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Voss wrote:
It also seems to bizarrely downplay how stupidly big 40k ships are, especially Space Hulks. Its another lore mismatch, because we absolutely know there hallways big enough for tanks and large open spaces big enough for full scale battlefields.

A competent gaming group can come up with exceptions around that for different scenarios.

Slight correction to dread their, the options for space marines are, in fact, pan imperial, so guard, admech, sisters, etc are under the same rules (one knight, one agent of the imperium or Votan patrol)

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/01/05/metawatch-warhammer-40000-new-year-new-balance-dataslate-new-munitorum-field-manual/

Balance update, points and FAQ changes are all live.

Wow. Old Doctrine settings is a surprise.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

Voss wrote:
It also seems to bizarrely downplay how stupidly big 40k ships are, especially Space Hulks. Its another lore mismatch, because we absolutely know there hallways big enough for tanks and large open spaces big enough for full scale battlefields.

A competent gaming group can come up with exceptions around that for different scenarios.

A 'competent gaming group' doesn't need to be sold special rules for... walls and doors. Regardless, if your justification is you can just make stuff up, then you don't need what GW is trying to sell you.



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https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/01/05/arks-of-omen-abaddon-is-your-first-step-into-an-even-grimmer-even-darker-future/
Even more grimmer and darker! Exciting. After shearing the galaxy in half and doing... pretty much nothing with that, letting the necrons flatten the warp and driving people mad(der) and doing nothing with that, giving abaddon's forces some extra large boats seems.. underwhelming


"Join the Warmaster at the outset of his grand coup-de-grace" Shouldn't the coup-de-grace come at the end? And mean he's won?

I wouldn't put it past GW to have Imperium Nihilus fall, reduced to a few isolated holdfasts like Baal. They could solidiy the north half of the galaxy as 'bad guy dark zone' while allowing the Imperium to endure and even rebuild in Sanctus. Could set the stage for some cool narratives in the future. I am also keen to hear more about this fine Vashtorr fellow, he seems an upstanding gentleman.

Also, giving out pilotable space hulks which come with a free constant-conflict-simulator* onboard? Abby sure does know how to catch the eyes of Chaos Warlords

*Simulation aspect not included

I love how the fluff talks up Haarken Worldclaimer.

I think he's the Chaos Lord that Abaddon makes the other Chaos Lords invite to their party so he doesn't feel left out.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I love how the fluff talks up Haarken Worldclaimer.

I think he's the Chaos Lord that Abaddon makes the other Chaos Lords invite to their party so he doesn't feel left out.

It definitely feels like a reverse case of "show, don't tell". As far as him being a herald of Abbadon, he doesn't seem to do a great job. It would be better if they highlighted that he was just the most recent person for this position which has high turnover and Haarken is desperate to make sure his head isn't on the line for failing Abby.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I love how the fluff talks up Haarken Worldclaimer.

I think he's the Chaos Lord that Abaddon makes the other Chaos Lords invite to their party so he doesn't feel left out.

It would be hilarious if they played his title completely straight and he was something like Abaddon's notary, going around and literally just claiming worlds, not conquering them. Imagine a pictscreen in the government palace lighting up, and it's just that frumpy guy who clears his throat, dons his chaos-star reading glasses, and rattles of a bunch of dark legalese and basically gives you a notice of eviction All hail Haarken, he who files in triplicate, crosser of all ts, keeper of deadlines, dotter of is, who lets the galaxy run red with ink and those little 'sign here' stickers.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I love how the fluff talks up Haarken Worldclaimer.

I think he's the Chaos Lord that Abaddon makes the other Chaos Lords invite to their party so he doesn't feel left out.

He's the only Chaos Lord badass enough to know how to use a Jump Pack.

Voss wrote:

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https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/01/05/arks-of-omen-abaddon-is-your-first-step-into-an-even-grimmer-even-darker-future/
Even more grimmer and darker! Exciting. After shearing the galaxy in half and doing... pretty much nothing with that, letting the necrons flatten the warp and driving people mad(der) and doing nothing with that, giving abaddon's forces some extra large boats seems.. underwhelming


"Join the Warmaster at the outset of his grand coup-de-grace" Shouldn't the coup-de-grace come at the end? And mean he's won?

Yeah, not really impressed with any of this yet. I was amused they mentioned it as being the most significant event since Gathering Storm, since I can't recall anything about that, though I assume it was what led to the Rift being formed. Then there's the gifts of the Arks of Omen, which seem kind of terrible. "Here's a space hulk. It's about 5% easier to control than a regular one but it's still infested with all manner of horrible things!" I think a "thanks, but no thanks" might have been the best answer from old Abby there.

I wonder how long it's going to take GW to realise that literally none of their ongoing storyline expansion series have had any real impact on the player base. I can see these books sitting on shelves for a long time. I just don't think there are enough players out there who are keen to invest in a set of books with no Matched Play rules in them.

Slipspace wrote:

Voss wrote:

-----
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/01/05/arks-of-omen-abaddon-is-your-first-step-into-an-even-grimmer-even-darker-future/
Even more grimmer and darker! Exciting. After shearing the galaxy in half and doing... pretty much nothing with that, letting the necrons flatten the warp and driving people mad(der) and doing nothing with that, giving abaddon's forces some extra large boats seems.. underwhelming


"Join the Warmaster at the outset of his grand coup-de-grace" Shouldn't the coup-de-grace come at the end? And mean he's won?

Yeah, not really impressed with any of this yet. I was amused they mentioned it as being the most significant event since Gathering Storm, since I can't recall anything about that, though I assume it was what led to the Rift being formed. Then there's the gifts of the Arks of Omen, which seem kind of terrible. "Here's a space hulk. It's about 5% easier to control than a regular one but it's still infested with all manner of horrible things!" I think a "thanks, but no thanks" might have been the best answer from old Abby there.

He obviously needs Vasthor's help to build another extension for his mantlepiece, to store all the Chekov's guns he's collecting. According to the WarCom article, Abaddon't once again sends out his minions to collect 'mysterious artifacts', a.k.a. MacGuffins and plot devices that only ever pay of in years, if at all. At this point his 'preparing' and 'staging' feels like these filler episodes in anime where people just scream at each other and summarize the plot for weeks before anything actually happens. The Imperium is literally ripped apart, the Demon Primarchs are back, the power of Hell flows freely into the universe and Servants of the Dark Gods walk the realm of men. How much more preparing do you need?

His 'long coup de grace' sums that gak up perfectly: a coup de grace is a swift killing blow to a defeated enemy, not whatever this is. I guess the glacial advance of the heresy books has poisoned the mind of the studio people...

Tsagualsa wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I love how the fluff talks up Haarken Worldclaimer.

I think he's the Chaos Lord that Abaddon makes the other Chaos Lords invite to their party so he doesn't feel left out.

It would be hilarious if they played his title completely straight and he was something like Abaddon's notary, going around and literally just claiming worlds, not conquering them. Imagine a pictscreen in the government palace lighting up, and it's just that frumpy guy who clears his throat, dons his chaos-star reading glasses, and rattles of a bunch of dark legalese and basically gives you a notice of eviction All hail Haarken, he who files in triplicate, crosser of all ts, keeper of deadlines, dotter of is, who lets the galaxy run red with ink and those little 'sign here' stickers.

I mean, even the text itself seems to suggest that the Warmaster's daily routine is a bureaucratic quagmire:

The first book, Arks of Omen: Abaddon, finds our eponymous villain and/or anti-hero mulling over his next strategic move following Haarken Worldclaimer’s reaving of the Nachmund Gauntlet. The Imperium Nihilus is barely holding together, despite desperate victories on Vigilus and Baal, and the Despoiler senses that it’s time to tighten his grip and seize ultimate control.

But where to strike next? Abaddon has survived the Long War by picking his fights with care, and so he spends his waking hours surrounded by charts and data-banks and dark prophets, his frustration and battle-lust growing by the day.

 Esmer wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I love how the fluff talks up Haarken Worldclaimer.

I think he's the Chaos Lord that Abaddon makes the other Chaos Lords invite to their party so he doesn't feel left out.

It would be hilarious if they played his title completely straight and he was something like Abaddon's notary, going around and literally just claiming worlds, not conquering them. Imagine a pictscreen in the government palace lighting up, and it's just that frumpy guy who clears his throat, dons his chaos-star reading glasses, and rattles of a bunch of dark legalese and basically gives you a notice of eviction All hail Haarken, he who files in triplicate, crosser of all ts, keeper of deadlines, dotter of is, who lets the galaxy run red with ink and those little 'sign here' stickers.

I mean, even the text itself seems to suggest that the Warmaster's daily routine is a bureaucratic quagmire:

The first book, Arks of Omen: Abaddon, finds our eponymous villain and/or anti-hero mulling over his next strategic move following Haarken Worldclaimer’s reaving of the Nachmund Gauntlet. The Imperium Nihilus is barely holding together, despite desperate victories on Vigilus and Baal, and the Despoiler senses that it’s time to tighten his grip and seize ultimate control.

But where to strike next? Abaddon has survived the Long War by picking his fights with care, and so he spends his waking hours surrounded by charts and data-banks and dark prophets, his frustration and battle-lust growing by the day.

The Dark Mechanicum is so passé, give me the Dark Administratum Nurgle as the patron of the unchanging ledger and the tallyman of all things, Tzeentch the god of typos and miscalculation, Slaanesh who indulges in perfect records, and Khorne to collect his tithe in battle...

Dark administratum actually sounds like ... not a half bad idea actually. For certain a corrupted part of the administratum would make for a nice background for a campaign or story.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Dark administratum actually sounds like ... not a half bad idea actually. For certain a corrupted part of the administratum would make for a nice background for a campaign or story.

On the face of it ''administrating chaos'' borders on slapstick, but you can obviously play it straight into a story about the banality of evil and uncommon forms of excess & corruption if you wish.

Tsagualsa wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Dark administratum actually sounds like ... not a half bad idea actually. For certain a corrupted part of the administratum would make for a nice background for a campaign or story.

On the face of it ''administrating chaos'' borders on slapstick, but you can obviously play it straight into a story about the banality of evil and uncommon forms of excess & corruption if you wish.

Absolutly, but chaos in the 40k sense is not chaos colloqually known and used by us.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Dark administratum actually sounds like ... not a half bad idea actually. For certain a corrupted part of the administratum would make for a nice background for a campaign or story.

On the face of it ''administrating chaos'' borders on slapstick, but you can obviously play it straight into a story about the banality of evil and uncommon forms of excess & corruption if you wish.

Absolutly, but chaos in the 40k sense is not chaos colloqually known and used by us.

True, 40k 'chaos' is far too regimented, restricted and patterned.

Slipspace wrote:
Then there's the gifts of the Arks of Omen, which seem kind of terrible. "Here's a space hulk. It's about 5% easier to control than a regular one but it's still infested with all manner of horrible things!" I think a "thanks, but no thanks" might have been the best answer from old Abby there.

Except a lot of CSM warbands already use space hulks (that still move randomly despite the efforts of band sorcerers and stuff) because they can't get their hands on a real ship and have to make do with what's available. For them, more controllable hulks would be a real boon (and funnily enough, a good way to explain why Khornate warbands don't self kill in transit like most of old fluff says they should). Fanfiction CSM with battle barge per squad sporting pristine 30K tech just aren't a thing, most of Chaos are beggars deep below level of being picky.

Voss wrote:
True, 40k 'chaos' is far too regimented, restricted and patterned.

But when GW tries to play up the '10000 year old champions, each master of different, legendary, one of a kind weapon' a bit more with the rules, complete with more free form loadouts, the loud minority upset their snowflake CSM more regimented and copy-pasted than freshly inducted Cadians (complete with brand new combi-plasma plus whatever melee weapon is the best in X edition spam) starts to whine. Go figure

Pre-Orders are up in NZ/OZ.

The boarding action box has zero accessory sprues. Just straight corridors/pillars/hatches.

What a rip.

And the Ark of Omen book is AUD$98 for 88 pages. They must think we're made of money...

Slipspace wrote:

Voss wrote:

-----
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/01/05/arks-of-omen-abaddon-is-your-first-step-into-an-even-grimmer-even-darker-future/
Even more grimmer and darker! Exciting. After shearing the galaxy in half and doing... pretty much nothing with that, letting the necrons flatten the warp and driving people mad(der) and doing nothing with that, giving abaddon's forces some extra large boats seems.. underwhelming


"Join the Warmaster at the outset of his grand coup-de-grace" Shouldn't the coup-de-grace come at the end? And mean he's won?

Yeah, not really impressed with any of this yet. I was amused they mentioned it as being the most significant event since Gathering Storm, since I can't recall anything about that, though I assume it was what led to the Rift being formed. Then there's the gifts of the Arks of Omen, which seem kind of terrible. "Here's a space hulk. It's about 5% easier to control than a regular one but it's still infested with all manner of horrible things!" I think a "thanks, but no thanks" might have been the best answer from old Abby there.

I wonder how long it's going to take GW to realise that literally none of their ongoing storyline expansion series have had any real impact on the player base. I can see these books sitting on shelves for a long time. I just don't think there are enough players out there who are keen to invest in a set of books with no Matched Play rules in them.

I find myself dramatically more invested in 40k as a setting with plot movement than without. While I feel some elements could have been handled better overall I have been quite happy with the plot developments thus far. If anything I am MORE excited for these because they have no Matched Play rules; I'm not interested in 40ks Matched Play at all so that would be wasted page space for me.

People's opinions vary.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I love how the fluff talks up Haarken Worldclaimer.

I think he's the Chaos Lord that Abaddon makes the other Chaos Lords invite to their party so he doesn't feel left out.

He's the only Chaos Lord badass enough to know how to use a Jump Pack.

And would have sold several times as many copies if he was released as a generic Chaos Lord with Jump Pack.

well, we have seen how a pure narrative ruleset without any matched play rules works out with the first edition of AoS

And I don't know any game system that does not use some sort of matched play
even Black Powder adds matched play rules with the army list supplements


and it is not like we had the ongoing story line before, but GW likes to reset the story back to "shortly before" because their grim dark flair comes from everything is close to the end were the big clash happens and they don't know how to proceed

they advanced the story in 8th to point X after M40 and in 9th we "explore" the time between M40 and point X
if 10th does not go beyond the point we already reached in 8th than the advancing plotline is just a marketing buzzword but not more

Doesn't matter if they move year though. The status quo situation will still remain with "I'll get you next time!" saturday cartoon.

Player wanted 40k be turned from setting to saturday cartoon, GW gave them that.

It might just be me but I find the whole battle Brothers detachment pretty weird. Especially because somehow a bunch of space dwarfs are much better and closer allies to the Imperium than the various subgroupings within the Imperium are. But I guess that it's another of those things that wasn't really thought through.

And, of course, it's amazing that you can have a knight walking with your guardsmen but you can't have guardsmen walking with multiple knights.

 Dolnikan wrote:
It might just be me but I find the whole battle Brothers detachment pretty weird. Especially because somehow a bunch of space dwarfs are much better and closer allies to the Imperium than the various subgroupings within the Imperium are. But I guess that it's another of those things that wasn't really thought through.

And, of course, it's amazing that you can have a knight walking with your guardsmen but you can't have guardsmen walking with multiple knights.

that latter part is almost certianly a deliberate decision to limit knights players ability to grab some cheap obsec point holders and cover one of their "traditional" weaknesses the designers want the faction to have, like SM scouts being moved to elites..

tneva82 wrote:
Doesn't matter if they move year though. The status quo situation will still remain with "I'll get you next time!" saturday cartoon.

Player wanted 40k be turned from setting to saturday cartoon, GW gave them that.

Pretty sure a warp rift tearing the galaxy in half qualifies as more than 'I'll get you next time!' not to mention important character/planet losses. If that's your Saturday cartoon then damm, they were a hell of a lot better than mine!

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Doesn't matter if they move year though. The status quo situation will still remain with "I'll get you next time!" saturday cartoon.

Player wanted 40k be turned from setting to saturday cartoon, GW gave them that.

Pretty sure a warp rift tearing the galaxy in half qualifies as more than 'I'll get you next time!' not to mention important character/planet losses. If that's your Saturday cartoon then damm, they were a hell of a lot better than mine!

When I was a kid everyone watched Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop and Serial Experiments Lain.
I swear there were no psychological drawbacks.

Voss wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

Voss wrote:
It also seems to bizarrely downplay how stupidly big 40k ships are, especially Space Hulks. Its another lore mismatch, because we absolutely know there hallways big enough for tanks and large open spaces big enough for full scale battlefields.

A competent gaming group can come up with exceptions around that for different scenarios.

A 'competent gaming group' doesn't need to be sold special rules for... walls and doors. Regardless, if your justification is you can just make stuff up, then you don't need what GW is trying to sell you.



-----
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/01/05/arks-of-omen-abaddon-is-your-first-step-into-an-even-grimmer-even-darker-future/
Even more grimmer and darker! Exciting. After shearing the galaxy in half and doing... pretty much nothing with that, letting the necrons flatten the warp and driving people mad(der) and doing nothing with that, giving abaddon's forces some extra large boats seems.. underwhelming


"Join the Warmaster at the outset of his grand coup-de-grace" Shouldn't the coup-de-grace come at the end? And mean he's won?

Yeah, I don't think it's saying a lot that this is the "biggest event since Gathering Storm" when the vast majority of stuff from the last few narrative updates have led pretty much nowhere and were overall just forgettable. They hinted at Psychic Awakening being a big thing with everyone being affected by Psychic Events to an unprecedented level, Tyranids were meant to be getting more powerful, Magnus had plans of making an Psychic Empire, blackstone was something everyone was scrambling to get, Orks were gathering in utterly absurd numbers not seen before, and after all that in terms of actual significant stuff it was mostly..... Baal gets almost destroyed but is saved at the last minute because Guilliman and Primaris, and I guess the Ragnar / Ghazghull fight.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
Baal gets almost destroyed but is saved at the last minute because Guilliman and Primaris

Baal got saved last minute by Ka'banhda and Khorne because they feel entitled to the Blood Angels.

"Saved" is a big word for what happened.

The Baal system was pretty much consumed and almost all Blood Angels (first founding and successors) devoured.