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.

I got to thinking to myself this week about how Warhammer Fantasy's universe and the game were rather ungracefully transitioned into the Age of Sigmar. This led me to think of a hypothetical question of how this could have been done to satisfy everyone involved? That then led me to another hypothetical about 40k. If I had certain knowledge that Warhammer 40k's lore and game system had to end in 2 years, how could this be done in a way that I wouldn't feel upset at the end? A grim question I know, and one that may someday happen (Look at fantasy!).

So, if you knew that 40k's lore and game system had to end in 2 years, what would you like to see in those 2 years to leave you satisfied with 40k ending? How would you like to see the lore finish? What rules/new model would you like to see to give you the most fun in those 2 years so that you wouldn't be salty or angry after 40k had ended? What's the most graceful way that this could be done?

It can't.

Ending 40K WOULD piss off any fan who has collected any models for the game prior to its passing.

Better to explore the state of the universe before 40K (maybe 30K or even 20K) or skip forward through a dark age to 50K will all new factions and simply start a new game from scratch. Those who play 40K still have their game, and if they want to write an ending, they can do so to their satisfaction. Everyone else can just hop on the new game and ignore the old even existed or make up their own story about how the Imperium of Man and its ilk came to an end.

it was called the gathering storm. there's no need to do a complete setting wipe with 40k. gathering storm pushed the setting forward eneugh to give GW the wiggle room needed

 Stormonu wrote:
It can't.

Ending 40K WOULD piss off any fan who has collected any models for the game prior to its passing.

Better to explore the state of the universe before 40K (maybe 30K or even 20K) or skip forward through a dark age to 50K will all new factions and simply start a new game from scratch. Those who play 40K still have their game, and if they want to write an ending, they can do so to their satisfaction. Everyone else can just hop on the new game and ignore the old even existed or make up their own story about how the Imperium of Man and its ilk came to an end.

That's why I put had in bold of course it would piss everybody off. I'm saying a hypothetical world where everybody had a firm understanding that this had to happen or else the world would end or something stupid. It's a hypothetical of how could it be done as gracefully as possible if we knew it must happen

I'd like two things:
1) Leman Russ to return.
2) Squats to return.

What GW did wrong with WHFB was to kill it.

What would have ruffled far fewer feathers is if they had used the End Times to launch a 'final edit' of the rules, with as many balances implemented and holes patched as they could, so that when they released AoS they could have kept WHFB as an available (just unsupported) game with a functional and stable ruleset.

So, if the same thing was going to happen to 40K, then the preference would be the same - roll 40K into a 'Final Edition', spend 6-12 months getting gamers to playtest and provide feedback so that patches can be applied where necessary, and then release a final version of the rulebook to carry the game on into perpetuity while they launch Age of the [Whatever] to replace it.

Depends whether you want status quo, rebirth of glory, destruction of everything, the perpetual wheel of Time where it starts all over again etc.

The thing with a setting like 40k is that there's no goal beyond survival. Every faction is winning by existing.

So no future where they exist... More, will be an 'end', anymore than any other Tuesday.

There's no master plan or ultimate goal that will do anything more than have a faction survive but differently.

Any future of 40k that ends in peace will stop the setting being itself.

For me, a happyish ending for the Eldar would be the rhana dandra turning out to be just the end of this 'age of being' and the beginning of a new one.

The rise of ynnead breaks the eldar from slannesh forever, and the eternal matrix feeds ynnead.

However, the souls of the eldar are not all given over as many are devoted to the walking demi Gods, the Phoenix Lords. Other the millennia they have also collected the souls of prophetically important eldar, each bringing the Lord back and slowly powering them up.

Each of the Phoenix lords would die fullfilling their destiny, but in so doing rise again reborn as a new Eldar pantheon.

The battle between ynead and slannesh would weaken both and the apotheosis of maugan ra would allow him to easily crush ynnead,absorbing him into the new god of death, maugan ra.

The shards of khaine finally melt away in the blazing triumph of fuegan's divinity.

Karandras slays the entire incubi order, each pierced by a single barb from the shadows no matter where they stood. The souls stolen by arha are retrieved and purified, joining their true lord as the court of the eternal hunt.

Asurmen takes on the mantle of Lord of gods
Karandras is the Lord of the hunt
Fuegan the war dragon
Baharoth the hawk
Maugan ra lord of death
Jain Zar, lady of fate


They free Isha from nurgle and cegorach comes forth, having the last laugh by living through multiple ages of the Eldar intact.

This Pantheon like the old, is comprised of potent psychic weapons forged in the material plain, but where the old ones built theirs, these were shaped and forged by a hundred lifetimes, binding them closer to their people than their predecessors.

So, with a godhead ascendent, one built in war and blood and skill, the Eldar step into a new cycle of being. One where their gods walk with them


This is just the Eldar, and it doesn't have a huge affect on anyone else (slannesh gets sustenance from all excess not just the Eldar), and the dark Eldar have plenty of warrior cults they don't need to steal the scorpions).

 Murrax9 wrote:
I got to thinking to myself this week about how Warhammer Fantasy's universe and the game were rather ungracefully transitioned into the Age of Sigmar. This led me to think of a hypothetical question of how this could have been done to satisfy everyone involved? That then led me to another hypothetical about 40k. If I had certain knowledge that Warhammer 40k's lore and game system had to end in 2 years, how could this be done in a way that I wouldn't feel upset at the end? A grim question I know, and one that may someday happen (Look at fantasy!).

So, if you knew that 40k's lore and game system had to end in 2 years, what would you like to see in those 2 years to leave you satisfied with 40k ending? How would you like to see the lore finish? What rules/new model would you like to see to give you the most fun in those 2 years so that you wouldn't be salty or angry after 40k had ended? What's the most graceful way that this could be done?

Nothing. The game ending doesn't require a 'lore finish.'
If they don't want to do it anymore, they should stop, but there isn't any need or point to pissing on the ashes.

If they announced an end in 2 years, any rules or models would be pointless- I certainly wouldn't waste time or money on them. Trying to serve me a plate of crap to justify the end in-universe would make me MORE salty and angry than just ceasing.

I've no idea why GW and now some fans started conflating setting with narrative. The WHFB universe and the 40k universe were and are settings. The 'narrative' is created through fluff within those settings. We are inspired by this in our games. You don't need to constantly evolve the setting. There are infinite stories to be told within a single day when a setting is as big as an entire world/galaxy.

The destruction of the Old World was a hamfisted response to a problem GW caused for themselves i.e. zero customer feedback and allowing whole armies to atrophy whilst scratching their heads wondering why nobody was buying armies that were two editions out of date.

The Gathering Storm was conceived as part of this corporate myopia and, thankfully, seems to have been watered down by cooler heads.

TLDR: The 40k Universe is a setting, with conventions and rules. The story takes place in that setting. If you want to keep customers happy, change the story but stick to the accepted rules of the setting. Don't blow the fecking thing up.

The best way to do such a thing if it is to be done is to tell us that AoS was a bad dream and that Primaris are heresy. Put Cawl on the traitor list and ask Rick Priestly and Andy Chambers to shoot GW senior management with potato guns for treason.

The major reasons the End Times/AoS pissed everyone off were:

-Drastic overhaul of the aesthetic. WHFB was never a very intensely-weird fantasy setting; magic was rare and special, most of the armies were fairly normal organic life forms that had a history and a context and a civilization behind them, the geography was relevant, there were logistics and supply chains, that kind of thing. It was a setting and an aesthetic you could make a Total War game about. Age of Sigmar, on the other hand, is a setting comprised of murder-hobos dreamt up by a six-year-old; it's all ghosts, demons, and angels, there are no people. There are sky-pirates with nothing to pirate on, defenders of humanity with no humanity to defend, tree-ghosts, ghost-ghosts, and we've moved from something that looks more like the Lord of the Rings to something that looks like Warcraft. I don't want to try and pick a fight about which one is "better", and I don't want to pretend the shift didn't really start with 8e's one-weird-monster-kit-per-army-release trend, but for people who liked the game because it was a more low-key game about armies the shift to the outlandish high-special-effects-budget world was quite jarring.

-Miscommunication about what would happen to your old armies. Before AoS launched GW said "oh, yeah, sure, you'll still be able to use all your old stuff, it'll be fine", then when AoS did launch the "new" armies were incredibly powerful, and while all the old stuff did technically have rules they were half-assed, terrible, and stuffed full of stupid jokes ("If you have the longest beard at the table get bonuses!"). People with old armies felt cheated and lied to, and were pissed off.

-Botched rules roll-out. AoS felt like a beta-test. It didn't have points at launch, the rules felt really half-baked, and it was startlingly difficult to actually use. The rules had no answers for seemingly simple questions ("so am I allowed to stack my models' bases on top of each other to get maximum range off my weapons?"), the double-turn mechanic still makes people twitchy, and all customizability and interestingness felt like it had died. The game wasn't finished at launch, and it's gotten better in the years since, but selling it to us at launch as a finished game was a big screw-up that annoyed a lot of people.

So if you wanted to do a 40k End Times-style relaunch you'd need to: not dramatically overhaul the aesthetic, either actually be serious about letting people use their pre-relaunch armies or tell them up front "We won't be supporting your old stuff in this new shiny version of the game", and perhaps most importantly finish writing the rules before publishing them.

If they are gonna make a new setting, they might aswell launch it as a separate game. 50k!

Eh, if we are just throwing stuff around.

The Imperium does an Eldar. Terra becomes the next Eye of Terra, a new god is born which eats The Emperor. The Imperium/Mechanicus become the new Eldar, a scattered dead race.

Fast forward to Warhammer 50k. Tau own the Galaxy, Tyranids and Greenskins are rampant. Eldar have faded to Necron levels.

Agree, the most elegant way is to do a time skip to the future, redivide the galaxy across the different races, allow certain things that are currently impossible to happen:
- The Emperor dies
- Imperium scatters to multiple factions: a traditional faction with all the bureaucrats, church and inquisition and a progressive faction with ad mech as leaders with new technologies that embraces xenos, maybe a neutral faction in between them with a modern society based around trade, diplomacy and free warp users.
- Marine chapters scattered across those as fits their ideologies but a huge unwillingness to fight each other
- Tau gain control of major parts of the galaxy
- Ynnari manage to blow up Slanesh, among with large parts of their species, the remaining eldar reunite and can finally go back to just being normal people
- Necron empire risen back to power and occupying a good portion of the galaxy
- Eye of terror closes and forces all the chaos worshippers back into real space, so they actually have to cooperate as a lose alliance in order to not be wiped out
- Tyranids get cut off from their hivemind/hivemind destroyed, so they have to change their behavior from all-out biomass collection to creating a new hive and surviving.

Basically redivide the entire galaxy equally among all current races. In the end this, would just be just like 30k though. Everything is a bit different but recognizable, except everyone needs to buy new miniatures.

Voss wrote:

 Murrax9 wrote:
I got to thinking to myself this week about how Warhammer Fantasy's universe and the game were rather ungracefully transitioned into the Age of Sigmar. This led me to think of a hypothetical question of how this could have been done to satisfy everyone involved? That then led me to another hypothetical about 40k. If I had certain knowledge that Warhammer 40k's lore and game system had to end in 2 years, how could this be done in a way that I wouldn't feel upset at the end? A grim question I know, and one that may someday happen (Look at fantasy!).

So, if you knew that 40k's lore and game system had to end in 2 years, what would you like to see in those 2 years to leave you satisfied with 40k ending? How would you like to see the lore finish? What rules/new model would you like to see to give you the most fun in those 2 years so that you wouldn't be salty or angry after 40k had ended? What's the most graceful way that this could be done?

Nothing. The game ending doesn't require a 'lore finish.'
If they don't want to do it anymore, they should stop, but there isn't any need or point to pissing on the ashes.

If they announced an end in 2 years, any rules or models would be pointless- I certainly wouldn't waste time or money on them. Trying to serve me a plate of crap to justify the end in-universe would make me MORE salty and angry than just ceasing.

The game being squatted doesn’t make your models pointless.

I played 3 games of Mordheim yesterday without GW’s swat team descended from heavenly Nottingham Castle to confiscate my models. I’m pretty sure Mordheim’s ghost is old enough to dei k in many countries.

 Jidmah wrote:
Agree, the most elegant way is to do a time skip to the future, redivide the galaxy across the different races, allow certain things that are currently impossible to happen:
- The Emperor dies
- Imperium scatters to multiple factions: a traditional faction with all the bureaucrats, church and inquisition and a progressive faction with ad mech as leaders with new technologies that embraces xenos, maybe a neutral faction in between them with a modern society based around trade, diplomacy and free warp users.
- Marine chapters scattered across those as fits their ideologies but a huge unwillingness to fight each other
- Tau gain control of major parts of the galaxy
- Ynnari manage to blow up Slanesh, among with large parts of their species, the remaining eldar reunite and can finally go back to just being normal people
- Necron empire risen back to power and occupying a good portion of the galaxy
- Eye of terror closes and forces all the chaos worshippers back into real space, so they actually have to cooperate as a lose alliance in order to not be wiped out
- Tyranids get cut off from their hivemind/hivemind destroyed, so they have to change their behavior from all-out biomass collection to creating a new hive and surviving.

Basically redivide the entire galaxy equally among all current races. In the end this, would just be just like 30k though. Everything is a bit different but recognizable, except everyone needs to buy new miniatures.

Shhhh. Gw may be listening.

Gadzilla666 wrote:
[Shhhh. Gw may be listening.

Don't worry, I built in a fail-safe. The new 50k universe would have less marines and more xenos

 Jidmah wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:
[Shhhh. Gw may be listening.

Don't worry, I built in a fail-safe. The new 50k universe would have less marines and more xenos

Tyranids absorb Primaris genes. New Primanids are the most OP army. Also, all of the modles are slighlty bigger and redesigned.

Changing a horde armies models is a good money earner. Imagine if they upped the Guards base size...

 Jidmah wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:
[Shhhh. Gw may be listening.

Don't worry, I built in a fail-safe. The new 50k universe would have less marines and more xenos

And that's good for my gang of midnight blue power armoured murderers how?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Trickstick wrote:
Changing a horde armies models is a good money earner. Imagine if they upped the Guards base size...

Damn it! Are you guys trying to get a commission from gw or what?

Hellebore wrote:
Depends whether you want status quo, rebirth of glory, destruction of everything, the perpetual wheel of Time where it starts all over again etc.

The thing with a setting like 40k is that there's no goal beyond survival. Every faction is winning by existing.

So no future where they exist... More, will be an 'end', anymore than any other Tuesday.

There's no master plan or ultimate goal that will do anything more than have a faction survive but differently.

Any future of 40k that ends in peace will stop the setting being itself.

For me, a happyish ending for the Eldar would be the rhana dandra turning out to be just the end of this 'age of being' and the beginning of a new one.

The rise of ynnead breaks the eldar from slannesh forever, and the eternal matrix feeds ynnead.

However, the souls of the eldar are not all given over as many are devoted to the walking demi Gods, the Phoenix Lords. Other the millennia they have also collected the souls of prophetically important eldar, each bringing the Lord back and slowly powering them up.

Each of the Phoenix lords would die fullfilling their destiny, but in so doing rise again reborn as a new Eldar pantheon.

The battle between ynead and slannesh would weaken both and the apotheosis of maugan ra would allow him to easily crush ynnead,absorbing him into the new god of death, maugan ra.

The shards of khaine finally melt away in the blazing triumph of fuegan's divinity.

Karandras slays the entire incubi order, each pierced by a single barb from the shadows no matter where they stood. The souls stolen by arha are retrieved and purified, joining their true lord as the court of the eternal hunt.

Asurmen takes on the mantle of Lord of gods
Karandras is the Lord of the hunt
Fuegan the war dragon
Baharoth the hawk
Maugan ra lord of death
Jain Zar, lady of fate


They free Isha from nurgle and cegorach comes forth, having the last laugh by living through multiple ages of the Eldar intact.

This Pantheon like the old, is comprised of potent psychic weapons forged in the material plain, but where the old ones built theirs, these were shaped and forged by a hundred lifetimes, binding them closer to their people than their predecessors.

So, with a godhead ascendent, one built in war and blood and skill, the Eldar step into a new cycle of being. One where their gods walk with them


This is just the Eldar, and it doesn't have a huge affect on anyone else (slannesh gets sustenance from all excess not just the Eldar), and the dark Eldar have plenty of warrior cults they don't need to steal the scorpions).

All of this sounds awesome. I would love the Eldar to have their own pantheon. Hopefully this can happen one day without the universe ending lol

As long as the Drukhari win, it's all good.

Hellebore wrote:
Depends whether you want status quo, rebirth of glory, destruction of everything, the perpetual wheel of Time where it starts all over again etc.

The thing with a setting like 40k is that there's no goal beyond survival. Every faction is winning by existing.

So no future where they exist... More, will be an 'end', anymore than any other Tuesday.

There's no master plan or ultimate goal that will do anything more than have a faction survive but differently.

Any future of 40k that ends in peace will stop the setting being itself.

For me, a happyish ending for the Eldar would be the rhana dandra turning out to be just the end of this 'age of being' and the beginning of a new one.

The rise of ynnead breaks the eldar from slannesh forever, and the eternal matrix feeds ynnead.

However, the souls of the eldar are not all given over as many are devoted to the walking demi Gods, the Phoenix Lords. Other the millennia they have also collected the souls of prophetically important eldar, each bringing the Lord back and slowly powering them up.

Each of the Phoenix lords would die fullfilling their destiny, but in so doing rise again reborn as a new Eldar pantheon.

The battle between ynead and slannesh would weaken both and the apotheosis of maugan ra would allow him to easily crush ynnead,absorbing him into the new god of death, maugan ra.

The shards of khaine finally melt away in the blazing triumph of fuegan's divinity.

Karandras slays the entire incubi order, each pierced by a single barb from the shadows no matter where they stood. The souls stolen by arha are retrieved and purified, joining their true lord as the court of the eternal hunt.

Asurmen takes on the mantle of Lord of gods
Karandras is the Lord of the hunt
Fuegan the war dragon
Baharoth the hawk
Maugan ra lord of death
Jain Zar, lady of fate


They free Isha from nurgle and cegorach comes forth, having the last laugh by living through multiple ages of the Eldar intact.

This Pantheon like the old, is comprised of potent psychic weapons forged in the material plain, but where the old ones built theirs, these were shaped and forged by a hundred lifetimes, binding them closer to their people than their predecessors.

So, with a godhead ascendent, one built in war and blood and skill, the Eldar step into a new cycle of being. One where their gods walk with them


This is just the Eldar, and it doesn't have a huge affect on anyone else (slannesh gets sustenance from all excess not just the Eldar), and the dark Eldar have plenty of warrior cults they don't need to steal the scorpions).

This warms my heart, I can get behind this.

Hellebore wrote:


For me, a happyish ending for the Eldar would be the rhana dandra turning out to be just the end of this 'age of being' and the beginning of a new one.

The rise of ynnead breaks the eldar from slannesh forever, and the eternal matrix feeds ynnead.

However, the souls of the eldar are not all given over as many are devoted to the walking demi Gods, the Phoenix Lords. Other the millennia they have also collected the souls of prophetically important eldar, each bringing the Lord back and slowly powering them up.

Each of the Phoenix lords would die fullfilling their destiny, but in so doing rise again reborn as a new Eldar pantheon.

The battle between ynead and slannesh would weaken both and the apotheosis of maugan ra would allow him to easily crush ynnead,absorbing him into the new god of death, maugan ra.

The shards of khaine finally melt away in the blazing triumph of fuegan's divinity.

Karandras slays the entire incubi order, each pierced by a single barb from the shadows no matter where they stood. The souls stolen by arha are retrieved and purified, joining their true lord as the court of the eternal hunt.

Asurmen takes on the mantle of Lord of gods
Karandras is the Lord of the hunt
Fuegan the war dragon
Baharoth the hawk
Maugan ra lord of death
Jain Zar, lady of fate


They free Isha from nurgle and cegorach comes forth, having the last laugh by living through multiple ages of the Eldar intact.

This Pantheon like the old, is comprised of potent psychic weapons forged in the material plain, but where the old ones built theirs, these were shaped and forged by a hundred lifetimes, binding them closer to their people than their predecessors.

So, with a godhead ascendent, one built in war and blood and skill, the Eldar step into a new cycle of being. One where their gods walk with them


This is just the Eldar, and it doesn't have a huge affect on anyone else (slannesh gets sustenance from all excess not just the Eldar), and the dark Eldar have plenty of warrior cults they don't need to steal the scorpions).

Not decrying your effort, but there is a awful lot of "and they lived happily ever after / but it was all a dream" in this. No consequence, total victory without loss, and everthing neatly back how it was. No thanks.

A cataclysmic battle between the eldar and slaanesh ending in a terrible warp storm that annihilates the chaos forces and decimates the rest of the galaxy, with the necrons retreating to their tomb worlds and the other civilizations smashed.

Ten thousand years pass and the warp begins to stir, the Emperor rises once more to gather the scattered techno-barbarian tribes of humanity while a few unheard seers of the exodite empire speak of whispers in the darkness.

The year is 665.M51, and half-exodite inquisitor Kylo Grissom Caine oversees the first of the new brotherhoods, protectors against the dark times, the psycho-conditioned condemned given the most modern of exo-suits and rocket blasters, the Legiones Galaxias, the Galaxy Soldiers (tm).

In such dark times, it sounds like we need the return of Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau.

nareik wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Murrax9 wrote:
I got to thinking to myself this week about how Warhammer Fantasy's universe and the game were rather ungracefully transitioned into the Age of Sigmar. This led me to think of a hypothetical question of how this could have been done to satisfy everyone involved? That then led me to another hypothetical about 40k. If I had certain knowledge that Warhammer 40k's lore and game system had to end in 2 years, how could this be done in a way that I wouldn't feel upset at the end? A grim question I know, and one that may someday happen (Look at fantasy!).

So, if you knew that 40k's lore and game system had to end in 2 years, what would you like to see in those 2 years to leave you satisfied with 40k ending? How would you like to see the lore finish? What rules/new model would you like to see to give you the most fun in those 2 years so that you wouldn't be salty or angry after 40k had ended? What's the most graceful way that this could be done?

Nothing. The game ending doesn't require a 'lore finish.'
If they don't want to do it anymore, they should stop, but there isn't any need or point to pissing on the ashes.

If they announced an end in 2 years, any rules or models would be pointless- I certainly wouldn't waste time or money on them. Trying to serve me a plate of crap to justify the end in-universe would make me MORE salty and angry than just ceasing.

The game being squatted doesn’t make your models pointless.

I played 3 games of Mordheim yesterday without GW’s swat team descended from heavenly Nottingham Castle to confiscate my models. I’m pretty sure Mordheim’s ghost is old enough to dei k in many countries.

Didn't say it did. But I'd have no interest in buying more, or paying them for products to 'wrap up'

Leave a solid ruleset behind so those who prefer 40k can still play it. Not that that will happen because rules books are more profit bit yeah.

Return the storyline to just before the 13th Crusade again, go back to being a setting and release a book for making your own campaigns.

Oh look, this thread again...

Why do people entertain the idea of this? What could possibly be gained from jumping forward another 10k years that hasn't already been jumpstarted with moving 40k into a storyline?

There are multiple threads set up that are yet to be resolved. There are huge swathes of stories to be told as a result, but yet some still clamour for an "end times" of 40k because the storyline GW crammed into the 40k setting is now boring for them and their need for instant gratification or something.

You've made you bed, lie in it.

You want my way? Pay me monies!