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So I've seen that people are generally "meh" about them. I'm curious why.

I mean, it feels like it makes sense. They are the next evolutionary step in space marines genes.

Eventually, I would assume, that this will spread to all other chapters and that there won't be just regular space marines anymore. Everyone will be primaris, right? Like imagine primaris space wolves. That would be sick. (if there are others already please let me know. cuz I thought only ultramarines were primaris so far)

Like if I want to think about this from how space marines evolve, you got Thunder Warriors - Space Marines - Primaris

Alrighty I'll try to answer this, first of all you have to understand that warhammer 40k players are, especially where space marines are concerned, somewhat conservitive, and there are always vocal members who hate ANY change. When centurions came out in 6th edition? people said they where silly. when space marines got their stormhawk and stormtalons? people complained they didn't make sense. in 5th edition I'm sure people complained about stuff too.

new things being suddenly retconned in, that the fluff never even hinted at annoys some people.


then there is the fact that they ARE an evolution of the space marine. this annoys some people who generally don't like the IoM moving forward (a lotta the classic appeal of the setting IS that the IoM is stuck in stasis)

BrianDavion wrote:
Alrighty I'll try to answer this, first of all you have to understand that warhammer 40k players are, especially where space marines are concerned, somewhat conservitive, and there are always vocal members who hate ANY change. When centurions came out in 6th edition? people said they where silly. when space marines got their stormhawk and stormtalons? people complained they didn't make sense. in 5th edition I'm sure people complained about stuff too.

new things being suddenly retconned in, that the fluff never even hinted at annoys some people.


then there is the fact that they ARE an evolution of the space marine. this annoys some people who generally don't like the IoM moving forward (a lotta the classic appeal of the setting IS that the IoM is stuck in stasis)

Definitely wasn't a retcon. It was a story progression. Roboute woke up and then called his Mechanicus buddy to see how an intentionally secretive project turned out. GW didn't change anything we knew about. They just added in a character (Cawl), secretly working behind the scenes.

But yeah. People hate change and story progression is change.

I'm one of the few marine players that embraces the change. I think that marines got stale a long time ago. The primaris adds a new dynamic and internal turmoil in the armies. Especially those chapters working outside somewhat. Wolves and Dark Angels.

They have written it in so any chapter can have primaris now. There has been events that have caused the "need" for troops. And Bobby G just so happened to have primaris troops to fill in.

Blood Angels had the devistation of Baal with Hive fleet leviathan.

Dark Angels had tzeentch invade the rock. (This was funny because when Bobby G turned up above the rock he debated to shoot down Bobby G).

Wolves had a similar, there was cadia and now vigilus.

So there is plenty reason for all and any marines to have primaris.

The big thing is how immune they are to the qwerks of the chapters. For example the Blood Angel ones are apparently unaffected by Black Rage. But they do still get Red Thirst, (which is unintentional).

Also as well people try and compare the primaris marines to their tactical counter parts. But end of the day what got me into the hobby is painting and playing with cool models. As long as that sticks and I don't feel like GW take the piss ill stay (and I did leave because workshop did take the piss between 5th and 7th ed but 8th brought me back).

Fluffwise, I think a lot of folks (myself included) took a bit of issue with the somewhat...let's call it "Age of Sigmar" flavor of their introduction.

Primaris could have been introduced as an "out of fluff" aesthetic design change to the basic marine.

They could also have been introduced as a technological advancement in armor - even genetics if you wanted to go that route, outright replacing existing marine armor marks (Reivers being the new scouts, Aggressors being the new Terminators, and you can use the old models as one and the other)

Instead, they were introduced as a new thing, making them optional and as a completely different playstyle. The Primaris "replacement" to jump pack marines is a shooting unit, not an assault unit. The Primaris "Replacement" to tactical marines does not have their flexibility in loadout, which was the defining feature of tactical squads for many.

I suspect that what we're actually seeing is a "soft replacement" rather than a "hard replacement" and that what we will see is new Primaris kits coming out as "Primaris Veterans" with more of the old-marine options. I find it difficult to believe that GW really plans to sideline iconic weapons like Melta Guns, Chainswords and marine-carried heavy weapons forever, and I think eventually we will see more direct Primaris replacements to standard marine designs. And at that point, there will likely be more widespread acceptance: When you can directly use your current Tactical Squad as a Primaris Veteran squad, and all the things you've modeled on your Tactical Squad can be used as a Primaris equivalent, just like you can use your old 2nd ed Terminators as the much larger terminators of today.

Currently, the weird way they've shoehorned both into the fluff together feels like a way to get Little Timmy interested in the bigger, better, but ultimately more simplistic Primaris fluff and rules.

 Ironbeer wrote:
So I've seen that people are generally "meh" about them. I'm curious why.

Two reasons.

1: "Oh look it's another kind of marines that more marine than the other marines, can't GW think of something more creative instead?" Which is a fair point. That's literally all they are, and GW has been trying to do that for two decades now. I don't actually hate them, they're just really not that impressive or interesting to me.

2: You just can't do much with them in-game. They're monorole with highly limited customization options, and cannot equip many chapters' signature weapons or loadouts. A Blood Angels primaris apothecary can't have a power axe and a red grail. A Raven Guard primaris captain can't equip dual lightning claws. And so on. They're all generic and forgettable, designed around the Ultramarines template, rather than unique and memorable. Hell, even ultramarine primaris aren't all that interesting compared to the actual ultramarine-specific miniatures!

Personally, I like the progression of the story. The issues I have is with the implementation of the rules, which have been done with the apparently intent to coincide with sub-par non-Primaris Marine rules, rather than just ripping the Band-Aid off and replacing them outright.

From a rules perspective, this hurts BOTH lines, IMO, because OldMarines end up being crappy and Primaris end up having to be designed in just the right way as to not over-step the roles of OldMarines, i.e. not having options Old Marines have as mentioned above.

It would have been far better if 8E started with 2W/2A marines and "Primaris" were just an new armour mark for Guilli-Cawl's reinforcements, which would come with better gear (AP-1 Bolters, etc)
That way new players could get the new hotness, while older players could still have decent rules for their existing models.
But that won't make as much $$$ for GW, so it makes business sense to do what they have done.

Essentially, GW has sold all the OldMarines they want to sell and want all players, old and new, to start dropping money on Primaris. They will continue to "ignore" regular Marines in both new releases and overall balance until the sales of those kits are so low, that they will drop Old Marines entirely as the players are no longer buying enough, thus GW will be justified in dropping them.
Buy that time, enough Primaris units will exist, that all the roles will be filled.

This is not likely to happen soon by any means, but the limbo it has created is what frustrates me. Until Old Marines are gone, Marines in general are going to have an extremely bloated model range with mostly sub-par units.

The models look cool and have a good scale though

-

Ironbeer wrote:Eventually, I would assume, that this will spread to all other chapters and that there won't be just regular space marines anymore. Everyone will be primaris, right? Like imagine primaris space wolves. That would be sick. (if there are others already please let me know. cuz I thought only ultramarines were primaris so far)

Already has spread, actually. I believe it something like 98% of all Chapters have integrated Primaris elements into their Chapter, and as far as I know, there's no named Chapter who have refused it.

The Custodes are also on record for essentially turning around to Chapter who are initially reluctant about the Primaris and saying "accept this gift, or else you're a heretic".

 Ironbeer wrote:
So I've seen that people are generally "meh" about them. I'm curious why.

I mean, it feels like it makes sense. They are the next evolutionary step in space marines genes.
s

That's because you're young, and dont have twenty odd years of a relationship with stubby marines. It's easy for you to shrug your shoulders and not have any emotional investment in them. Plenty folks do.

Folks are 'meh' about primaris for a lot of reasons (as many reasons as there are people). For some, it's the aesthetics that they dislike. For some it's the severely-reduced options rules that they dislike. For others, it's how they were hammered into the lore.

For the first, fair enough. Aesthetics are subjective. I disagree. I happen to love the primaris. They're the marines I wish I had fifteen years ago.

For the second, again, fair enough. 40k has always been a game big on 'customisations and options'. Going against this is kind of going against their own history . Personally, I played warmachine/hordes for nearly 10 years, I am well used to reduced options and kit load outs for my units and have no issues with it whatsoever in 40k.

For the third, agin, fair enough. It was more than a bit ham-fisted and clumsy, but then again, 40k shouldn't be treated as super-serious business to begin with in my less than humble opinion. That said, I really don't think there was any way for gw to 'win' here. Whatever option they would have chosen to introduce the primaris would have generated friction.

It's hugely contradictory to the setting.
The Imperium is in constant decline not summoning new and better armies.
The Imperium is steeped in tradition to the point of madness not allowing new radical things to be introduced.
The Emperor is supposed to have made the best of the best so why are there new better things all of a sudden?
The Imperium is in a state of ruined glory, the heights of it are long gone and they're clinging to the remains. Not making massive new and better armies.

On top of all that you have the weirdness of the Eldar helping and the super lazy introduction.

 Ironbeer wrote:
So I've seen that people are generally "meh" about them. I'm curious why.

I mean, it feels like it makes sense. They are the next evolutionary step in space marines genes.

Eventually, I would assume, that this will spread to all other chapters and that there won't be just regular space marines anymore. Everyone will be primaris, right? Like imagine primaris space wolves. That would be sick. (if there are others already please let me know. cuz I thought only ultramarines were primaris so far)

Like if I want to think about this from how space marines evolve, you got Thunder Warriors - Space Marines - Primaris

I don't know, I'm kinda a bit on both sides. I don't hate the idea, and in fact there is alot of precedence for making "better marines" (HH Raptors and ofcourse the cursed founding), and there are alot of interesting aspects an author can examine. Having said that there are a few things that personally bother me/I'd change if I could.

First and largest- the transport issue, with land raiders being a massive sticking point because I love them. Granted I haven't had a match in a long while but I don't think this has changed, which kinda kills the idea of using my primaris as primaris. I can vaguely understand rhinos but even land raiders when terminators fit?

Next is the scale- I love the new scale of the primaris but it feels like that should be the scale of the old marines (using the rather distorted cadian trooper as a base for size), so it feels a bit weird to see marines being called larger than humans and primaris larger than marines but not have this born out in the models. This in turn makes me wonder how HH and all pre dark imperium sets (if they do a Badab war 2.0 or something similiar) will work in the future. I'd personally would have wanted primaris scale mk II-VII over a decade instead of primaris. It's just wierd and feels like it blocks out alot of the potential of going back in time to explore different ages of the Imperium. When you're flagship line isn't going to be compatible from a fluff/aesthetic standpoint with 99% of the Imperium's history I consider that a loss (you could retcon it but I still mark that as a loss). Also maybe I have my rose tinted glasses on, but I prefer the older marks of armor and the stubby boltgun, though that's something a little conversion can handily solve!

Lastly I don't like how the primaris seem to have fixed all the gene seed problems with 99.999% accuracy, it's not necessarily bad but I feel like it does take away a bit from the soul of each of the chapters, and cheapens things like Sanguinius freaking out about the red thirst when apparently it was something the big E could have solved in like a week if he was told about it/felt like it was worth doing (hyperbolic but it conveys my point). Granted Cawl had 10k years to iron out problems but still, either the Emperor was lazy/incompetent or purposefully put in the mutations as he had an unknown number of years to work out the problems himself.

Overall I find the primaris interesting in their own way and it doesn't ruin the setting for me, but I would have picked a different route ultimately.

 Kriswall wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
Alrighty I'll try to answer this, first of all you have to understand that warhammer 40k players are, especially where space marines are concerned, somewhat conservitive, and there are always vocal members who hate ANY change. When centurions came out in 6th edition? people said they where silly. when space marines got their stormhawk and stormtalons? people complained they didn't make sense. in 5th edition I'm sure people complained about stuff too.

new things being suddenly retconned in, that the fluff never even hinted at annoys some people.


then there is the fact that they ARE an evolution of the space marine. this annoys some people who generally don't like the IoM moving forward (a lotta the classic appeal of the setting IS that the IoM is stuck in stasis)

Definitely wasn't a retcon. It was a story progression. Roboute woke up and then called his Mechanicus buddy to see how an intentionally secretive project turned out. GW didn't change anything we knew about. They just added in a character (Cawl), secretly working behind the scenes.

But yeah. People hate change and story progression is change.

when I refer to retconned in I'm actually refering to old marine stuff. things like centurions, stormtalons etc where we are told "actually they've had these for the last 7000 years but it was never spoken of until now"

BrianDavion wrote:
Alrighty I'll try to answer this, first of all you have to understand that warhammer 40k players are, especially where space marines are concerned, somewhat conservitive, and there are always vocal members who hate ANY change. When centurions came out in 6th edition? people said they where silly. when space marines got their stormhawk and stormtalons? people complained they didn't make sense.

I think mainly the complaints on centurions and the brickfliers were focussed on the models being god awful

The Thunderhawk just about gotal away with being a massive blocky thing because the proportions work much better. In order to.fit the new.flyers on the board more easily they were made to be quite stubby to.the detriment of the aesthetics.

Yes aesthetics are subjective, YMMV.

There's also the fact that the Primaris are so unnecessary from a model and storytelling point of view.

Want to increase the scale of Marine models so that they're better scaled with giganto guardsmen, and encourage Marine collectors to buy all their stuff again? That was already being done! The Deathwatch Veterans are noticeably taller than prior Marines; as are the new Chaos models since the Thousand Sons releases.

Want to have an excuse to create a bunch of new Chapters and give the Imperium a mini-Renaissance now that a Primarch has returned? Use standard Marines - have a grand new Founding, have every Chapter go on a recruiting drive with unprecedented numbers of blood trials or whatever the local variant is. Have Guilliman encourage the production of older marks of power armour in greater numbers, or even use a new MkIX design.

Instead GW went with even biggerer betterer Marineier Marines in their thousands who have been on ice for ten millenia for reasons with new shooter guns nobody has been using for reasons and new armour and vehicles which nobody thought might be usefully employed elsewhere in the interim, but now everybody has them because that allows them to sell more kits (although they can't actually interact with most of the old kits). Hardly narratively satisfying...