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We can only really guess as to whether or not it's a good idea for GW to change the aesthetic of Space Marines at this point in time.

Sure, it's going to piss off some customers, but other customers are going to prefer the new Marines and others still might not like it but will still buy the new ones. Without taking a comprehensive poll who knows which group is bigger.

We know from GW killing WHFB in favour of AoS they aren't afraid to piss off some of their customer base if they think they can make up for it elsewhere.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
We can only really guess as to whether or not it's a good idea for GW to change the aesthetic of Space Marines at this point in time.

Sure, it's going to piss off some customers, but other customers are going to prefer the new Marines and others still might not like it but will still buy the new ones. Without taking a comprehensive poll who knows which group is bigger.

We know from GW killing WHFB in favour of AoS they aren't afraid to piss off some of their customer base if they think they can make up for it elsewhere.

Wasn't that a decision by the previous management though? Considering the whole "This is the new GW!" thing that even GW are trying to get people to believe, suddenly invalidating everyones Marines and all the related armies would likely completely destroy any trust built up after that.

The only way i can see this working without either problems with the lore or problems with the current models is if this is just a "You've wanted True-scale Marines for years? Well now you have an official option for those!" situation, but that doesn't line up with what a few of the rumours have said about their being a new type of them.

suddenly invalidating everyones Marines and all the related armies

Because marines got 2mm taller?

JSG wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
suddenly invalidating everyones Marines and all the related armies

Because marines got 2mm taller?

That would not invalidate anyone's army, it has happened before. However, if fluff and rules-wise there will be a new breed of marines that are just like marines, except better (not just specialised like GK and DW) then it kinda invalidates old marines.

It isn't 2mm taller it is 2.5mm taller, and that ruins everything!

 Crimson wrote:

JSG wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
suddenly invalidating everyones Marines and all the related armies

Because marines got 2mm taller?

That would not invalidate anyone's army, it has happened before. However, if fluff and rules-wise there will be a new breed of marines that are just like marines, except better (not just specialised like GK and DW) then it kinda invalidates old marines.

This is why I don't think we'll get a new marine faction. Just a new mk of armour and some background about guilliman shaking up the production process. Have them all grown in vats or something.

I think I'd be fine with them if they were Ultramarine only. Like how Wulfen, Sanguinary Guard, and Deathwing Knights are all chapter unique units. Giving Ultramarines something not-generic would be great.

Unless they somehow want to push the heresy of other chapters allowing girlyman geneseeded marines into their chapter. Or if they go the approach of 'every chapter BUT space wolves/dark angels/blood angels can use them!' like they always do.

I'm cautiously optimistic. They have a lot of ways to screw this up.

 Don Savik wrote:
I think I'd be fine with them if they were Ultramarine only. Like how Wulfen, Sanguinary Guard, and Deathwing Knights are all chapter unique units. Giving Ultramarines something not-generic would be great.

Unless they somehow want to push the heresy of other chapters allowing girlyman geneseeded marines into their chapter. Or if they go the approach of 'every chapter BUT space wolves/dark angels/blood angels can use them!' like they always do.

I'm cautiously optimistic. They have a lot of ways to screw this up.

I get the impression you are assuming Codex: SPACE MARINES is ultramarines. THere are a lot more chapters that are different than just BA/DA/SW. Those just happen to have separate books. There is no chance the Ravenguard, Salamanders, Imperial Fists, White Scars or Iron Hands would welcome some new random geneseed.

 Kirasu wrote:

 Don Savik wrote:
I think I'd be fine with them if they were Ultramarine only. Like how Wulfen, Sanguinary Guard, and Deathwing Knights are all chapter unique units. Giving Ultramarines something not-generic would be great.

Unless they somehow want to push the heresy of other chapters allowing girlyman geneseeded marines into their chapter. Or if they go the approach of 'every chapter BUT space wolves/dark angels/blood angels can use them!' like they always do.

I'm cautiously optimistic. They have a lot of ways to screw this up.

I get the impression you are assuming Codex: SPACE MARINES is ultramarines. THere are a lot more chapters that are different than just BA/DA/SW. Those just happen to have separate books. There is no chance the Ravenguard, Salamanders, Imperial Fists, White Scars or Iron Hands would welcome some new random geneseed.

Oh no, I know how it is. I should've said they should be for chapter tactics: ultramarines only. It would spit on the lore to have Roboute and his heretical buddy Cawl impose new super-marines on all the chapters. But if they flush out ultramarines more they should at least give more love to the other chapters you mentioned.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
We can only really guess as to whether or not it's a good idea for GW to change the aesthetic of Space Marines at this point in time.

Sure, it's going to piss off some customers, but other customers are going to prefer the new Marines and others still might not like it but will still buy the new ones. Without taking a comprehensive poll who knows which group is bigger.

We know from GW killing WHFB in favour of AoS they aren't afraid to piss off some of their customer base if they think they can make up for it elsewhere.

Considering what happened to most metal terminators when the new ones became bigger, this is a valid point should the marines suddenly become larger in such a more noticeable fashion.

 Don Savik wrote:

Oh no, I know how it is. I should've said they should be for chapter tactics: ultramarines only.

This would be terrible. It would be the wardian fan-spank coming literally true.

 Crimson wrote:

 Don Savik wrote:

Oh no, I know how it is. I should've said they should be for chapter tactics: ultramarines only.

This would be terrible. It would be the wardian fan-spank coming literally true.

So how is it ok for Space Wolves to get Wulfen and TWC but Ultramarines can't get anything unique? I thought people didn't want ultramarines to be so vanilla. Wouldn't it be weirder having Salamanders that look like blonde haired romans?

Is it just because they're taller? I mean, I think either way we go with this its going to rub people the wrong way. Either we give ultramarines some cool things or we screw over lore by having Guilliman and Cawl enforce new-marines of their own geneseed on other chapters. Lose, lose if you ask me.

 Don Savik wrote:

So how is it ok for Space Wolves to get Wulfen and TWC but Ultramarines can't get anything unique? I thought people didn't want ultramarines to be so vanilla.

Being vanilla is the whole point of Ultras.

Wouldn't it be weirder having Salamanders that look like blonde haired romans?

Yes. But them getting some new fancy armour wouldn't.

Is it just because they're taller? I mean, I think either way we go with this its going to rub people the wrong way. Either we give ultramarines some cool things or we screw over lore by having Guilliman and Cawl enforce new-marines of their own geneseed on other chapters. Lose, lose if you ask me.

Indeed. And that's why übermarines from Guilliman's blood is a terrible idea, and I really, really, hope that it's not what this is about.

It already doesnt make sense because the Emps already made them the best compared to his sons compared to the custode... so its already dumb if they arent just re doing the SM line, and giving standard marines 'upgrade' armor or weapon options not inline with what they already have.
because literally every other chapter and chaptermaster will be garbage, in theory compared to the new bigger better stronger versions.
something like that should theoretically start a revolt.

What about vat grown blanks, their DNA based on guillimans who then have chapter specific geneseed implanted. Wouldn't really be that bad as primarchs are all based on the emperors DNA anyway. Since ultramarines are the most standard marines so to speak it may not be that big a deal. Cawl would just have to remove the book keeping gene.

The result would be higher quality base material which can be churned out quickly to fight the 13th black crusade plus other threats.

If they introduce in the lore Guillimarines and then half the Chapters start a revolt to topple Guilliman because they felt totally substituted and worthless like objects (And, to Terra, they are. Space Marines are just a weapon) it can be even a good lore advancement.

The old marines fighting against the opresion of being just put aside as obsolete weapons after centuries of fighting for the future of Humankind.

Guilliman: The Chapster Masters need to be substituted by the new generation of loyal Guillimarines. Execute order 66.
Cato Sicarius: Yes, master... *unsheathe his bolter and gun down Marneus Calgar from the back*

I stand corrected. My local Gw manager (who told me about a new thunder hawk, overlords, and death watch before public knowledge) said the new marines are RGs new breed. Old marines are still valid and these will have new stats. They're between custodes and current marines in the line up of things....

Great way to real in the cash but incouldnonly imagine the out rage, people quitting because they don't want to replace the thousands they have spent.

JSG wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
suddenly invalidating everyones Marines and all the related armies

Because marines got 2mm taller?

Just to be clear, your quote is broken, I never said that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
We can only really guess as to whether or not it's a good idea for GW to change the aesthetic of Space Marines at this point in time.

Sure, it's going to piss off some customers, but other customers are going to prefer the new Marines and others still might not like it but will still buy the new ones. Without taking a comprehensive poll who knows which group is bigger.

We know from GW killing WHFB in favour of AoS they aren't afraid to piss off some of their customer base if they think they can make up for it elsewhere.

Wasn't that a decision by the previous management though? Considering the whole "This is the new GW!" thing that even GW are trying to get people to believe, suddenly invalidating everyones Marines and all the related armies would likely completely destroy any trust built up after that.

The decision was probably made under the old management, but wasn't it carried out under the current management?

Also killing Bretonnians and Tomb Kings and a lot of the old WHFB units.

The only way i can see this working without either problems with the lore or problems with the current models is if this is just a "You've wanted True-scale Marines for years? Well now you have an official option for those!" situation,

Well there's always going to be "problems", my point wasn't that there wouldn't be problems, it was that we can only guess as to the extent of those problems vs the possible benefits.

There's a lot of Marine players who might be unhappy with those problems, but there's going to be a lot who always felt the old models looked derpy and will be happy to see embiggened Marines.

but that doesn't line up with what a few of the rumours have said about their being a new type of them.

The rumours on new Marines IMO are to be taken with a grain of salt. A relatively reliable rumourmonger in Hastings has been shown to be wrong when he said the new Marine leaked picture didn't match the description he'd been given.

Except that is exactly the reason to disregard that. They were "described" to Hastings. If the descriptor or Hastings misspoke or misunderstood then we have a precise rumour being undermined by its own progenitor because he got the wrong mental image when something was explained to him.

There was also another rumour from JamesY where his source said it wasn't exactly like the things he was working on, but did implicitly confirm that these nuMarines were a thing, so there's a chance that there were some mods done to the original leaked model also.

Both Hastings and Sad Panda have, to a greater or lesser degree, suggested that the organic bit in those new MkX suits is also new though.

There's a whole heap of possibilities. Maybe there's a new type of Marine on top of the ones we've seen. Maybe the decisions in house have been changed since the rumourmongers heard them. Maybe there were multiple rumours released prior to deciding on which path to actually take. Maybe the rumours refer to a new Marine concept that was killed. Maybe GW purposely released some false rumours to try and crack down on leaks.

My point was simply that we don't have to assume these Marines are going to perfectly match with the rumours.

Regardless of what the rumours say I'm still erring on the side of these Marines being a replacement for the current Marines or a new mark in which the existing Marines live simply because that's what they look like to me. They simply look too plain and too much like regular Tacticals for me to believe they are new super-marines. Unless GW are introducing a whole new Marine sub-faction and these are just the basic troops in that sub-faction, but that seems a bit implausible at this stage.

My only beef with this new lore/marines is that it should have been ravenguard(corvax), since they have history of fething around with marine making. I know ultra lore tends to be...uninspired..but sheesh.

Ah, but think about this - 40K armour is ornate for officers and veterans because it is revered and ancient and has been maintained, repaired and decorated for millennia.

MkX is brand new, and manufactured under the auspices of Guilliman who believes in the secular imperium and won't consider armour venerable relics.

Hence MkX will be all about function and not decoration.

I mean didn't Guilliman himself awake from his long sleep, look at the armour wrought to sustain him and declare "what the feth is all this swirly gak everywhere?!"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bulldogging wrote:
My only beef with this new lore/marines is that it should have been ravenguard(corvax), since they have history of fething around with marine making. I know ultra lore tends to be...uninspired..but sheesh.

Or, RG have a history of spectacularly fething up when fething around with Marine making?

 Azreal13 wrote:
Ah, but think about this - 40K armour is ornate for officers and veterans because it is revered and ancient and has been maintained, repaired and decorated for millennia.

MkX is brand new, and manufactured under the auspices of Guilliman who believes in the secular imperium and won't consider armour venerable relics.

Hence MkX will be all about function and not decoration.

I mean didn't Guilliman himself awake from his long sleep, look at the armour wrought to sustain him and declare "what the feth is all this swirly gak everywhere?!"

Yeah.... maybe if we were looking for a realistic explanation, but I'm talking about GW here, not reality, in GW's world anything special has to be absolutely caked in ornate looking details regardless of anything else

 Azreal13 wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bulldogging wrote:
My only beef with this new lore/marines is that it should have been ravenguard(corvax), since they have history of fething around with marine making. I know ultra lore tends to be...uninspired..but sheesh.

Or, RG have a history of spectacularly fething up when fething around with Marine making?

Hah, yeah, thanks to alpha legion. Doesn't change that somewhere in the Raven spire there is/could be the information needed that didn't require a handwave for the ultras and could let the ravenguard enjoy some positive attention. I don't play ravenguad, and my largest army is admech led by Cawl, the deliverer of ultramarine "more awesome stuff" (love that model) so I'm not hating.

My THEORY.

RG would prefer to standardize Space Marines, because they are too fragmented in their current state.

The original rumour/leak stated that these RG Marines will come from MARS. I thought they would be local to Ultra, but this makes sense if you want to supply the Imperium with weapons and equipment/Mk X etc, you would pick a location like Mars.

RG will actually try to standardize Marine recuitment and training, all Marines will meet the same standard now. Chapters like DA, BA, BT already have upgrade kits to look different, and I think that's what GW is slowly pushing towards, if you want a standard Marine look, go with the new marines, if you like old school with some flavour for your chapter of choice, grab the upgrade kit. Lore wise, these chapters will continue to recruit and create Marines the way they think is right, which leads to really different looking Marine forces, eventually.

I think they will make the original Marines larger, and I wouldn't be surprised if this scale creep went up for all forces eventually, leaving IG and others small because it makes sense for them to be smaller.

CRACKPOT TIME

LOOK at the previous Ultramarines artwork and colours what do we always see? 2nd Company, GOLD and BLUE.

NOW if you look at the colour wheel, what colour is opposite to yellow/gold? Blue and PURPLE, and who have Ultramarines been fighting a lot in the last few years? TYRANIDS! To be specific PURPLE Tyranids. Why is this important?

Because for the first time, we see the 3RD COMPANY in the painting booklet.. which is RED and BLUE, and what is the opposite colour to RED in the colour wheel? GREEN!

And what faction has green as a primary colour.... PLAGUE MARINES - yes.. you have just stepped through the looking glass.

Has anyone considered that GW might be setting up for a Horus Heresy Round 2?

I have no rumors or inside knowledge to base it on, but just a feeling going off of what we've seen recently or know is coming.

1) Return of the Primarchs

I don't think there's much to say on this other than we know more primarchs are coming from the Atia, Sadpanda, and (iirc) Hastings rumors. I think even the most cynical people here can agree that after Mortarion we are going to get at least 1 more primarch, but personally I'm guessing GW will bring back as many primarchs as possible.

Also fluffwise their reappearance doesn't seem to be just a short term pillaging of the setting history. Where in the past a daemon primarch might show up for a single plot point only to then feth off back to the warp, its looking pretty likely that this is going to be a long, drawn out conflict. With Magnus pulling the Planet of Sorcerors into the material realm and Mortarion seemingly gunning for Guilliman directly it doesn't seem like this will be a one and done affair.

2) GW's stated focus on Imperium vs Chaos for the near future

Considering that Space Marines are the poster boys for both the Chaos and Imperial factions it only makes sense that we'll be seeing a lot of marine vs marine battles with Xenos taking the backseat in upcoming books. This means that there will be a lot more opportunities to explore the change in relations and rivalries between the first founders and fallen legions over the course of the last 10k years in much the same way that the HH focuses on how the legions reevaluate their place in the Imperium and their relationships with one another.

We can see this in the difference in treatment between Primarch Descendant Chapters/Legions vs the Unknown Origin Chapters/Renegades. Unknown descendant Chapters get no special rules at all while Renegades are only represented by the "much loved" Crimson Slaughter book which to my understanding was more or reprinted in Traitor Legions as the Word Bearers tactics...

Meanwhile between the core SM codex, SW codex, BA codex, DA codex, and Angels of Death all 9 descendant chapters have at least some amount of rules and wargear if not also special units to represent them uniquely. The chaos legions has similarly gained Traitor Legions, Thousand Sons, and soon Death Guard to add unique rules, wargear, and special units back into the mix.

How this relates to Guillimarines.
A core element of the Horus Heresy fluff is how each legion's primarch shaped their own legion to be specialized on a certain type of warfare which is represented in the game as a some unique units, special rules, and wargear wrapped around an identical core astartes list. However until recently 4th - 7th Editions of 40k homogenized most marines into just being different colored armor on the same armies. But with Thousand Sons and Death Guard it seems that GW really want to bring back unique astartes units (if for no reason other than to sell new minis to people who have already completed their SM and CSM armies).

So if the supposed rumors of the Nu Marines being Ultramarines only are true then they could be their unique units. I mean they are essentially exactly what the Ultras would make, a +1 version of the most flexible existing units like Tacticals and Assault Marines. So maybe if we get Corax, Dorn, Jaghatai, etc back then they will also bring with them new special units for their own descendants.

Has it been mentioned yet that the 40th anniversary White Dwarf model is not only wearing the new style armour but also has one of the new bolt pistol designs as a present on his base.

 Azreal13 wrote:

There was also another rumour from JamesY where his source said it wasn't exactly like the things he was working on, but did implicitly confirm that these nuMarines were a thing, so there's a chance that there were some mods done to the original leaked model

Sorry I must not have communicated what I meant properly. The person I spoke to said that the model in that picture definitely was the nu armour, but they hadn't seen that specific model themselves, so someone from a different part of the studio had built it from the sprue. No different from a first look at a space marine and being able to identify that it was built from a sternguard box, for example. Apologies if that wasn't clear.

krazynadechukr wrote:
I stand corrected. My local Gw manager (who told me about a new thunder hawk, overlords, and death watch before public knowledge) said the new marines are RGs new breed. Old marines are still valid and these will have new stats. They're between custodes and current marines in the line up of things....

So exactly what the original rumour from one of the most reliable guys (which was then commented on without correction by THE most reliable rumourmongers) said?

Who knew?