Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Oh I agree it's possible to create thin justification to get everyone there.

I say thin, because why are Dark Eldar plunging into a massive warzone to take slaves when they can raid any number of far less prepared locations. For just one example.

The point is why bother? It waters down the identity of the battle confuses the positions and stakes.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I don't remember it from any other stories? Only games like Dawn of War.

Black Reach, Dark Vengeance, any of the Imperial Armours, etc, are all 1v1.

3rd war for armageddon, 13th black crusade (the original one), medusa V, just off the top of my head.


All mega events that had every faction then in the game sticking thier nose in, even ones where that made no sense. And those are all from 3/3.5 era.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Oh I agree it's possible to create thin justification to get everyone there.

I say thin, because why are Dark Eldar plunging into a massive warzone to take slaves when they can raid any number of far less prepared locations. For just one example.

The point is why bother? It waters down the identity of the battle confuses the positions and stakes.

keep in mind, they're specificly saying every faction just about has KILL TEAMS operating in the theatre. a kill team is basicly a squad of guys. that's an absolutely TINY number of people for every faction in 40k (barring space marines) I mean is it really hard to belive that in an entire sector that 5 dark eldar got drunk and decided "hey ya know, these tyranid beasties in this sector would make awesome arena fodder!"

I wasn't as familiar with those, but it seems you're half right on Armaggeddon as that's Orks vs Imperium vs Chaos with Necrons chilling.

You're right on Medusa though, that's a mosh pit of everyone. Why? Because it was the setting of a global campaign, thus justifying the shoe-horning in of everyone for meta reasons.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I don't remember it from any other stories? Only games like Dawn of War.

Black Reach, Dark Vengeance, any of the Imperial Armours, etc, are all 1v1.

Look at Vigilus and other "campaign books".

Vatsetis wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I don't remember it from any other stories? Only games like Dawn of War.

Black Reach, Dark Vengeance, any of the Imperial Armours, etc, are all 1v1.

Look at Vigilus and other "campaign books".

I mean in fairness the last campaign book before octarius didn't feature everyone just some that made sense, Imperial armies (mostly admech and knights but sisters where present in the zone eneugh to get mentioned) vs chaos. dark eldar appered but they fit nicely narratively

I consider Vigilus part of the new lore. It's exactly the sort of "this is the story of 40k" direction that I mean to point out here.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I consider Vigilus part of the new lore. It's exactly the sort of "this is the story of 40k" direction that I mean to point out here.

so it's a majorly important world we've never heard of before now that a bunch of important characters end up fighting over. yeah thats a new thing...

if you ignore Cadia, armageddon, a dozen other similer worlds.....

I think you're misrepresenting my argument there.

Where were Tau on Cadia, or Armageddon?

I agree 40k has often focused around named characters, particular GW fiction, but that's slightly different to the point I'm making.

The evolution of Necrons from the dark and unknowable eldtritch menance into saturday morning cartoon villains

Chaos being far less…chaotic.

I appreciate the Daemon Engines and some move away from Just Spiky Maureens overall.

But I prefer the Realm of Chaos Warband approach. The best incarnation for me comes from WHFB, around 5th edition.

Rather than a regular army selection, you started off with a Character. They then had to be accompanied by other units of at least equal points. Rinse and repeat until you’ve spent all your points.

The focus was on power and charisma of the Champions as the driving force, and less formally organised armies.

In 40K now, they’re just Another Army. Gone are the mutations and gifts. Gone are lower level spod followers. It’s all just too organised.

We saw a glimmering of that approach with the previous Dark Eldar Codex, and I’d like to see Chaos reflect that again.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I think you're misrepresenting my argument there.

Where were Tau on Cadia, or Armageddon?

I agree 40k has often focused around named characters, particular GW fiction, but that's slightly different to the point I'm making.

Tbf the Tau didn’t exist when Armageddon 3 was written.

They were involved with everyone else in the EoT campaign, Medusa V, etc

BrianDavion wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I consider Vigilus part of the new lore. It's exactly the sort of "this is the story of 40k" direction that I mean to point out here.

so it's a majorly important world we've never heard of before now that a bunch of important characters end up fighting over. yeah thats a new thing...

if you ignore Cadia, armageddon, a dozen other similer worlds.....

But cadia and armageddon were both well established strategic locations in the lore, long before the mega campaigns over them, so it's not like medusa v or viligus, which were created wholesale for them campaign as critical to hold, and then dropped off the galaxy as unimportant afternoon

I just grabbed Tau as one example of Armageddon, there's also Eldar and Dark Eldar that weren't there to name just two examples.

In general I feel like you're nitpicking specifics rather than appreciating the point I'm actually making.

Medusa is a great comparison actually.
It's an interactive global campaign that brought all the factions together for thin narrative reasons. That's fine, it's a global campaign, everyone needs to be able to participate.

But what's up with Octarius? Nothing. They're just forcing everyone together because they're telling a story they think everyone needs to be involved with.
The new Killteam game in no way needs to be a story. Certainly not a single story.

But Kill Team is largely a narrative affair. So yeah, Tau don’t have much of a reason or opportunity to fiddle around in Octarius.

But tying the game system into the wider narrative does make sense. And you can’t really go leaving people out.

Importantly, Octarius is just a serving suggestion for the two forces in the forthcoming boxed set. There’s nothing tying you or me etc to Octarius.

TBF, Octarius is near two Chapter homeworlds (Chogoris and Nocturne), a major Forge World (Ryza), and two important Guard homeworlds (Catachan and Tallarn). Orks being Orks and Nid's being Nid's if the conflict spills out then large portions of Ultima Segmentum, Segmentum Tempestus, and Segmentum Solar will be within striking distance.
So that's Imperial, Ork and Nid Kill Teams sorted. An enterprising Drukhari Archon might want some prime slave specimens for the arenas, the Asuryani and Harlequins like to meddle so there's that, the T'au could be pre-empting a potential threat to the Empire, CSM could be going for the skulls or glory. 40k is built on thin narrative reasoning, why should this be the exception. IMO the thin reasoning is to allow you to decide why you're dudes are there.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Importantly, Octarius is just a serving suggestion for the two forces in the forthcoming boxed set. There’s nothing tying you or me etc to Octarius.

I agree, that's kinda my point. Importantly, I think it contradicts what you said immediately prior.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But tying the game system into the wider narrative does make sense. And you can’t really go leaving people out.

Is it leaving people out when the Octarius narrative is just for the core set?
Why does everyone's dudes need to be at Octarius? It'd make sense if this was a video game or something where Octarius is all there was. It seems to me like GW is presenting or assuming that indeed Octarius is all there is for Killteam. Which I think is the wrong direction to be taking the 40k narrative.

kirotheavenger wrote:I don't remember it from any other stories? Only games like Dawn of War.

Black Reach, Dark Vengeance, any of the Imperial Armours, etc, are all 1v1.

Literally every large scale IRL event has had every faction present, and for good reason - people want their faction to feel involved.

Armageddon, Vigilus, Cadia, the Plague Wars in Ultramar, Medusa V - it's hardly a new thing. Octarius is just another one of those.

kirotheavenger wrote:I say thin, because why are Dark Eldar plunging into a massive warzone to take slaves when they can raid any number of far less prepared locations. For just one example.

If we're going to use that logic, why should Dark Eldar ever show up at any battlefield, when they can just raid undefended towns and settlements? Should Dark Eldar exist only as a faction in their own game, where one player controls a raiding team of Dark Eldar, and the other controls a gaggle of frightened civilians?

Dark Eldar have every right to show up at massive warzones as any other faction - you just have to justify why, in the same way a Grey Knights player has to justify why their daemon hunting specialists are dealing with an army of Tau.

kirotheavenger wrote:You're right on Medusa though, that's a mosh pit of everyone. Why? Because it was the setting of a global campaign, thus justifying the shoe-horning in of everyone for meta reasons.

And have you considered that's why GW want to do this with Octarius? Making that the new centrepiece for a new theatre of 40k, in a way that Cadia, Medusa V, and Armageddon all have been?

xerxeskingofking wrote:But cadia and armageddon were both well established strategic locations in the lore, long before the mega campaigns over them, so it's not like medusa v or viligus, which were created wholesale for them campaign as critical to hold, and then dropped off the galaxy as unimportant afternoon

Octarius is a well established location in the lore too.

Plus, Vigilus is more relevant galactically than Cadia is right now - or are we saying that new worlds can't become important, only a select handful of already existing ones can only ever be important?

kirotheavenger wrote:Medusa is a great comparison actually.
It's an interactive global campaign that brought all the factions together for thin narrative reasons. That's fine, it's a global campaign, everyone needs to be able to participate.

But what's up with Octarius? Nothing. They're just forcing everyone together because they're telling a story they think everyone needs to be involved with.

The same could be said of any global campaign. GW don't *have* to make global campaigns in the first place.

The new Killteam game in no way needs to be a story. Certainly not a single story.

Maybe it's going to be more than just the Kill Team stuff in the future.


End of the day, lore should be a skeleton which players use to build their factions up from, but when that lore starts being prohibitive ("no, your faction CAN'T show up here!"), then I think that the lore has outstayed it's welcome. It's why I really like that Tau got the Startide Nexus, and because of that, ended up scattering a lot of their fleets across the galaxy. Now it's totally feasible that a Tau army could show up in the Segmentum Pacificus, when they couldn't beforehand, and I like that.

You keep saying Armageddon, not everyone was there. It was just Orks, Imperium, Chaos, and Necrons.

If you don't agree with and think every faction needs to be in every war, fine, but that just wasn't always the case.
I prefer a world of a thousand stories and we only hear a few of them, with the rest ours to make.

I too got excited that GW we’re doing a campaign between Orks and Nids that did not involve the imperium but alas it was not to be.

I suppose it’s a lot of overhead to run multiple campaigns for just 2 factions. Or is it, not sure.

But as Orks have a new codex and Nids might be getting a new one soon it felt refreshing for a minute to think the products might be released like that

kirotheavenger wrote:You keep saying Armageddon, not everyone was there. It was just Orks, Imperium, Chaos, and Necrons.

Shadow War Armageddon? Did that not have rules for every faction in that game?

Also, with the amount of Armageddon campaigns that ran, I'd be surprised if there wasn't some Tau or other factions that showed up.

If you don't agree with and think every faction needs to be in every war, fine, but that just wasn't always the case.

And likewise, there's still stories where only some factions show up currently, and also have historically been stories when everyone has shown up.

Things haven't changed all that much.

I prefer a world of a thousand stories and we only hear a few of them, with the rest ours to make.

And of those few that we hear about, those ones big enough to warrant their own warzone stories, I think that everyone should be free to partake in them.

If you want stories where only a few factions show up, as you say, you're free to make them.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That an event during the Horus Heresy was responsible for drawing the Tyranids to the Milky Way galaxy.

Oh no, is that a thing?

Sadly yes.
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Pharos_(Device)

I haven't kept up with the new fluff. In general, I like to DIY my game settings and lore - the official lore doesn't really matter to me. And IMO most of the GW lore that I have been exposed to is pretty weak, and kinda childish.

Overall, I preferred the 1st edition lore, which was much more open than the current stuff, in which everything is more or less "discovered" already.

Grav Tanks.

Not Primaris as a whole, they're pretty meh lore wise, but whatever, at least the models look cool. The Grav tanks changed tanks that looks cool and could pass as real tanks (so long as your knowledge of tanks is firmly based in pop culture) to tanks that looked dumb AND made no sense. Okay, so you can float, that does have some niche advantages, but you're certainly going to take a harder hit when you're shot because physics are a thing, and also why are there no guards on your grav generators, loose one and you're dead in the water.

Aparently one of the strenghts of 40k to a very vocal part of the fanbase is the lack of logic... Actual physics are anathema for them... The bigger and dumbmer a concept the better... So primaris grav tanks must be excelent.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
And likewise, there's still stories where only some factions show up currently, and also have historically been stories when everyone has shown up.

Can you name some? I honestly can't think of any where everyone shows up.

I can't think of a way it could be done well, either.

Lord Zarkov wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I think you're misrepresenting my argument there.

Where were Tau on Cadia, or Armageddon?

I agree 40k has often focused around named characters, particular GW fiction, but that's slightly different to the point I'm making.

Tbf the Tau didn’t exist when Armageddon 3 was written.

They were involved with everyone else in the EoT campaign, Medusa V, etc

During the Eye of Terror campaign, the Tau were in their own area separate from everybody else who were busy in the Cadian Gate.

They were so on their own that they were largely ignored by everybody else, which led to the background of the eastern Fringe being stripped of resources by the Imperium in order to reinforce the Gate, and the Tau being able to take advantage of that weakness during the Third Sphere Expansion.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

kirotheavenger wrote:You keep saying Armageddon, not everyone was there. It was just Orks, Imperium, Chaos, and Necrons.

Shadow War Armageddon? Did that not have rules for every faction in that game?

Only the Marines, Guard, and Orks are narratively present in Acheron where Shadow War Armageddon is set.

The framing for all of the other factions in the rulebook is 'The battles that rage through Acheron’s sprawling underhive are but a drop in the ocean of clandestine campaigns that ravage the Imperium. Armageddon is a single planet in a vast galaxy, and every hive world, promethium colony and mining station can quickly become enshrouded in a shadow war' (pg.114).

Vatsetis wrote:
Aparently one of the strenghts of 40k to a very vocal part of the fanbase is the lack of logic... Actual physics are anathema for them...

Would you care to show the class how the physics of psychic powers work? The Warp? Daemons?

Maybe physics as we know it just isn't a feature in 40k - after all, I thought we were all aware this is an illogical setting?

Vatsetis wrote:
Aparently one of the strenghts of 40k to a very vocal part of the fanbase is the lack of logic... Actual physics are anathema for them... The bigger and dumbmer a concept the better... So primaris grav tanks must be excelent.

Sure it’s sci fi fantasy, the science is beyond even the understanding of the characters in the game, mostly, so we accept that some amazing science has delivered these improbable machines and concepts. We don’t need to try and get behind the science like in star trek

But if you are going to free your self from science then your concepts need to be great. And if the best someone can do is going from “it’s got wheels” to “it floats” then that not imaginative enough for me to get excited about.

But a massive cathedral on legs? We need more of that kind of imagination

Voss wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
And likewise, there's still stories where only some factions show up currently, and also have historically been stories when everyone has shown up.

Can you name some? I honestly can't think of any where everyone shows up.

Dawn of War features that in Soulstorm (I think?).
Medusa V had every faction present.
The Plague Wars had everyone present.
I *believe* that the 13th Black Crusade had everyone around, even Tau.
Nearly any "narrative" campaign that GW ran at WHW was explicitly open to all factions.
And, as I said, Shadow War: Armageddon had unit packs for all factions in the game at the time.

I can't think of a way it could be done well, either.

I think it sure could - just pick a sufficiently large and vital region (like a sub-sector of space, perhaps), and just provide enough reasons to be there - but considering this is 40k, that's not difficult for many factions.