Imperium, it's the end of mankind and, through that end, the end of Chaos. At best both would be given "dying race" status like the Eldar, with the disadvantage that human lifespans are so short you'd only have a handful of centuries of storytelling left, and it's already bad enough with the studio cramming practically everything of note that's happened since the Age of Apostasy into the last five years of 999.M41.

GW have written themselves into a corner - the 40K "end times" equivalent has been talked up as so apocalyptic, such an utter shattering of the status quo that they would only really have two choices; big bang, everything dies, fast forward a few eons and do Age of Sigmar 2; Space Marine Boogaloo, or else advance the story so incrementally and ineffectually that nothing would actually change very much. The first is a giant risk to take given the apparent reception of AoS and the fact 40K is their golden goose, and the latter rather makes you ask why bother then if you're just going to establish a new untouchable status quo where things are only superficially different?

I mean, consider the total minefield that just one aspect of the 40K "end times" would be; the return of the Primarchs. Word one, before they've even started, you're annoying Iron Hands players yet again. Then you've got all the vanished Primarchs; do they all come back? Will they have been changed by their experiences? Russ, as a nice topical example, has just spent 10 millennia in the Eye, so unless they're going to pull that "oh naw brah, time totes didn't pass, for him the Heresy was, like, yesterday!" nonsense the experience can't have failed to change him in some way - will SW players like those changes? What if they decide not to bring back Dorn or Jaghatai, are those fans going to take it well? How will Space Wolf players take it if Russ is killed off as part of the story? But then consider if they just decided to sidestep that one and not bring them back at all, then they're disappointing everyone who, quite reasonably based on the existing fluff, would be expecting their return. There's no path for them to take that doesn't piss off a lot of people, and that's just one part of one faction's fluff.

They could just about make the argument that doing such things didn't matter for Fantasy because so few people played it relative to their projections on how AoS would sell the losses would be irrelevant compared to the gains, but that logic simply won't work for 40K.

We'll see when we get the fluff in the new book, but I would suspect if they don't retcon the 13th Co returning as no longer being the precursor to Russ & the Wolftime, they'll advance things so marginally that we'll be at 10 seconds to midnight, rather than 30 as we are now, or 60 as we were a few years back, and do so in such a way that functionally nothing changes beyond people being able to play 13th Co. armies.

EDIT: And in addition to Rygnan's comments; it can be plausibly argued that the End Times was a commercial success because it's the most attention GW had paid to the system in terms of new models and the setting in terms of new fluff in years. If you're dying of dehydration even a stagnant muddy puddle will suffice, it doesn't mean you wouldn't prefer a nice chilled bottle of spring water.

Chaos breaks out of the eye, overwhelms the neighboring systems, imperium now sends massive amounts of fleets at them, chaos holds out and forms a massive beachhead in the outlying systems of the eye.

Wow.... No end of the universe and chaos wins the 13th black crusade, it also allows all the cool stuff to start appearing, primarchs, avatar reborn or something, vect, basically we can advance another 200 years of total war, the imperium has shrunk, the empire of the eye (what I'd call them) is expanding slowly, Eldar are trying to aid the imperials, orks are doing ork stuff, the Nid threat is getting worse, drawing the attention of the gods, tau discover true ftl tech through raiding a few tombships and see what the universe is really like, crons are now engaged in total war with the nids, dark eldar are doing there thong as usual.

So no, advancing post 13th crusade doesn't mean the end of 40k, just births 41k

I'm reserving final judgement on those until I see better images, but sometimes I wish GW would actually look at what FW is doing. The Gal Vorbak already use the general same concept to great effect, without resorting to Rob Liefeld levels of acrobatics.

 Stormonu wrote:

It does seem like it; they've been more obvious about hinting that the end of the Imperium looms nigh.

Wait, what? The Imperium of Mankind is in danger? Well that's certainly a new development in the 40k universe.

I'd love for the storyline to finally continue beyond 40.999 - they don't have to redo the rule system just to do that.

 Formosa wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 kodos wrote:
the question is, if the 13th returns, is this the first 40k EndTimes book?

It wasn't the last time they returned...

It's was actually, they just backed out of the result.

It would be interesting to see them re do the end times jn 40k though, as end times Warhammer did well commercially from what I've been told, doesn't mean they have to nuke the 40k universe.

Forgive me, but it does. Unless they're willing to substantially retcon or ignore most of the hints/prophesies/predictions from the fluff over the years, there's no way to put 40K through its own "end times" without the result being so radically dissimilar to the present setting as to mean it has effectively been nuked. The end of the Imperium isn't just the end of the Imperium, it's the end of mankind and, through that end, the end of Chaos. At best both would be given "dying race" status like the Eldar, with the disadvantage that human lifespans are so short you'd only have a handful of centuries of storytelling left, and it's already bad enough with the studio cramming practically everything of note that's happened since the Age of Apostasy into the last five years of 999.M41.

GW have written themselves into a corner - the 40K "end times" equivalent has been talked up as so apocalyptic, such an utter shattering of the status quo that they would only really have two choices; big bang, everything dies, fast forward a few eons and do Age of Sigmar 2; Space Marine Boogaloo, or else advance the story so incrementally and ineffectually that nothing would actually change very much. The first is a giant risk to take given the apparent reception of AoS and the fact 40K is their golden goose, and the latter rather makes you ask why bother then if you're just going to establish a new untouchable status quo where things are only superficially different?

I mean, consider the total minefield that just one aspect of the 40K "end times" would be; the return of the Primarchs. Word one, before they've even started, you're annoying Iron Hands players yet again. Then you've got all the vanished Primarchs; do they all come back? Will they have been changed by their experiences? Russ, as a nice topical example, has just spent 10 millennia in the Eye, so unless they're going to pull that "oh naw brah, time totes didn't pass, for him the Heresy was, like, yesterday!" nonsense the experience can't have failed to change him in some way - will SW players like those changes? What if they decide not to bring back Dorn or Jaghatai, are those fans going to take it well? How will Space Wolf players take it if Russ is killed off as part of the story? But then consider if they just decided to sidestep that one and not bring them back at all, then they're disappointing everyone who, quite reasonably based on the existing fluff, would be expecting their return. There's no path for them to take that doesn't piss off a lot of people, and that's just one part of one faction's fluff.

They could just about make the argument that doing such things didn't matter for Fantasy because so few people played it relative to their projections on how AoS would sell the losses would be irrelevant compared to the gains, but that logic simply won't work for 40K.

We'll see when we get the fluff in the new book, but I would suspect if they don't retcon the 13th Co returning as no longer being the precursor to Russ & the Wolftime, they'll advance things so marginally that we'll be at 10 seconds to midnight, rather than 30 as we are now, or 60 as we were a few years back, and do so in such a way that functionally nothing changes beyond people being able to play 13th Co. armies.

EDIT: And in addition to Rygnan's comments; it can be plausibly argued that the End Times was a commercial success because it's the most attention GW had paid to the system in terms of new models and the setting in terms of new fluff in years. If you're dying of dehydration even a stagnant muddy puddle will suffice, it doesn't mean you wouldn't prefer a nice chilled bottle of spring water.

Chaos breaks out of the eye, overwhelms the neighboring systems, imperium now sends massive amounts of fleets at them, chaos holds out and forms a massive beachhead in the outlying systems of the eye.

Wow.... No end of the universe and chaos wins the 13th black crusade, it also allows all the cool stuff to start appearing, primarchs, avatar reborn or something, vect, basically we can advance another 200 years of total war, the imperium has shrunk, the empire of the eye (what I'd call them) is expanding slowly, Eldar are trying to aid the imperials, orks are doing ork stuff, the Nid threat is getting worse, drawing the attention of the gods, tau discover true ftl tech through raiding a few tombships and see what the universe is really like, crons are now engaged in total war with the nids, dark eldar are doing there thong as usual.

So no, advancing post 13th crusade doesn't mean the end of 40k, just births 41k

But why do you need an official sanction from GW to do this? If you want the setting to advance, grab a notebook and a pen and write it down. But don't force it down the throats of the rest of us. It's a setting, and all of these "adventure hooks" are just a way to set up your battles. If you want timeline advance, make it up. Or set the stage, fight the battles on the tabletop and record results and let that influence your fluff. Nothing is stopping you from living out the End Times

Edit: double post

 Formosa wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 kodos wrote:
the question is, if the 13th returns, is this the first 40k EndTimes book?

It wasn't the last time they returned...

It's was actually, they just backed out of the result.

It would be interesting to see them re do the end times jn 40k though, as end times Warhammer did well commercially from what I've been told, doesn't mean they have to nuke the 40k universe.

Some of them returned at the end of Ahriman: Sorcerer, if I recall correctly. They had to fly through/past Cadian forces as they left the Eye of Terror. Or am I getting my books mixed up?