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Martel732 wrote:
Get rid of them. They are also dumb.

Dude just go play another game then. At this point you've made it clear you hate your army, both rules wise (this I can understand to a degree) but you also seem to want the background so fundamentally altered that it would essentially be an entirely different setting. I again ask what if anything even attracted you to this game.

Martel732 wrote:
Get rid of them. They are also dumb.

That's rather harsh. I'm not fond of the Daemon aspect of 40K, but I find the Warp intriguing. "The realm of thoughts and dreams" as it were, twisted into a hellish landscape by humanity's fears, hatred and other unbridled negative emotions given life in this age of strife. It really hits home how much of a gakfest 40K is - if the galaxy hadn't devolved into an endless battlefield that feeds itself, it would be a placid or perhaps even an utopia sort of "afterlife".

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Get rid of them. They are also dumb.

Dude just go play another game then. At this point you've made it clear you hate your army, both rules wise (this I can understand to a degree) but you also seem to want the background so fundamentally altered that it would essentially be an entirely different setting. I again ask what if anything even attracted you to this game.

he's essentially parroting things said without him understanding the subtle nuances. I mean the space Marines suck bit is something you hear here from plenty of sources and martel seems to just parrot that. even the "the warp is deus ex machina" is him parroting something without understanding the nuance of what was said. in the wake of Devestation of Baal people complained that the warp storm removing the bulk of the hive fleet was a deus ex machinea. and they where arguably correct to state this (aa random action done by the gods of the setting itself just so happened to save the blood angels from destruction. that was arguably a deus ex machina. but that does not mean the warp itself is a deus ex machina anymore then the existance of wesley Crusher makes every TNG character a mary sue

Please stick to discussing the topic and not other posters as directed by rules 1 and 2.
Thanks,
ingtaer.

BrianDavion wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Get rid of them. They are also dumb.

Dude just go play another game then. At this point you've made it clear you hate your army, both rules wise (this I can understand to a degree) but you also seem to want the background so fundamentally altered that it would essentially be an entirely different setting. I again ask what if anything even attracted you to this game.

he's essentially parroting things said without him understanding the subtle nuances. I mean the space Marines suck bit is something you hear here from plenty of sources and martel seems to just parrot that. even the "the warp is deus ex machina" is him parroting something without understanding the nuance of what was said. in the wake of Devestation of Baal people complained that the warp storm removing the bulk of the hive fleet was a deus ex machinea. and they where arguably correct to state this (aa random action done by the gods of the setting itself just so happened to save the blood angels from destruction. that was arguably a deus ex machina. but that does not mean the warp itself is a deus ex machina anymore then the existance of wesley Crusher makes every TNG character a mary sue

Never sully the great name of The One True Wesley!

Yes Ka'band'aha destroying most of the hive fleet is kinda lame, but it at least makes sense "in-universe". Khorne wouldnt let anyone take the prize of either destroying or turning the Blood Angel's from him.

Racerguy180 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Get rid of them. They are also dumb.

Dude just go play another game then. At this point you've made it clear you hate your army, both rules wise (this I can understand to a degree) but you also seem to want the background so fundamentally altered that it would essentially be an entirely different setting. I again ask what if anything even attracted you to this game.

he's essentially parroting things said without him understanding the subtle nuances. I mean the space Marines suck bit is something you hear here from plenty of sources and martel seems to just parrot that. even the "the warp is deus ex machina" is him parroting something without understanding the nuance of what was said. in the wake of Devestation of Baal people complained that the warp storm removing the bulk of the hive fleet was a deus ex machinea. and they where arguably correct to state this (aa random action done by the gods of the setting itself just so happened to save the blood angels from destruction. that was arguably a deus ex machina. but that does not mean the warp itself is a deus ex machina anymore then the existance of wesley Crusher makes every TNG character a mary sue

Never sully the great name of The One True Wesley!

Yes Ka'band'aha destroying most of the hive fleet is kinda lame, but it at least makes sense "in-universe". Khorne wouldnt let anyone take the prize of either destroying or turning the Blood Angel's from him.

It's also nice to see a Bloodthirster getting gak done for once instead of being used as a punching bag to hype somebody else up. Greater Daemons get good showings sometimes but it's not terribly consistent. Not like Tyranids are anything but an NPC race either.

The whole Dark Imperium thing is really just a cosmetic change. Abaddon is still the primary antagonist of Chaos poised to launch war on a key Imperium world. The Tyrannids are still an all consuming force surrounding the galaxy, and poised to sweep in an nom everything. The Necrons are still all mostly sleeping in their tombs poised to wake up and reclaim what's rightfully theirs. The Craftworlders are still floating around on their Craftworlds mostly observing goings on and making their "subtle" interventions. The Commorrahns still kidnap and pillage.

So the Eye got bigger and so did Space Marines, and instead of four guys with no names in charge of a dispersed and besieged Imperium, now there's one really famous guy in charge of a dispersed and besieged Imperium.

I really like having a few splashes of hope here and there. It's fun to play the villain, but less so when everyone is 100% villain and hopeless. It's less fun to butcher a planet's population when you realize you're basically doing them a favor by saving them from whatever their imperial overlords had them doing in the first place.

You can't savor the sensation of crushing your opponent's hope when there was never any hope to begin with. Some ultra smurfs want to let a relatively nice imperial world remain in tact and productive? Sacrificing that world to chaos or abducting its best and brightest with my drukhari feels like I've shaped that planet for the worse and spawned a generation of vengeful heroes. But if the planet is just a despairing cog in the galactic machine, my bad guys are at worst just swapping one hellscape with another.

And from the less villainous side of things, pre-8th 40k kind of had a damned if you do/diabla ex machina problem. My marines stopped chaos from taking over a planet? Um. Yay I guess? I mean, the lives of everyone there will remain just as miserable as ever. Your guard regiment managed to purge an ork invasion from a planet and readied it for colonization? Well, you probably lost thrice as many worlds as you gained, so you're losing even when you win. Craftworlders repelled a hive fleet? So what? You're just delaying things until the Rhana Dandra and your inevitable extinction anyway.

It made a lot of the story telling in 40k feel really pointless. Which might appeal to my inner 14 year old edge lord but is pretty boring on the whole.

"See? Everything sucks no matter what you do! Isn't that super mature and brutal?"
Not really. It's kind of shallow and dull. I'm much more excited about my death cult elves throwing their lives into the blender for a desperate chance at maybe, just maybe, actually creating a better future. Let them die horribly. Let Slaanesh eat a bunch of them. Heck. Let them LOSE in the end or find out that Ynnead was a false hope all along. But fighting for a slim hope is infinitely more interesting than just hitting the snooze button on your own destruction for a few more minutes.

If your faction has nothing to fight for, then why bother fighting?

If your faction has nothing to fight for, then why bother fighting?

To make it worse for others or just out of spite? hardly a new concept. And eldar may understand that his race to dieing out because of how their population growth works. Now if he used human logic or if we would to assume that the great end enemy is chaos, he or she should do anything to fight chaos and help those that fight it. This is clearly not the case though, and eldar have absolutly no problem with butchering other people races that are fighting chaos like orcs or humans.
Dark eldar are even more extrem in this. Because they have to feed themselfs more and more pain and misery to avoid getting turn in to a suck tub by slanesh, at some point the required misery and pain becomes too much to generate in a single raid. So they do know they are going to die, in a brutal and eternal way, yet they still keep up the raiding tradition they started just after the fall.

 Andersp90 wrote:
So the first primarch has returned, and more are probably coming. The aeldari have received a possible "get-out-of-jail-free" card in the form of Ynnead, and the tyranid threat has been diminished by the the great rift.

Put short, there is hope.

But what do you think of this change in the setting? Good, bad?

"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment"

 Andersp90 wrote:
So the first primarch has returned, and more are probably coming. The Eldar have received a possible "get-out-of-jail-free" card in the form of Ynnead, and the tyranid threat has been diminished by the the great rift.

Put short, there is hope.

But what do you think of this change in the setting? Good, bad?

Real bad in short.

This has been an argument going back as far as the introduction of the Tau.

I am ambivalent about it all, the background was becoming very poorly written and flanderised over the last while anyway, so this is something of a continuation of that, but at least some aspects of it are new and interesting. I think they should focus on a game setting rather than a continuing narrative, I have always felt that if I want a narrative I will read a novel, but if I want to play a game I want a setting to muck around in.

The original 40K setting is something really special. It is not "serious" but deals with serious themes, and it is interesting precisely because it does not lend itself to typical heroic storytelling, the sort where hope, victory and salvation are the outcomes.

There are no heroes in 40K. It depresses me that many people consider the Imperium to be the defacto "good guys", though I recognise that terrible writing by new staff who don't seem to understand the setting very well is a big part of this. The Imperium is an absolutely evil organisation. They are fascists, extreme fascists. The sort of casual re-writing of them into kind of "Good Guys with a Dark Side" is actually pretty disturbing. As a kid I always understood that the guys that do a genocide are the bad guys, and what was fascinating was that there did not seem to be ANY good guys fighting against them.

Space Marines as the heroes, thinking the Imperium "needs" to be bad to save the Galaxy and the ends justifying the means...urgh. No. That is Imperial propaganda. They are extreme xenophobe fascistic scum who are creating their own shadows in the Warp to fight against.

 Da Boss wrote:
This has been an argument going back as far as the introduction of the Tau.

I am ambivalent about it all, the background was becoming very poorly written and flanderised over the last while anyway, so this is something of a continuation of that, but at least some aspects of it are new and interesting. I think they should focus on a game setting rather than a continuing narrative, I have always felt that if I want a narrative I will read a novel, but if I want to play a game I want a setting to muck around in.

The original 40K setting is something really special. It is not "serious" but deals with serious themes, and it is interesting precisely because it does not lend itself to typical heroic storytelling, the sort where hope, victory and salvation are the outcomes.

There are no heroes in 40K. It depresses me that many people consider the Imperium to be the defacto "good guys", though I recognise that terrible writing by new staff who don't seem to understand the setting very well is a big part of this. The Imperium is an absolutely evil organisation. They are fascists, extreme fascists. The sort of casual re-writing of them into kind of "Good Guys with a Dark Side" is actually pretty disturbing. As a kid I always understood that the guys that do a genocide are the bad guys, and what was fascinating was that there did not seem to be ANY good guys fighting against them.

Space Marines as the heroes, thinking the Imperium "needs" to be bad to save the Galaxy and the ends justifying the means...urgh. No. That is Imperial propaganda. They are extreme xenophobe fascistic scum who are creating their own shadows in the Warp to fight against.

The Imperium are the good guys because ends always justify the means and survival is the only goal in life. If you're up against a wall and cornered by existential threats you do whatever is necessary to survive, regardless of what that entails. Not only are they not fascist/Nazi in structure, but the Imperium has far more in common with any bronze or iron age polity facing existential threats on its borders and thus engages in any means necessary to live one more day. Or hell just the USSR during the invasion of Nazi Germany with scorched earth tactics. No different from the Eldar killing billions to save a single member of their species or the Tau blazing anything that comes in their path - many surprising options become more reasonable to you when your life is on the line.

Also don't forget that the lore and books (major ones at least) tend to focus on the armed forces and the space marines aas well as most of the "upper" ranks of the universe.

Even the necromunda stuff, which looks at the almost litteral dregs of a hiveworld society, still focus on those who are succeeding in general.

The working class - the lines of slave workers - are mostly ignored as a background element. Mostly because there isn't much to write about when their entire life is basically that of an organic machine. Labouring long hours with only just enough downtime to down tools, eat, sleep and wake to pick up their tools once more. The drudge and hard labour and endless work is basically all they have in life.

The Imperium is still dark; men are still made into skull faced servators; their people are still kept in slave like conditions by and large whilst lords and ladies far above play with power armours and toys the like of hwich are near magical in nature. Heck come to Necromunda where the lords might send down a few of their kids to shoot up the commoners for fun.

 Overread wrote:
Also don't forget that the lore and books (major ones at least) tend to focus on the armed forces and the space marines aas well as most of the "upper" ranks of the universe.

Even the necromunda stuff, which looks at the almost litteral dregs of a hiveworld society, still focus on those who are succeeding in general.

The working class - the lines of slave workers - are mostly ignored as a background element. Mostly because there isn't much to write about when their entire life is basically that of an organic machine. Labouring long hours with only just enough downtime to down tools, eat, sleep and wake to pick up their tools once more. The drudge and hard labour and endless work is basically all they have in life.

The Imperium is still dark; men are still made into skull faced servators; their people are still kept in slave like conditions by and large whilst lords and ladies far above play with power armours and toys the like of hwich are near magical in nature. Heck come to Necromunda where the lords might send down a few of their kids to shoot up the commoners for fun.

Yeah the Imperium is no cake walk. Planetary Governors have total control over their worlds so long as they aren't late and tithes and thus planets can range from the occasional paradise to utter hell on earth where people are worked to the bone and jaywalking gets you sent to the penal colony mine. Ultimately the Adeptus Terra don't care how you treat your citizens so long as you're a loyalist, your planet is comprised of loyalists, and you pay whatever your designated tithe is on a regular schedule. It's actually what kicked off the Badab War too, Huron was taking resources normally allotted for tithes to the Adeptus Terra by his neighboring worlds. The Governors knew what would happen if they failed to pay and, having no other alternative, were forced into war simply to prevent the Imperial axe from landing on their heads when the taxman came to collect.

The Imperium is not the good guy faction, and the ends do not justify the means. It is an obvious part of the setting that the Imperium is evil.It is just that no one else is good.

And I would absolutely dispute that the Imperium is not fascist.
To me, that is what makes it interesting. There is no one to obviously cheer for.

Tyranids are clearly the good faction - there's no oppression, no slavery, no abuse within the swarm. They are simply a beast that consumes on a scale far greater than most, but still just living within their own balance.

True I mean I guess they eat galaxies and they do have no individual willpower and you can argue taht wiping out whole planetary ecosystems is pretty bad, but only from a certain perspective.

All ethics is only vaid from a certain perspective.

 Da Boss wrote:
The Imperium is not the good guy faction, and the ends do not justify the means. It is an obvious part of the setting that the Imperium is evil.It is just that no one else is good.

And I would absolutely dispute that the Imperium is not fascist.
To me, that is what makes it interesting. There is no one to obviously cheer for.

The Imperium is the default 'good guy' faction because it's human. I'm human, and thus I obviously do not find aliens to be terribly sympathetic (especially when fighting humans), because I'm a human too and thus the humans are the most relatable party sans CWE. However heinous the Imperium's actions are, they are ultimately justified because they are taken in the steps of preserving humanity by the suffering of many so future generations can even be born. So long as the end of human survival is ultimately met, the Imperium is wholly just in its existence as the custodian of the species. Remember when the alternative is death, every solution is preferable.

 Overread wrote:
Tyranids are clearly the good faction - there's no oppression, no slavery, no abuse within the swarm.

All tyranids are slaves whom are used without concern for their well being, and thrown in to the vats to be recycled when they've outlived their usefulness.

But be that as it may, that's not really on topic here.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Remember when the alternative is death, every solution is preferable.

Okay, Dr. Leonard Church

I think you may be overegging the pudding on the Nids there.

I get where you're coming from like. But in the background, they're more all parts of a single, vast organism. So it can be said they're no more slaves of the Hive Mind than my fingers are slaves of my brain.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for 'who are the Good Guys'.

Has to be Orks. They just don't have a concept of evil in the way other species do. They fight not out of malice, but because they enjoy it, and are instinctually compelled to. So they're no more evil than say, a man eating Lion that eats someone.

Their entire culture is 'might makes right'. Those they enslave are only enslaved because the Orks were 'arder than them. Any Ork could find themselves in the same situation, and know that if the can clobber The Boss, they can get out. And if they can't, they're stuck doing as their told.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I think you may be overegging the pudding on the Nids there.

I get where you're coming from like. But in the background, they're more all parts of a single, vast organism. So it can be said they're no more slaves of the Hive Mind than my fingers are slaves of my brain.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for 'who are the Good Guys'.

Has to be Orks. They just don't have a concept of evil in the way other species do. They fight not out of malice, but because they enjoy it, and are instinctually compelled to. So they're no more evil than say, a man eating Lion that eats someone.

Their entire culture is 'might makes right'. Those they enslave are only enslaved because the Orks were 'arder than them. Any Ork could find themselves in the same situation, and know that if the can clobber The Boss, they can get out. And if they can't, they're stuck doing as their told.

By that rational, then you could just as easily say that humanity, Tau, or Eldar (or really any of race) if the still the good guys in that they are instinctively compelled to 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate). Their culture is for the survival and expanse of it species. Which again makes every species just as good or evil as any other. I don't really see any sentient being following its base instinct as good or even neutral.

Except the Tyranids. They are only bad guys. Being a super intelligent hive mind and not developing photosynthesis and co-existing within a foreign galaxy for the betterment of all. Truely evil. [/s]

As for the setting, I don't see if being any lighter than it was before. Old Bob and the super marines basically have kept the doom's day clock at 2 minutes til midnight for a couple of centuries. I think it could even been argued that Cicatrix Maledictum caused Imperium of Man has already been diminished by half. Two centuries is more than enough time for sectors to throw off the yoke of Terra and form their own despotic empires or be consumed by hostile xenos. Chances are the space marines that would be sent to prevent that are far too busy dealing with Chaos now if they hear anything at all.

To make a poor WWII analogy I see the fall of Cadia kinda like the Normandy landing and the Cicatrix Maledictum as the rapid push of the western front through France. All the while soviets (Tyranids, Necrons and Orks) and grinding the IoM on the eastern front (basically every where else in the galaxy). The IoM (Germany), is almost pushed back and only now has slowed, not stopped, the advance of its enemies, and now those enemies can strike from any number of locations making consolidating a force to deal with it much more difficult (with the exception of Vigilus).

 Da Boss wrote:
The Imperium is not the good guy faction, and the ends do not justify the means. It is an obvious part of the setting that the Imperium is evil.It is just that no one else is good.

And I would absolutely dispute that the Imperium is not fascist.
To me, that is what makes it interesting. There is no one to obviously cheer for.

Fascism, requires a form of absolute central authorithy.
The imperium has that only in name since the horus Heresey, everything else is competeing power.
Also i doubt even at the hight of the Great crusade the imperium was unified enough to propperly implement a fascisct central state.


Edit: as for the setting?
Sure the Aeldary get a jail out of free card, but that doesn't change the fact that the galaxy now looks like the backside of a rhinoceros.

Quibbling over the definition is pretty tiresome. The Inquisition are very much absolute authority for example.

If you don't like the word fascism, because it triggers you, then we could just say "Horrible oppressive evil genocidal regime".

 Da Boss wrote:
Quibbling over the definition is pretty tiresome. The Inquisition are very much absolute authority for example.

If you don't like the word fascism, because it triggers you, then we could just say "Horrible oppressive evil genocidal regime".

Except the Inquisition doesn't have absolute authority and has gotten their arses kicked to the curb precisely because they thought they were the supreme authority.

And the issue isn't "quibbiling over definitions", the issue is that "fascist" and "nazi" have specific socio-economic and political structures that the Imperium is literally incapable of replicating as a completely disorganized byzantine horror reminiscent of the Holy Roman Empire at its worst with naught even a centralized form of currency to speak of. It's more a matter of actually understanding definitions to properly label things instead of carelessly slinging words around.

 Da Boss wrote:
Quibbling over the definition is pretty tiresome. The Inquisition are very much absolute authority for example.

If you don't like the word fascism, because it triggers you, then we could just say "Horrible oppressive evil genocidal regime".

The inquisition is by no means absolute, only as far as the personal influence of one inquisitor extends and most of the time occupied by dicking each other over.
Infact they have more incommon with the early HRE when the emperor was on voyage collecting tribute. Infact the whole tithe system is basically the same.

Also triggering? Get some manners and go read the relevant books.

Games Workshop writers themselves have stated several times that the Imperium is heavily influenced by early-mid 20th century European totalitarian states. No they are not technically fascists or Nazi's or Bolsheviks but they are clearly heavily influenced by them and this is clearly meant to be a bad thing. To suggest otherwise is baffling.

They even said in the most recent voxcast interview "in these troubling times we must stress they are in no way meant to be aspirational".Can't get much clearer than that.

Fascism and feudalism aren't the same thing, however. But at this point we're really veering towards a discussion of politics.

 Melissia wrote:
Fascism and feudalism aren't the same thing, however. But at this point we're really veering towards a discussion of politics.

I have no if certain people even had medieval history.

 Melissia wrote:
Fascism and feudalism aren't the same thing, however. But at this point we're really veering towards a discussion of politics.

I realise this, I've an MA in Political History.


Apols if comment was not aimed at me but we all like a little brag occasionally.