what piece of 40k fluff do you hate the most?

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.

**tneva82**

Martel732 wrote:
But marines aren't even that good. And there's WAY too much fluffl with them NOT being used that way. The 1000 marine thing can not work on a galactic scale no matter how you use them.

Dunno. Virtual invulnerability to any small arms requiring anti-tank weapons to even try to take one down...(And ignore the game stats. We are talking about fluff. Rules where basic marine has T5+, 2+ rerollable with 4+ FNP etc would result in model sales tanking so GW obviously scales down rules)

**Mudrat**

tneva82 wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
But marines aren't even that good. And there's WAY too much fluffl with them NOT being used that way. The 1000 marine thing can not work on a galactic scale no matter how you use them.

Dunno. Virtual invulnerability to any small arms requiring anti-tank weapons to even try to take one down...(And ignore the game stats. We are talking about fluff. Rules where basic marine has T5+, 2+ rerollable with 4+ FNP etc would result in model sales tanking so GW obviously scales down rules)

Maybe, but for each bit of fluff about their invincibility, there is another of CSM being killed by far weaker weaponry, which presumably would work on the loyalists just as well. For Instance:

"Autocannon's and a Lascannon, they'll make a mess of us if they open fire." Sergeant Pausanius, Ultramarines Chapter, The Killing Ground Ch3. He says this while equipped in full, although dented, power armour, referring to sentinel mounted heavy weapons. From the same book we have Captain Ventris think "Individually, lasguns were a poor mans weapon, but gathered en masse they were formidable and only a fool would underestimate the value of their massed firepower" (Ch15), while two platoons of guardsmen drive back monsters that later in the book tear apart elite SM's individually.

I like this example, because it comes from a SM centric book. This is without even getting into examples from guard focused books.

**BrianDavion**

BBAP wrote:
General Annoyance wrote:
Then forgive me if I have interpreted them as such. Kinda hard to interpret them as anything different when they are filled with memes/dismissive language though.

Is it really that difficult to pick content from between some low-ball wisecracks? I don't think so.

So the idea of a Space Julius Cesar doesn't appeal?

Whenever you see Caesar in fiction he's presented as a manipulative megalomaniac who bought, bartered and beat his way into the hearts of the masses with borrowed coin and other mens' blood. If that's the direction GW take with The Rowboat then fair enough - hackneyed as it is, it's more engaging than "lol designated hero prodigal son spiritual liege new emprah lol". That's what they're lining up for The Rowboat. No wickedness, no avarice, no complexity outside the odd internal monologue as he gazes wistfully out a window and laments the deaths of his soldiers in a way Julius Caesar wouldn't. None of that. Just "Spiritual Liege". See if I'm wrong.

The term Mary Sue seems pretty overused in 40k these days.

If the shoe fits, right?

I thought 40k allowed us to skip character development for more explosions and Chainsword noises, honestly.

I'm free as I ever was to build armies and play games without regard for the fluff. Problem is, GW have decided that the narrative backdrop to the game system they've maintained for 28 years has to "advance", and that means their characters can no longer be the unobtrusive, static scenery pieces they have been up to this point. They need to develop, GW needs to develop them, and the return of Primarch superheroes suggests to me they're going to develop them along the lines of a Rob Liefeld gak-comic. The fact they've chosen to bring back the Elminster of 40k says only bad things about the direction the narrative will take.

I stand to be corrected, of course, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

If Demi-gods are superheroes, what does that make the gods of 40k then?

... gods?

I'm still not seeing the superhero thing though. Superhuman yes, obviously, but none of them seemed to be strong enough to change the course of time for their advantage when it was time to take a side.

Batman's "superpower" is being very rich and going to the gym a lot. He loses sometimes too. He's still a superhero, yet the dude who submerges a metal dragon in lava and walks away with metal hands isn't. Likewise, Superman's super power is being invincible and better than a human being in every conceivable way (i.e. a Primarch, and before you say "thye can't fly though" - Sanguinius). He loses sometimes too. Still a superhero.

The distinctions are academic to me. The Primarchs are superheroes, and having them in 40k makes the galaxy one big superhero comic. Ask me how interested I am in playing the the bit-part Genestealer Cult villain or the Adepta Sororitas third-fiddle in "Rowboat-Force and The Primarch League". The answer is "not very". I'd rather go find a game system where my £800 army actually has a stake in the narrative.

Okay, so from what I see here the problem you have with Guilliman is that his path to glory was too straightforward, which created a bland character, yes?

... what? He's a genetically engineered superhero who fell from heaven in a meteorite and punched his way to the top in true superhero fashion. It's the same story as every other Primarch; there was never any danger he wouldn't make it to the top of anything because he can beat 1,000 men to death with his fists without breaking a sweat.

Now he's coming back to punch his way to the top at the head of The Primarch League and the Imperium. Zzzzzzz.

Disregarding past actions that made Guilliman an interesting character to me, such as personally questioning the Emperor's orders and underestimating two of his fellow Primarchs, both of which he was lucky to walk away from, don't you think anything might happen after this event that might provide such a flaw to run on with his character?

Sure it could. It won't, is what I'm betting.

Has he been repeatedly brought forwards, though?

They've been talking about the Rowboat popsicle forever and a day. I remember reading about it in the 4th Ed BRB. "All the Primarchs are either vanished, dead, or in Hell - except the Spiritual Liege dude who is slowly healing in stasis you guise omg HINT HINT!"

I think even with his return, he's likely going to be trumped by the return of the other Daemon Primarchs who have not yet come to light.

Fall of Cadia 2 mentions "a snake-bodied [REDACTED]" fighting alongside the Emperor's Children somewhere. if Fulgrim reappears and kills Robot Jellyman with a BDSM whip I would buy £2,000 worth of models just on principle.

Desperate enough to continue work on a 10,000 year old project to bring him back to life. I still have lots of questions on how it was done, honestly.

Continue work on? Belisarius Cawl has been sitting on a deus ex machina for 10,000 years, and now, with the Ynnari's help, he's about to deliver it to Rowboat so the Spiritual Liege can walk among us again.

If anything can save 8th Edition it'll be Yvraine and the Ynnari. They're up to something here, and it could be something awesome. Except it won't be because Spiritual Liege cannot lose due to being the new Emprah and zzzzzz....

I don't see how his return makes the Imperium of Man any better than they were before. He's going to be very influential, sure, but he's not going to change the way the IoM will fight this war, even if he wanted to.

The IoM has always had a superhero at its head. The Emprah was fine, because The Emprah was a sealed superhero in (or rather, on) a can. Now Rawbutt is stepping forward to take his "rightful" place as new Emprah and Spiritual Liege, so the IoM is being led by a living, breathing superhero who will descend from heaven to right every wrong and reverse every success the evil aliens and Daemons manage to inflict.

Warhammer 40,000: Age of Girlyman. In stores summer 2017. I think I'll go and play Infinity.

except, all you have are you're assumptions for what direction they'll take him, why not wait and see?

**Warpig1815**

Just my personal opinion, but I don't necessarily mind the 1000 Marines in a Chapter, because I'm not sure (aside from some over-zealous authors), that they were ever intended to have the whole 'saviours of mankind' image. In the days of Legions, each Legion had an expeditionary fleet at it's back, which could include millions of Army personnel, Mechanicus forces and Titan Legions. The Legions, and by extension the Chapters they were broken into, are simply intended to be a killing edge to a much, much larger formation. I think what makes the number more unbelievable is the perpetuated 'fact' that SMs are 'Strike Forces' and are given an infallible aura of invincibility. In truth, if they were simply presented as Shock Troops, vanguards to the IG that we all know take the brunt of the work in the Galaxy, then a number of 1000 (Essentially a modern battalion) is not so outlandish. It's the concept that they just arrive in system, cut the head off the snake and miraculously win the day that makes it so jarring, because it's too much of a deus ex machina. Instead, as FW portray them, I prefer to think that their campaigns are a series of take and hold actions, be it aerial or armoured assault, to seize vital ground and then relinquish it to the IG - no different to the 24,000 Airbourne troops that preceded the much larger force of 160,000 men that landed on D-Day and the 875,000 that arrived over the course of June 1944.

It's also worth considering that the 'Galaxy' isn't perhaps as big as it seems. Sure, it's bigger than anything we can comprehend now, but in 40k terms, a lot of it is void, uninhabitable planets, enemy controlled sectors, covered by warp storms and space weather and even in 'Imperial' space, there are whole sectors that nobody has yet explored. Really, the space conquered by the Great Crusade an claimed by the Imperium exists on maps alone - de Jure they may control the Galaxy, but de facto more of it is uncharted than is known about. So the total area that the 1 Million marines have to cover is, in reality, perhaps only a fraction of the actual galaxy.

TLDR: Give us more stories about the IG! (or AM if your that way inclined

)

**Bobthehero**

tneva82 wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
But marines aren't even that good. And there's WAY too much fluffl with them NOT being used that way. The 1000 marine thing can not work on a galactic scale no matter how you use them.

Dunno. Virtual invulnerability to any small arms requiring anti-tank weapons to even try to take one down...(And ignore the game stats. We are talking about fluff. Rules where basic marine has T5+, 2+ rerollable with 4+ FNP etc would result in model sales tanking so GW obviously scales down rules)

Hotshots are enough to make a mess of Marines. The current Marine stats line only misses night vision

**Ynneadwraith**

Yeah I've always held that the most realistic depiction of a marine's actual resilience was how they perform on the tabletop (i.e. better than humans, but not by much). Anything in stories of Marines pulling superhuman feats is simply Imperial propaganda painting them as the glorious heroes of the Imperium.

It's a personal interpretation of course, but I feel like it really adds to the whole 'humanity facing down the eldritch terrors if the uniferse with nothing but sheer grit and determination' that the Imperium has.

It's more heroic if Marines are weaker, not less.

**Martel732**

I'm still going with 1000 being outlandishly low. GW tries to make them special, but instead ends up invalidating them.

**Melissia**

Martel732 wrote:
The Eldar and Tau can both wipe out multiple chapters of 1000 in a day with their shooting

I was gonna respond, then I read who was talking. Given your bizarre, unfounded views on the balance of the tabletop, plus your apparent insistence that the tabletop and fluff are the same thing, I see no reason to take your response seriously. I've seen no evidence that any given Eldar force can wipe out entire chapters in a mere day, nor can Tau, just your insistence because of your conflation of lore and tabletop. Space Marine chapters have gotten wiped out, but usually it takes a very, very long time-- the examples of it happening quickly are the rare exceptions, not the norm. And even then, they are usually depleted chapters by the time they receive the final crushing blow.

**Martel732**

I just don't think you understand how fast casualties can pile up in a war. Especially wars with high powered energy weapons, and WMDs. And when potentially outnumbered by many orders of magnitude.

The only evidence we need about chapters being wiped in a day is the count of 1000. That's so incredibly low. It's a rounding error in historical human battles. It would not take a long time to cause 1000 casualties, and chapters wouldn't have to be depleted to lose everything. Just because authors don't have it happen doesn't mean it wouldn't logically happen.

As that doesn't even take into account marine transports getting shot down in route to their destinations, etc.

If anything, marines are worse off in the lore, because their opponents have no numerical constraints, and no point totals. Given the absurdly small number of marines, it's likely the Tau have more Ritpide suits than there are marines. I doubt the ion accelerator is any less forgiving in the fluff. I don't have to conflate table top and fluff for the marines to be completely useless.

And against a competent foe, the whole "cut the head off the snake" would work exactly once. The next such attempt would likely be trap, resulting in a massacre of Astartes.

And this also doesn't take into account battles vs trillions of nids or billions of Orks. All space marines in once place would lose in an afternoon against a Tyranid planetary invasion, and there would be no survivors.

Marine plot armor is absurd and breaks any remote suspension of disbelief. (Oh which I have little for 40K)

Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
But marines aren't even that good. And there's WAY too much fluffl with them NOT being used that way. The 1000 marine thing can not work on a galactic scale no matter how you use them.

Dunno. Virtual invulnerability to any small arms requiring anti-tank weapons to even try to take one down...(And ignore the game stats. We are talking about fluff. Rules where basic marine has T5+, 2+ rerollable with 4+ FNP etc would result in model sales tanking so GW obviously scales down rules)

I don't think they're that good in the fluff, even.

**Commissar Benny**

Most of the recent fluff. We went from grimdark/hopeless to:

Cawl: I have failed the imperium... *whimper*

Celestine: We don't deserve you! *cries*

Guilliman: Rawr! Guilliman strong!

Magnus: Magnus stronger! *Smash*

Cypher: Not on my watch! -deflect- *Makes a cool pose*

I like Dragonball Z as much as the next person but keep that gak out of my 40k. The entire setting is quickly turning away from mass scale warfare to a soap opera. How is notable character (x) feeling today? What did he/she eat for breakfast. Who gives a damn. Talk about the conflict. Talk about the mortal experience. When the only details that get fleshed out are the emotions of demi-god characters and the actual armies doing the fighting become a sidenote you ruin the setting. If this sh*t keeps up I am going to commission my own writers and fix all this garbage. I'm not joking. I've put thousands into this hobby and they are ruining it.

**Martel732**

Mortal experience doesn't sell new model kits.

**Melissia**

Yes, human casualties can pile up. Humans are fragile. Marines aren't. Marines are put as an equivalent toughness to orks, a race of beings so durable that they can be decapitated, and they will be perfectly fine as long as their head is sewn on within a week or so. Nothing about Marines makes them smarter or particularly faster than humans, but what they DO have is durability up the wazoo, including the ability to enter in to a near-death state instead of dying-- so many of the casualties in all but the most disastrous of battles are recovered, and the marines in question return to service within a few months without the need for cybernetics (though they would speed the process up)-- and a mere human, facing the same injuries, would simply die, or at best be crippled for life and be unable to serve without massive augmentations. Marines are able to endure casualties (because remember, casualties aren't equivalent to "deaths") so much more than any other factions other than Orks, Necrons, and Tyranids in spite of their limited numbers, because they are just that tough.

FFS stop making me defend Marines goddamnit.

**Martel732**

Marines are fragile with the kind of weapons flying around in 40K. Especially Xeno weapons. 1000 would get chewed through like nothing. When you're just a hiroshima burn on the ground, there's not much discussion left.

The other angle to approach this is that if marines WERE all that you claim, they'd breach the Ogre limit and enemies would use nothing BUT strategic weapons them, again making their numbers absurdly low to withstand such weaponry.

" because they are just that tough."

I think it's laughable that you think anyone can win a 500 vs 1 X 10 ^15 battle. That's fanboy-itis at its worst.

"because remember, casualties aren't equivalent to "deaths"

They would be with the weapons as described in the game. Most of the time, there wouldn't even be a body.

**Melissia**

Martel732 wrote:
Marines are fragile

No, they really aren't. Stop conflating tabletop with the fluff. This is hte background forum, not general discussion.

**Martel732**

Melissia wrote:
Martel732 wrote:
Marines are fragile

No, they really aren't. Stop conflating tabletop with the fluff. This is hte background forum, not general discussion.

I'm not. High energy weapons and WMDs would vaporize their carbon-based targets, no matter how fancy marine physiology is. One of the rules of warfare: weapons escalate until they can do the job. Marines would not be a magical exception. You're conflating plot armor with realistic ranged combat. If marines actually were as good as you say, enemies would go straight to nuking them at every engagement rather than trying to fight them. They would stop a nothing to slag each and every marine homeworld. Again, the Ogre limit.

**BobtheInquisitor**

The scale is different between the game and the fluff. In the game, lasgun shots and bullets are nearly the same, with bolters being not much better. In the fiction, lasblasts are like Star Wars blasters that vaporize heads and cauterize fist-sized holes in torsoes and bolters basically fire rocket propelled grenades everywhere. The tabletop is WW2 and the fiction is far future space opera. There is a gulf of difference between table marines and book marines.

**Martel732**

The original question was what piece of fluff do we hate the most. I was just trying to voice my agreement with a previous poster.

**Melissia**

BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The scale is different between the game and the fluff. In the game, lasgun shots and bullets are nearly the same, with bolters being not much better. In the fiction, lasblasts are like Star Wars blasters that vaporize heads and cauterize fist-sized holes in torsoes and bolters basically fire rocket propelled grenades everywhere. The tabletop is WW2 and the fiction is far future space opera. There is a gulf of difference between table marines and book marines.

At least you didn't say Movie Marines, as that meme is just based on a ridiculous exaggeration heh.

**gummyofallbears**

Gonna have to agree with Martel here.

Even if they wouldn't all die, they would be very very quickly overwhelmed, even with some guard on the side. A gaunt is about equal to a guardsman, however, and there aren't trillions of respawning guardsman defending against tyranids.

**Melissia**

gummyofallbears wrote:
Gonna have to agree with Martel here.

Even if they wouldn't all die, they would be very very quickly overwhelmed, even with some guard on the side. A gaunt is about equal to a guardsman, however, and there aren't trillions of respawning guardsman defending against tyranids.

... technically, there are, actually. It just takes a little longer. But I'd actually argue that a guardsman is superior to a gaunt or gant.

**Martel732**

Superior enough to make for orders of magnitude in numbers?

**VictorVonTzeentch**

While it wouldnt change how horribly out numbered the Guardsmen and Marines would be, you have to remember that a large portion of the Chapter shouldn't be sitting in several places defending. The First Company and the Battle Companies, should be launching counter attacks against the Largers Synapse Creatures and hive nodes, boarding the Hive Ships and crippling the Fleet's ability to command the swarm.

The reserve companies would be divided between that and assisting the Guard in holding the line.

Winning would come down to whether the strike teams could eliminate the command ability, and there is no doubt that would be near impossible and if they did pull it off the Chapter would need to rebuild. In a straight holding action though, there is no way they should be able to win.

**BobtheInquisitor**

Martel732 wrote:
The original question was what piece of fluff do we hate the most. I was just trying to voice my agreement with a previous poster.

I think we are in agreement, though. A thousand marines per chapter just raises ridiculous questions about who is driving the vehicles and how can they possibly make a difference on a galactic scale. Marines can be absolute superhuman badasses even in a universe where melta weapons exist, but that has almost no bearing on the number discussion when the number is so small that it doesn't even make sense on a planetary scale. It's like the Karen Traviss clone number controversy all over again, forever.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

gummyofallbears wrote:
Gonna have to agree with Martel here.

Even if they wouldn't all die, they would be very very quickly overwhelmed, even with some guard on the side. A gaunt is about equal to a guardsman, however, and there aren't trillions of respawning guardsman defending against tyranids.

Conservative estimates based on 4th edition-era fluff put the number of guardsmen at around a quadrillion, although you could probably fudge that down to the tens of trillions for a particular segmentum if you don't like big numbers. With mixed genders and substantial logistic trains, including families and hangers on, they are almost literally respawning.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Superior enough to make for orders of magnitude in numbers?

I haven't seen definitive numbers for gaunts, so if GW have given some, even indirectly, I'd love to see them. Besides, Tyranids in the fluff are pretty much an all or nothing threat. If you don't defeat them in space (allowing the guard to mop up any ground forces), the planet is doomed. Even if you do kill the fleet, the planet may still be lost. The Tyranids don't so much invade as Tyrannoform planets to aid in digestion.

**Martel732**

VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
While it wouldnt change how horribly out numbered the Guardsmen and Marines would be, you have to remember that a large portion of the Chapter shouldn't be sitting in several places defending. The First Company and the Battle Companies, should be launching counter attacks against the Largers Synapse Creatures and hive nodes, boarding the Hive Ships and crippling the Fleet's ability to command the swarm.

The reserve companies would be divided between that and assisting the Guard in holding the line.

Winning would come down to whether the strike teams could eliminate the command ability, and there is no doubt that would be near impossible and if they did pull it off the Chapter would need to rebuild. In a straight holding action though, there is no way they should be able to win.

There are more hive ships than marines in a chapter. There are more synapse creatures on one planet than there are marines in the entire Imperium. The scale doesn't work.

**VictorVonTzeentch**

Martel732 wrote:
VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
While it wouldnt change how horribly out numbered the Guardsmen and Marines would be, you have to remember that a large portion of the Chapter shouldn't be sitting in several places defending. The First Company and the Battle Companies, should be launching counter attacks against the Largers Synapse Creatures and hive nodes, boarding the Hive Ships and crippling the Fleet's ability to command the swarm.

The reserve companies would be divided between that and assisting the Guard in holding the line.

Winning would come down to whether the strike teams could eliminate the command ability, and there is no doubt that would be near impossible and if they did pull it off the Chapter would need to rebuild. In a straight holding action though, there is no way they should be able to win.

There are more hive ships than marines in a chapter. There are more synapse creatures on one planet than there are marines in the entire Imperium. The scale doesn't work.

The numbers of what the Tyranids have on planet also varies greatly though. How early in the invasion is it? How much time have they had? Have the spawning pools been hit all ready? How much of the fleet made it through initial contact? Where they expected or was it a sudden attack?

How many Astartes are there? Is it one Chapter or is it several? Are they fighting the way they should, with Rapid Strikes and withdrawls or are they fighting like "Heros" and holding the line. Its GW after all.

**Martel732**

What happens when said lightning strikes don't go as planned? And lets not forget that any sentient foe can read codex astartes for themselves and have a massive leg up.

**MarsNZ**

gummyofallbears wrote:
there aren't trillions of respawning guardsman defending against tyranids.

Human life is the cheapest currency the IG possess. Trillions would be a low estimate.

**GodDamUser**

Well as mentioned there are not really that many 'Big' fights that actually happen.

Spacemarines are used for surgical strikes and rarely hold a point against mass numbers, when they do have to hold... it tends to end badly for them.

And when it is a big fight of massed army vs mass army, you will normally find that there are several Spacemarine chapters in attendance... And with the fluff they are generally only a few companies from each. Fluff or even 'movie' Marines are a lot tougher and smarter then their table top equivalent, but in the same sense within the various tales there is a lot of inconsistency with how tough they are.

But there is a well established narrative for why there are generally only a 1000 per chapter and Gulliman is to blame... But this also means that it is quite easy to fluff up your own marines

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
And lets not forget that any sentient foe can read codex astartes for themselves and have a massive leg up.

Do you think that it is publicly available?

Or do they put in a Freedom of Information request?

**Earth127**

The massive amount of tyranids in a hive fleet is just as ridiculous logically as the 1000 space marines are a force to be reckoned with. Both can annoy me equally.

**VictorVonTzeentch**

Martel732 wrote:
What happens when said lightning strikes don't go as planned? And lets not forget that any sentient foe can read codex astartes for themselves and have a massive leg up.

Then they lose, there is always the chance it goes that way, but it wont always go wrong and it wont always go right, thats just the way of things. I doubt the Codex is something that is easily gotten a hold of by any one or even carried around in a manner that it would be easily obtained, or else the Tau would be able (fluff wise not table top) to completely negate the more dogmatic followers of the Codex.