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The thing is, it's easy to see what they were trying to do with Primaris. They wanted to upscale Marine models to make them more visually impressive, and they needed a way to do that without having to replace the entire range in one go. So making them a 'new' type of 'super-marine' gave a handy justification for them being larger. But they had to realise that wedging them into the background like that was going to ruffle feathers.

If it had been up to me, I would have made marines more impressive looking initially by winding back the scale creep in the regular human lines. That wouldn't take much... it would have essentially been the difference between the Catachan trooper plastics and the Catachan command and heavy models.

Then, 'true-scale' new marine models by slightly elongating their limbs and torsos. Enough to make them noticably taller than regular humans while not looking completely out of place alongside existing marine models. And leave them with their existing weapons... there is absolutely no need to confuse the hell out of players by introducing 17 different types of bolt weapons differentiated only by very slight visual cues.

As for vehicles... there was no reason to introduce completely new vehicles in order to get grav tanks for marines. Anti-grav versions of the rhino and land raider already existed in the fluff. So just take the existing tank kits and make the track sections modular, with a new anti-grav module that can be used instead of the tracks.

At the end of the day, you get more impressive looking marines, slightly more high-tech vehicles for those who want to use them while not invalidating the tracked versions for those who prefer that... and no need to shoehorn in a sudden inexplicable jump in technological prowess and leave players dealing with having models that look completely out of scale with each other in the same army.

[/armchair business planning]

 Irbis wrote:
If you took a battle barge, filled it with straw, then took another battle barge, did the same thing, then rammed them together you'd still have less straw than this picture - and it would be less of a flaming wreck too

Yeah I'm not entirely confident you know what a strawman logical fallacy actually is, especially when you consider what I just quoted.

I would have probably been happy with The Rubicon being the way Numarines were introduced.

That new organ upgrades had come from mars (they've got 10,000 years of gene tithe anyway) and that new weapon modifications or devices had been released.


This would have kept the current chapters as they were and the geneseed simply added to their normal induction process, or used to upgrade existing brothers.

Tactical, assault and devestator units would then have access to some other weapon loadout options.

But not to the crazy extent they've gone to, with more bolter variants than there are Xenos HQ choices.

It would have kept the marine line fresh and wouldn't needed to have bloated the line - the intercessor unit could just have been released as an upgraded tactical squad with the new weapon models they'd been provided.

The whole thing was way more complicated than it needed to be for no benefit at all.

Bolter Options now far outnumber Wohle other factions unit selections.
Heck there's more bolter options than there are Chaos infantry in the csm dex...

Not Online!!! wrote:
Bolter Options now far outnumber Wohle other factions unit selections.
Heck there's more bolter options than there are Chaos infantry in the csm dex...

To be fair,there was already about thirty or thirty five pre-primaris boltnouns kicking about - just did a quick count on lexi. And nearly as many terminator variants. (OK I kid with that last one!)

Primaris didn't introduce that boltbloat. Gw giving everything a 'unique name/rule' did and that's been something that's been accelerating since at least fifth with ba blood nouns, sw wolf/fang/claw nouns, da darknouns and so on as similar examples of the phenomenon. Previously they were lore only. Same with the old marks of armour. If mks2-8 came out today, I'd expect them to be treated exactly the same as phobos, gravis and tacitus armour.

I actually don't mind some of it. Like, mk2 bolt rifle with its 3 variants I can live with quite happily. Plus they look boss. I just wish the rest of it was 'bolt carbines' and bolt pistols. Those heavy bolt pistols to be should be stripped down carbines or smgs. They are in my mind at least. When I do my assaultercessors, I'll be converting them with foregrips, stocks and extended magazines.

What would people rather have. The three modes of shoting for marines linked to a chapter tactic or a some system of orders given out by squad sergants, or the idea that most primaris units are going to have 3 weapon options, one for assault, rapid fire and heavy mode of fire?


Or better yet. Would people want the codex sm to have an entry for autoboltgun dudes, sniper boltgun dudes, regular boltgun dudes and then the same for hellblasters, eradictors etc.

Racerguy180 wrote:Primaris could've been v1.1 if they'd been teased in the background for more than 1 week.

Now that I'll agree with. Primaris are fine, IMO, and the justification for them is sufficient - but we got the hook, the set-up, and result all in one moment.

Let's say, for example, that Ynnead was never mentioned in previous fluff. Then, when the Ynnari are made, GW say that the Eldar had had this prophecy about Ynnead all along, and this was it being fulfilled. Sure, the explanation is fine, but it *really* should have had more set-up over real world time - but that's a real world time issue, and not one inherently problematic with the story, I believe.

Hellebore wrote:10,000 years to secretly do X is the lowest form of verisimilitude.

Any faction can pull that out at any time and the imperium could do that forever.

I'm pretty sure most factions *do* have those kinds of justifications. The galaxy's a big place, I wouldn't be surprised if there *were* people trying to achieve various forms of development - hell, the Tau and Necrons are a great example of that: factions that have been sleeping/developing either deep underground/in an intergalactic backwater and all of a sudden have emerged to claim the galaxy as their own. Same as the Tyranids, come to think of it!

So, I'm generally pretty fine with "the secret thing was happening in the background" tropes in 40k, given the circumstances.

Tau are, on a cosmic scale, irrelevant, and necron would either be burried too deep to be bothered or if they were bothered they would kill anyone who decided to bother them.

Hidding a legion of space marines, including a fleet to fly them around, is a feat that maybe Alpharius or Corvus could pull out. But not a not top ranking adeptus mechanicus adept, with no knowladge of warfare or subterfuge.

Karol wrote:Tau are, on a cosmic scale, irrelevant

At one point? Yeah. At the current moment? Not really - they have about as much cosmic influence (if not more) than Harlequins, Grey Knights, Custodes, or any other single Astartes Chapter.

With the Startide Nexus, they've spread beyond the Damocles Gulf, and have a much stronger galactic foothold. Are they enough to properly threaten the Imperium or Chaos or Necrons or Tyranids? Of course not, but they're by no means a backwater empire now.

and necron would either be burried too deep to be bothered or if they were bothered they would kill anyone who decided to bother them.

Necrons are awakening at unprecedented numbers across the galaxy unprovoked. They're a galactic threat.

Hidding a legion of space marines, including a fleet to fly them around, is a feat that maybe Alpharius or Corvus could pull out. But not a not top ranking adeptus mechanicus adept, with no knowladge of warfare or subterfuge.

... you've clearly not read anything on Cawl then. Cawl is no stranger to conflict, having fought against Horus' forces on Molech (I think I was Molech?), and faked loyalty to the Warmaster and worked behind his back to gain more knowledge and power before defecting back to the Imperium.

As well, let's not forget that Cawl had direct blessing from the Emperor and Guilliman, his own Ark Mechanicus, and was almost certainly not working alone, likely having an army's worth of lesser Techpriests and menials at his command, like equivalently ranked Techpriests do.

I will never understand this "Cawl has nothing going for him!" rhetoric when that couldn't be further from the truth. If you've not read it, or simply don't like it, that's down to you, but it's explained.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Maybe it's this?

That's hilarious and also spot on.

Deadnight wrote:

I actually don't mind some of it. Like, mk2 bolt rifle with its 3 variants I can live with quite happily. Plus they look boss. I just wish the rest of it was 'bolt carbines' and bolt pistols. Those heavy bolt pistols to be should be stripped down carbines or smgs. They are in my mind at least. When I do my assaultercessors, I'll be converting them with foregrips, stocks and extended magazines.

I don't entirely mind it but they should be meaningful. The heavy/rf/assault split on Intercessor bolters and hellblasters is bad because nobody can tell the model differences apart at tabletop height and most lists end up mathing out and choosing the best one. Reiver, Infiltrators and Incursors are also and issue because they're gimmicks that are kind of meaningless. I like intercessors having bigger bolters, I like thousand sons having chaos fire bolters, I even kind of wish that death guard had plague bolters and GK could give their bolters psybolts.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Hellebore wrote:10,000 years to secretly do X is the lowest form of verisimilitude.

Any faction can pull that out at any time and the imperium could do that forever.

I'm pretty sure most factions *do* have those kinds of justifications. The galaxy's a big place, I wouldn't be surprised if there *were* people trying to achieve various forms of development - hell, the Tau and Necrons are a great example of that: factions that have been sleeping/developing either deep underground/in an intergalactic backwater and all of a sudden have emerged to claim the galaxy as their own. Same as the Tyranids, come to think of it!

The didn't dramatically alter other current factions to do so.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Maybe it's this?

Yes... I think that it really is at least partly this...