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yukishiro1 wrote:


I dunno, it's often the newbies who are the biggest try-hards in any organization, and who double down hardest on the "traditions."

My personal theory is that the Primaris marines all suffer from nagging self-doubt and insecurity issues. They can sense on some vague level how their existence doesn't fit with the rest of the 40k universe, that they are a fish out of water that really shouldn't exist in an IP based on a degraded Imperium that reveres old technology and methodology it can no longer produce. And here they are, popped out of a mold bright and shiny and better than everything that came before. It must be unsettling to know you're breaking the universe that was previously set up. So they try harder than everybody to fit in...but like all try-hards, the harder they try, the more they just end up standing out. Hence the Primario Kart.

That's also a good point.

*Runs out of credibility as a basis for new models for people to buy.

Don't get me wrong, Primaris was a stroke of genius from a marketing point of view. Fundamentally re-do the entire line of miniatures of the faction that gets the most play, requiring these players to basically rebuy their whole army? It's genius, if you can get people to swallow it.

The trouble is that in doing so they've created massive problems for themselves both in terms of the lore and in terms of game balance. With more thoughtful treatment, the lore side of things could actually have been interesting - think if they had really explored that fundamental break that Primaris represent, with the more traditional chapters rejecting Primaris entirely as heretical, while others embrace them, and with those tensions threatening to create a schism like the one 10 millenia before.

But instead, everybody just gets primaris because they need to sell them to everybody. Hand wave some <reasons> and now nobody really cares any more about 10 millenia of tradition being cast aside.

Traditions are made to be discarded eventually.

With an emphasis on the "eventually."

Instead, Papa Smurf shows back up and teams up with Lead Heretic Cawl and throws 10 millenia of tradition on its head and everybody is just like "oh ok, cool, intercessors and centurions baby!"

It would have been so much interesting if they had given the whole thing space to breathe and develop instead of having everyone jump on the primaris and new technology bandwagon straight away because they wanted to sell everybody primaris models, even though it is not believable based on everything we've been told up to this point about how the Imperium and the Space Marine chapters operate. This could have been a second, inverse Horus Heresy if they had treated it with the respect the development deserved. Instead it got a little bit of hand-waving and then everyone forgot about what they had been doing for 10 millenia because it was convenient for them to do so.

10K was too long for anything to have lasted anyway. Sometimes change is gradual, sometimes its sudden. No society is immune.

Martel732 wrote:
But things change. Old tech that can't be maintained or replaced runs out of credibility as a narrative.

The galaxy is sooooo big and there are so many humans that at some point invention is inevitable so the AM must be putting a huge effort into supressing heretical new technology. It would just have been bette rig they were normal marines and a new power armour and gun STC was discovered giving GW licence to upgrade the model range. But I’m sure there no one on here who wants to the open that argument again.....

That approach worked so well for the Catholic chruch. Let me tell you.... I could see the nonsense going on for 500-1000 years, but 10K? We went from stone tools to nuclear weapons in less time.

Martel732 wrote:
That approach worked so well for the Catholic chruch. Let me tell you.... I could see the nonsense going on for 500-1000 years, but 10K? We went from stone tools to nuclear weapons in less time.

But the point is that it did. This was an organization so committed to suppressing change that it did so for 10k years.

Only for Papa Smurf and Cawl to convince everyone in it that they had been wrong for 10k years and to do things their way all at the same time with no significant resistance because <we need to sell primaris to everyone>.

It's just clumsy and transparently driven by considerations that have nothing to do with the integrity of the story.

It's not that the Primaris thing is inherently bad...it's that the way they introduced it is fundamentally inconsistent with everything that came before, and the development isn't treated with the importance it deserves in terms of how it upends the entire structure of a society that had endured for 10,000 years.

I"m saying there is no conceivable scenario where they can keep it up for 10K years. It doesn't matter what GW says, really. I don't accept their BS. So primaris doesn't register to me at all.

Well if you don't care about the lore, of course you don't care about the lore? Dunno why you're talking about it in that case, though...

yukishiro1 wrote:
Well if you don't care about the lore, of course you don't care about the lore? Dunno why you're talking about it in that case, though...

It's a pretty big white elephant. I've had the displeasure of people quoting it to me while playing. I think making the setting a bit more realistic is probably good now that they are playing it straight instead of going with a satirical approach.

There's a difference between not caring and not fully accepting GW's nonsense. There are parts that are cool, but then they screw them up by not thinking things through.

mrFickle wrote:I can’t believe all the vat grown primaris are dead

Vat-grown Primaris never existed.

There were Marines in *stasis*, not cloned, not vat-grown. Cawl was starting the Primaris project in M31 - it's not like he just showed up out of nowhere in pre-Fall of Cadia M41 and said "I know what I'll do today, build a new army with all new guns and technology!" and it was all ready to go by M42. Of course, that's what happened IRL, but that's not what happened within the universe.

When you think that Cawl's been at this for 10,000 years, pretty much has all the resources and authority he could possibly need (Guilliman gave him said authority during when he was acting as Imperial Regent before he got poisoned), and outright has first hand experience of working on genetically modifying Space Marines (via Sedayne), the idea of him *only* being able to create slightly better bolt weapons, slightly better plasma, appropriate some hover tech in the most bastardised way possible, and make Marines stronger over 10,000 years - it's not all that much.

After all, how quickly did it take to move between Marks I to VII of power armour? Within many Marines' lifetimes! Like, there's probably Astartes from the original batches on Terra who saw the integration of Aquila pattern armour and the emergence of the Godwyn-pattern bolter over the old Phobos, Umbra and Tigrus patterns. Those all happened in a fraction of the time it took Cawl to fully develop his Primaris.

also what about the new primaris Only chapter.

Still use Scouts, it seems. And, they're still going to be influenced by the general styles of their fellow Marines - but hey, if you want your own Primaris to have a widely different aesthetic design due to their isolation from other Chapters, be my guest!

And has the production of mini marines stopped (in lore)

No, it hasn't - potential reasons could be a distrust of Cawl (which is still a thing in universe! It's not exactly massively widespread, but there's definitely Marines who don't fully trust him), a surplus of older power armour that wouldn't fit a Primaris Marine, or perhaps your Marines have been cut off, and haven't yet received the equipment to make Primaris Marines.

Firestrike servo-turret
I love tech marines. I like the long range firepower, I'll be sure to grab one if the price is right. Also pretty flavourful for entrenched marines I'd say.

Invader ATV
I guess by namesake it's an all terrain vehicle but looks more for driving through streets. Wish that it could have a twin multi-melta but oh well. Hope the guy on the back has some kind of variation

Primaris Captain
Relic shield. What? 2++? halve wounds taken? Very strange. Seems like a fun alternative to Calgar to me

New Lt
Sure. At least they gave him a master crafted power sword

New chaplain
This is just a scrapped Chaplain Cassius

Judiciar
Would have much preferred a chapter/company champion since I suspect they'll be mechanically similar

Blade guard vets
Sure, at least they also have Mastercrafted power swords. I wonder if they'll have a different load out?

Blade guard ancient
I just love the standard! "has no obvious weapon" "handy" so you're telling this guy is gonna go around slapping people with a bone hand?

Eradicators
Long range melta rifles? Well I guess melta was kinda high risk low reward

Assault Intercessors
Great idea! Should have started with this. Sorry reivers good luck!

Outriders
I'm glad they don't have assault bolters to avoid overlap with Inceptors. I always loved bikes, probably should be a white scars player but white paint

I'm excited for the full kits. Wondering what if any options the full kits will have. And fingers crossed we get a suppressors kit too

yukishiro1 wrote:
Well if you don't care about the lore, of course you don't care about the lore? Dunno why you're talking about it in that case, though...

I don't think it's inconsistent. If fact, I think it's too consistent.

Everything has to have been old and founded in the Heresy Era. Nothing can be actually truly new or newly developed, even though there's lots of innovations, incremental improvements to things, and wholesale new things created during the intervening period [Razorbacks, Immolators, Exorcists, Leman Russ Annihilators, Stormblades, Marcharii, Chimerae, etc.]. Guilliman couldn't have woken up and gone "hell, everything has gone to gak. Well, we need more marines and badly, so you, what's your name? Cawl? Good. You, get to work on developing a refinement to the Astartes Program, I need them better and faster and we have lots of money to pay for it. Get to it!"

Instead, it's a retcon like "Guilliman foresaw the need for more better marines ages ago and commissioned Cawl to make an refined Astartes program, which he worked on secretly without funding for 10000 years and then decided not to declare his project done [or the project finally finished and the hot pockets are done] just when Gulliman came back to life." Because nothing can be truly new and everything new has to be retconned to have it's origins in the 31st Millenium.

Don't all the problem comes from the fact that Cawl is a new OC character. If it was done by some tech priest that existed for all, or most, of w40k history. Or maybe if it was a project started by the Emperor, like lets say the one RG had, but unlike theirs it didn't get sabotaged by the AL.

the idea that somewhere on terra someone had hidden 100k marines, manufactorums to gear them out, energy planets, then replacement parts manufactorums, training facilities a ship building facility. And no one for 10k years knew a thing about it, not even the AL, is bogus and annoying. It is like those tv series or books, where deus ex machina follow each other at light speed and plot hooks are pulled out of stuff that is done off screen.

the rest is what others said. GW wanted to get rid of old marine model line, strike at the 3ed parts companies, but too heed from what AoS was, and decided that maybe a full reset is probably not a good idea.

no wonder so people stop carrying about the lore.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


Instead, it's a retcon like "Guilliman foresaw the need for more better marines ages ago and commissioned Cawl to make an refined Astartes program, which he worked on secretly without funding for 10000 years and then decided not to declare his project done [or the project finally finished and the hot pockets are done] just when Gulliman came back to life." Because nothing can be truly new and everything new has to be retconned to have it's origins in the 31st Millenium.

I wrote a long reply earlier but deleted it saying pretty much this.

I think they shot themselves in the foot by writing some of this stuff down. Mostly in the HH series. Yes it gave us some interesting reads and showed how things got started but it also seems to have cemented how things went or collapsed the wave function of something. Saying "things went to pieces many many years ago but they still struggling on, now with Nids" left a lot of wriggle room to retcon stuff without too much hassle.

The fact GW kept launching new and improved units shows innovation hasn't stopped. The changes we've seen since RT prove that. IoM should be quasi Eldar-Tau by now. Trying to bluff your way through fluff.

I appreciate the larger, IMHO mostly better looking, Marines who appear somewhat closer to the fluff levels of dangerous now and I think they are trying to move the WH40K universe on without AoS-ing things.

Karol wrote:
Don't all the problem comes from the fact that Cawl is a new OC character. If it was done by some tech priest that existed for all, or most, of w40k history. Or maybe if it was a project started by the Emperor, like lets say the one RG had, but unlike theirs it didn't get sabotaged by the AL.

.

Too many of the GrimDark features of the WH40K universe simply aren't practical. Not to mix too many IPs around but it seems highly unlikely there isn't a "District Thirteen" somewhere with better tech than the IoM, and was able to carve out its own empire, like the Tau. They also had an "out" they could have exploited in the form of the II and XI Legions. They could have been the Emperor's backup and rolled out exactly like the Primaris.

Personally I'm just happy that there are finally some PROPPA choppy Primaris.

Too many of the GrimDark features of the WH40K universe simply aren't practical. Not to mix too many IPs around but it seems highly unlikely there isn't a "District Thirteen" somewhere with better tech than the IoM, and was able to carve out its own empire, like the Tau. They also had an "out" they could have exploited in the form of the II and XI Legions. They could have been the Emperor's backup and rolled out exactly like the Primaris.

In real life, yes. But not in the w40k world. talking trees in LotR make no sense either , up until we are in a world of magic rings, elfs, demons and dragons the size of mountains.

It is like with sports clubs, if an old timer hooligan comes and explained why we are suppose to have a cease fire with hooligans of another club it is easier to swallow. Then if someone new came out and said that it is just better for the fight clubs.

The primaris would have been easier to accept, if they were the plan of the Emperor or some well know, to the players, adeptus mechanicus priest. It is hard to accept the world standing on its head, when the doers are an disliked primarch and an OC, out of no where, Cawl.

Except people don't like Roboute because of 1d4chan hyperbole. He's really just inoffensive if you read the actual fluff. Instead we get people hyperventilating "sPiRiTuAl LiEgE" without actually getting context of it.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except people don't like Roboute because of 1d4chan hyperbole. He's really just inoffensive if you read the actual fluff. Instead we get people hyperventilating "sPiRiTuAl LiEgE" without actually getting context of it.

Similar to a lot of the complaints of both Cawl and Primaris in general.

Like, the amount of times I've seen people say "but how come CAWL knows so much about Space Marine biology that even the Emperor couldn't do!", without knowing that Cawl probably has a higher claim in the involvement of making Space Marines than the Emperor, or the oft-repeated "vat grown/cloned Primaris".

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except people don't like Roboute because of 1d4chan hyperbole. He's really just inoffensive if you read the actual fluff. Instead we get people hyperventilating "sPiRiTuAl LiEgE" without actually getting context of it.

Similar to a lot of the complaints of both Cawl and Primaris in general.

Like, the amount of times I've seen people say "but how come CAWL knows so much about Space Marine biology that even the Emperor couldn't do!", without knowing that Cawl probably has a higher claim in the involvement of making Space Marines than the Emperor, or the oft-repeated "vat grown/cloned Primaris".

The problem is there have been whole story arcs about rebuilding the Marines. Numerous ones. Ones back in 30k and in the more modern M35/36 Cursed Founding. Where was Cawl in all of this?

Kayback wrote:
Where was Cawl in all of this?

Just off camera. He was here a second ago, but you just missed him.

Same as all massive retcons.

At the end of the day it's still just a long winded way to shoehorn in a lore excuse to encourage people to replace their army.

But they really could have up-scaled the marine line without all the fuss, and probably done just fine. People love marines, people already buy multiple marine armies, and members of the studio themselves have spoken about how surprised they have been at how well the Tactical Squad has sold. Marines print money, and Primaris are a cynical acknowledgement of that fact.

And their lore and game design stinks.

I painted my first Primaris Marine last night just to see if I would enjoy building an Astartes army. I dabble with a Blood Angel army shortly in 6th and prior to that, Rogue Trader. Overall, the quality of the model is great. Nice detail and easy to paint. I don't like the spots where the sprue meets the model (in the shoulder pad.....really?). Aside from that, I do like the Primaris models as a whole and will build out an army. They can look good on the tabletop without spending a great deal of time painting.

Overall, looking forward to the new boxset.

Kayback wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except people don't like Roboute because of 1d4chan hyperbole. He's really just inoffensive if you read the actual fluff. Instead we get people hyperventilating "sPiRiTuAl LiEgE" without actually getting context of it.

Similar to a lot of the complaints of both Cawl and Primaris in general.

Like, the amount of times I've seen people say "but how come CAWL knows so much about Space Marine biology that even the Emperor couldn't do!", without knowing that Cawl probably has a higher claim in the involvement of making Space Marines than the Emperor, or the oft-repeated "vat grown/cloned Primaris".

The problem is there have been whole story arcs about rebuilding the Marines. Numerous ones. Ones back in 30k and in the more modern M35/36 Cursed Founding. Where was Cawl in all of this?

Did Cawl WANT to be involved? How in depth do we know about those foundings? What facts do we have? There's a lot of questions for that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Kayback wrote:
Where was Cawl in all of this?

Just off camera. He was here a second ago, but you just missed him.

Same as all massive retcons.

Except Cawl doesn't retcon anything.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Kayback wrote:
Where was Cawl in all of this?

Just off camera. He was here a second ago, but you just missed him.

Same as all massive retcons.

As much as I disliked my Bretonians getting Sigmared maybe it wasn't the wrong approach. Heresy I know.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Did Cawl WANT to be involved? How in depth do we know about those foundings? What facts do we have? There's a lot of questions for that.
.

The HH novel about it was a whole novel. True the Emp was preoccupied fighting in the Webway so *maybe* unable to say "Here the keys to my lab, call Cawl" but if he had access to upgraded Marines and the entire Marine program almost collapsed in the 21st founding then logically he should have put in an appearance.

While lack of evidence isn't evidence of not being there it is very Emperor ex machina.

Again, probably overthinking a way to relaunched bigger miniatures.

And no it isn't a retcon retcon but it is introducing things that were apparently in motion the entire time and not referenced.

 Insectum7 wrote:
At the end of the day it's still just a long winded way to shoehorn in a lore excuse to encourage people to replace their army.

But they really could have up-scaled the marine line without all the fuss, and probably done just fine. People love marines, people already buy multiple marine armies, and members of the studio themselves have spoken about how surprised they have been at how well the Tactical Squad has sold. Marines print money, and Primaris are a cynical acknowledgement of that fact.

And their lore and game design stinks.

No, Marines needed a change in terms of the statline. You can keep pretending that whatever you're doing in your locals is fine, but it doesn't grasp the bigger picture. The real problem is CSM not getting any decent treatment.

The marine statline was totally fine. There's a reason that for more than 30 years marines stayed at 1W like the basic troops of every other army. GW's game engine works best with armies that are roughly equivalent.

Marines worked best when they had base stats that were better overall than everybody else, but not dramatically so. Kicking them up to 2W and then effectively 3A each wrecked the basic design of the whole game and has led directly to most of 8th edition's problems.

The idea that they had to be bumped up in power level because they weren't doing well in 7th is a bit curious in light of the fact that there were 6 other previous editions of the game. And even if space marines had been chronically underpowered, which they weren't, there were lots of ways to address that that didn't involve just buffing the base statline out the wazoo.

See I don't mind advancing imperial tech. It doesn't make sense that in a galaxy with races that literally cage stars to power their guns that the Imperial would survive. I don't give a crap how many trillions of humans and orcs there are when 1 eldar titan can snap its fingers and break a world in half.

What I do find weird is that now Imperial tech is all mishmashed and weird.

The tank hovers, but the bikes need tracks. We have chainswords and new bolters, but a lot of our transports are covered in stubbers. Primaris models do vary in design widely and sometimes they appear to just not fit together. The bikes look great, but the quad bike looks pretty bad and not even remotely as if it is from the same game.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The marine statline was totally fine. There's a reason that for more than 30 years marines stayed at 1W like the basic troops of every other army. GW's game engine works best with armies that are roughly equivalent.

Marines worked best when they had base stats that were better overall than everybody else, but not dramatically so. Kicking them up to 2W and then effectively 3A each wrecked the basic design of the whole game and has led directly to most of 8th edition's problems.

The idea that they had to be bumped up in power level because they weren't doing well in 7th is a bit curious in light of the fact that there were 6 other previous editions of the game. And even if space marines had been chronically underpowered, which they weren't, there were lots of ways to address that that didn't involve just buffing the base statline out the wazoo.

Wern't marines the top army in 7th? Free rhinos for days, drop pod assault. I remember going to LVO in 2017 and like 60% of the competitors were playing marines.

I didn't play 7th, so I can't talk from personal experience, but I've heard that was mostly because they literally gave space marines lots of free points in their armies, or something like that?