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.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
They were building pylons on Medusa V and in the Cerberus Shroud.
They were destroying Blackstone Fortresses during the 13th Black Crusade.
The Deciever was messing with the Adeptus Mechanicus [on Naogeddon].
They were impersonating Inquisitors and cataloging the galaxy's lifeforms (and then exterminating them).
They were hunting for the Orphan World and the Culexus Temple.
They were raiding from Sanctuary 101 to Angelis and everywhere inbetween.
They were harvesting pariahs and gathering resources.
They were cultivating mortal followers, and inspiring cults.
They were feeding stars to C'tan.

To name a few off the top of my head.

Really cool stuff I never knew. I could design narrative missions based on almost all of that stuff.

To get back to OP, and people who have similar feelings regarding GW's handling of Necron Lore:

I think that, for me, my own engagement and narrative investment is a big part of the what makes the game work; I had the potential to build those missions back then and play them, but I didn't, so I assumed nothing was going on. People HATED the Primaris roll out, but in my experience, those who played through a campaign with a Torchbearer Fleet army list probably perceived that there was a lot more action and thematic flavour to that roll-out, because they actually played the transition from Grey Shield Primaris to Battle Brothers of the Host Chapter.

There are a lot of planets in the Pariah Nexus; not all of them have been written about, not all of them will be written about. Pick one of those. Conquer it with Necrons. If you do, then regardless of what GW writes in bolter-porn novel 983, the Necrons were more than cartoon punching bags, because YOU made them more than that.

Or don't, and just keep bitching instead. Choice is yours.

JNAProductions wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I generally prefer the old lore, but I am cool with Necron Lords being able to seize command of clusters and direct them. I just don't love it when the chaff have personality or agency. If they have any self awareness it should very much be of the "I have no mouth and must scream" kind of existential horror.

I don't think the chaff do.

Warriors are almost entirely mindless.
Immortals have a faint brain, but are still slaved to Crypteks and Lords and such.

I think this is one of the many areas where 'cron lore is kind of contradictory/inconsistent. Some sources are insistent that 'crons definitely don't have actual souls post-trasnference. But on the other hand, souls in 40k are almost synonymous with minds, which are in turn *usually* synonymous with some kind of psychic presence however weak. The Twice Dead King books spend a fair bit of time talking about heka and flux which aren't really souls but seem to be darn close and would probably qualify as souls in most fantasy settings. As best as I can tell, 'crons essentially have purely non-psychic minds that still behave the same way minds do in almost every way except that they come with adjustable settings. Which I guess would make warriors either lobotomized minds or else I have no mouth and I must scream style full minds that simply can't exert their personal will at all due to the settings.

This is slightly supported by the connection between the flayer virus and the disphoria some 'crons experience. The fact that warriors can become flayed ones suggests that they might have enough self-awareness left to experience and/or resist that disphoria.

Lord Damocles wrote:They were building pylons on Medusa V and in the Cerberus Shroud.
They were destroying Blackstone Fortresses during the 13th Black Crusade.
The Deciever was messing with the Adeptus Mechanicus [on Naogeddon].
They were impersonating Inquisitors and cataloging the galaxy's lifeforms (and then exterminating them).
They were hunting for the Orphan World and the Culexus Temple.
They were raiding from Sanctuary 101 to Angelis and everywhere inbetween.
They were harvesting pariahs and gathering resources.
They were cultivating mortal followers, and inspiring cults.
They were feeding stars to C'tan.

To name a few off the top of my head.

Good to know. I wasn't aware of most of those. I was definitely under the same impression Lathe was, that 99% of all 'cron stories were just non-crons digging too deep, everything turning green, and then the status quo resetting after some skeleton-shaped exterminations.

While there are aspects of the 5th edition retcon I would do differently (probably get rid of all the big red buttons that have to be written around), I still like the changes overall. As cool as the c'tan are, pre-5th crons suffered from being an even more facelesss, personality-less faction than 'nids.

Post-5th 'crons can tell all these stories about building/rebuilding kingdoms after waking up to find the status quo totally overhauled. They let your characters actively struggle against the c'tan as they try to escape their prisons. They can do anything from political dramas to frontier survival/empire building to quirky adventures themed around whatever your overlord's hobby of choice is. All with the unique angles of formerly organic beings grappling with some ghost in the shell questions and the weight of eternity.

Pre-5th 'crons were all kind of just... "Beep boop. Behold how evil and mysterious I am, meat bags."
Which is cool and evocative the first couple of times... Until you're just sort of repeating it over and over again.

Pre-5th 'crons are kind of like Legion of the Damned. Yes, a legion of fire-headed mystery marines who just pop up randomly and then disappear are cool... But you can't really write campaign lore about them. They can't have motivations or character arcs because those things would require pinning down something about their nature or motivations. They can't do political intrigue or kingdom building or treasure hunting or any of that because then you'd have to commit to establishing who/what they are. And 'crons were kind of similar. Cool as a high concept, but really tough to let people put their personal touch on or craft non-repetitive stories with.

The problem is as soon as you start walking back their red buttons, you immediately run into the ridiculousness of them defeating and breaking gods to use as pokemon.

Which then unravels all of that aspect of the retcon.

Which is why I prefer them to have never had that ability. The C'tan should have been the main weapon that defeated the old ones, not macguffin necron superscience they suddenly came up with that also makes the c'tan pointless to have needed in the first place.

Because this is what happens when you write Wardstyle - he took rule of cool to an extreme leaving a whole bunch of poorly thought out consequences. Abnett isn't much better with his enuncia bollocks either.

I feel like there's a plausible middle ground where crons had enough super science (probably largely based on what the c'tan had to give them to help fight the Old Ones) to chain up the c'tan as part of a desperate but miraculously successful plan. That's the sort of collective achievement that would help justify some of the 'crons pride. Then from there, have the really impressive super tech be achievable only by harnessing the imprisoned c'tan, and then have the best of said super tech be lost to the sands of time because it turns out elaborate super machines don't always do well without regular maintenance.

So it casts 'cron science as impressive but in more of a Star Trek just-so-crazy-it-might-work kind of way rather than a we-could-push-the-big-red-button-any-time-but-don't-feel-like-it way. It arguably makes the c'tan even more impressive/interesting by giving more limited examples of what a sliver of their power can do when harnessed and also makes c'tan shards getting free that much more immediately consequential for 'crons.

Or they could have just kept the Enslaver plague, have the command protocols corrode over time so if the Necrons wake up first they go "hold on, why should we be working for those gits?" and lock the C'tan up when they're still sleeping.

Then you could have a Necron civil war with independent necrons fighting C'tan Necrons.

So, technological augments that allowed c'tan to direct their power in new and interesting ways is fine, like a fresnel lens for the sun.

But it's like a natural phenomenon happening that you are harnessing the results of, not literally yoking the star itself.

I am far more in favour of the necrons aligning with the c'tan for mutual advantage. Then in classic Icarusian style they eagerly fly too close to the sun and gain immortality at a price. The c'tan kill the old ones and turn on one another and the necrons were able to escape domination as their c'tan masters were killed.

The current timeline would then have c'tan enslaved necrons and free necrons, but the free necrons don't themselves have enslaved c'tan, and they are terrified of ever being dominated again in that eldar vs slannesh kind of existential dread.

I don't think Loki Trazyn is an interesting path for the faction, it just puts them outside the 40k paradigm, the necrons are just on top. That they are sad they don't have meat any more isn't itself a compelling story, especially as they're already looking at transferring back into flesh with whatever deus ex machina tech they invent for the purpose of the story.

I feel like the whole "transferring back into flesh" thing is one of those plots that can be fun to be pursuing but is unlikely to ever actually happen. Just like the BA will probably never find a cure for the black rage/red thirst, the salamanders will never collect all of Vulkan's relics (unless GW is ready to sell a Vulkan model), etc. It's basically just there to be an option for a goal your faction to be pursuing. Why are your 'crons fighting space marines today? Because they're trying to capture subjects for flesh transferrance related research. Etc.

I also feel like necrons being "on top" is kind of sort of untrue. They can't use the insta-win star deleting button because there's always a non-zero chance their math is wrong and they end up blowing up the universe. They can pull out a bunch of absurd levels of tech shenanigans, but apparently the ad mech/imperials are able to sorta kinda match/counter it ala that recent campaign lore.

They do have a massive tech advantage over pretty much everyone except maybe the drukhari, but they also can't actually replace any of their true 'crons once they're lost. And the self-destructive levels of backstabbing and self-preservation mean that a given necron character can't always conjure up infinite forces for every single millitary action he wants to pursue.

All of which puts them in this kind of fun place where they have enough resources/security/tech to pursue oddball hobbies if that's the route you want to go, but they're ultimately also an empire in decline. They can reclaim lost territory. They can cannibalize remaining true 'crons from other dynasties, but they *are* slowly going extinct. And that's without factoring in the ticking timebombs like the ever-spreading flayer virus or occassional/inevitable c'tan escapes that often result in a star god wrecking any necrons in the area.

They're too obsessed with clinging to the past to *not* do haughty conqueror drukhari type stuff, but they're also rotting away in a half dozen different ways over time. And if you zoom in on any one necron, he doesn't actually have all the power that the species as a whole does. Even the silent king is struggling to rally enough forces to achieve his current goals.

Idk. I like where they're at. The goofy stuff is there if you want it. The spooky lovecraftian robots are still there if you want them. You can zoom in on a character of your choice and tell a story about a dynasty on the rise or a dynasty in decline depending on your preference. You can pull off crazy tech/engineering feats if that's what you're into, but it's going to require a ton of resources to pull off, which is itself a source of plot hooks. You can go into character studies of creatures dealing with body dismorphia or the struggle to reconceptualize themselves as beings that have to live for millennia and explore what that means for them mentally. There's a lot of fertile ground there.

My only real gripes are that some of the established super science stunts are so over the top they kind of require you write around them if your particular dynasty has access to those particular bits of tech.

basically my issue is that corporeal factions should have some agency to threaten the others in a meaningful way as a form of counter balance. the necrons have been set up so that no external agency threatens them, it's all internal.

For someone playing and reading about necrons that can be fine, its a protagonist style of writing. But from external perspectives it's not. For anyone else the agency is gone so they aren't protagonists in their own stories, because the necrons could at any time turn on supertech and just win. Your victory was only because they let you.

That's not narratively satisfying at all and it's why i don't think any of the modern necron background works in the setting.

Super-tech would be ok if it was just a vague implied background threat which we never see (because the Necrons are still only just awakening and haven't busted out the big toys yet, or maybe they're lost/destroyed, or maybe they required C'tan intervention to use etc.)

Instead the Necrons keep being shown with massive 'I Win' buttons, which they either never use because plot says no (workable time travel!!!); or Space Marines just destroy them (World Engine, Impossible Planet, Dark Throne... it's odd how often that happens...)

Hellebore wrote:basically my issue is that corporeal factions should have some agency to threaten the others in a meaningful way as a form of counter balance. the necrons have been set up so that no external agency threatens them, it's all internal.

For someone playing and reading about necrons that can be fine, its a protagonist style of writing. But from external perspectives it's not. For anyone else the agency is gone so they aren't protagonists in their own stories, because the necrons could at any time turn on supertech and just win. Your victory was only because they let you.

That's not narratively satisfying at all and it's why i don't think any of the modern necron background works in the setting.

The Twice Dead King books make it seem like 'crons absolutely *are* threatened by other factions. Half of the second novel is them getting chased and beaten up by an Indomitus fleet. There's a bit of plot contrivance to get them in that situation, but a lot of that contrivance basically boils down to the flayer curse putting them on the backfoot. So in this case, you have a whole dynasty getting essentially wiped out despite making use of various bits of super tech partly because that tech has limits/requirements and partly because 'crons are permanently under a DoT effect in the form of the flayer virus slowly chewing away at the remnants of their species.

The important thing to remember here, I think, is that not every faction has access to all the win buttons. And the win buttons themselves have limitations. Not every dynasty can go to the orrery or whatever it's called and just delete chunks of the universe from existence. Not every dynasty has access to an unlimited fleet of tomb ships.

The last bastions of a given dynasty are hard to permanently take out, but that's kind of true of most 40k factions. The Queen of Knives novel describes an already-mauled minor craftworld with a tiny portion of its original population as an extremely daunting fortress that the protag's fleet of raiders is only able to do a brief lightning raid against. Fenris has been invaded in novels/campaign books a couple of times, and while it's possible to destroy it, doing so would be very costly. The Thousand Sons can presumably just pull out whatever magical nonsense they want, but they don't auto-win every conflict and famously even lost Prospero.

All of which is to say that at the end of the day, the 'crons are functionally pretty similar to other factions in that regard. They're hard to destroy, but not impossible.

Lord Damocles wrote:Super-tech would be ok if it was just a vague implied background threat which we never see (because the Necrons are still only just awakening and haven't busted out the big toys yet, or maybe they're lost/destroyed, or maybe they required C'tan intervention to use etc.)

Instead the Necrons keep being shown with massive 'I Win' buttons, which they either never use because plot says no (workable time travel!!!); or Space Marines just destroy them (World Engine, Impossible Planet, Dark Throne... it's odd how often that happens...)

I haven't finished the book with the Key of Infinity, so I can't comment much on that one yet other than to say the rest of the necrons seemed to think time travel was a dangerous enough tool that they did their best to lock the whole project away and make it off limits. A button having an X% chance to backfire and wipe out the person who presses it seems like a pretty reasonable limitation.

The World Engine does smack of bolter porn plot contrivance a bit, but it's ultimately just the classic Death Star thing. More specifically, iirc, the engine needed a very cranky c'tan to power it, and freeing that c'tan was apparently achievable with less than a thousand marines. Plus it obviously had to travel into range of its destintaion/target to be effective (unlike something like the orrery). So it's kind of just an extra big space ship that presumably took a lot of resources (including a rebellious power source) to put together and could ultimately be defeated with the application of enough soldiers. So it's kind of Blackstone Fortress-y in that regard.

I'm not going to say the 'cron lore is free of plot contrivance, but it seems pretty well established at this point that even their especially powerful (and thus especially rare/costly/hard or impossible to replace) assets can be countered in some fashion or else are so inherently dangerous to use that it's just not in the 'crons interest to actually use them. (A grenade makes a pretty good melee weapon if you're willing to let it blow up in your hand.) And in functional terms, that makes a lot of the I Win Buttons pretty much the same as the assets of any other faction.

The imperium could auto-win any fight because of their sheer numbers... They'd just have to sacrifice every other battlefront in the galaxy to pull it off! Ditto the Black Legion and its massive fleet. Thousand Sons could win every battle through a big enough psychic ritual... As long as no one stops the ritual and they don't mind sacrificing a crippling amount of resources every time they do it. Vect could force Commorragh to empty itself out and bring all the mad science of the drukhari to bare... if he didn't mind leaving himself vulnerable to the political and martial backlash. Orks have the numbers to conquer the galaxy! ... If they stop squabbling/have an interest in actually doing that. Etc.

I feel like necrons is way different in novels. If you look at guards novels, necrons are scary menacing killers. And not something you can win against easily. And I think any sm novel make enemies looks bad. Just think of it as imperium propaganda, and divide everything sm do by 3.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I haven't finished the book with the Key of Infinity...

That's not even the example I'm thinking of - which neatly illustrates the scale of the problem.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I haven't finished the book with the Key of Infinity...

That's not even the example I'm thinking of - which neatly illustrates the scale of the problem.

Which time travel shenanigans were you thinking of? The only other ones I'm familiar with are cryptek-level time stunts, but the most powerful version of that we've seen is to roll back the clock a few seconds up to a handful of times in a row. Which is still very impressive and all, but not exactly an auto-win. A cryptek having 4 chances to duel a marine captain makes him more likely to succeed than if he only got one chance, but it's still far from a guaranteed win. And that's one duel against one guy.

Is there an en masse time travel device I'm not aware of that lets you like, send a whole army back in time or something? (I know of at least one Thousand Sons character who famously did that, so I wouldn't be surprised if 'crons had an equivalent. But then we'd probably need to discuss whether the Thousand Sons are a problem for the same reasons.

 Jammer87 wrote:
The Silent King’s return was hyped as a galactic game-changer, but what did we get?

The same thing everyone else gets? Meaning: Status Quo. How many Chaos Primarchs have returned? Cadia Fell. All that changed is some of the "red tape" Chaos warbands - especially their daemon primarchs - have to go through get to the Imperium. There's now actually a war not a Kaiju incursion. But other than that nothing has changed. The setting intentionally does not advance. All they do is rearrange the deck chairs. They don't want the setting to advance. they just want you to feel like it did.

Also the only book I know of with Necrons resulted in them winning.

Breton wrote:

 Jammer87 wrote:
The Silent King’s return was hyped as a galactic game-changer, but what did we get?

The same thing everyone else gets? Meaning: Status Quo. How many Chaos Primarchs have returned? Cadia Fell. All that changed is some of the "red tape" Chaos warbands - especially their daemon primarchs - have to go through get to the Imperium. There's now actually a war not a Kaiju incursion. But other than that nothing has changed. The setting intentionally does not advance. All they do is rearrange the deck chairs. They don't want the setting to advance. they just want you to feel like it did.

Well, again, I gotta say what changes is up to us, because we decide how much of what GW gives us we're going to use. If all we ever do is play stand-alone pickup games, we probably won't notice the difference. But if your army is fleet based, and you need to get from Terra to the Segmentum Obscurus... suddenly it ain't status quo, because you CAN'T. Or rather, there's like two or three places stable enough to cross, but they're all pretty heavily contested. And that's how GW wrote it.

Whether or not YOU choose to make a big deal of that is up to you, not GW. All they can do is write the stuff. We choose to use it or not.

I choose not to use Kyria Draxus in my campaign, because my campaign is set in Pacificus, and Draxus is stuck in the Pariah Nexus. If YOU choose to use Draxus to fight chaos in the Eye of Terror, don't bitch at GW for "status quo" and say the fluff doesn't matter... Because YOU'RE the one choosing to not make it matter. You know why I chose Pacificus for the setting of my campaign? It's because I wanted the armies in the campaign to be able to interact with characters on their way to or from the Blackstone Fortress. When I use the Taddeus the Purifier and Pious Vorne models as guest stars who appear for a game or two and then move on, that's who they are- not a Missionary or a Priest. And that couldn't happen for me if I had my campaign in Obscurus because I choose to use what GW gives me.


People HATED the roll out of Primaris, but I thought it was awesome, because I wanted to play a Torchbearer Fleet. You can say "Primaris came out of thin air" but if you actually escorted five units of Grey Shield Primaris across the galxy over 5 games just to find the Chapter they were supposed to join, and then you played 5 or so games while they learn to manifest the traits of their host chapter, and then and only then allowed the Custodes, Mechanicus and Inquisitorial escorts to retreat so that the army could function as homogenous army of the host chapter consisting of both Primaris and first born units, I assure you it would not feel like the Deus ex Machina you accuse it of being.

But choosing to simply add three units of Primaris to your existing first born Blood Angels and then bitching about it being a Deus Ex doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's fine if that's what you want to do- I'm not telling you you're playing wrong, I'm just telling you you lost the right to bitch because you made the choice to play it that way. GW GAVE you the Torchbearer rules, and if you chose not to use them, that's fine... Just don't complain that the introduction of Primaris was slap-dash, because that was always your choice.

Now look, I'll dial that back a bit... Yes, it does take planning and effort to figure out a way to make the fluff work for you; like I chose to generate my star system using the rules in the Tau dex rather than saying "Oh, I'm in Pacificus so maybe I'll use Hydraphur" because GW might make something happen on Hydraphur that doesn't fit my narrative. And yes, if you're Karol, and all anyone in your entire country wants to do is stomp your face in a 2k matched game, maybe you didn't have the option of running a Torchbearer Fleet to introduce the Primaris into your army in narrative fashion. I get it- I'm not insensitive.

 PenitentJake wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Jammer87 wrote:
The Silent King’s return was hyped as a galactic game-changer, but what did we get?

The same thing everyone else gets? Meaning: Status Quo. How many Chaos Primarchs have returned? Cadia Fell. All that changed is some of the "red tape" Chaos warbands - especially their daemon primarchs - have to go through get to the Imperium. There's now actually a war not a Kaiju incursion. But other than that nothing has changed. The setting intentionally does not advance. All they do is rearrange the deck chairs. They don't want the setting to advance. they just want you to feel like it did.

Well, again, I gotta say what changes is up to us, because we decide how much of what GW gives us we're going to use. If all we ever do is play stand-alone pickup games, we probably won't notice the difference. But if your army is fleet based, and you need to get from Terra to the Segmentum Obscurus... suddenly it ain't status quo, because you CAN'T. Or rather, there's like two or three places stable enough to cross, but they're all pretty heavily contested. And that's how GW wrote it.

Whether or not YOU choose to make a big deal of that is up to you, not GW. All they can do is write the stuff. We choose to use it or not.

I choose not to use Kyria Draxus in my campaign, because my campaign is set in Pacificus, and Draxus is stuck in the Pariah Nexus. If YOU choose to use Draxus to fight chaos in the Eye of Terror, don't bitch at GW for "status quo" and say the fluff doesn't matter... Because YOU'RE the one choosing to not make it matter. You know why I chose Pacificus for the setting of my campaign? It's because I wanted the armies in the campaign to be able to interact with characters on their way to or from the Blackstone Fortress. When I use the Taddeus the Purifier and Pious Vorne models as guest stars who appear for a game or two and then move on, that's who they are- not a Missionary or a Priest. And that couldn't happen for me if I had my campaign in Obscurus because I choose to use what GW gives me.


People HATED the roll out of Primaris, but I thought it was awesome, because I wanted to play a Torchbearer Fleet. You can say "Primaris came out of thin air" but if you actually escorted five units of Grey Shield Primaris across the galxy over 5 games just to find the Chapter they were supposed to join, and then you played 5 or so games while they learn to manifest the traits of their host chapter, and then and only then allowed the Custodes, Mechanicus and Inquisitorial escorts to retreat so that the army could function as homogenous army of the host chapter consisting of both Primaris and first born units, I assure you it would not feel like the Deus ex Machina you accuse it of being.

But choosing to simply add three units of Primaris to your existing first born Blood Angels and then bitching about it being a Deus Ex doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's fine if that's what you want to do- I'm not telling you you're playing wrong, I'm just telling you you lost the right to bitch because you made the choice to play it that way. GW GAVE you the Torchbearer rules, and if you chose not to use them, that's fine... Just don't complain that the introduction of Primaris was slap-dash, because that was always your choice.

Now look, I'll dial that back a bit... Yes, it does take planning and effort to figure out a way to make the fluff work for you; like I chose to generate my star system using the rules in the Tau dex rather than saying "Oh, I'm in Pacificus so maybe I'll use Hydraphur" because GW might make something happen on Hydraphur that doesn't fit my narrative. And yes, if you're Karol, and all anyone in your entire country wants to do is stomp your face in a 2k matched game, maybe you didn't have the option of running a Torchbearer Fleet to introduce the Primaris into your army in narrative fashion. I get it- I'm not insensitive.

So in order for me to have the right to dislike & maybe complain about crap writing (the introduction of the Primaris in this case) you think I should have wasted a bunch of real world game hours playing a SM oriented campaign - when 90%+ of the time I'm running Xenos/Chaos/non-SM Imperial stuff?
How about I just cut to the chase & call out crap writing when I see it instead?

 PenitentJake wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Jammer87 wrote:
The Silent King’s return was hyped as a galactic game-changer, but what did we get?

The same thing everyone else gets? Meaning: Status Quo. How many Chaos Primarchs have returned? Cadia Fell. All that changed is some of the "red tape" Chaos warbands - especially their daemon primarchs - have to go through get to the Imperium. There's now actually a war not a Kaiju incursion. But other than that nothing has changed. The setting intentionally does not advance. All they do is rearrange the deck chairs. They don't want the setting to advance. they just want you to feel like it did.

Well, again, I gotta say what changes is up to us, because we decide how much of what GW gives us we're going to use. If all we ever do is play stand-alone pickup games, we probably won't notice the difference. But if your army is fleet based, and you need to get from Terra to the Segmentum Obscurus... suddenly it ain't status quo, because you CAN'T. Or rather, there's like two or three places stable enough to cross, but they're all pretty heavily contested. And that's how GW wrote it.

Whether or not YOU choose to make a big deal of that is up to you, not GW. All they can do is write the stuff. We choose to use it or not.

I choose not to use Kyria Draxus in my campaign, because my campaign is set in Pacificus, and Draxus is stuck in the Pariah Nexus. If YOU choose to use Draxus to fight chaos in the Eye of Terror, don't bitch at GW for "status quo" and say the fluff doesn't matter... Because YOU'RE the one choosing to not make it matter. You know why I chose Pacificus for the setting of my campaign? It's because I wanted the armies in the campaign to be able to interact with characters on their way to or from the Blackstone Fortress. When I use the Taddeus the Purifier and Pious Vorne models as guest stars who appear for a game or two and then move on, that's who they are- not a Missionary or a Priest. And that couldn't happen for me if I had my campaign in Obscurus because I choose to use what GW gives me.


People HATED the roll out of Primaris, but I thought it was awesome, because I wanted to play a Torchbearer Fleet. You can say "Primaris came out of thin air" but if you actually escorted five units of Grey Shield Primaris across the galxy over 5 games just to find the Chapter they were supposed to join, and then you played 5 or so games while they learn to manifest the traits of their host chapter, and then and only then allowed the Custodes, Mechanicus and Inquisitorial escorts to retreat so that the army could function as homogenous army of the host chapter consisting of both Primaris and first born units, I assure you it would not feel like the Deus ex Machina you accuse it of being.

But choosing to simply add three units of Primaris to your existing first born Blood Angels and then bitching about it being a Deus Ex doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's fine if that's what you want to do- I'm not telling you you're playing wrong, I'm just telling you you lost the right to bitch because you made the choice to play it that way. GW GAVE you the Torchbearer rules, and if you chose not to use them, that's fine... Just don't complain that the introduction of Primaris was slap-dash, because that was always your choice.

Now look, I'll dial that back a bit... Yes, it does take planning and effort to figure out a way to make the fluff work for you; like I chose to generate my star system using the rules in the Tau dex rather than saying "Oh, I'm in Pacificus so maybe I'll use Hydraphur" because GW might make something happen on Hydraphur that doesn't fit my narrative. And yes, if you're Karol, and all anyone in your entire country wants to do is stomp your face in a 2k matched game, maybe you didn't have the option of running a Torchbearer Fleet to introduce the Primaris into your army in narrative fashion. I get it- I'm not insensitive.

Spending time paying games themed around the fluff justification for the slap-dash primaris release does not make it less slap-dash, nor does it convey any rights. Liking something does not automatically mean it's good (cries in love for b-movies). Genuinely glad for you that you like the fluff and can enjoy it this much though.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I haven't finished the book with the Key of Infinity...

That's not even the example I'm thinking of - which neatly illustrates the scale of the problem.

Which time travel shenanigans were you thinking of?

In Devourer the Necrons have a time machine which is able to send a brood of genestealers back to before biotransference. Doing so causes necrontyr carvings on a wall to alter in the present day (to show the tyranids).

It feels like that would have been a useful ability for the Necrons to have used at some point ever...


There's also heavily implied time travel in Deathwatch: The Outer Reach, and as a result of whatever the Impossible Planet is doing in Codex: Grey Knights (5th ed.).

 alextroy wrote:
Necrons. Tyranids. Chaos. Orks.

What does this list have in common?

They are all Galactic level threats to the Imperium of Man.

The problem is that if any of them is allowed to steamroller the setting, aka the Imperium and their Space Marine poster boys, you have no setting. Therefore we get plot armor and incompetent commanders to keep hope and the Imperium alive. Nobody wants to play the faction that always loses.

Shareholder problem, not ours.

 alextroy wrote:
Necrons. Tyranids. Chaos. Orks.

What does this list have in common?

They are all Galactic level threats to the Imperium of Man.

The problem is that if any of them is allowed to steamroller the setting, aka the Imperium and their Space Marine poster boys, you have no setting. Therefore we get plot armor and incompetent commanders to keep hope and the Imperium alive. Nobody wants to play the faction that always loses.

But the answer should be easy: the Orks are attacking the Tyranids, who are eating a traitor planet, who are trying to steal Necron relics, and the Imperium is just sitting back having an inquisitor take notes.

Just because the Imperium is the implicit PoV for the setting doesn't mean all events actually need to revolve around them, they can realistically manage more powerful enemies by having those enemies at each other's throats. And that's how it should be anyways because it's a wargame where every faction should be able to fight the other (or even themselves). The "Good Guys v Bad Guys" mentality doesn't fit, insofar as "Good Guys" exist they would get creamed. It should be 10 Bad Guys in a free-for-all, because there is Only War.

I would be 100% behind this type of depiction of the Galaxy in WH40K. The opportunities are vast without making any major changes to things.

We've had mentions here and there of things like Tyranids being directed into Ork Waaghs to distract both forces from attacking the Imperium. We need a lot more of that.

Necrons at war with Chaos as they attempt to build a new pylon networks to close the Citatrix Maledictum to reclaim worlds lost to the Warp. Necrons also pulling out their big, bad toys to destroy one after another of the endless Tyranid Hive Fleet splinters, yet being forced into battle due to the endless numbers.

Chaos drawing Tyranids to worlds only to spring daemon invasions to destroy them and use the mass slaughter to fuel their diabolic plans.

Orks showing up to spoil everyone's grand schemes with inconvenient interventions that hold the only real purpose of getting in on yet another good scrap.

 PenitentJake wrote:

Well, again, I gotta say what changes is up to us, because we decide how much of what GW gives us we're going to use. If all we ever do is play stand-alone pickup games, we probably won't notice the difference. But if your army is fleet based, and you need to get from Terra to the Segmentum Obscurus... suddenly it ain't status quo, because you CAN'T. Or rather, there's like two or three places stable enough to cross, but they're all pretty heavily contested. And that's how GW wrote it.

Whether or not YOU choose to make a big deal of that is up to you, not GW. All they can do is write the stuff. We choose to use it or not.

What we choose to use or not doesn't matter. Jim Bob down in Alabama has no idea what I choose to use or not. Henry Cavill in London has no idea what I choose to use or not. Everybody knows what GW chooses to use or not. And they choose to keep things status quo. Nobody is invading Terra any time soon. The last Craftworld is not dying any time soon. None of the majors are likely dying any time soon. To be honest, the only "changes" theyve made are to make it easier to explain how Chaos is roving around the Imerpium.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
Necrons. Tyranids. Chaos. Orks.

What does this list have in common?

They are all Galactic level threats to the Imperium of Man.

The problem is that if any of them is allowed to steamroller the setting, aka the Imperium and their Space Marine poster boys, you have no setting. Therefore we get plot armor and incompetent commanders to keep hope and the Imperium alive. Nobody wants to play the faction that always loses.

But the answer should be easy: the Orks are attacking the Tyranids, who are eating a traitor planet, who are trying to steal Necron relics, and the Imperium is just sitting back having an inquisitor take notes.

Just because the Imperium is the implicit PoV for the setting doesn't mean all events actually need to revolve around them, they can realistically manage more powerful enemies by having those enemies at each other's throats. And that's how it should be anyways because it's a wargame where every faction should be able to fight the other (or even themselves). The "Good Guys v Bad Guys" mentality doesn't fit, insofar as "Good Guys" exist they would get creamed. It should be 10 Bad Guys in a free-for-all, because there is Only War.

Well the problem is all the Imperium Players can't participate. There's a reason the summer campaigns get the kitchen sink jokes.

Breton wrote:


What we choose to use or not doesn't matter. Jim Bob down in Alabama has no idea what I choose to use or not. Henry Cavill in London has no idea what I choose to use or not. Everybody knows what GW chooses to use or not. And they choose to keep things status quo. Nobody is invading Terra any time soon. The last Craftworld is not dying any time soon. None of the majors are likely dying any time soon. To be honest, the only "changes" theyve made are to make it easier to explain how Chaos is roving around the Imerpium.

Perhaps I didn't express my self clearly enough. The Cicatrix Maledictum is a HUGE fluff deal.

If you play a game of 40k, let's say you decide to set that game in Segmentum Tempestus. Excellent- it's your first game with your new army, and you decide where you are fighting. So you're in Tempestus, and you fight and you have a great game.

In your next game, you're playing someone whose army is based in Segmentum Obscurus. Prior to the Cicatrix Maledictum, no problem, because getting from Tempestus to Obscurus or vice versa wasn't a problem. But now, because of the Cicatrix Maledictum, the battle will only be possible if you cross through one of about five places in the entire galaxy where you can cross- probably Vigilus, which is the most publicized crossing point.

To make it easier to play against that opponent, you will probably take short cuts- you'll just ASSUME that either your opponent fought his way through the Nachmund gauntlet to get to you, or that you fought your way through to get to your opponent without ever playing a game to represent that fight. And that's fine- if that's what you've got to do in order to play the game against the guy that you want to play.

But you can't then complain that no lore exists which has made in important change to the galaxy; the lore DOES exist- they've been publishing that lore for three editions now- you're just ignoring it in order to facilitate playing a game against who you want when you want.

IF you were using the lore as written, you would tell your opponent in Obscurus something along the lines of:

We have 3 options if we want to play against each other according to lore:

1/ I fight my way through Nachmund. You and I will have a battle in Obscurus once I win my way through.
2/ You need to fight your way through the Gauntlet to get to me. Call me once you get through and we'll arrange a game.
3/ We both hate each other so much that we're trying to get to each other at the same time and we'll set our game in the Nachmund Gauntlet where our armies will bump into each other.

That sounds complicated perhaps, which is why most players don't bother. But that IS the way you have to do it if you are going to use the Lore that exists. If you choose not to, that's fine- obviously it has to be an option, otherwise it might get inconvenient to play whoever you want whenever you want. But if you make that choice, you can't complain the lore doesn't impact the galaxy, because YOU are the one who CHOSE for the lore not to affect the galaxy to make it convenience for you to play against someone, who wouldn't be able to get to you if you did play according to the Lore.

I get what you're saying, but not even GW really seems to care.
When I read the Psychic Awakening book where Typhus hunts Fabious Bile I was like, wait, Typhus has just been decribed in the 8th edition rulebook IIRC to be at the Plague stars which are nearly on the other side of the galaxy, and now he's hunting Bill at the Eye of terror? Nah...
GW hasn't really reprinted the cool 8th edition maps, right? They also stopped doing proper dates with 8th edition. It's all to put people wherever they want whenever they want.

That's fair.

Remember how Vigilus was such a big deal that... it was never mentioned again...
Forge that narrative!

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Remember how Vigilus was such a big deal that... it was never mentioned again...
Forge that narrative!

Not in the least true. The Nachmund Gauntlet has been pretty consistently important.

 PenitentJake wrote:


But you can't then complain that no lore exists which has made in important change to the galaxy; the lore DOES exist- they've been publishing that lore for three editions now- you're just ignoring it in order to facilitate playing a game against who you want when you want.

IF you were using the lore as written, you would tell your opponent in Obscurus something along the lines of:

We have 3 options if we want to play against each other according to lore:

1/ I fight my way through Nachmund. You and I will have a battle in Obscurus once I win my way through.
2/ You need to fight your way through the Gauntlet to get to me. Call me once you get through and we'll arrange a game.
3/ We both hate each other so much that we're trying to get to each other at the same time and we'll set our game in the Nachmund Gauntlet where our armies will bump into each other.

That sounds complicated perhaps, which is why most players don't bother. But that IS the way you have to do it if you are going to use the Lore that exists. If you choose not to, that's fine- obviously it has to be an option, otherwise it might get inconvenient to play whoever you want whenever you want. But if you make that choice, you can't complain the lore doesn't impact the galaxy, because YOU are the one who CHOSE for the lore not to affect the galaxy to make it convenience for you to play against someone, who wouldn't be able to get to you if you did play according to the Lore.

Well, since I don't play BFG, my dudes aren't disembarking from their ship(s), and we (almost) never play Boarding Actions.... I guess my cruise through the Gauntlet was uneventful?

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
Necrons. Tyranids. Chaos. Orks.

What does this list have in common?

They are all Galactic level threats to the Imperium of Man.

The problem is that if any of them is allowed to steamroller the setting, aka the Imperium and their Space Marine poster boys, you have no setting. Therefore we get plot armor and incompetent commanders to keep hope and the Imperium alive. Nobody wants to play the faction that always loses.

But the answer should be easy: the Orks are attacking the Tyranids, who are eating a traitor planet, who are trying to steal Necron relics, and the Imperium is just sitting back having an inquisitor take notes.

Just because the Imperium is the implicit PoV for the setting doesn't mean all events actually need to revolve around them, they can realistically manage more powerful enemies by having those enemies at each other's throats. And that's how it should be anyways because it's a wargame where every faction should be able to fight the other (or even themselves). The "Good Guys v Bad Guys" mentality doesn't fit, insofar as "Good Guys" exist they would get creamed. It should be 10 Bad Guys in a free-for-all, because there is Only War.

This. All the unstoppable threats should slam each other while the Imperium, instead of being the unstoppable colossus against speed bumps is just one of many or even a minor player tiptoeing around the feet of fighting giants much like the Eldar with the Imperium. Tyranids vs Necrons is also a convenient way to neutralize the Necron superweapons. The Necrons detonate a few stars and destroy or splinter a few Tyranid fleets then their superweapon is on cooldown for the next several million years or one use weapons are gone for good. The Necron pylons and Tyranid Kronos hive fleet do just enough against Chaos to prevent the Rift from expanding, while the Tyranids vs Pariah Nexus (or its smaller versions elsewhere in the galaxy) does just enough to prevent the Necrons from sealing off the galaxy from the warp.

Dynamic equilibrium is maintained in the galaxy. The individual factions then get their moment to shine without necessarily having to go stupid.

Breton wrote:
Well the problem is all the Imperium Players can't participate. There's a reason the summer campaigns get the kitchen sink jokes.

That's why the Imperium needs to actually be paranoid, dysfunctional, and filled with people trying to advance their own agenda, to the point where hot conflict between Imperial factions is common. It was originally written that way for that reason, but over time that aspect of the Imperium devolved into mere rhetoric. When's the last time there was serious intra-Imperial warfare? Badab? Even that isn't a great example because one side was manipulated by Chaos, so unambiguously in the wrong. That's a terrible state of affairs when 30-40% of all real games are Imperials on both sides.

Somehow Dawn of War did this better than GW: space marines, sisters, and guard all existed as enemies on the same planet, each with their own reason to believe they were right and asserting "true" Imperial authority. That both fits the tone of the setting and facilitates the real games played. But GW always wants the fight to be caused by Chaos secret agents, and that's much less interesting.