Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

If you could delete a faction, fluff, models, rules, mentions and all, which one would it be. And why?

Just the one.

Note that this action does not change time, it does not send you back into the past, but it deletes all mention of that faction from all GW publications forever. The faction existed in fluff up until the day of deletion, and everyone remembers it. This line exists to try to make this thread slightly more than a whinge thread.

Let me know if you want a faction added.

My choice, oddly enough is the Imperial Guard. Without the IG, all human armies would be supersoldiers of some kind or another. You could thusly make the proliferation of SM armies fluffy, and there would be an unending horde of the fethers. You'd have to give them more personality than that of just a hardened warrior, but with good writers (ha!) you could pull it off.
Humans would be closer to evolving into something more, and we can go ham on the customization of everything.

I would retcon Old Ones, honestly, to make them more in line with the hilarious incompetence explained by the Emperor in the various If the Emperor Had a Text to Speech Device videos. And then give them a model range that makes one think of WFB Lizards IN SPAAAAACE.

No, I am not joking.

Give the Slann themselves something like Freeza's chair to sit in, as they psychically command their units which consist of primitive versions of Orks and Eldar, called Krorks and Eladin. Include giant sauropods and theropods with armor and turrets as "living tanks".

I don't want to delete any faction.

I want to overhaul a fair few but I do not want any removed entirely.

I guess if I had to, I'd pick Sisters, because they are not far from being squatted anyway. But I'd want to keep them too, honestly. Just changed.

Retconning is more than deletion, Ashiraya.

Every time Marines get a new toy that "oh we've always had before", that's a retcon.

 Melissia wrote:
Retconning is more than deletion, Ashiraya.

Every time Marines get a new toy that "oh we've always had before", that's a retcon.

 Selym wrote:

Note that this action does not change time, it does not send you back into the past, but it deletes all mention of that faction from all GW publications forever. The faction existed in fluff up until the day of deletion, and everyone remembers it. This line exists to try to make this thread slightly more than a whinge thread.

It does today, unless you have a funner explanation of a change. Mostly I want to see why someone would want a faction removed, and how they would compensate for the loss.

Tyranids. Biotech is stupid and their lore is boring.

I like the irony of your avatar with that choice

How would you explain Tyrannic War vets, Cassius' entire life, Calgar's limbs, and the one time Ultramarines were not top dog?

To comply with the rules of the thread, I chose Farsight Enclaves. I don't mind the Tau being in the 40K universe, but the Farsight Enclaves, with Crisis Suits as Troops, are just a pandering to players who want to spam suits.

When I saw the title, I got kind of excited, because I thought it would be about changing the fluff of existing armies, not completely getting rid of them. For a long time, I've wanted to retcon the fluff for the Chaos Marine Legions. The idea they're comprised largely of Horus Heresy veterans and thus are super-cooler than Imperial Space Marines is just absurd. After 10,000 years of warfare, there'd hardly be any left, and of those that are, if they're anything less than Chaos Lords or Sorcerers, they're the most underachieving warriors in the history of underachieving.

That said, if I could only retcon one faction's fluff, it'd be Space Marines. Specifically, I'd get rid of the whole "only men can be Space Marines" guff. GW really needs to catch up with demographic trends and start making more of an effort to appeal to female gamers. Having their flagship army be a boys-only club does not help them do that.

 Selym wrote:
It does today

So change it from "retcon" to "delete". Because Retcon means something entirely different. And yes, I will insist on being fething pedantic about this.

 Selym wrote:
I like the irony of your avatar with that choice

How would you explain Tyrannic War vets, Cassius' entire life, Calgar's limbs, and the one time Ultramarines were not top dog?

It was all a dream by Roboute Guilliman.

But I wouldn't retcon the Tyranids out of existence. I would rework the faction to be less dumb. Like give them actual space ships instead of flying around in bigger Tyranids.

Edit: Actually, I change my vote. I also pick Space Wolves. They are just... So dumb these days. Issue exterminatus. Kill them before they lose their last semblance of dignity.

I want to say Space Wolves. They have so much potential to be cool, but both the content of their fluff, representations on the tabletop, and the quality of the writing has been awful in every conceivable measure for quite a while now. Painfully contradictory, horribly written, and stupidly executed. It's all just...awful. If I had to pick just one specific faction to delete via retcon, it would be them.


That said, overall, if GW's background basically just stopped at mid 2007, and disregarded everything newer, I think that's how I would retcon things, just freeze everything there. I think that would be as close to a "perfect" 40k universe as we're likely to get before the fluff started to get increasingly "Fanfic-ey" and less coherent.

Tyranids. As I've said before, their fluff is stupid, their rules are bad, and their models are ugly. Remove them entirely.

Necrons, but by retcon drive them back more to their original storyline. return them to being a mysterious race awakening from the time before now.

Lose the Ctan and just have them as that, an ancient race that was defeated by the Old Ones (not Orks and Eldar that link is not tenable). The Old Ones are gone now and some of the Necrons have survived and their power is growing again.

 Melissia wrote:

 Selym wrote:
It does today

So change it from "retcon" to "delete". Because Retcon means something entirely different. And yes, I will insist on being fething pedantic about this.

Your wish

Tau... Never liked them, never thought they fit properly with the setting. And they are horrendously boring to play against.

Even as a Space Marine player myself, I would remove them. Their representation on the tabletop just doesn't match the fluff. The story of a dying empire fighting against a galaxy that wants to destroy it just loses impact when every other Imperium force on the table is a group of supersoldiers. I would have vastly preferred it if Space Marines were a minor faction akin to Harlequins but even more limited, as in only one squad per Imperial army minimum 1 model, maximum 10 models. I think movie marines would actually be better than the marine armies we have today from a fluffy standpoint.

Tau, no questions asked.

If they replaced all their guns with samurai swords, then they can stay.

Delete a faction? Eh... I mean I don't think factions should be deleted, I think that there should be fluff to support a fractured Imperium, so all your Space Marines/Guard/Sisters/etc. aren't on the same side of good and righteousness but have their own agendas that bring them into conflicts with each other.

Custodes. Totally irrelevant and don't even have models. Besides, when SM are already the best of mankind, deathwatch the best of SM, grey Knights the best of SM + psi, Paladins the best of Grey Knights... it is stupid.

Or Assassins. I wouldn't mind if they were Eldar, but as part of the Imperium the are just another part of the imperial bloat that 40K suffers from. Every Xenos race is supposed to have sth. special but in the end there are SM chapters and subfactions of the Imperium that, if combined, already have everything.

40K needs more like Tau, less SM. Actually, I wouldn't really want to erase anything, I would be fine if they stopped to give even more to the Imperium.

I don't want to erase something, but if I had to do it, it would be Space Wolves, too.
Juste look at the old wulfen, and then look at the new wulfen,
This summarize their delcine.

I really don't understand why sisters get so many votes ?
They have a strong personnality, and they don't bother anyone by existing.
Why ?

Tyranids.

I don't find them entertaining to read about, and don't enjoy playing with our against them. There are no negative effects on me if they get squatted.

None. I'm good now. With the Eldar more or less screwed thanks to Eldrad I'm finally good. I know they won't be squatted and some lore event will save them, but it's given me a good enough chuckle they can all stay now.

It also helps they are no longer top dogs thanks to superfriends. deathstars.

 EnTyme wrote:
Even as a Space Marine player myself, I would remove them. Their representation on the tabletop just doesn't match the fluff. The story of a dying empire fighting against a galaxy that wants to destroy it just loses impact when every other Imperium force on the table is a group of supersoldiers. I would have vastly preferred it if Space Marines were a minor faction akin to Harlequins but even more limited, as in only one squad per Imperial army minimum 1 model, maximum 10 models. I think movie marines would actually be better than the marine armies we have today from a fluffy standpoint.

I completely agree, they should be a tiny, minute part of the Imperium, legends, and heroes. Their appearance should be a miraculous exception, in the most desperate of circumstances.
The imperial guard are the mainstay of the imperium, they should represent 99.9% of every game played.

 General Kroll wrote:
Tau... Never liked them, never thought they fit properly with the setting.

You must not have read their fluff very carefully.

 Peregrine wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
Tau... Never liked them, never thought they fit properly with the setting.

You must not have read their fluff very carefully.

To be fair, the good parts of their fluff are easy to miss and largely absent from their newer stuff (though admittedly the last Tau codex I read the fluff parts on was the 6E book).

A lot of hate on Tau.

Funny enough, Tau are proven to not be as powerful as they are perceived, they simply punish players who aren't very good easier than most.

I like the Tau fluff since yeah there is bad stuff, but they are also trying to be better than the others. So there is this mix where they do fit in since they are conquerors first, but the ones who do embrace their way genuinely are treated well.

I also like and would love to see more Xenos auxiliaries. That aspect of them is shriveling up with each new mecha release. There's no reason they can't design cool alien monsters for the Tau to use as tamed beasts of war by Kroot or some other faction. Look at Age of Sigmar's huge minis and they all look great. Seeing more 40k xenos done by those sculptors would be great.

I would also like to see more of their vehicles as well.

Finally Tau are the only faction you can portray as having both great good and great evil. Where as most other factions are just mustache twirling Saturday morning cartoon villainy.

Cephalobeard wrote:
A lot of hate on Tau.

Funny enough, Tau are proven to not be as powerful as they are perceived, they simply punish players who aren't very good easier than most.

lets not deceive ourselvrs here, against many armies Tau very much do have some EZ mode I win abilities. They arent as capable against the top end Eldar and Superpals army lists so they get knocked out of contention in many instances, but can be stupidly overpowered against armies that rely on armor, AV and cover and that cant play wound allocation gimmicks, no matter how capable the opposing general is.

I said Eldar.
They're dying anyway aren't they?

I wouldn't outright delete any. There are a few I'd like to fix.