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 Overread wrote:
It's a bit of an unfair comparison considering one is a stand alone novel and the other was a novel released right alongside a new launch edition of the game as a companion product. If anything putting things in Skaventide that are not in the box/game would be more of a mistake since the books sort of paired up super close too it.


Heck I recall when there were naga and sea seaserpents in Sylvaneth and a whole undersea world that they added to one of the novels as a short element. A concept that probably was somewhere in GW's background at the time when they were alla bout micro-armies and such; but which has never come to fruition in the game.

But that's the point, the novels have shifted from a product on their own, to supporting marketing collateral and thus occupy a completely different space. The difference you see as an unfair comparison is exactly the point. The unfairness isn't the comparison, it's that GW changed how the books work so that comparison is now so obvious.


GW won't let a stand alone novel with too much world building get produced anymore, unless it also has accompanying models to sell. Their novels used to be a product unto themselves, now they're just a long poster for a toy. You can see how this evolved with the HH novels. Their first few were speculative, world building. but then they produced models and a game and over the last 20 years the novels now connect more and more to the products.

Fiction driven sales vs product support driven sales have changed how they get novels written. For the worse in my opinion.

I think it depends which novels you read - the AoS ones still have a tonne of stuff that isn't appearing as a model. Cities of Sigmar in the stories is full hard core steam punk - tabletop wise they really only have the CogFort. The rest is honestly almost pre-steampunk era (a lot of their guns are more primitive in design than even Empire guns from Old World).


This is an issue because if fans connect more with the books and come through that gateway into Warhammer but then can't find that steam punk army; or that naga based undersea army; or that Asia inspired army with dragon leaders - suddenly their hook is lost.
Plus fans who ARE in the setting already read those books and instantly go "Ohh so maybe GW will make X". Some of us are STILL waiting for Exodites which so far have not had a single model in 40K (perhaps barring one or two in the Rogue Trader days?); and from what I recall have had a couple of models (and a few concepts) in Epic and that's it.



So on one front GW creating fantasy outside of product creates hooks and temptations that people want and don't get.

At the same time I also love when the books do that because it does help deepen the setting. It does flesh out the world; create interests and so forth



I think its a no win on either front. IF GW make models of everything in books and only put in books what they make models of they lose some free imagination in the setting; but gain hooks that make people happy.

In a sense you kind of want separation; but its also impossible to actually have.

AoS demonstrates the point though, because it's been at that pre-product state for ages relying on old WFB models to sell.

They were using the novels to help world build because they didn't already have one. But now they're shifting to that novel per faction schtick.

The expectation that if it's described it has to have models is also a relatively new phenomenon.

Back in the early days of Dakka and Portent we would discuss these snippets just for their own sake, obviously saying it would be great to see models but also just talking about the scale of snippets and extra stuff that's out there.

Exodites are a little different in that they actually had 40k stats and epic preproduction models. So they were closer to a model release than say the 'quiescent perils of the c'tan', the only mention of the c'tan until the callidus phase sword and then much later the 3rd ed codex necrons.

Ghoul Stars are still a thing, right?

I think its also about catering to less "creative" minds and shorter attention spans, the target audience of today. A Timmy from 1991 is a completely different Timmy than a Timmy from 2026. You gotta have stuff that you can buy straight away, and get cracking with, and you need to have a list for what colour to use etc. Introducing stuff that leaves your imagination to run wild wont be conductive to getting sales from such Timmys (or rather, their single moms who apparently are the biggest buyers of GW products)

 Overread wrote:
It's a bit of an unfair comparison considering one is a stand alone novel and the other was a novel released right alongside a new launch edition of the game as a companion product. If anything putting things in Skaventide that are not in the box/game would be more of a mistake since the books sort of paired up super close too it.


Heck I recall when there were naga and sea seaserpents in Sylvaneth and a whole undersea world that they added to one of the novels as a short element. A concept that probably was somewhere in GW's background at the time when they were alla bout micro-armies and such; but which has never come to fruition in the game.

So the funny part about this is that Eisenhorn was also a tie-in product. It was written to tie in with the Inquisitor game release- Abnett was shown an early version of the game in development. You can see links like the discussion of the new Inquisitorial philosophies.

The fact it isn't obvious rather underlines the original point.

 tauist wrote:
I think its also about catering to less "creative" minds and shorter attention spans, the target audience of today. A Timmy from 1991 is a completely different Timmy than a Timmy from 2026. You gotta have stuff that you can buy straight away, and get cracking with, and you need to have a list for what colour to use etc. Introducing stuff that leaves your imagination to run wild wont be conductive to getting sales from such Timmys (or rather, their single moms who apparently are the biggest buyers of GW products)

Which is little different to how it was in the olden days.

Yes, the painting guides have gotten better. Yes, the advent of Contrast and a bit of slapchop has lowered the skill barrier to reasonably painted models.

But in the olden days? Painting Guides did exist, they just lacked detail. And if you had a GW Store nearby, they’d do you a free painting lesson on pretty much anything,

That support and easing the path in has always existed. It’s just done much better these days. And there’s still constant encouragement to hone your skills, be that modelling, playing, painting or what have you.

 Haighus wrote:
So the funny part about this is that Eisenhorn was also a tie-in product. It was written to tie in with the Inquisitor game release- Abnett was shown an early version of the game in development. You can see links like the discussion of the new Inquisitorial philosophies.

The fact it isn't obvious rather underlines the original point.

I think without prompting most people probably forget (or never knew) Inquisitor ever existed.

Tyel wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
So the funny part about this is that Eisenhorn was also a tie-in product. It was written to tie in with the Inquisitor game release- Abnett was shown an early version of the game in development. You can see links like the discussion of the new Inquisitorial philosophies.

The fact it isn't obvious rather underlines the original point.

I think without prompting most people probably forget (or never knew) Inquisitor ever existed.

Yeah you don't even see models if it appear all that often anywhere and that scale of gaming has ever strongly taken off. Heck I'd argue that Confrontation Last Argument of Kings is probably the biggest larger-scale game and that's only at 40mm and even that stands out a lot in the market. Even bigger scale models are typically in the art/painting/collection bracket. I have seen a few games at conventions over the last few years trying to kick off games in those scales; the models always look very cool but to me its somewhat telling that every time I see one of those booths they only have models on display.

There's no terrain, table, game on show; just big models and potential for a game.

You are old. You are no longer GW’s target commercial audience. GW’s target audience has not experienced the kind of storytelling you’re talking about, has different expectations, discovered Warhammer 40K through meme culture, which has amplified the caricature-like aspects at the expense of "grandeur", and is used to getting answers to mysteries.

Nothing new under the sun.

 Overread wrote:
Yeah you don't even see models if it appear all that often anywhere and that scale of gaming has ever strongly taken off. Heck I'd argue that Confrontation Last Argument of Kings is probably the biggest larger-scale game and that's only at 40mm and even that stands out a lot in the market. Even bigger scale models are typically in the art/painting/collection bracket. I have seen a few games at conventions over the last few years trying to kick off games in those scales; the models always look very cool but to me its somewhat telling that every time I see one of those booths they only have models on display.

I'd imagine the need to (at least in theory) build terrain to fit the 54mm scale was something of a burden.
But IIRC the main problem with Inquisitor is that it was exactly the sort of game GW have wanted to make but there's seemingly not much of an audience for.
I.E. There was no points. You are meant to just try and invent a fair scenario - and keep it fair by playing for narrative/RPG results rather than just killing the other player. The moment you approached it as a competitive game where you were aiming to win it fell over.

This all added up to it being more fun to read the Inquisitor battle reports/scenarios in the Inferno! magazine than it was to actually play.
After it was released in 2001 I think GW put a reasonable amount of effort marketing/selling the game for about 18-24 months. Then it went onto life support and after about 2005 it had functionally ceased to exist.

It lives on as a 28mm game, or whatever scale 40k is now, with necro terrain and similar doing a lot of work.

Honestly though why you would want to play that and not confrontation from white dwarf is beyond me

Selfcontrol wrote:
You are old. You are no longer GW’s target commercial audience. GW’s target audience has not experienced the kind of storytelling you’re talking about, has different expectations, discovered Warhammer 40K through meme culture, which has amplified the caricature-like aspects at the expense of "grandeur", and is used to getting answers to mysteries.

Nothing new under the sun.

This is the sad truth. I'm probably going to stop "following" the background soon because it doesn't make me happy to do so any more. But it's fine anyway, there's enough great stuff in the older background that I'll never run out, and in any case I'd rather be making up my own stuff than taking what's given to me by GW (or WOTC, or whoever else).

I do miss the mystery of the older days, but you just can't recreate that in the modern world. All we had were whatever books we could get locally, and there was no way to find anything else out without word of mouth. So we could have these long discussions over the implications of a little bit of boxed text in a 40K rulebook because we couldn't find "the answer" quickly. I found the same thing with comic books back then - we would buy boxes of old american comics second hand, and the collections would have gaps in them and so on. And there'd be these little boxes saying "See Aquaman issue 98" or whatever, and we didn't have that or any way to get it, so we'd have to speculate about what might have happened. Or when there was a few issue gap in our collection, we'd have to discuss what we thought happened. Those are my fondest memories of being into comics as a kid. And you were so excited to get a new rulebook or find a comic you hadn't read.

Nowadays, if you want that information and it exists, it's trivially easy to find it. And you don't even have to find it yourself - there'll be someone on youtube who does that for you, and summarizes it for you and then tells you all about it so you don't even have to read anything yourself. It's turned all of these nerdy niches into something else entirely for me. And I think a lot of my fellow nerds get a sense of satisfaction and comfort from obsessively cataloguing every detail and making sure it's all correct, so it's all up on a wiki somewhere and people are very quick to come in and correct any discussion of possibilities with the "right answer" if it exists. So even discussions have a very different character nowadays with people mostly coming in looking for sources, quotes, screenshots and to either be told or to tell others what is true and correct rather than to speculate. I find speculation a lot more fun and creative, so discussion the background is just a bit depressing for me now.

This is the sad truth. I'm probably going to stop "following" the background soon because it doesn't make me happy to do so any more.

This generational difference is also reflected in the way GW approaches its universe. We have moved from a fixed universe in which past stories are told (where a bit of mystery can be kept since they happened a long time ago), to a living, evolving story and universe in motion (which needs explanations). The style of narration has therefore changed completely, but from what I see of mainstream popular culture, it seems to align with the expectations of newer generations (until the next generational shift).

Like you, I don’t really connect with this type of storytelling (for 40K anyway), and I largely stopped following the lore after the end of 8th. And it's fine. I still have lots of fond memories from the past and I don't mind aging. It's just life.

My only criticism of GW is its decision to connect almost everything in 40K to the Horus Heresy. The final straw for me was the role attributed to the Pharos in the Tyranids arrival. It's downright moronic.

But the Astronomican drawing the Tyranids to the Milky Way has been in the lore for decades. At least as one of the potential story hooks (others mostly are "drifting tyranids roaming and aimlessly wandering into the galaxy; or fleeing from some even greater threat, though that last one is more fan/throwaway comment theory).

Shifting it to the Pharos being the trigger and then the Astronomican being a continual lighthouse lure isn't really changing the lore all that much since its all set in the 30K era.

The 40K lore has been gotten worse for a long time, but bringing back the loyalist primarchs was a step too far for me. It just ruined the setting. So these day I try not pay much attention to the official lore any more, as the headcanon is the only way I can keep enjoying the setting.

 Overread wrote:
But the Astronomican drawing the Tyranids to the Milky Way has been in the lore for decades. At least as one of the potential story hooks (others mostly are "drifting tyranids roaming and aimlessly wandering into the galaxy; or fleeing from some even greater threat, though that last one is more fan/throwaway comment theory).

Shifting it to the Pharos being the trigger and then the Astronomican being a continual lighthouse lure isn't really changing the lore all that much since its all set in the 30K era.

It's not a retcon per se, but it's another instance of something which stands perfectly well on its own becoming yet another consequence of the Horus Heresy. Which if you're already not a fan of how the forgotten time of myth and legend has been wrung dry in excruciating detail, just magnifies the annoyance.

Selfcontrol wrote:

This is the sad truth. I'm probably going to stop "following" the background soon because it doesn't make me happy to do so any more.

This generational difference is also reflected in the way GW approaches its universe. We have moved from a fixed universe in which past stories are told (where a bit of mystery can be kept since they happened a long time ago), to a living, evolving story and universe in motion (which needs explanations). The style of narration has therefore changed completely, but from what I see of mainstream popular culture, it seems to align with the expectations of newer generations (until the next generational shift).

Like you, I don’t really connect with this type of storytelling (for 40K anyway), and I largely stopped following the lore after the end of 8th. And it's fine. I still have lots of fond memories from the past and I don't mind aging. It's just life.

My only criticism of GW is its decision to connect almost everything in 40K to the Horus Heresy. The final straw for me was the role attributed to the Pharos in the Tyranids arrival. It's downright moronic.

Ironically, this is why I increasingly favour Horus Heresy instead.

Because it's set in a fixed time span, GW can explore it sideways and depthways, but can't really extend it. They can move into the Scouring if they want (though they might not, apparently Ashes of Imperium didn't sell to expectations), but 005.M31 was when the Heresy started and 014.M31 was when it ended, and that is set in stone unless GW wants to go very bold with the retcons!

I think part of the problem is that the old lore had reached numbing levels of grimdark where no matter what you did with it, it was pretty hard to keep hitting with the kind of impact that made it stand out. A trillion souls wiped out to stop an Eldar couple from having a second child? Yeah, sure, sounds like a Tuesday.

I'm a little numb to these things being a comic book fan. The reality is that fiction is really only impactful in relation to the time it was written. A lot of 40k's impact was how it recognized the darkness in more optimistic times. The appeal isn't quite the same as it was a few decades ago, particularly for generations less familiar with the 80s.

Self Control: Again, really agree. As catbarf says, it's the drive to link EVERYTHING to the Horus Heresy that turns me off - like making Armageddon into Ullanor, just awful, terrible background. I can't believe they actually did that.

But it certainly is about aging out of the fandom for me. I think it's better to just leave it to people who enjoy it without rancor. There's some cool people here on Dakka who like the current background and it's no fun getting annoyed at their takes when they're nice and it's so inconsequential, but I really do get upset about it which is dumb.

That said, I'm not going to stop being interested in the fictional universe and the stuff I have. I hope to be playing games and painting stuff for years yet. But the era when I bought Black Library books regularly, always bought the new edition or was excited to read new codices when they came out is gone. I've also deflated on watching "Lore" videos on youtube, even from channels I previously enjoyed like Arbitor Ian.

I reckon it's all normal stuff, but hey, this is a discussion forum so worth talking about for the sake of it.

 Overread wrote:

Tyel wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
So the funny part about this is that Eisenhorn was also a tie-in product. It was written to tie in with the Inquisitor game release- Abnett was shown an early version of the game in development. You can see links like the discussion of the new Inquisitorial philosophies.

The fact it isn't obvious rather underlines the original point.

I think without prompting most people probably forget (or never knew) Inquisitor ever existed.

Yeah you don't even see models if it appear all that often anywhere and that scale of gaming has ever strongly taken off. Heck I'd argue that Confrontation Last Argument of Kings is probably the biggest larger-scale game and that's only at 40mm and even that stands out a lot in the market. Even bigger scale models are typically in the art/painting/collection bracket. I have seen a few games at conventions over the last few years trying to kick off games in those scales; the models always look very cool but to me its somewhat telling that every time I see one of those booths they only have models on display.

There's no terrain, table, game on show; just big models and potential for a game.

I don't think that is particularly relevant here. How many people will remember the Skaventide starter boxset in 20+ years? There will probably be a dozen plus new starters by then. How many people who even played 40k around the time of Inquisitor launching remember the 3rd edition starter boxset name today?

The point is that Eisenhorn didn't feel like a product box blurb stretched into a book, but it was a tie-in product.

 Overread wrote:
But the Astronomican drawing the Tyranids to the Milky Way has been in the lore for decades. At least as one of the potential story hooks (others mostly are "drifting tyranids roaming and aimlessly wandering into the galaxy; or fleeing from some even greater threat, though that last one is more fan/throwaway comment theory).

Shifting it to the Pharos being the trigger and then the Astronomican being a continual lighthouse lure isn't really changing the lore all that much since its all set in the 30K era.

What you're saying isn't true. The theory (which was only speculation put forward by Imperial scholars) was that the Astronomican was drawing the Tyranid hive fleets already present in the galaxy specifically toward Terra. The origin of the Tyranid invasion was completely unknown, with other Imperial scholars proposing various speculative theories, ranging from the Tyranids fleeing from an even more dangerous enemy to the possibility that this is simply what the Tyranids have been doing since time immemorial.

In short, there was no definitive answer regarding the Tyranids origin. That fit both the grimdark nature of 40K and its sense of mystery, while also showing that the Horus Heresy was not the alpha and omega of everything that had happened. The Tyranid invasion was an independent event that stood perfectly well on its own, as catbarf said.

What I particularly appreciated about this old approach to the lore (both mysterious and centered on a largely static setting) is that it allowed for the creation of many compelling stories that are very different from one another (because they either happened a long time ago or were so small in the face of a whole galaxy that they didn't matter in the grand scheme of things), while also stimulating the reader's imagination. That's why I loved reading the old Forge World books such as The Anphelion Project, as well as the Dark Heresy books (despite never having played a single game of Dark Heresy myself !).

Not everything needs an explanation, not everything needs to make an impact on the larger setting. I always loved self-contained stories. And also, some of the most fascinating aspects of 40K were always, to me, the unanswered questions. Leaving room for mystery makes the universe feel larger, older, and more believable, because it suggests that neither the characters nor the audience can ever fully grasp everything that exists within it.

Self Control: Again, really agree. As catbarf says, it's the drive to link EVERYTHING to the Horus Heresy that turns me off - like making Armageddon into Ullanor, just awful, terrible background. I can't believe they actually did that.

I do not thank you for reminding me Armageddon terrible canonical background. Holy gak

Selfcontrol wrote:
You are old. You are no longer GW’s target commercial audience. GW’s target audience has not experienced the kind of storytelling you’re talking about, has different expectations, discovered Warhammer 40K through meme culture, which has amplified the caricature-like aspects at the expense of "grandeur", and is used to getting answers to mysteries.

Nothing new under the sun.

It's a bit of a chicken or an egg thing, is it the expectation of generations, or the push from marketing that creates the expectation. I lean toward the latter.

Just as various trends come and go , I expect 'mystery' to come into vogue again as a response to immediate consumerism. People want what they don't have, and ironically not having access to a product that sells you something you can't have is itself a want.

I'm not trying to create a generational argument, as I find those highly constructed to create drama.

From a purely commercial perspective, there is value in just not answering your customers immediately. The corporate zeitgeist seems to think you'll lose your consumers if you don't pander to them endlessly, being reactive and ensuring they get everything. But that's the junkfood of fictional immersion. It's satisfying in the immediate, but leaves you hungry. The answer is to generate more junk to eat, but they won't be able to keep up with the consumer. Mystery and inference sustain people on literally nothing (or you wouldn't have conspiracy theories surviving this long).

But to make the mystery effective you need a product apparatus that supports and encourages engaging with the mystery. The 'your dudes' approach is one of the main ways this was sustained. GW turning from a hobby to consumerism, where you aren't encouraged to COUNTS AS or convert or explore the niche parts, further concentrates the passivity of the consumer and changes the dynamic.

If you only set up a community to buy things when they come out, only accept official things and slave themselves to 'lore accuracy', you will control and measure your sales. but you will always be in a position of never being able to satisfy the consumer, because there are an infinity of bad ideas and you will fast rely on those if your output must remain high.

The value of mystery is that it allows the consumer to place their own idea into the product, actively, which self selects for an idea that is good to them, keeping their interest. It also means 10 people in a room can all explore that same mystery in 10 different ways, all equally valid, and all meaningfully valuable to them. You aren't relying on one creative to construct a concept that will appeal to all customers.

This is where the 'it is said', or 'perhaps it works this way' approach of old 40k allowed multiple competing ideas about a single concept, like Tau Ethereals to exist and then every consumer can pick the one they like and dive into that. Answering questions will satisfy some, but alienate others and GW used to only do it sparingly. HH was where they broke that seal, when they actually novelised legendary figures who were originally shrouded in mystery and the mystery sustained the interest. But as soon as GW takes sides on what really happened, it draws lines between customers.

there's nothing wrong with taking up a passive consumption hobby, we all watch tv and that's about as passive as you get. GW just happen to sell product that allows them to tap into a really powerful and evocative form of storytelling and attention keeping that tv can't do. And instead, they've decided that they'll just do TV.


The other thing about revealing mysteries, is that unlike a tv show or a book series, 40k doesn't have an end. When you read a book, you discover the mysteries and get to the end and wrap it up. In 40k, revealing that ethereals do or dont' mind control, or that the tyranids are drawn to the emperor, or that the emperor is actually dead, or that isha is trapped in nurgle's garden, is just a data point added to the game. Tomorrow you still immerse yourself in it, but now the mystery is gone and you have a data point to add to your endless other data points about uniforms or troop numbers.

40k interacts with mystery in a fundamentally different way to other media, a powerfully evocative way, and rather than leverage that they've gone the modern corporate safe route of just reacting to consumers endlessly pouring junkfood down their throats and watching as it gets thinner and thinner and hoping the next wave of consumers will last just as long.


The 'this generation only likes x' is a disservice to all generations. We live in a highly controlled and measured media environment that creates needs and forces usage. The number of younger people looking for analogue hobbies has exploded as has the number leaving social media in direct reaction to the environment they've been forced into. It's a mistake to think that it's just 'kids these days not appreciating the mysteries of yore'.

It's no different to boomers blaming millennials for the participation trophies the boomers invented and gave to them.

principalskinneramioutoftouch.jpeg goes here

It's funny, as I've listened through Gaunts Ghosts it actually slightly annoys me how often we DON'T get to see stuff from the tabletop game. There's heaps of non-tapletop vehicle and weapons, which is really great and much better than wall to wall "Then a Leman Russ Battle Tank™️appeared in the Ruined Imperial Sector ™️and Gaunt drew his Power Sword™️" type stuff , but I don't think there's been a single scene with a guard Sentinel or infantry plasma gun in 12 novels! At least not to a level where it illustrates the interesting aspects of sci-fi tech on the battlefield. In fact one of them (showing the age of the novel and where the incidental fluff was at the time no doubt) has an infantryman destroy a Chaos dreadnought with an overloaded lasgun pack, which is pretty absurd in terms of energy density levels (and narrative power levels besides)

I suspect that some of this is due to the selective nature of memory. We tend to remember the good bits.

When I got all excited about an Adeptus Mechanicus army, I went out and picked up what ebooks I could find. The books in the Forge of Mars trilogy by Graham McNeil were released in 2012, 2013, and 2014 - before there was a miniature range - and I honestly thought that they were just bad. The hoplite-esque and now unrecognizable Skitarii were okay, but the story itself was disjointed with an over-reliance on The Chosen One and Space Tech-Magic! The whole thing was pretty forgettable except for, maybe, the lives of the thralls who were press ganged into service on the ship.

I then read Skitarius and Tech-Priest by Rob Sanders, and I really enjoyed those. The story made sense, people's motivations and machinations were believable, and stuff was grimdark in a "Our hubris unleashed Chaos!" way without going overboard into being flippant with "Our cyber-ghost fight casually destroyed uncountable amounts of irreplaceable data that nobody could even read!" I just learned as I looked up the publication dates for this post that those books were released in 2015 as the tie-in novels for the new Adeptus Mechanicus minis, but I would argue that the writing in the tie-in novels is just better than the writing in the other novels. That some of characters were recognizable as miniatures was neat as it showed another side to these silly little plastic toys, but it didn't seem to restrain the story at all.

Another thing is that this stuff only bothers you if you let it.

After Leagues of Votann came out, I picked up The High Kahl's Oath by Gav Thorpe, and that was a mixed bag. I thought some of the additional lore was cool, but the quality of the writing was spotty and it seemed to have suffered from an overly aggressive editor. Again, the best part was getting glimpses into the lives of these little grey men on my painting desk. So I'm keeping the bits that I like and dropping the bits that I don't like because these particular space dwarves are my space dwarves and I can do what I want with them.

I don't think that's gone away. I like the Mars colors, but that didn't stop me from giving my army its own story. Nobody is going to stop me from painting my Leagues of Votann army purple; that has actually gotten easier now that I can use whichever detachment with whichever paint job instead of having prescribed paint jobs for certain mechanics like in 9e. Just this weekend, I was ambushed by the idea for a Dark Angels successor chapter because what I really need in my life is yet another unfinished project fighting for limited spare time.

 RustyNumber wrote:
principalskinneramioutoftouch.jpeg goes here

It's funny, as I've listened through Gaunts Ghosts it actually slightly annoys me how often we DON'T get to see stuff from the tabletop game. There's heaps of non-tapletop vehicle and weapons, which is really great and much better than wall to wall "Then a Leman Russ Battle Tank™️appeared in the Ruined Imperial Sector ™️and Gaunt drew his Power Sword™️" type stuff , but I don't think there's been a single scene with a guard Sentinel or infantry plasma gun in 12 novels! At least not to a level where it illustrates the interesting aspects of sci-fi tech on the battlefield. In fact one of them (showing the age of the novel and where the incidental fluff was at the time no doubt) has an infantryman destroy a Chaos dreadnought with an overloaded lasgun pack, which is pretty absurd in terms of energy density levels (and narrative power levels besides)

I would say that's just classic protagonist power. Protagonists do all sorts of things that the average unnamed person can't. It's pretty tame compared to what Malum Caedo did.... Krak grenades were at the time capable of one shotting a dreadnought in melee. It's really interesting to plot gamist elements through GW's novels over the years. It isn't unreasonable that a laspack set to discharge all at once would generate at least the same damage as a krak grenade. the pack usually has 120-150 shots in it and while they wouldn't stack linearly, a S3 shot only needed to be S6 to kill a dreadnought at the time (or S4 if you were able to hit its rear). Dividing 120 by 3 gives 0.025, or about 0.08% of a shot per shot released at once. Should be pretty doable.


Your expectations for what you wanted in the story are also really telling. Because someone else might listen to it and say there's no way there'd be plasma guns in these units, they're rare. And given Abnett went with a particular tech base for the ghosts, IMO it was thematically appropriate they didn't have other equipment. GW goes to great lengths to show that all regiments are armed and armoured differently depending on their homeworld and what allied forgeworlds they may or may not have.

On the lasgun powerpack example, it also didn't one-shot the dreadnought. It just about cracked the front armour enough to allow the very dangerous local flora to take out the hard-wired occupant (there was a sort of cactus-like plant that fired large amounts of massive spines at nearby movement, hard enough to completely spit a soldier).

Also an executionable offence if the trooper was found to have done it by the wrong superior, and one that most troopers would not have the technical knowledge to pull off.

Didn't the same book also feature a Guardsmen simply setting their lasgun to "maximum power" and blasting an Iron Warrior square through the dome?
Not even a hotshot lasgun or pack, just a standard lasgun set to maximum. I think that's a sillier example than the Dreadnought (which is reasonably well explained in the book). Mkoll is basically a super-hero anyway that out-stealths a Mandrake whom literally becomes shadow lol

No, that's a different book. And said Iron Warrior had been run through by Gaunt's chainsword, shot four times by Larkin's Long Las to the point that it's armour was shredded and then finally finished off by a high power lasgun blast. Hardly "simply setting it to maximum power", is it?

(And here I am, quoting chapter and verse as I complained about earlier. Oh dear.)

Mkoll is ridiculous though, and it becomes almost a running joke in the series that he's stupidly over the top.


A side note: Google AI came up with a completely mangled version of this, presented as a word for word excerpt, where Gaunt had a power sword in the scene. He doesn't get a power sword until half way through Necropolis. Crazy that Google can just make stuff up now, eh.

On "Mystery" I wonder if there is something of a backlash because there was this massive overabundance of "mystery box" storytelling, and people rightly got bored of "you are just making this up as you go, there is no payoff, and how come it all ended in a church?"