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I've been reading Judge Dredd comics, and really miss the absolute darkness and weirdness portrayed there. Its been almost 40 years since the judge first appeared, and all the darkness and weirdness is still there.

I remember that distinct feeling in 40k in 2nd and 3rd edition, where everything was dark, weird, mutated and desperate. Comparing that era to now, it seems almost noblebright. For one, eldar has moved from the background of xenophobic elves to the foreground as noblebright heroes rushing in to save the day. The whole stupid ultramar being a paradise. Also, I remember in 3rd, things like meltaguns and plasmaguns were super rare, but everyone and their dog has some super-centurion carrying loads of them. In 3rd, they used the old marks, because the imperium is decaying, now, they use old marks out of veneration.

The biggest factor I feel the the cartoonisation of the villians. CSM used to be a 2 minutes to midnight threat. Tyranids were unstoppable, and Necrons (to a lesser extent) heralded the end. Now, CSM is a joke, the 13th BC is a massive failure and joke for the armless abaddon. The warp is not only fully understood (more or less), but is always extremely safe (due to plot armour). People only go mad and get posessed because they're really evil deep down, and not because they are randomly chosen. Daemons are not rampaging evil that cannot be stopped, and will tear through the ship, to some paper-thin rat that gets evaporated the moment the nearest space marine captain flexes his pecs. There is no more wyrd in the warp, all you need to do is carry eldar plot armour, or a beefcake marine captain to solve all the posessions and glitches in the matrix, usually by putting a round in the head of the nearest evil person.

Tyranids are far worse. They ALWAYS lose. There has never been a hivefleet that hasn't been destroyed by some elf or imperium at the cost of some unknown elf colony, or giving up say 3 (out of millions) worlds of the imperium, or the death of some stupid chapter no one cares. I understand that if tyranids win the game is over, but at least hold them at bay, or make them rest to consolidate or fight with CSM or something. They always die in the most stupid of ways to the most stupid of things, like being out-evolved by blue elves. No longer do you fear being stalked by genestealers in an ancient spacehulk, only to be stalked and killed the moment you're left alone. These days, its about wearing the most garish armour you have, strapping on a super-melta-plasma-nuke, and killing them by the thousands. Then you go home and complain that your knight cannot kill carnifexes as quickly as wraithknights.

Necrons is neo-Egypt stereotype, laughable at best. That's that stupid character who still thinks he's in Egypt or something.

AOS has elves and sigmarites pushing out evil from the venerable paradise. The whole medival-wyrd feeling is completely gone.

There is no more darkness nor mystery left. All there is left is bickering between which of the "good" factions are more powerful.

It seems that this is intentional, and GW is moving out from the grimdark model completely. It might still be xtreme, but in the mtn dew+doritos way, rather than being grimdark.

Thoughts?

kburn wrote:

The biggest factor I feel the the cartoonisation of the villians. CSM used to be a 2 minutes to midnight threat. Tyranids were unstoppable, and Necrons (to a lesser extent) heralded the end. Now, CSM is a joke, the 13th BC is a massive failure and joke for the armless abaddon. The warp is not only fully understood (more or less), but is always extremely safe (due to plot armour). People only go mad and get posessed because they're really evil deep down, and not because they are randomly chosen. Daemons are not rampaging evil that cannot be stopped, and will tear through the ship, to some paper-thin rat that gets evaporated the moment the nearest space marine captain flexes his pecs. There is no more wyrd in the warp, all you need to do is carry eldar plot armour, or a beefcake marine captain to solve all the posessions and glitches in the matrix, usually by putting a round in the head of the nearest evil person.

It depends on what you read I guess. In the Black legion Codex they retconned Abaddons old background and actually he's now more successful than ever, all of his crusades where successful and there's no sign that the 13th won't be. if you read the Daemon-Codex everything you say about the warp is still there. I admit that in warzone Fenris Chaos is depicted as pretty weak, the Space Wolves are pretty ridiculous and slaughter billions of daemons seemingly without losses. However, it seems that all of their victories are useless in the end, so there's still something grimdark.
I don't think there's anything noblebright about 40K, the Imperium is still the fascist craphole it always was, so all those shiny plot armoured space marines are fighting for... nothing actually, humanity is lost since 10K years. And not even Tau seem to be that "good" anymore.

kburn wrote:
Daemons are not rampaging evil that cannot be stopped, and will tear through the ship, to some paper-thin rat that gets evaporated the moment the nearest space marine captain flexes his pecs. There is no more wyrd in the warp, all you need to do is carry eldar plot armour, or a beefcake marine captain to solve all the posessions and glitches in the matrix, usually by putting a round in the head of the nearest evil person.

If you've got a CSM or big nasty ork or daemon something causing issues, no worries, your average joe can just throw his exploding lasgun at the problem and it goes away.

Grimdark indeed.

He can't, actually.

What kills the Dread is the plants shooting spear-like spines. The explosion just blew up the faceplate. And don't act like Marines don't suck out the grimdark of the settign with their fluff.
Besides, you don't have to explode your lasgun to kill Orks or Marines. Regular pew pew works.

I always look at everything as being Imperium propaganda that celebrates the victories while ignoring the negatives. The Imperium can win many battles but they are definitely losing the war and the combination of Necrons, Nids, Orks, Daemons being these unstoppable threats is the writing on the wall that the Imperium of Man is doomed. Not even the Ultrasmurf plot armor can stop every threat facing the Imperium. As each world falls, each irreplaceable titan or battle barge is destroyed, and each noble sacrifice is made that is ultimately in vain the Imperium creeps one step closer to its total demise. A death by a thousand cuts and nothing bar the return of the Emperor can turn the tide (who is nearing the end of his existence which most likely means he is dead for good).

GW can mary sue, hero worship, and plot armor the setting up as much as they want but unless they pull a Emperior Ex Machina the end is nigh for humanity.

 Bobthehero wrote:
What kills the Dread is the plants shooting spear-like spines. The explosion just blew up the faceplate.

So throwing your exploding AK blows up the tank-equivalent front plate. Okay, that makes things better,

And don't act like Marines don't suck out the grimdark of the settign with their fluff.

They don't. They are strong but not even close to many enough to prevent the Imperium from crumbling around them. That is grimdark.

Besides, you don't have to explode your lasgun to kill Orks or Marines. Regular pew pew works.

As said, that really does not make things any better. Joe McJoeson pulling the trigger of his average gun, killing the monstrous horrors of the galaxy, and then going back home to watch spaceball with his mates is not my idea of grimdark.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
And don't act like Marines don't suck out the grimdark of the settign with their fluff.

They don't. They are strong but not even close to many enough to prevent the Imperium from crumbling around them. That is grimdark.

This.
Humanity has wins - they have to, because if humanity lost all the time, there would be no humanity.

Space Marines, as glorified as they are in fluff, have to be. There simply isn't enough to completely protect the Imperium. Maybe see it like this - the Imperium is pro-boxer fighting a swarm of children with shivs. The boxer can beat any of them single handed. But there are just so many, and so many cuts, and the boxer will eventually tire and fall. That is the Imperium. It's strong, yes, but it can't hold on. Not in it's current form.
I will agree that the Tyranid fluff is butchered. They could be so much more.
But Chaos is just as insidious as it ever was. Heard of the Abyssal Crusade? That is easily enough to show how bad Chaos can be.
Necrons are better, IMHO. They have far more personality and potential to be fluffed out and customised than murderbots who walk towards a doomed outpost and kill everything. The Nemesor you refer to is actually a rather cool piece of fluff - if you don't like that, I doubt you'd find much ork fluff to be any good, which is all very old. And you can still have your murderbots of death even now: just say something malfunctioned in their hypersleep.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
What kills the Dread is the plants shooting spear-like spines. The explosion just blew up the faceplate.

So throwing your exploding AK blows up the tank-equivalent front plate. Okay, that makes things better,

And don't act like Marines don't suck out the grimdark of the settign with their fluff.

They don't. They are strong but not even close to many enough to prevent the Imperium from crumbling around them. That is grimdark.

Besides, you don't have to explode your lasgun to kill Orks or Marines. Regular pew pew works.

As said, that really does not make things any better. Joe McJoeson pulling the trigger of his average gun, killing the monstrous horrors of the galaxy, and then going back home to watch spaceball with his mates is not my idea of grimdark.

You know full well that is not what happens, you can cut the overreaction right now. He never goes home or see his family ever again and it's unlikely he'll survive the engagement. And at this point I doubt orks are in the ''horror"' category, they're probably the most comon thing the IG fights after traitors. As for marines, tough luck, they're mutants in good gear, not gods.

They are not mutants, I am pretty sure the Emperor was quite deliberate in their creation.

'Mutants in good gear' and 'gods' are both wrong; the truth lies in between.

IG have to be weak, because they are so incredibly many. If they had been both many and strong, the Imperium wouldn't have been in a bad situation like it is.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
What kills the Dread is the plants shooting spear-like spines. The explosion just blew up the faceplate.

So throwing your exploding AK blows up the tank-equivalent front plate. Okay, that makes things better,

And don't act like Marines don't suck out the grimdark of the settign with their fluff.

They don't. They are strong but not even close to many enough to prevent the Imperium from crumbling around them. That is grimdark.

Besides, you don't have to explode your lasgun to kill Orks or Marines. Regular pew pew works.

As said, that really does not make things any better. Joe McJoeson pulling the trigger of his average gun, killing the monstrous horrors of the galaxy, and then going back home to watch spaceball with his mates is not my idea of grimdark.

You know full well that is not what happens, you can cut the overreaction right now. He never goes home or see his family ever again and it's unlikely he'll survive the engagement. And at this point I doubt orks are in the ''horror"' category, they're probably the most comon thing the IG fights after traitors. As for marines, tough luck, they're mutants in good gear, not gods.

Neither does a Marine. A Space Marine probably won't ever get to see their family again, and are recruited from an earlier age than standard Guardsmen.

Orks being more common doesn't exclude them from being horrors. As a reader, we might see them as comical, but as a Guardsmen, watching your lasbolts blister the skin of a brute with arms thicker than your torso charging at you is rather terrifying. The audio extracts from Space Marine and parts of Gunheads show this very well.

Marines aren't gods? True - they're more like demigods. That's what the Ecclesiarchy tell the myriads of guardsmen: Space Marines are the sons of the Emperor, his Angels of Death. They don't get a moniker like that for nothing.

It's kind of like how we do not call Warlord Titans (to take a more extreme example) stupid mary sues even though they are so much more powerful than guardsmen. They are so few it more than compensates, and the grim future is not fair.

Depends on the guardsmen. And lasgun usually don't just blister the ork skin.

And I don't buy the demigods thing, either, it's more imperial propaganda. As for monikers, there's ton of them Angel of Death is just one amongst many

It's been a gradual shift obviously trying to reflect how they shifted their target audience more and more. Grimdark is not so much important when your narrative is trying to somewhat mirror typical super hero stuff focusing on the space marines. Such as how they progressively get raised higher to match the view the generic imperial citizen has of them as demigods when the primarchs were the true demigods and the marines merely exceptional.

As more and more new things are written with that viewpoint the more and more the grimdark that's being pushed aside is watered down. One thing that needs to change is the view the put on the "bad guys" as their threat is watered down a bit too much at this point. Honestly with how it is I'd see the threat of another civil war in the Imperium as more real to them than chaos, tyranids and orks. The others seem to be too busy being unsure of what they're doing as a whole.

Erm, nice example, Trooper Mkoll self-destructing a las-gun into an already quite badly damaged (read as blind) chaos dreadnought.

Yeah, and then you've got troopers dying in droves on a beach landing from their landing ships coming in too soon, and then getting told that their fight was essentially for nothing. (Monrax)

Gaunt getting his eyes burnt out by chaos warriors and then dying 4 times?

Oh, Larkin dying, Corbec dying, Bragg dying?

And lets get started on Inquisitor Ravenor. Having to set essentially a WARP event off on an inhabited planet because his apprentice is a deamon.Binding a daemon three times and seeing worlds die because of his own negligence.

Still grimdark.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Depends on the guardsmen. And lasgun usually don't just blister the ork skin.

"The Cadians' landmines were barely stopping them" and "It took six men firing lasguns at close range to bring that bastard down." - Gunheads
"Ork Physiology is fascinating and terrifying in equal measure, demonstrating inhuman degrees of resilience to the point where they can withstand seemingly fatal wounds with little apparent long-term consequence. Indeed, Orks witnessed suffering fatal wounds in the midst of heavy fighting have often been observed again several days later, larger and stronger than they were before their injuries and with no sign of those wounds save for some largely superficial scarring." - Rogue Trader: Into the Storm

And I don't buy the demigods thing, either, it's more imperial propaganda. As for monikers, there's ton of them Angel of Death is just one amongst many

Well, you can say it's propaganda all you want, but it's no more so than all the fluff on Scions.

40k switched from GrimDark to GrimDork quite a while ago. Dark humor and irony were gradually lost among the fluff writers during the 00s. Matt Ward is usually heralded as the ultimate example of fanboyish, fanfiction-like writing that can't even understand the universe he's writing about, but in truth he was just one among many. Nowadays it's mostly bolter porn and godly unstoppable mary-sue-ines crushing anything that dares to get in their way. The only sane way to keep up with the current fluff is to dismiss 90% of it as ridiculously over-the-top imperial propaganda, while ignoring the gakky writing.

theres still some grimdark out there, in the recent Tau book Mont'Ka the Tau manage to beat back an entire Imperial Invasion fleet that had them trapped, only to have their great leader super murdered, admit their long time traitor Farsight was right, and then get their entire way back home turned into a giant slow burning fireball. If that dosen't embody the spirit of no one wins I dont know what does. Heck, one of the reasons they Tau win is because they use the Imperium's own penchant for pollution against them via weather control.

 Doctadeth wrote:
Erm, nice example, Trooper Mkoll self-destructing a las-gun into an already quite badly damaged (read as blind) chaos dreadnought.

Yeah, and then you've got troopers dying in droves on a beach landing from their landing ships coming in too soon, and then getting told that their fight was essentially for nothing. (Monrax)

Gaunt getting his eyes burnt out by chaos warriors and then dying 4 times?

Oh, Larkin dying, Corbec dying, Bragg dying?

And lets get started on Inquisitor Ravenor. Having to set essentially a WARP event off on an inhabited planet because his apprentice is a deamon.Binding a daemon three times and seeing worlds die because of his own negligence.

Still grimdark.

All good points, but those stories are getting pretty old now aren't they? Gaunts ghosts and Ravenor stopped being published like in the 2000's in any kind of consistent manner.

The large majority of the fluff is being pumped into the 30k stuff and a bit of the 35k (ork stuff going on).

The most recent update of fluff is probably the campaign based books and their spin offs, and they just got done killing off a major character in the space wolves codex. Some more fuel for this fire, the Imperium effectively fought to a stalemate and bludgened the Tau's third sphere expansion (and killed the space pope while they were at it). The blood angels homeworld is being attacked by the Nids directly, the white scars homeworld is also under attack from a black legion faction, the imperial fists lost their Chapter Master, and the necrons and ultras fought to a stalemate.

I'm hoping they move forward down the Wulfin story line personally, it is time for some new plot lines to put that last disaster of a CEO to bed for good. (IMO)

kburn wrote:
I've been reading Judge Dredd comics, and really miss the absolute darkness and weirdness portrayed there. Its been almost 40 years since the judge first appeared, and all the darkness and weirdness is still there.

I remember that distinct feeling in 40k in 2nd and 3rd edition, where everything was dark, weird, mutated and desperate.

By 2nd and 3rd, Grimdark was already getting pushed aside by bright, colourful, cartoonish artwork, and ridiculous, hyperbolic fluff. Part of the target audience is 11 year olds (myself, I loved the Grimdark at 11, but this is not the case for everyone), and part of it is nihilistic grown men. That's the business model. The game is kind of what you make it. If you're looking for simplistic heroic caricatures, that's there for you. If you want the Grimdark, there's still plenty of that there for you. I was tempted to point out a bunch of places where I thought you had msicharacterized what the fluff actually says, but the thing is, you're probably right, and so am I. The fluff is vast, and has been written by so many different people, and it's ridiculously self-contradictory. That probably started with Second or Third Ed too...


The beauty of it, is building an army, and a narrative around that army, is a creative process, you can take it whatever direction you want.

 Bobthehero wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
What kills the Dread is the plants shooting spear-like spines. The explosion just blew up the faceplate.

So throwing your exploding AK blows up the tank-equivalent front plate. Okay, that makes things better,

And don't act like Marines don't suck out the grimdark of the settign with their fluff.

They don't. They are strong but not even close to many enough to prevent the Imperium from crumbling around them. That is grimdark.

Besides, you don't have to explode your lasgun to kill Orks or Marines. Regular pew pew works.

As said, that really does not make things any better. Joe McJoeson pulling the trigger of his average gun, killing the monstrous horrors of the galaxy, and then going back home to watch spaceball with his mates is not my idea of grimdark.

You know full well that is not what happens, you can cut the overreaction right now. He never goes home or see his family ever again and it's unlikely he'll survive the engagement. And at this point I doubt orks are in the ''horror"' category, they're probably the most comon thing the IG fights after traitors. As for marines, tough luck, they're mutants in good gear, not gods.

or if he does return home to his family he finds out his family died an ignomious death while he was off fighting the good fight. ref Dan Abbnett's Titanicus.