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In my view one of the advantages of the 40k universe is the instability and incompleteness of official records. As a developer I would take that to my advantage and say of past lore "That was all a disinformation campaign" when things change. 40k doesn't need to be a strict and clear timeline, and I think it's wise to embrace the everpresent uncertain now of story telling which may or may not reconcile with any former official reports. Whole star systems are settled and destroyed and whole campaigns may be fought that the Imperium wasn't aware of or lost/concealed the records of.

Between keeping the atmosphere, content, and options of 40k in a constant uncertain maleable texture of possibilites, vs. cutting, folding, stapling, and spindling it for a nice coherent timeline that limits its possibilities and applications, I would gladly take the former where even now a bold planet of squats fights for its survival against a hostile menace.

40k has no reason to take options off the table. It should embrace it's chaotic gift.

The issue is the Horus Heresy series happened and became the go-to starting place for new 40k fans. And traditionally, the Horus Heresy does not work the same as the rest of the setting. It is intended to be a set story with beginning, middle, and end, with (attempted) continuity throughout. Laurie Goulding was brought on specifically to ensure lore continuity. There is no editor of lore continuity for any other 40k series, and certainly not for studio material.

But because of this, it became the first impression new fans have, and so the expectation has become that modern 40k is a "story" the same as the Horus Heresy. It's a horrible thing and takes away from the open setting feel that you're describing.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
If Primaris Marines had simply been Cawl magicing up a new set of armour, and Rowboat making an errata to the codex for new tactics, it would have been a lot better than "Your oldmarines are now obsolete."

Sure, but then they wouldn't have been able to invalidate the secondary market and force people to buy new stuff.

But they haven't invalidated the secondary market.

In a few years it might be more difficult to find buyers for secondhand Firstborn, but that's the same with almost all older/outdated models anyway.

The secondary market that affected GW's bottom line was that any given player could choose from either buying a new GW product or 30ish years of spacemarine players second hand.

A new Tactical squad box competes with ebay, garage sales, second hand shops or hand-me-downs. A Primaris Infinitumer fireteam with Cawl pattern Redundtant Bolt Accelerators can't be directly substitiuted by RTB01s or Battle for Maccrage guys, because its a SPECIAL bolter, and SPECIAL armour.

I wouldn't call that a major retcon. Both changes are bringing Dark Imperium more in line with how the fluff has been presented anyways, and the timeline change in particular is incredibly minor given what 40k is as a setting.

Of course, if the Ultramarines 2nd Company are fighting in the Plague Wars, how did they also end up engaged in the Pariah Nexus halfway across the galaxy at the same time..? And on Vigilus?

It is fully possible to exit a warp jump chronologically before you started it.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Of course, if the Ultramarines 2nd Company are fighting in the Plague Wars, how did they also end up engaged in the Pariah Nexus halfway across the galaxy at the same time..? And on Vigilus?

By spending very little time fighting? "Sorry, it's been 5 minutes, we got to get going if we are going to make the warp jumps to Vigilus"

I agree that a tight timeline creates these issues. The forces have no time to actually do anything before they have to be at another place in the timeline.

jareddm wrote:
The issue is the Horus Heresy series happened and became the go-to starting place for new 40k fans. And traditionally, the Horus Heresy does not work the same as the rest of the setting. It is intended to be a set story with beginning, middle, and end, with (attempted) continuity throughout. Laurie Goulding was brought on specifically to ensure lore continuity. There is no editor of lore continuity for any other 40k series, and certainly not for studio material.

But because of this, it became the first impression new fans have, and so the expectation has become that modern 40k is a "story" the same as the Horus Heresy. It's a horrible thing and takes away from the open setting feel that you're describing.

I wish I could exalt this more than once...

The sheer damage the HH series has done to the background is staggering. For all of the people it may have brought in, warping 40k into something it is not is too high a cost. It is it's own thing. Not everything in 40k needs to be connected to it and vice versa. Utterly, utterly hate how so many little things are like that nowadays...

 Grimtuff wrote:

jareddm wrote:
The issue is the Horus Heresy series happened and became the go-to starting place for new 40k fans. And traditionally, the Horus Heresy does not work the same as the rest of the setting. It is intended to be a set story with beginning, middle, and end, with (attempted) continuity throughout. Laurie Goulding was brought on specifically to ensure lore continuity. There is no editor of lore continuity for any other 40k series, and certainly not for studio material.

But because of this, it became the first impression new fans have, and so the expectation has become that modern 40k is a "story" the same as the Horus Heresy. It's a horrible thing and takes away from the open setting feel that you're describing.

I wish I could exalt this more than once...

The sheer damage the HH series has done to the background is staggering. For all of the people it may have brought in, warping 40k into something it is not is too high a cost. It is it's own thing. Not everything in 40k needs to be connected to it and vice versa. Utterly, utterly hate how so many little things are like that nowadays...

I couldn't agree more.

 Grimtuff wrote:

I wish I could exalt this more than once...

The sheer damage the HH series has done to the background is staggering. For all of the people it may have brought in, warping 40k into something it is not is too high a cost. It is it's own thing. Not everything in 40k needs to be connected to it and vice versa. Utterly, utterly hate how so many little things are like that nowadays...

The biggest problem the HH introduced was not so much that the story should be ongoing, but that the characters that mattered were the Primarchs/Emperor and all that stuff, not the smaller-scale stories like we'd see in Imperial Armor, or even the galaxy-wide stories that nonetheless included latter-day characters like the 13th Black Crusade. I'm one of the people who thinks that the story should move forward in some way... but the Primarchs should have stayed dead.

While I bear no ill will towards those who enjoy HH stuff, I wish it had never been done. That FW had never made any HH models, that the novels were not written. I think the Horus Heresy worked better in the fluff as an ancient boogyman-style downfall without the details being known. And it makes me sad to think about how many models 40k and WHFB missed out on because HH was being worked on instead. FW was actually creating content that moved the story of WHFB forward and was adding some seriously cool unit options. There were books and models we saw previews of, that got cut in favor of allocating resources to HH. It's a stretch, but possible that the entire fate of WHFB could have played out differently if HH was never done.

Hecaton wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

I wish I could exalt this more than once...

The sheer damage the HH series has done to the background is staggering. For all of the people it may have brought in, warping 40k into something it is not is too high a cost. It is it's own thing. Not everything in 40k needs to be connected to it and vice versa. Utterly, utterly hate how so many little things are like that nowadays...

The biggest problem the HH introduced was not so much that the story should be ongoing, but that the characters that mattered were the Primarchs/Emperor and all that stuff, not the smaller-scale stories like we'd see in Imperial Armor, or even the galaxy-wide stories that nonetheless included latter-day characters like the 13th Black Crusade. I'm one of the people who thinks that the story should move forward in some way... but the Primarchs should have stayed dead.

the fundamental issue is that they keep putting Named, Playable Characters in story critical positions for EPIC DUELZ!, but keep having these fights end inconclusively, and because they dont want to kill off a Named, Playable Character (and kill sales for that character). after two or three of these non-events, people start to get tired.

i havent read much of the HH books, but people keep expressing the same problem with them: the Important People keep fighting without results.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I wouldn't call that a major retcon. Both changes are bringing Dark Imperium more in line with how the fluff has been presented anyways, and the timeline change in particular is incredibly minor given what 40k is as a setting.

The only reason shifting these major battles isn't more of a major retcon is just that they did it so soon, before a whole lot of other stuff was written to fill in that period.

Moving these events 100 years isn't minor, given all of the events GW shoved in the last 40 years of M41.

What really bothers and troubles me is that it feels like either way, something massive and important was poorly thought out. Did they not think out the implications for moving the timeline forward, even though it was going to accompany a massive revamp in their primary product line?

If they DID think out those implications, what the hell are they doing now, undoing it? Presumably, the development of the narrative had some planning--was the planning bad, or was the response to the narrative that negative?

It just seems like a massive screwup in the planning stage, which really weakens any certainty that the whole Primaris model line isn't going to be undone/altered/abandoned/sidelined. I collect Orks, so it doesn't affect me at all--except it makes me concerned that a similarly poorly thought out change will hit my model line too.

xerxeskingofking wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

I wish I could exalt this more than once...

The sheer damage the HH series has done to the background is staggering. For all of the people it may have brought in, warping 40k into something it is not is too high a cost. It is it's own thing. Not everything in 40k needs to be connected to it and vice versa. Utterly, utterly hate how so many little things are like that nowadays...

The biggest problem the HH introduced was not so much that the story should be ongoing, but that the characters that mattered were the Primarchs/Emperor and all that stuff, not the smaller-scale stories like we'd see in Imperial Armor, or even the galaxy-wide stories that nonetheless included latter-day characters like the 13th Black Crusade. I'm one of the people who thinks that the story should move forward in some way... but the Primarchs should have stayed dead.

the fundamental issue is that they keep putting Named, Playable Characters in story critical positions for EPIC DUELZ!, but keep having these fights end inconclusively, and because they dont want to kill off a Named, Playable Character (and kill sales for that character). after two or three of these non-events, people start to get tired.

i havent read much of the HH books, but people keep expressing the same problem with them: the Important People keep fighting without results.

It's worse in the HH books since we know for certain what the fates of the important named characters (basically the Primarchs) are. The last HH novel had Dorn and Fulgrim fight but the battle was robbed of any dramatic tension because we know neither of them die. Similarly, there's a scene with Abaddon facing his imminent death which fundamentally fails because we know he'll survive.

I was always confused why GW were so hesitant to kill of special characters in 40k. It happened a few times in WH - in fact, some of the characters there were explicitly dead even when they were first written because they were historic figures. We have 10,000 years of history to play in with 40k, it's fine if we have rules for a famous Chapter Master or Farseer who is now dead. But that would take away from the possibility of fighting a canonically correct battle and we can't have that (while a Daemon Primarch and a Chapter Master fight it out flanked by three squads of dudes and a couple of tanks).

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
While I bear no ill will towards those who enjoy HH stuff, I wish it had never been done. That FW had never made any HH models, that the novels were not written. I think the Horus Heresy worked better in the fluff as an ancient boogyman-style downfall without the details being known. And it makes me sad to think about how many models 40k and WHFB missed out on because HH was being worked on instead. FW was actually creating content that moved the story of WHFB forward and was adding some seriously cool unit options. There were books and models we saw previews of, that got cut in favor of allocating resources to HH. It's a stretch, but possible that the entire fate of WHFB could have played out differently if HH was never done.

I preferred the Horus Heresy as revealed in the first edition of Space Marine. It was not so clear cut, and some of the statements or arguments made for Horus' rebellion made sense. Similarly, the Loyalist position had flaws. As such, it was more realistic as nothing in human history has ever been perfectly good/evil or moral/immoral (even without getting into moral and/or cultural relativity). To me it had more weight. Now we have a cookie-cutter cartoon villain who is all evil and champions a flawed, unredemeeable cause. Oh, it's GI Joe or He-Man, or one of the many simple-minded Saturday Morning cartoons AGAIN, just more violent. The interesting bits are all gone now.

As for the HH books, read the first trilogy, was not impressed, and have no desire to pay GW prices for the several dozen currently existing books. It's even worse than The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. (My nickname for the series is Wheel of Tedium. At least I borrowed the first few of those from the library; with HH I'd have to waste my own money.)

As for worried about Primaris, my advice is don't worry. They've done all this retooling and started marginalizing the Firstborn sculpts and kits. They won't waste that investment (especially the retooling, plastic molds are expensive compared to those for metal or resin, but they last for a long time). Now individual Primaris kits, such as the poorly thought out Reivers, might go bye-bye, but probably not. Duds will be used to fill out the Combat Patrol Boxes, like other "starter army" boxes previously released usually had at least one dud unit. And if I'm wrong and they do kill Primaris and start yet another Marine line, well there's nothing we can do to stop them, so why worry?

Slipspace wrote:

I was always confused why GW were so hesitant to kill of special characters in 40k. It happened a few times in WH - in fact, some of the characters there were explicitly dead even when they were first written because they were historic figures. We have 10,000 years of history to play in with 40k, it's fine if we have rules for a famous Chapter Master or Farseer who is now dead. But that would take away from the possibility of fighting a canonically correct battle and we can't have that (while a Daemon Primarch and a Chapter Master fight it out flanked by three squads of dudes and a couple of tanks).

Maybe it's a long shot, but I'm hopeful that the return of the Markari model represents GW moving towards accepting models of canonically deceased characters. Sure, he's not exactly the most important character in the game, but it still means that every Makari vs Primaris battle is technically non-canon. It sets a nice precedent.

Although on the other hand, maybe the poor guy got retconned to have died during the Indomitus Crusade and no one bothered to tell me.

New Makari was stated to be a different grot to the one Ghaz sat on and killed.

Which completely undermines the specialness of both; but hey!

 Lord Damocles wrote:
New Makari was stated to be a different grot to the one Ghaz sat on and killed.

Which completely undermines the specialness of both; but hey!

Well that sucks. I can't believe they actually did that.

Although maybe that means they can do the same thing with the rest of the Primarchs

There is an option they could do; kill the character, make the model generic. Obviously this wouldn't work with very iconic characters, but the likes of Captain Lazarus, Pask, Shadowsun, most of the Ultramarine characters, Zagstruck, Urien Rakarth, and a ton of others would work as generic characters. Some would even be a way to open up new options; imagine 'Catachan Guerilla Operative' for Sly Marbo. And of course keep the rules for the named character around too, there are a number that are dead but still have miniatures for sale.

Another option when introducing new characters is to simply use the generic model. AoS does this a lot and it works fine; Mr. Bob in the fluff just uses the generic Bobist Captain in game.

 Flipsiders wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
New Makari was stated to be a different grot to the one Ghaz sat on and killed.

Which completely undermines the specialness of both; but hey!

Well that sucks. I can't believe they actually did that.

If it makes you feel any better, he wasn't the original Makari either. He had short stories in Waaargh the Orks! before Ghaz was even a thing.

Grots are inherently replaceable. Its part of the point.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
There is an option they could do; kill the character, make the model generic. Obviously this wouldn't work with very iconic characters, but the likes of Captain Lazarus, Pask, Shadowsun, most of the Ultramarine characters, Zagstruck, Urien Rakarth, and a ton of others would work as generic characters. Some would even be a way to open up new options; imagine 'Catachan Guerilla Operative' for Sly Marbo. And of course keep the rules for the named character around too, there are a number that are dead but still have miniatures for sale.

Another option when introducing new characters is to simply use the generic model. AoS does this a lot and it works fine; Mr. Bob in the fluff just uses the generic Bobist Captain in game.

Back in 5th edition they specifically called out the fact that you could file the names off the special characters to add them to your army, as your special character. So Sgt. Talion could be a RG scout, and Lysander could be any chapter’s first company captain. This was before the whole chapter tactics system was put into place, locking them into subfactions.

There might be some balance issue with overlapping rules if they went back to that now, but I much preferred it.

I hate the idea of canon being applied to 40K. Why do we nerds always do this? We want everything nailed down with absolutely no ambiguity, a timeline with defined characters. We want to make everything into comic books.

I love comic books, but 40K is a different thing, a setting for a game.

The idea of a moving timeline with a limited cast of characters is so boring compared to a deep setting where you create your own characters and make up your own stories.

Why do the nerds always ruins their own interests (comics, wargames, movies…), trying to nail everything with absolutely no ambiguity?
Because they have a very childish understanding of them.

There is nothing stopping you running Ultramarines on paper, and using their special dudes, and painting them hot pink with neon green polka dots if you're so inclined.

There is also nothing de facto stopping you from running your Calgar model as a genetic Primaris Captain either, with generic datasheet rules.

 Da Boss wrote:
I hate the idea of canon being applied to 40K.

Serious question: What is a Space Marine?

A nebulous concept of a futuristic soldier that fights in powered armour.

I know you were trying to catch me out there with a rhetorical trick. But even if we limit it to GW space marines, there are lots of different interpretations of Space Marines. They could be noble Space Knights, degenerate murder-enuchs recruited from the scum of the galaxy, or anything in between.

This is good, because it means each player can interpret them to their best taste. The more you nail it all down and canonize it, the less flexibility players have.

Half the questions in this sub are stuff like "Does X have Y" and the answer is "Yeah, if you want it to!" but people feel constrained by the existence of this canon version that is "right". The less defined the better for a creative space to play games.

I suppose it depends on if you view games _as_ a creative space. I don't, particularly.
They're structured rules environments, less creative than comics or books or even films.


For 40k particularly, the story/setting and the game are entirely separate and fundamentally incompatible. They don't even vaguely operate on the same set of assumptions, and things that happen in universe literally can't happen in game. And the things that _do_ happen in game like Bobby G or Magnus showing up to thousands of trivial battles and getting burnt off the table by idiots with lascannons would be terrible in a proper creative format.

In games, we are the creators. We create our stories, come up with our ideas for our armies and figure out how to implement them. We can make or adjust our own rules and design our own scenarios, and play them out at the table together.

If you are MAKING books, comics or films then I agree 100% they are more creative. If you are just consuming them, as most people do, then in no way are they more creative.

 Da Boss wrote:
...even if we limit it to GW space marines...

There are no Space Marines.

So, you are not really interested in having a conversation then?
Cool. You have won 1 internet point.