Justyn wrote:
I always thought proper Primarch level rules for 40k would be something like:

We each deploy our Primarch or Primarch level being. Each turn they march directly towards each other killing any enemy model unlucky enough to find itself within 6" of said Primarch. When they reach each other they fight. For the rest of the game they fight. On each players turn they move d3 in a random direction still locked in combat. Again each Primarch killing any enemy model unlucky enough to be caught up in the Titanic struggle.

Why? Because Lt Dan should not be able to kill a Primarch simply because he charged and swings first with his hammer and Angron got unlucky with his saves. Primarch battles should be Epic. And yet they never are when i see them on the table. I'm looking at you Mortarion when you got run over by a Baneblade. Or when Magnus died to Lasgun fire that one time. Or when Gulliman tripped on a hair-squig and broke his silly neck. Ok that last one didn't happen. But you get the point. Seeing any Primarch get chumped makes them far less epic.

 Imateria wrote:

witchdoctor wrote:
Back in 3rd and 4th every special character in a codex had a rule that stated something to the effect of requiring opponent's permission to use as was most Chapter Approved items and Forgeworld. This lead to a widespread perception that these units were unbalanced and not properly playtested. In some cases this was true (looking at the dumpster fire that was Vehicle Design Rules) and in other cases was an unfair stigma (almost all Imperial Armour rules of that era.)

While some posters here are pointing out a contrarian view of Special Characters in 3rd and 4th edition, that was the unusual exception, not the norm. They were banned from the Grand Tournaments (the official GW tournies before NOVA and Adepticon) and as such were not allowed in the regional and local tournament circuits whose rules usually reflected the GTs.

Outright lies don't help. I have several of those coedexes from that era and there was no such rule associated with the special characters from the Dark Eldar and Tyranids codexes at least (the ones I've just checked) though several of them did specify a minimum (and in the case of Old One Eye, maximum) points limit for the game before you could use them (Vect couldn't be used in games of less than 2K for example, the Red Terror 1500pts).

I can't speak for the tournament scene of the time as I wasn't playing then, but a friend of mine who was playing in 2nd ed regularly made use of special characters, Jain Zar in particular, as did many of his opponents.

 Yodhrin wrote:
And this is why it was a mistake for GW to make Special Characters the focus of both the game and the lore, rather than opponent's permission only extras meant for narrative games. The idea that stuff like Pheonix Lords and C'tan would show up regularly on the tabletop has *not* been around "since the start of the game". Up until probably 5th edition the focus was very much on Your Dudes and you brought out special characters for narrative campaigns, or "my dad could beat up your dad" joke games, or just for a bit of variety on occasion. Some people certainly tried to bring their favourite snowflake to every game, and some players were willing to accommodate that, but it was very much not the default approach.

40K as saturday morning cartoon where everyone plays along with the story about the Big Hero Punchy Men is still a pretty recent state of affairs.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
And this is why it was a mistake for GW to make Special Characters the focus of both the game and the lore, rather than opponent's permission only extras meant for narrative games. The idea that stuff like Pheonix Lords and C'tan would show up regularly on the tabletop has *not* been around "since the start of the game". Up until probably 5th edition the focus was very much on Your Dudes and you brought out special characters for narrative campaigns, or "my dad could beat up your dad" joke games, or just for a bit of variety on occasion. Some people certainly tried to bring their favourite snowflake to every game, and some players were willing to accommodate that, but it was very much not the default approach.

40K as saturday morning cartoon where everyone plays along with the story about the Big Hero Punchy Men is still a pretty recent state of affairs.

Words of wisdom.
40k should be about YOUR dudes from YOUR chapter/craftworld/regiment. Not about Famous McPresentInEveryBook and his sworn enemy Bafous McPresentInEveryOtherBook fighting it out all the time with their super-friends around.
“Story advancement” should be about the story of some specific Black Library story, or of YOUR dudes in a campaign, not about Famous McPresentInEveryBattle changing the face of the setting by creating the Marinus Supram or whatever.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Not really. It’s should be about whatever you want it to be about.

 ImAGeek wrote:
If you don’t have a draw to special characters, fine. If you do, fine.

 DivineVisitor wrote:

Justyn wrote:
I always thought proper Primarch level rules for 40k would be something like:

We each deploy our Primarch or Primarch level being. Each turn they march directly towards each other killing any enemy model unlucky enough to find itself within 6" of said Primarch. When they reach each other they fight. For the rest of the game they fight. On each players turn they move d3 in a random direction still locked in combat. Again each Primarch killing any enemy model unlucky enough to be caught up in the Titanic struggle.

Why? Because Lt Dan should not be able to kill a Primarch simply because he charged and swings first with his hammer and Angron got unlucky with his saves. Primarch battles should be Epic. And yet they never are when i see them on the table. I'm looking at you Mortarion when you got run over by a Baneblade. Or when Magnus died to Lasgun fire that one time. Or when Gulliman tripped on a hair-squig and broke his silly neck. Ok that last one didn't happen. But you get the point. Seeing any Primarch get chumped makes them far less epic.

That was pretty much The Avatar of Khaine vs The Bloodthirster in 2nd edition, they could duel practically the entire game and sometimes not find a victor and when one did come out on top the other would generally be on its last legs. They are beings that have been in the game for a long time and who should effectively be just about Primarch level. The fact that nowadays we have background where Chapter Masters like Calgar or Dante are defeating them in single combat and come out practically unscathed shows what a sorry state the more recent background material has become.

Would be like a Primarch being taken down by some random legion Praetor.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 DivineVisitor wrote:

Justyn wrote:
I always thought proper Primarch level rules for 40k would be something like:

We each deploy our Primarch or Primarch level being. Each turn they march directly towards each other killing any enemy model unlucky enough to find itself within 6" of said Primarch. When they reach each other they fight. For the rest of the game they fight. On each players turn they move d3 in a random direction still locked in combat. Again each Primarch killing any enemy model unlucky enough to be caught up in the Titanic struggle.

Why? Because Lt Dan should not be able to kill a Primarch simply because he charged and swings first with his hammer and Angron got unlucky with his saves. Primarch battles should be Epic. And yet they never are when i see them on the table. I'm looking at you Mortarion when you got run over by a Baneblade. Or when Magnus died to Lasgun fire that one time. Or when Gulliman tripped on a hair-squig and broke his silly neck. Ok that last one didn't happen. But you get the point. Seeing any Primarch get chumped makes them far less epic.

That was pretty much The Avatar of Khaine vs The Bloodthirster in 2nd edition, they could duel practically the entire game and sometimes not find a victor and when one did come out on top the other would generally be on its last legs. They are beings that have been in the game for a long time and who should effectively be just about Primarch level. The fact that nowadays we have background where Chapter Masters like Calgar or Dante are defeating them in single combat and come out practically unscathed shows what a sorry state the more recent background material has become.

Would be like a Primarch being taken down by some random legion Praetor.

You can thank Ward's puerile writing style for that. It pretty much was the beginning of marines jumping the shark to show how awesome they are.
Well, ok, it was always a little like that, but it was particularly egregious when Ward did it.

changemod wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 DivineVisitor wrote:

Justyn wrote:
I always thought proper Primarch level rules for 40k would be something like:

We each deploy our Primarch or Primarch level being. Each turn they march directly towards each other killing any enemy model unlucky enough to find itself within 6" of said Primarch. When they reach each other they fight. For the rest of the game they fight. On each players turn they move d3 in a random direction still locked in combat. Again each Primarch killing any enemy model unlucky enough to be caught up in the Titanic struggle.

Why? Because Lt Dan should not be able to kill a Primarch simply because he charged and swings first with his hammer and Angron got unlucky with his saves. Primarch battles should be Epic. And yet they never are when i see them on the table. I'm looking at you Mortarion when you got run over by a Baneblade. Or when Magnus died to Lasgun fire that one time. Or when Gulliman tripped on a hair-squig and broke his silly neck. Ok that last one didn't happen. But you get the point. Seeing any Primarch get chumped makes them far less epic.

That was pretty much The Avatar of Khaine vs The Bloodthirster in 2nd edition, they could duel practically the entire game and sometimes not find a victor and when one did come out on top the other would generally be on its last legs. They are beings that have been in the game for a long time and who should effectively be just about Primarch level. The fact that nowadays we have background where Chapter Masters like Calgar or Dante are defeating them in single combat and come out practically unscathed shows what a sorry state the more recent background material has become.

Would be like a Primarch being taken down by some random legion Praetor.

You can thank Ward's puerile writing style for that. It pretty much was the beginning of marines jumping the shark to show how awesome they are.
Well, ok, it was always a little like that, but it was particularly egregious when Ward did it.

Have you read the 2nd edition Ultramarines codex? Because all the absurdity about primarchs pretty much started right there with it’s account of Gulliman.

It wasn’t irrecoverable until the heresy novels started coming out and treating the old legends of the heresy era as literal historical fact, but still.

changemod wrote:

Have you read the 2nd edition Ultramarines codex? Because all the absurdity about primarchs pretty much started right there with it’s account of Gulliman.

It wasn’t irrecoverable until the heresy novels started coming out and treating the old legends of the heresy era as literal historical fact, but still.

 Crimson wrote:

changemod wrote:

Have you read the 2nd edition Ultramarines codex? Because all the absurdity about primarchs pretty much started right there with it’s account of Gulliman.

It wasn’t irrecoverable until the heresy novels started coming out and treating the old legends of the heresy era as literal historical fact, but still.

And the latter was the real problem. Treating distorted legends about events that supposedly happened ten thousand years ago as literal truth. Bloody idiotic.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Not really. It’s should be about whatever you want it to be about.

I want it to be about MY dudes (and ofc, MY OPPONENT's dude).

 ImAGeek wrote:
If you don’t have a draw to special characters, fine. If you do, fine.

I don't like how the codex encourages you to take them while at the same time limiting customization for normal characters, and also all the terrible stuff about them being put in every codex and campaign book and leading to entire setting evolution. But as they were in 3rd/4th ed, extra “If both opponent agree” piece, they were fine!

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

changemod wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 DivineVisitor wrote:

Justyn wrote:
I always thought proper Primarch level rules for 40k would be something like:

We each deploy our Primarch or Primarch level being. Each turn they march directly towards each other killing any enemy model unlucky enough to find itself within 6" of said Primarch. When they reach each other they fight. For the rest of the game they fight. On each players turn they move d3 in a random direction still locked in combat. Again each Primarch killing any enemy model unlucky enough to be caught up in the Titanic struggle.

Why? Because Lt Dan should not be able to kill a Primarch simply because he charged and swings first with his hammer and Angron got unlucky with his saves. Primarch battles should be Epic. And yet they never are when i see them on the table. I'm looking at you Mortarion when you got run over by a Baneblade. Or when Magnus died to Lasgun fire that one time. Or when Gulliman tripped on a hair-squig and broke his silly neck. Ok that last one didn't happen. But you get the point. Seeing any Primarch get chumped makes them far less epic.

That was pretty much The Avatar of Khaine vs The Bloodthirster in 2nd edition, they could duel practically the entire game and sometimes not find a victor and when one did come out on top the other would generally be on its last legs. They are beings that have been in the game for a long time and who should effectively be just about Primarch level. The fact that nowadays we have background where Chapter Masters like Calgar or Dante are defeating them in single combat and come out practically unscathed shows what a sorry state the more recent background material has become.

Would be like a Primarch being taken down by some random legion Praetor.

You can thank Ward's puerile writing style for that. It pretty much was the beginning of marines jumping the shark to show how awesome they are.
Well, ok, it was always a little like that, but it was particularly egregious when Ward did it.

Have you read the 2nd edition Ultramarines codex? Because all the absurdity about primarchs pretty much started right there with it’s account of Gulliman.

It wasn’t irrecoverable until the heresy novels started coming out and treating the old legends of the heresy era as literal historical fact, but still.

That's a primarch though. I can handle those being absurd. What I can't handle are Chapter masters pummeling literal gods and Grand Masters giving Demon Primarchs heart tatoos. That's just...dumb.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
And this is why it was a mistake for GW to make Special Characters the focus of both the game and the lore, rather than opponent's permission only extras meant for narrative games. The idea that stuff like Pheonix Lords and C'tan would show up regularly on the tabletop has *not* been around "since the start of the game". Up until probably 5th edition the focus was very much on Your Dudes and you brought out special characters for narrative campaigns, or "my dad could beat up your dad" joke games, or just for a bit of variety on occasion. Some people certainly tried to bring their favourite snowflake to every game, and some players were willing to accommodate that, but it was very much not the default approach.

40K as saturday morning cartoon where everyone plays along with the story about the Big Hero Punchy Men is still a pretty recent state of affairs.

Words of wisdom.
40k should be about YOUR dudes from YOUR chapter/craftworld/regiment. Not about Famous McPresentInEveryBook and his sworn enemy Bafous McPresentInEveryOtherBook fighting it out all the time with their super-friends around.
“Story advancement” should be about the story of some specific Black Library story, or of YOUR dudes in a campaign, not about Famous McPresentInEveryBattle changing the face of the setting by creating the Marinus Supram or whatever.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:


I'm guessing you didn't actually read the story and are relying on good ol' 1d4chan inaccuracies.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
No, not even close. Special characters were so terribly priced you had no choice to let your opponent use them.

Hellebore wrote:

 Imateria wrote:

witchdoctor wrote:
Back in 3rd and 4th every special character in a codex had a rule that stated something to the effect of requiring opponent's permission to use as was most Chapter Approved items and Forgeworld. This lead to a widespread perception that these units were unbalanced and not properly playtested. In some cases this was true (looking at the dumpster fire that was Vehicle Design Rules) and in other cases was an unfair stigma (almost all Imperial Armour rules of that era.)

While some posters here are pointing out a contrarian view of Special Characters in 3rd and 4th edition, that was the unusual exception, not the norm. They were banned from the Grand Tournaments (the official GW tournies before NOVA and Adepticon) and as such were not allowed in the regional and local tournament circuits whose rules usually reflected the GTs.

Outright lies don't help. I have several of those coedexes from that era and there was no such rule associated with the special characters from the Dark Eldar and Tyranids codexes at least (the ones I've just checked) though several of them did specify a minimum (and in the case of Old One Eye, maximum) points limit for the game before you could use them (Vect couldn't be used in games of less than 2K for example, the Red Terror 1500pts).

I can't speak for the tournament scene of the time as I wasn't playing then, but a friend of mine who was playing in 2nd ed regularly made use of special characters, Jain Zar in particular, as did many of his opponents.

It's not a lie. The rule was in the entry of each character.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Soooo what are those rumours saying for psychic awakening guys?

What do people think is going to be included in the first book?

Why are we talking about special characters and their validity in the game? They ain't going anywhere guys. Let's move on.

 Imateria wrote:
Thats very weird, the version I'm looking at doesn't include that line for Drazhar at all.

pm713 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

changemod wrote:

Have you read the 2nd edition Ultramarines codex? Because all the absurdity about primarchs pretty much started right there with it’s account of Gulliman.

It wasn’t irrecoverable until the heresy novels started coming out and treating the old legends of the heresy era as literal historical fact, but still.

And the latter was the real problem. Treating distorted legends about events that supposedly happened ten thousand years ago as literal truth. Bloody idiotic.

I don't know what you mean. Being able to survive being trampled by a Titan is completely reasonable.

Darsath wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Soooo what are those rumours saying for psychic awakening guys?

What do people think is going to be included in the first book?

Why are we talking about special characters and their validity in the game? They ain't going anywhere guys. Let's move on.

The news about the first release has been so slow. They're stretching this thing out for far too long. I'm hoping there's a lot more substance to the release, and it's more like a Codex 2.0 to match the lead time.

 Imateria wrote:

Hellebore wrote:

 Imateria wrote:

witchdoctor wrote:
Back in 3rd and 4th every special character in a codex had a rule that stated something to the effect of requiring opponent's permission to use as was most Chapter Approved items and Forgeworld. This lead to a widespread perception that these units were unbalanced and not properly playtested. In some cases this was true (looking at the dumpster fire that was Vehicle Design Rules) and in other cases was an unfair stigma (almost all Imperial Armour rules of that era.)

While some posters here are pointing out a contrarian view of Special Characters in 3rd and 4th edition, that was the unusual exception, not the norm. They were banned from the Grand Tournaments (the official GW tournies before NOVA and Adepticon) and as such were not allowed in the regional and local tournament circuits whose rules usually reflected the GTs.

Outright lies don't help. I have several of those coedexes from that era and there was no such rule associated with the special characters from the Dark Eldar and Tyranids codexes at least (the ones I've just checked) though several of them did specify a minimum (and in the case of Old One Eye, maximum) points limit for the game before you could use them (Vect couldn't be used in games of less than 2K for example, the Red Terror 1500pts).

I can't speak for the tournament scene of the time as I wasn't playing then, but a friend of mine who was playing in 2nd ed regularly made use of special characters, Jain Zar in particular, as did many of his opponents.

It's not a lie. The rule was in the entry of each character.

Thats very weird, the version I'm looking at doesn't include that line for Drazhar at all.

 Imateria wrote:

Hellebore wrote:

 Imateria wrote:

witchdoctor wrote:
Back in 3rd and 4th every special character in a codex had a rule that stated something to the effect of requiring opponent's permission to use as was most Chapter Approved items and Forgeworld. This lead to a widespread perception that these units were unbalanced and not properly playtested. In some cases this was true (looking at the dumpster fire that was Vehicle Design Rules) and in other cases was an unfair stigma (almost all Imperial Armour rules of that era.)

While some posters here are pointing out a contrarian view of Special Characters in 3rd and 4th edition, that was the unusual exception, not the norm. They were banned from the Grand Tournaments (the official GW tournies before NOVA and Adepticon) and as such were not allowed in the regional and local tournament circuits whose rules usually reflected the GTs.

Outright lies don't help. I have several of those coedexes from that era and there was no such rule associated with the special characters from the Dark Eldar and Tyranids codexes at least (the ones I've just checked) though several of them did specify a minimum (and in the case of Old One Eye, maximum) points limit for the game before you could use them (Vect couldn't be used in games of less than 2K for example, the Red Terror 1500pts).

I can't speak for the tournament scene of the time as I wasn't playing then, but a friend of mine who was playing in 2nd ed regularly made use of special characters, Jain Zar in particular, as did many of his opponents.

It's not a lie. The rule was in the entry of each character.

Thats very weird, the version I'm looking at doesn't include that line for Drazhar at all.

 ingtaer wrote:

Can we please stick a little closer to the topic of News and Rmours for Psychic Awakening? As opposed to rules from previous editions.

pm713 wrote:

 ingtaer wrote:

Can we please stick a little closer to the topic of News and Rmours for Psychic Awakening? As opposed to rules from previous editions.

There's not much in terms of news or rumours though. We'll get something else small on Monday, talk it to exhaustion by Wednesday and then fill the time until the next leak with OT conversation. This is the result of GW's excessively slow schedule.

Darsath wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Soooo what are those rumours saying for psychic awakening guys?

What do people think is going to be included in the first book?

Why are we talking about special characters and their validity in the game? They ain't going anywhere guys. Let's move on.

The news about the first release has been so slow. They're stretching this thing out for far too long. I'm hoping there's a lot more substance to the release, and it's more like a Codex 2.0 to match the lead time.

 silverstu wrote:

Darsath wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Soooo what are those rumours saying for psychic awakening guys?

What do people think is going to be included in the first book?

Why are we talking about special characters and their validity in the game? They ain't going anywhere guys. Let's move on.

The news about the first release has been so slow. They're stretching this thing out for far too long. I'm hoping there's a lot more substance to the release, and it's more like a Codex 2.0 to match the lead time.

Yeah I hope so but I get the feeling that this is pretty much it- 2 kits and 2 special characters, at leats for now as the focus has been very tight to the banshees and Incubi. Maybe they are teeing up for a larger codex related release early next year though? Did the revised chaos codex come with Vigilus or a bit after? I can't remember?

 silverstu wrote:

Darsath wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Soooo what are those rumours saying for psychic awakening guys?

What do people think is going to be included in the first book?

Why are we talking about special characters and their validity in the game? They ain't going anywhere guys. Let's move on.

The news about the first release has been so slow. They're stretching this thing out for far too long. I'm hoping there's a lot more substance to the release, and it's more like a Codex 2.0 to match the lead time.

Yeah I hope so but I get the feeling that this is pretty much it- 2 kits and 2 special characters, at leats for now as the focus has been very tight to the banshees and Incubi. Maybe they are teeing up for a larger codex related release early next year though? Did the revised chaos codex come with Vigilus or a bit after? I can't remember?