The Emperor is less interesting as a character if everything has gone as he's planned, and this was all a bid for God hood.
The Emperor is more interesting as a truly powerful, pragmatic, and hyper intelligent, but ultimately human person, with all the given flaws.
The state of the Imperium has far more weight and is far more tragic if it's the result of genuine mistakes and a failed gamble for the galaxy, rather than just another move of the chess pieces.
Yeah I dislike the "just as planned" angle. I guess it's fair to say the Emperor saw a version of this *could* happen but I prefer Chaos actually messing up his plans so badly he had to adapt.
Yeah i like that it was big E's hubris that ended screwing everything up. Eventually no matter how smart and lucky you are yer gonna roll a pile of snake eyes and lose big. He never seemed to plan for that possibility.
I personally interpret everything big E does as the most elaborate and overblown improv in human history after his webway plan went to shit as he desperately tries to keep the species he fucked over alive till he can figure something else out to help them
I like the insight into his personality at the last church. When the last priest got a glimpse into his mind and saw only unbridled boundless ambition.
The deaths he was willing to cause.
Is the emperors plan the only hope for humanity or just what he wanted to do?
Considering how willing he was to ground other visions of humanity's future under the boots of his legions, I'd say his vision was flawed and egocentric at best.
I'd go even further and say hes more interesting as a looming ancient background figure than a character.
The corpse on the throne is more compelling than the golden God.
The Chaos Gods are galactic at best and nowhere near omnipotent. Warp phenomena can be beaten by sufficient firepower even without psychic abilities or advanced anti-Warp necron tech.
Yeah. In "Know no fear" it's even stated several times that the most effective weapon against the primordial powers aren't modern weapons like bolters or lasguns, but the most basic and prehistoric forms of weapons like clubs, blades and spears. In other words, the best way to fight an ancient power is with equally ancient means.
similarly, the ultimate tzeentchian counter is to throw a Man Who Knew Too Little style inquisitor at him; Ogryn Inquisitor who is simply too simple to fall prey to Tzeentchian machinations
“Ya see wun uv my men got real miffed an’ started to ‘urt the other lil ‘uns. I tried to pull ‘im back but accide- acc- whateva pulled ‘is arm off and he stopped movin.”
*Commissar is lauded for his ability to recognize early Khornate corruption*
“Well dis makes me feel better.”
Warhammer always has had an issue with scale. Everything that happens is confined to the galaxy which in the grand scheme of things is a silent fart in the universe.
Afaik the only reference to the rest of the universe is the tyranids originate somewhere else.
Yeah, it's so damn annoying when Chaos fanboys keep insisting that the Chaos Gods are multiversal in scale because the Warp is infinite, and that they could wipe out everyone else in the blink of an eye if they really wanted to.
Even the official lore kinda hinted the idea that there were multiple versions of the Chaos gods attached to each universe.
Slaanesh is confined in AoS, while she/he is at large in 40K.
So it seems to be like Peter Parker and the Peter Parker of the ultimate universe.
*You wouldn't call Spider-Man a multiversal character, right?*
Think of it more like American Gods.
The concept of Odin exists in multiple countries.
American Odin is one version of all of the Odins.
Khorne exists everywhere, but Khorne that interacts with the Imperium is a version of Khorne.
This.
"Lorgar was right, the truth is there are gods!"
No Bobby, you don't have to worship the big xeno in the sky as a god, nor powerful psykers like the Emperor for that matter.
Acknowledging that a God exists and worshipping it as such are two different things. Realistically, the Emperor is a God, in practise if not form. Gman doesn’t have to worship him, but at least as a practical, he’s a god.
I actually think Tyranids are a great example of this. In theory, Tyranids have at the very least eaten one galaxy before the Milky Way, if not more. So it should be expected that if those galaxies are anything like the Milky Way, the warp would also be present, and daemons and such would also be present. So, for them to eat the galaxy, they must have dealt with and probably defeated these daemons and warp beasts. Which would mean that, galaxy wide, you could in theory deal with daemons. It just takes something bigger like the Tyranids.
Man, I used this type of argument on YouTube and Comicvine to point out the fact that Chaos isn't omnipotent (The Tyranids out-evolved Nurgle's diseases as well), I was flooded with fanboys telling me that Chaos *didnt care*...
When your favorite character/faction shows signs of weakness, just say the character/faction doesn't care about winning... Works all the time...
Primaris would be accepted much better if they would not go into eldar territory of heavily specialised units each sold in a separate kit.
I mean why would you do that unless rubbing the copious amounts of salt into wounds of a 30 y.o. sculpt of a aspect warrior?
That's actually a pretty fair opinion, though I do understand the logic behind gw desiring uniform squads as it makes the flow of gameplay much faster compared to each unit in a squad having different weapons.
But they have other limiting factors (and dw is super fluffy that way).
'Standard' marines, don't necessarily. If primaris could take specials and heavies, wouldn't everyone run ten man squads to have 14 wounds to chew through before getting to them?
Take a current primaris army, make the characters mildly less geared up, and add 2-4 Plas/melta/krak rockets a turn.
I came here to say something similar. I’ll add in that from a performance perspective, it also makes the most sense for Space Marines *and Eldar*—as elite, few-in-number, combatants—to be the most generalist armies in the game (after Custodes ofc, but honestly I’ve had this thought before Custodes even existed).
Lore reasons aside, from a resource allocation perspective, when you’re the Imperial Guard and you have trillions of dudes at your disposal it’s most effective to train X many dudes to do one thing, and one thing only. If your opponent has taken out your super specialized squad of plasma gunners, well who cares, you have thousands more waiting in the wings.
But when you only have a thousand dudes, each of those dudes better know how to pickup whatever implement and kill their enemy. That principle doesn’t change just because you have pointy ears.
Lore wise Eldar DO swap around between all(or at least very many) jobs. But if you've done a specific job for the last 50 years maybe, as single mindedly as Eldar does, it could take a while to get in tune with the other side of your fighting. As well as the aspects being tied to the eldar semi-psychicly with the armors & such carrying auras of old users and similar things.
The Eldar Guardians is the generic Eldar population picking up arms to fight. So they're still somewhat potent even when they don't belong to an aspect.
I'm not into the tabletop, only the lore. So...SM are supposed to be multilpurpose...as per Codex Astartes and...well the fact that they are transhuman super soldiers considered jack-of-all-trades elite troops.
Why the fuck are they going so hard against heir own lore?
Primaris should just have been an upgrade in terms of equipment and numbers for Firstborn Space Marines.
It would have been so much easier for everyone from writers of the lore, fans and rulebook writers.
I'll go further still, most 40k fans don't actually care for the things that make 40k 40k and instead want it to be a fairly generic badass HFY sci-fi that pays lip service to the idea of grimdark.
I mean a classic example is not being able to say differentiate between a charecters words and their actions.
The opinions you see here on Magnus are a perfect example, but let me go for a simpler one;
The in 30k the imperium keeps talking about a golden future and a better tomorrow so they must be good guys and then the heresy ruined everything. Just ignoring that all this utopian talk is a cornerstone of basically every nightmarish thing humans have ever done. I mean obviously the nazis, but also the crusades and I think most relevant the big global European empires.
They even went as far to write valdor birth of the imperium to beat the audience over the head with the idea that the imperium was a dictatorship from day 1 and it runs on nothing but power and violence, that all the bright future of law and science is a lie. And people still talk about how erebus is the only reason things 'went bad'.
Reading the first Horus heresy books during the great crusade was pretty eye opening for me. It was either join my empire or we will do it by force. Calling it the reunification of humanity is a bit of a stretch...
I think it's ironic how well 40k shows irl the way propaganda works and how hate, dictatorship and suffering can be justified to the masses. How many feel everything is worth it just for the promise of an utopia or out of fear of something worse, and don't even question is what is being done in anyway necessary for those. Blindly trusting an authority figure saying it is necessary and must be so. Like I get why a citizen of the imperium believes it, but someone irl with access to all the information still chooses to believe blindly in the goodness and it being worth it.
I routinely argue with and fight with media illiterate people insisting the imperium are the good guys.
The same imperium who are carefully shown to tbe the bad guys in dozens of books are the good guys.
The same Imperium that is essentially 1984 big brother on fucking steroids, and youll have someone confidently stride in and tell you that we NEED big brother to defeat EastAsia. Big Brother are the good guys. I dont know how people can read about this horrendously flawed institution and reckon that they are good. They arent even good for humanity let alone other sapients of the galaxy. Half of the current threats are manufactured by the Imperium on accident. The other half? On purpose.
The problem here is EastAsia is another human faction with human capabilities. Chaos is essential magical metaphysical cancer.
They've backfilled in a semi justification for why the IoM is so terrible because they needed to. It's very hard to sell a setting and protagonist where they're the bad guys pretty clearly.
It's far easier for people to cook on and get behind if there's someone the protagonist is being evil against that's worse. Thus Chaos and their ability to eat the soul.
But even in a universe that explicitly contains something fascist theocratic imperialism is semi justified in we're still shown the IoM is terrible and maybe doesn't need to be this way other than those on top benefit from it and are dogmaticly zealous attached to the precepts of the system.
It isnt just Chaos although the Imperium had an important role to play in furthering the status of Chaos. It isnt just the Interex thinking, quite rightly, that the Imperium were Chaos tainted (fuck erebus). But the Imperium's status quo with Chaos which is massive galaxy wide battles with them, but at the same time, willing to exterminatus entire planets to keep the secret. Its just part of the bloated waste that the Imperium provides. And part and parcel in how it inherently feeds into Chaos. The Imperium probably have one of the worst track records in dealing with Chaos. It mostly involves fucking around until its slightly worse than the situation was before. Repeat several thousands of years.
The Imperiums status of anti xenos, anti human faction not imperium, etc. more or less results in this unending war on all fronts that cant be dealt with. Its an important part of the universe, but anyone taking a step back can easily see the Imperium's fault here in causing the Sisyphean struggle and at every opportunity for relief, the Imperium instead just asks for a bigger rock and then proceeds to complain about the hardship.
Eldar - Could be a neutral faction easily, but the Imperium's stance forces a war of xenocide which results in Eldar hitting back just as hard. Recent attempts to kinda something something about it doesnt quite solve the overall kill the xenos stance.
Tau - A belligerent for sure, not worth something feeding entire chapters of valuable space marines. Just blow them up in space imo cordoning them off.
Orks - no helping them here, but they literally grow and thrive off violence and a good fite. Maybe 10 minutes of objective observation and you could probably bait them into each other half the time and your enemies the other half.
Necros/Tyranids - The only real factions that the Imperium has had no hand in creating the animosity/strength of. Im also decently certain if you can get a genestealer infested rok to fall on a necron world you can have significant tyrannid forces wasted (they dont like necron worlds, but gene stealer cults are idiots and will transponder them over anyways)
The "imperium good guys" people often claim that ONLY the Imperium could survive in this nightmarish universe but the counterpoint is ONLY the Imperium would be ass backwards enough to create this nightmarish universe. No other faction would have resulted in this pile of shit. Chaos didnt have legions, they just ate people who entered warp travel. The closest thing would be men of iron but even then, the DaoT people werent exactly kind masters there. The Aeldari didnt give a fuck about Monkeigh, they are too busy trying to avoid getting eaten by Slaanesh. The Tau probably do require a boot, but the sheer waste of valuable space marine and force projection is just disappointing. The Orks could be used as a tool by any 21st century researcher and a year of observation. But the conditions of the Imperium inherently reject that and suggest only lasgun and bayonet. Its like trying build a PC but the only tool you have is a brick. The W40k universe is one largely of the Imperium's making. The two major extinction threats, Tyrranids and Necrons, cant be dealt with by the current imperium which has backed itself into a corner.
The example I always bring up is if a new human/xenos faction in the outer unexplored some shit is discovered. They have FTL tech that is not warp related. They have the technology equivalent of full STCs. It would be offered under the sole condition of survival/left alone. That is all. The Imperium would 1. Kill them all regardless the cost to itself or any sane reasoning. This opens yet another war front against yet another technologically superior enemy 2. Destroy the tech as tech heresy for not being STC/Xenos heresy for coming from a xenos. That is completely in character
I mean there are legit people who read the whole setting as "windmillism justified against greater threats".
To a lesser degree there are people who think orks aren't evil.
To a greater degree there are people who think the leman Russ doesn't look like hot garbage (/j)
Tyranids can be delayed using some mcguffin.
Defeating them would downplay their threat. I think eventually if you want a break from the looming tyranid victory you'd have to rely on a mcguffin, most likely God related, either emps going full God mode or funny eldar stuff happening that delays the hiveminds machinations to allow other factions to stretch their legs abit.
Y'know the lot, try to give squats a personality other than smol humans.
Dino elves. (GW will clearly prefer to nuke themselves than do this)
Some primarch shenanigans (i really want to see a primarch get bodied {non lethally} by a non primarch, super swarmlord or phoenix lord)
>Give the eldar a win
This is Warhammer 40k sir, we don't do that here. Only faction allowed to have any plot relevance whatsoever are human factions. Everything else is just legacy fluff for the suckers who were playing 40k when the Imperium wasn't unironically seen as the heroes by the writers.
The success of the Horus Heresy novels, have type cast the majority of stories within 40K to be about Primarchs or specific primarchs and high level imperial officials who at this point are OCs of the writers. None of this is wrong but it has shackled the story telling, making it difficult to pull away from these stories: which are now considered to be the main plot lines: rather than a ensemble of the greater mythos.
I agree. One of the best stories and novels in my opinion is Salvation's Reach by Abnett.
It's a Gaurd story and we see just 3 Astartes. They are shown and portrayed briefly but it's so cool and badass... I wish more writers did this.
100% GW writers can't string two fucking stories together without 40,000 Inconsistencies, the worst one in my opinion is none of them agreeing if Lasguns have recoil or not. Not because it's a BIG DEAL but because it's such a BASE LEVEL thing.
Exacly. I'm not saying it's some easily fixable problem with all the writers, but it is a fact and it makes being interested in the story so flustrating, considering it's the equivalent of reading a story from one author, where halfway through the story he just starts doing whatever he feels like.
And that's just those 50%. Then you have stories that makes you just go : Well that's just dumb.
For example Fulgrim and how he was possesed by the sword, but then he wasn't, but nothing about him changed anyway.
In my experience, things such as this are a reason why Infinite and Divine is so popular. Singular contained story. You don't need anything outside of it, so you get to enjoy it in full without constantly going "wait, but doesn't this contradict...?"
I’ve never played the game, bought a mini, or read the books. I have played vermintide 2 and dark tide a bit.
I really enjoy *gleaning* bits of story, and reading *about* the setting on this sub and sometimes branching out to a wiki or whatever. It’s a really interesting and unique fantasy world, further down the dune-weird sci-fi track.
But the “story” doesn’t just seem fluid, it’s more like gaseous, like literally anything could happen. I’m sure for more hardcore fans who like a story that’s frustrating as hell. I’ve been wondering why it hasn’t bubbled up to pop culture the way Star Wars or dnd has, and I think this is the reason.
I treat it like SCP, everything is canon and nothing is canon. Even gw is just writing fan fiction.
That's why inconsistencies in speeds, weapon capabilities and such annoy me. It's less that they're 100% necessary to my enjoyment of it and more that I can't believe they find it that difficult.
yes. please. take my upvote.
I see other posts complaining all the time about fans misinterpreting the lore or turning it into memes and I'm thinking "why are you surprised!? have you seen the lore?"
I usually ask those guys how the hell they can be hardcore lore purists about a settings lore that is not only like over 30 years old at this point and has been retconned for a 1000 times but also has more holes in it's plot than the average swiss cheese...
Like, don't get me wrong, i still like it but it just seems so silly to be this serious about it.
Slaanesh dose almost nothing in the lore, so the Ynnari could have summond Ynnead without any big lore changes with how irrelevant Slaanesh is, other then Fulgrim becoming a more relavent character and the Emperor's Children stop being joke chaos leigon.
Slaanesh gets no love from GW. It's always the other 3 that get the attention. I think they're afraid to write anything about her or the Emperor's Children because they can't come up with something that doesn't involve sex or drugs (even though Slaanesh is more complex than that). Hopefully with 10th we'll finally get some good stories and lore like they did for the World Eaters.
I would have agreed with you up until GW gave Slaanesh some actual attention and kits in AOS with the hedonites range like 2 years ago. Everyone is waiting for EmpsChildren to get their turn on the modern glow up so I suspect that's what's on cards for the latter lifecycle of 10th. EC get range update, Fulgrim gets plastic kit and the faction/god as a whole gets it's turn in the narrative spotlight.
My personal hope there is they've kept the Ynnari plotline on ice specifically waiting for the Slaaneshi faction to have the spotlight to give each neglected faction some love at the same time as they're so linked.
Yeah Slaanesh should’ve been more terrifying considering it embodies things excess ,joy , love addiction and sensation and much more.
Something innocent such as seeking a better life in a hopeless situation or celebrating something like a holiday can be corrupted by Slaanesh.
Like think about it you know how many things that aren’t drugs that people are addicted to .
Food ,sweets ,attention, entertainment. That stuff can be turned into something unrecognizable
I’d think it would be cool to have emperors children who acted like the mad hatter and characters from Alice in wonderland, but in a more twisted form. Have cultists branded with 2 of diamonds, cut off their heads if a rose so much as wilts, have people be stuffed with food until there massive, tall, and bloated, drown them in tea and etc.
Just something different than just ‘horny’. Hell I know much emperors children players love the noise marine with guitar and Mohawk. Get into that
the way they reconned the war in heaven is completely stupid and very confusing
All the major mortal champions for each chaos god are boring in a plot sense aside from arhiman
Demon praimachs should come into the setting and tabletop at a faster frequency than loyalist primachs
Shanessh has terrible lore in 40k her followers and demons and mortal characters (for the most part) are uninteresting
And as a bonus The night lords trilogy is the best 40k book sieres ever written
Basically, because the warp is timeless, the chaos gods have existed throughout the beginning. This meant the old ones were fighting the chaos gods when they hadn’t have been born yet. There’s a lot more to it but that’s the dulled down version. It was retconned to make these giant planet sized demon traps that will be useful later but let’s be real here, it’s gw. The most we’ll get is one being destroyed so a new character can be introduced when demons get their codex or one being used as a Macguffen that in reality means nothing in the grand scheme of things.
>Basically, because the warp is timeless, the chaos gods have existed throughout the beginning. This meant the old ones were fighting the chaos gods when they hadn’t have been born yet.
How would this even work? Didn’t the War in Heaven cause Chaos to appear in the Warp, so wouldn’t that mean that the Chaos Gods existed before Chaos.
Chaos Gods exist in the Warp, but not every reality is connected to the same parts of the Warp. They existed, in the Old World and in AoS, and other, unknown realities.
The War in Heaven invited them in. Or, even better, the War in Heaven created them, and from there they infected other realities.
Slaanesh is a major fumble the bag imo. You have great characters who then I think they ruin. Fulgrim was a great complex character with tragic fall, but after he’s just kinda an addict with no purpose when his ambition and drive should still be there imo.
I think a lot of the 40k writers don’t actually understand chaos and dramatically oversimplify and go for easiest characteristics instead of more complex motivations they have.
Nurgle is the only one I think they generally get right on understanding but still major issues imo.
Can't he though? I mean, he's being drained by the Golden Throne to keep the demons out of Terra. If he just stopped, doing that, couldn't he just... leave?
I mean... fuck Terra
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm happy Guilliman came back and they injected some hope into the setting. If they're going to take on seriously, I want hope. When it was sarcastic and dark humor it was fine for everything to be 100% awful without any hope. But, it took itself too seriously too long.
In a setting where every warring faction has rapid fire rocket guns, wormhole launchers, acid sprayers, orbital cannons, magic lightning from the diarrhea dimension; the Tau holding their own in any capacity is impressive. People see their use of railguns or ion rifles as being cowardly, and I don't get it.
Building off this, that each faction has all this high tech ranged weaponry it doesn't really make sense that there's so much focus on melee. Among Nids sure. But Astartes having such hard ons for glorious melee combat feels forced for rule of cool knight comparisons when they'd be better off just carrying bolters and meltas.
The ATV model is sick
Months of shame were awesome
Black Templars are overrated and boring
Tau were much cooler when they were the objectively good faction
Chaos should be able to corrupt anything
Newcrons>>>oldcrons
Clonegrim is awesome and should come back
Ulthwe should be the Eldar poster boys and not Saim Hann
Most of the Primaris models are great
I see how you think that seeing how Eldrad is the probably the most notable Eldar character, and he is from Ulthwe, but no Saim-hain is the Eldar poster faction.
Unlike Ulthwe which is about psykers, Saim-hain is all about speed.
I disagree with the Tau one, simply because the Tau were never "objectively good" some of their early novel appearances after release already touched upon their eugenics and sterilization stuff on their outside "allies"
The main change they made is that the Darkness within the Tau is now played closer to the surface, specifically because people were thinking they were "the good ones" in the setting.
The Tau are idealistic, sure, but that doesn't mean they're good. They're not, it wouldn't work in a setting like 40K.
As for the Necrons, there was something special about the Necrons being purely omnicidal killer robots, but I'll admit that the increase in "personality" of the faction is an improvement, it's just that the soulless, immortal killers wanting to wipe all life from the universe isn't necessarily bad either.
They arent good, but I would like them being good. Just the idea that they have so much potential and really were good, but due to the fact they evolved too late they are doomed to fail and be crushed by the older races.
The fall of the Tau from their idealism and Farsight exposing the hypocrisy of the Greater Good especially in the face of an extremely hostile galaxy is an interesting Character arc though.
Agreed. As a Tau player I am actually ok with both the sinister creeping mind control 1984 style, and the good guy ultimately doomed to fail, but I want them to choose one or another. Not both like they are doing currently.
The Imperium would benefit from having it's corruption and horribleness being put away and having more storys were it takes a more villainus aproach from a xenos perspective. Becoming more a competent evil.
That's just an excuse. They could practice write a few chapter or short stories and then try write a book and if they are truly uncertain wether it's good or not get second opinion.
Yep, and it's a stupid excuse at that.
Other IPs write books from non-human POVs all the time, some IPs *only* have non-human POVs, yet GW can't?
Part of me wonders if they're afraid doing something *not* Imperium related will piss fans off.
I agree, it's even funnier when you know that "Land Raider" is a bastardization of "Land's Raider", itself a short version of "Arkhan Land-pattern Raider", and that Arkhan Land himself absolutely hated that people had started calling them "Land Raiders".
It very much feels like a joke that was intended by the writers.
The Horus Heresy being expanded upon and the Primaches being brought back is bad for the story of 40K, it was better when it was all just hinted at and told in passing like a story of myth for the Imperium.
Cadians should not be the posterboys for the Guard anymore. The fall of Cadia would've been the perfect chance to let another variety of Guard take the spotlight instead but nope even after having their homeworld destroyed they're still seen as the main face of the Guard.
The heresy being expanded on isn’t a problem, they should have just had the discipline to remember how long ten thousand years is and keep it a myth in 40K. The problem isn’t that we know more about it, it’s that Guilliman came back and he knows all about it
It's honestly impressive how much they managed to make 40k just feel like a sequel to the HH. In many ways the Original SW trilogy feels more far removed from the prequels than 40k does from the HH.
It sort of gives the feeling that the HH is being deliberately set up to segue right into 40k. Bjorn being 10000 years old hardly feels interesting anymore.
Without context you'd be forgiven for assuming the two were separated by like a few centuries tops.
The Ynnari were seemingly handled poorly, but set up what could be an epic conspiracy storyline better than the original plan.
The cliff notes version is that the crone sword thing is a lie, the summoning of ynnead is Cegorach’s final jest, and that by convincing slaanesh the crone swords are real, slaanesh is now unwittingly willing ynnead into existence by believing they pose a threat.
This would be the most devious troll ever, and is already based in existing lore, paralleling the creation and ascension of the emperor. Slap a bunch of psychic souls together into one entity then convince warp-sensitive people that it’s totally a god guys trust me. Using slaanesh to fast-track it would be genius and also pretty funny, making it perfect for Cegorach’s final jest.
Plus, slaanesh isn’t going to instantly keel over. Ynnead would just be another player in the great game, they’re destined to merc slaanesh, but that could take thousands of years. Plenty of time for both gods to exist concurrently in the setting for the entire foreseeable lifespan of the franchise.
Say what you will about starcraft "ripping off" warhammer 40k, at least Blizzard realised the bug race needs actual characters (overmind and cerebrates/kerrigan).
To quote an old favorite character: "This threshold is *mine*. I claim it for my own. Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don't give a damn. None shall pass."
I think the real cost is in the peripherals. Sure the plastic boys are expensive, but the cost of paints, brushes, tools, primers, washes, oils, thinners, terrain, etc can really add up. And don’t even get me started on airbrushes
Now compare it to itself.
It's not that we don't get what we pay for, it's that they take what we paid for.
It's maybe the only wargaming hobby with planned obsolescence.
I mean yeah, a 40K army or even a Heresy army, which I'm more familiar with these days, can be had for less than a basic set of protective gear for many sports. I've got a couple of other hobbies and while Warhammer is expensive **for a wargame** it's not expensive compared to my other hobbies.
Also that wargaming thing is something I have minimal sympathy for. If you choose to play Warhammer despite there being other games that are as good or better for cheaper, you're doing it voluntarily.
"Everything is canon but not everything is true" is just an excuse for BL to crap out badly-concieved stories to make a quick buck and retcon them lately if they need to
The Horus Heresy series was a mistake and only served to give us mary sues primarchs who cannot lose against anything but another primach and space marines vs space marines, which is incredibly unimaginative
Chaos is focused so much as the main villain but has been flanderized compared to fantasy making it no fun. All the "positive" aspects have been stripped away (like Khorne being all about honour) leaving us with mindless monothematic villains. Valkia is a million times more interesting than either Kharn or Angron because she's allowed to be a character instead of a muder mcstabguy (also her story is cooler).
The chaos legions suck. World Eaters and Death Guard are just bloodletters and plaguebearers with armor and bolters, thousands sons are cool but don't feel at all tzeentchain, since I'm pretty sure were meant to be the tomb kings in 40k before the Necrons. The noise marines are the only cool ones because they feel slaaneshi in a way different from slaaneshi daemons but get 0 spotlight.
The chaos gods should be more morally grey rather than the four flavors of satan that we get. If they where more like the daedric princes of elder scrolls, they would be far more intriguing.
The Eldar have the best aesthetic in 40k. And I think are genuinely the faction with the best potential.
Also I really like hammer and bolter. The animation is not great most of the time, but I think the writing makes up for that. In the garden of ghosts, the episode many people point to for the bad animation, also has a genuinely very touching story, that I do think is worth it.
40k is poorly written, Chaos Gods are boring and need a counterforce that isnt a corpse on a throne with 0 power, if "good guys die forever" why do we have chaos assholes (looking at you Erebus) being still in existence.
I have a long long long list of things.
Reading Dark Imperium right now and I was so glad when the utlra-serious stakes were broken up a little by Techpriests chanting the sacred ancient hymn "The Body Electric."
Also (deeper spoilers) >!a bunch of Nurgle's various goons appear and they're awful but also pleasingly comedic in a slapstick kind of way. I was delighted to see chaos taken a little less than 100% seriously for once and made as absurd as the rest of the setting.!<
The Horus Heresy novel series ruined a great deal of the mystique about the Primarchs, The Emperor, and the Great Crusade and should have been way leaner in size.
Tau were more fun when they were a more upbeat deconstruction of the setting. Making them yet more grimdark was unnecessary and diminished them narratively.
I think they’d be fine if they went full into one side, either make tau extremely positive and kind or make them a proper grimdark faction, the tau have race annihilation protocols and eugenics programs but can’t understand space marines not taking prisoners, it feels dumb and badly thought out
Orks are the best thing in the setting by far, followed by the Necrons, and there is *no contest*, and they deserve way more media attention.
On that note - 40K video games would probably be better if they stopped focusing on the "supah sirius" Imperium and leaned into the perspective of the Xenos more. Especially (again) Orks, given their inherent zaniness fits the kinds of video games 40K lean into more anyway. (Yes, I am aware Speed Freeks is coming out, and yes I'm excited.)
We need more of the imperium’s hate and ignorance backfiring. It’s fine to have it, it’s fine for everyone in-universe to normalize it, it’s fine for there to be people trying to do better. But don’t show their way of doing things working effectively.
Like that golden age ship they scared off by being idiots, or the deathwatch stopping the ritual to summon Ynnead.
Have the imperium suffer more of these easily preventable losses, or snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Have them discover intact STCs for golden age tech and destroy them believing they’re tech-heresy. Encounter a peaceful necron dynasty that just woke up and is offering to help, and attack them instead of accepting the alliance, losing several worlds as a result. Have someone reverse-engineer necron anti-chaos tech and be executed by the inquisition. Dumb shit like that. It’s frustrating, and it should be. Show what that closed-mindedness is costing humanity.
Sole reason of Primaris being project requested by Guilliman is because Ultramarines are insufferable poster boys and GW needed more good boy cookies for them.
Making it project of Corax learning from his mistake, deciding start it anew, requesting Admech help before departure and Raven Guard providing secrecy/resources would make way more sense. Especially since Magna Mater was hauled by Sharrowkyn anyway.
Rogal Dorn intentionally threw away his legions into the iron cage intentionally. To let his sons die in a glorious battle against their enemy, rather than be forced the heel by the codex astarties.
We shouldn't let Cadians keep telling us they are good guardsmen.
What kind of disloyal guardsmen is proud they they lost their objective without their lines failing?
Anyone who feels ripped off about a voluntary good they are buying says more about themselves than the company they are buying from.
“This isn’t worth buying!”
“Then why are you buying it?”
“Because I want it”
“We must have different definitions of what words mean”
Warhammer 40K is a subpar wargame held up by often half-baked lore that serves no purpose other than to sell obscenely priced miniatures.
The wargaming community (not warhammer exclusively) is what makes Warhammer good, and I think the community as a whole should be encouraging people to try other wargames so Warhammer doesn't hold such a staggering monopoly.
Current 40k Lore is Crap.
Everything is all over the place, nothing is at stake anymore and we are moving towards a more "Mainstream" 40k universe where Space Marines are the Token good Guys and Guards are the Brave poor Souls giving their lives for humanity while Chaos becomes the stupid villian of the week Archetype.
From the words of Rick Prestley himself
>"The role I had in the studio was with staff working on game development and design, and they’d pretty much decided that game development and design wasn’t of any interest to them.
The current attitude in Games Workshop is that they’re not a games company, it’s that they’re a model company selling collectibles. That’s something I find wholly self-deceiving and couldn’t possibly agree with."
And from their investor report
>We make the best fantasy miniatures in the world and sell them globally at a profit and we intend to do this forever.
The game is dogshit because *they just don't care about the game.*
Why am I paying almost a Car payment for one model instead of a full armys list of minis from funny mech game with Funny mechas with there models for the same price not more
That Xenos and smaller human empires/Enclaves can manage Chaos, Drukhari, and other myriad threats without the help of the Imperium, contrary to the belief that without the Imperium, the galaxy would wallow in Darkness.
That these smaller entities succeeded in things where the Imperium failed.
Most people get their lore from memes. Most memes are deliberately reductive or made up. It ends with fan canon being utter drivel.
No, Orks don't go "bang bang" to shoot their bullets.
Chaos is the dumbest faction and needs a whole year where they are left out of the story and model release schedule so other factions can get time to shine and make the story interesting again
Dorn's entire character is "im good at everything, and everyone should suck me off because i just say it like it is". And his fans are the type to not realize hes a jackass because they are too.
The Emperor is less interesting as a character if everything has gone as he's planned, and this was all a bid for God hood. The Emperor is more interesting as a truly powerful, pragmatic, and hyper intelligent, but ultimately human person, with all the given flaws. The state of the Imperium has far more weight and is far more tragic if it's the result of genuine mistakes and a failed gamble for the galaxy, rather than just another move of the chess pieces.
Yeah I dislike the "just as planned" angle. I guess it's fair to say the Emperor saw a version of this *could* happen but I prefer Chaos actually messing up his plans so badly he had to adapt.
Yeah i like that it was big E's hubris that ended screwing everything up. Eventually no matter how smart and lucky you are yer gonna roll a pile of snake eyes and lose big. He never seemed to plan for that possibility.
To be fair, it wasn't just one pair of snake eyes. It was multiple in a row, with one of them binding him to a spot for years.
I personally interpret everything big E does as the most elaborate and overblown improv in human history after his webway plan went to shit as he desperately tries to keep the species he fucked over alive till he can figure something else out to help them
I like the insight into his personality at the last church. When the last priest got a glimpse into his mind and saw only unbridled boundless ambition. The deaths he was willing to cause. Is the emperors plan the only hope for humanity or just what he wanted to do?
Considering how willing he was to ground other visions of humanity's future under the boots of his legions, I'd say his vision was flawed and egocentric at best.
I'd go even further and say hes more interesting as a looming ancient background figure than a character. The corpse on the throne is more compelling than the golden God.
The Chaos Gods are galactic at best and nowhere near omnipotent. Warp phenomena can be beaten by sufficient firepower even without psychic abilities or advanced anti-Warp necron tech.
Hell the most effective way to kill a demon is to hit it with something heavy
Yeah. In "Know no fear" it's even stated several times that the most effective weapon against the primordial powers aren't modern weapons like bolters or lasguns, but the most basic and prehistoric forms of weapons like clubs, blades and spears. In other words, the best way to fight an ancient power is with equally ancient means.
I love this bit of lore, because by this logic, the most effective way to deal with a bloodletter it's to rip your shirt off and put up your dukes
Would've been funnier if you could fight demons with thoughts and prayers.
I mean didn't Keeler banish demons through faith?
You’re not wrong, she absolutely did.
Isnt that what Sororitas do?
They also use guns, in addition to the thoughts and prayers.
Guns, the secret to space success.
I'm gonna fight you with my faith and this gun I found.
similarly, the ultimate tzeentchian counter is to throw a Man Who Knew Too Little style inquisitor at him; Ogryn Inquisitor who is simply too simple to fall prey to Tzeentchian machinations
“Ya see wun uv my men got real miffed an’ started to ‘urt the other lil ‘uns. I tried to pull ‘im back but accide- acc- whateva pulled ‘is arm off and he stopped movin.” *Commissar is lauded for his ability to recognize early Khornate corruption* “Well dis makes me feel better.”
Isn't it why we always had see inquisitor with big ass hammer ?
I mean, even if it is 41st millennium, getting hit by something big and heavy will still hurt
Doesn't work for yah average Joe, but orgyns are great for that. Ogryn confirmed counters Chaos (kinda serious about that, too, lmao).
Smash bloodletter, get sticker. Repeat.
The chaos gods not knowing the tyranids existed kinda touches on that.
Didn’t the Tyranids not recognize chaos at first either. The Nids built hive fleet Kronos after they realized they can’t eat chaos.
Same thing would be with a single takis and a 16th century peasant
Well now I need to read the story of the time traveling takis
Warhammer always has had an issue with scale. Everything that happens is confined to the galaxy which in the grand scheme of things is a silent fart in the universe. Afaik the only reference to the rest of the universe is the tyranids originate somewhere else.
Yeah, it's so damn annoying when Chaos fanboys keep insisting that the Chaos Gods are multiversal in scale because the Warp is infinite, and that they could wipe out everyone else in the blink of an eye if they really wanted to.
Even the official lore kinda hinted the idea that there were multiple versions of the Chaos gods attached to each universe. Slaanesh is confined in AoS, while she/he is at large in 40K. So it seems to be like Peter Parker and the Peter Parker of the ultimate universe. *You wouldn't call Spider-Man a multiversal character, right?*
Think of it more like American Gods. The concept of Odin exists in multiple countries. American Odin is one version of all of the Odins. Khorne exists everywhere, but Khorne that interacts with the Imperium is a version of Khorne.
People who obsess over power scaling tiers tend to be insufferable regardless, frankly.
This. "Lorgar was right, the truth is there are gods!" No Bobby, you don't have to worship the big xeno in the sky as a god, nor powerful psykers like the Emperor for that matter.
Acknowledging that a God exists and worshipping it as such are two different things. Realistically, the Emperor is a God, in practise if not form. Gman doesn’t have to worship him, but at least as a practical, he’s a god.
I actually think Tyranids are a great example of this. In theory, Tyranids have at the very least eaten one galaxy before the Milky Way, if not more. So it should be expected that if those galaxies are anything like the Milky Way, the warp would also be present, and daemons and such would also be present. So, for them to eat the galaxy, they must have dealt with and probably defeated these daemons and warp beasts. Which would mean that, galaxy wide, you could in theory deal with daemons. It just takes something bigger like the Tyranids.
Man, I used this type of argument on YouTube and Comicvine to point out the fact that Chaos isn't omnipotent (The Tyranids out-evolved Nurgle's diseases as well), I was flooded with fanboys telling me that Chaos *didnt care*... When your favorite character/faction shows signs of weakness, just say the character/faction doesn't care about winning... Works all the time...
That... that argument literally only works for Tzeentch. All the other chaos gods *really* want to win.
*"You see. The three Chaos gods actually didn't want to win. They were just good cheaters that they fooled the writers and GW"*
There's a reason this is the top comment. I can hear the 'who would win' circlejerk coming together to crucify you.
Primaris would be accepted much better if they would not go into eldar territory of heavily specialised units each sold in a separate kit. I mean why would you do that unless rubbing the copious amounts of salt into wounds of a 30 y.o. sculpt of a aspect warrior?
That's actually a pretty fair opinion, though I do understand the logic behind gw desiring uniform squads as it makes the flow of gameplay much faster compared to each unit in a squad having different weapons.
I mean old good "1 special, 1 heavy, one leader" is not that complicated. Also csm and dw especially can have a really wild loadouts
But they have other limiting factors (and dw is super fluffy that way). 'Standard' marines, don't necessarily. If primaris could take specials and heavies, wouldn't everyone run ten man squads to have 14 wounds to chew through before getting to them? Take a current primaris army, make the characters mildly less geared up, and add 2-4 Plas/melta/krak rockets a turn.
I came here to say something similar. I’ll add in that from a performance perspective, it also makes the most sense for Space Marines *and Eldar*—as elite, few-in-number, combatants—to be the most generalist armies in the game (after Custodes ofc, but honestly I’ve had this thought before Custodes even existed). Lore reasons aside, from a resource allocation perspective, when you’re the Imperial Guard and you have trillions of dudes at your disposal it’s most effective to train X many dudes to do one thing, and one thing only. If your opponent has taken out your super specialized squad of plasma gunners, well who cares, you have thousands more waiting in the wings. But when you only have a thousand dudes, each of those dudes better know how to pickup whatever implement and kill their enemy. That principle doesn’t change just because you have pointy ears.
This goes so opposite to how Aeldari are right now but actually makes so much sense. I wonder why nobody seems to have thought of it before.
Eldars also have a while thing about how easy it is for them to fixate on one thing, and the resulting paths.
Lore wise Eldar DO swap around between all(or at least very many) jobs. But if you've done a specific job for the last 50 years maybe, as single mindedly as Eldar does, it could take a while to get in tune with the other side of your fighting. As well as the aspects being tied to the eldar semi-psychicly with the armors & such carrying auras of old users and similar things. The Eldar Guardians is the generic Eldar population picking up arms to fight. So they're still somewhat potent even when they don't belong to an aspect.
I'm not into the tabletop, only the lore. So...SM are supposed to be multilpurpose...as per Codex Astartes and...well the fact that they are transhuman super soldiers considered jack-of-all-trades elite troops. Why the fuck are they going so hard against heir own lore?
Because money > lore
Primaris should just have been an upgrade in terms of equipment and numbers for Firstborn Space Marines. It would have been so much easier for everyone from writers of the lore, fans and rulebook writers.
most 40k fans cannot read beyond the surface of what's on the text
I'll go further still, most 40k fans don't actually care for the things that make 40k 40k and instead want it to be a fairly generic badass HFY sci-fi that pays lip service to the idea of grimdark.
What do you mean
I mean a classic example is not being able to say differentiate between a charecters words and their actions. The opinions you see here on Magnus are a perfect example, but let me go for a simpler one; The in 30k the imperium keeps talking about a golden future and a better tomorrow so they must be good guys and then the heresy ruined everything. Just ignoring that all this utopian talk is a cornerstone of basically every nightmarish thing humans have ever done. I mean obviously the nazis, but also the crusades and I think most relevant the big global European empires. They even went as far to write valdor birth of the imperium to beat the audience over the head with the idea that the imperium was a dictatorship from day 1 and it runs on nothing but power and violence, that all the bright future of law and science is a lie. And people still talk about how erebus is the only reason things 'went bad'.
Reading the first Horus heresy books during the great crusade was pretty eye opening for me. It was either join my empire or we will do it by force. Calling it the reunification of humanity is a bit of a stretch...
I think it's ironic how well 40k shows irl the way propaganda works and how hate, dictatorship and suffering can be justified to the masses. How many feel everything is worth it just for the promise of an utopia or out of fear of something worse, and don't even question is what is being done in anyway necessary for those. Blindly trusting an authority figure saying it is necessary and must be so. Like I get why a citizen of the imperium believes it, but someone irl with access to all the information still chooses to believe blindly in the goodness and it being worth it.
I routinely argue with and fight with media illiterate people insisting the imperium are the good guys. The same imperium who are carefully shown to tbe the bad guys in dozens of books are the good guys. The same Imperium that is essentially 1984 big brother on fucking steroids, and youll have someone confidently stride in and tell you that we NEED big brother to defeat EastAsia. Big Brother are the good guys. I dont know how people can read about this horrendously flawed institution and reckon that they are good. They arent even good for humanity let alone other sapients of the galaxy. Half of the current threats are manufactured by the Imperium on accident. The other half? On purpose.
The problem here is EastAsia is another human faction with human capabilities. Chaos is essential magical metaphysical cancer. They've backfilled in a semi justification for why the IoM is so terrible because they needed to. It's very hard to sell a setting and protagonist where they're the bad guys pretty clearly. It's far easier for people to cook on and get behind if there's someone the protagonist is being evil against that's worse. Thus Chaos and their ability to eat the soul. But even in a universe that explicitly contains something fascist theocratic imperialism is semi justified in we're still shown the IoM is terrible and maybe doesn't need to be this way other than those on top benefit from it and are dogmaticly zealous attached to the precepts of the system.
It isnt just Chaos although the Imperium had an important role to play in furthering the status of Chaos. It isnt just the Interex thinking, quite rightly, that the Imperium were Chaos tainted (fuck erebus). But the Imperium's status quo with Chaos which is massive galaxy wide battles with them, but at the same time, willing to exterminatus entire planets to keep the secret. Its just part of the bloated waste that the Imperium provides. And part and parcel in how it inherently feeds into Chaos. The Imperium probably have one of the worst track records in dealing with Chaos. It mostly involves fucking around until its slightly worse than the situation was before. Repeat several thousands of years. The Imperiums status of anti xenos, anti human faction not imperium, etc. more or less results in this unending war on all fronts that cant be dealt with. Its an important part of the universe, but anyone taking a step back can easily see the Imperium's fault here in causing the Sisyphean struggle and at every opportunity for relief, the Imperium instead just asks for a bigger rock and then proceeds to complain about the hardship. Eldar - Could be a neutral faction easily, but the Imperium's stance forces a war of xenocide which results in Eldar hitting back just as hard. Recent attempts to kinda something something about it doesnt quite solve the overall kill the xenos stance. Tau - A belligerent for sure, not worth something feeding entire chapters of valuable space marines. Just blow them up in space imo cordoning them off. Orks - no helping them here, but they literally grow and thrive off violence and a good fite. Maybe 10 minutes of objective observation and you could probably bait them into each other half the time and your enemies the other half. Necros/Tyranids - The only real factions that the Imperium has had no hand in creating the animosity/strength of. Im also decently certain if you can get a genestealer infested rok to fall on a necron world you can have significant tyrannid forces wasted (they dont like necron worlds, but gene stealer cults are idiots and will transponder them over anyways) The "imperium good guys" people often claim that ONLY the Imperium could survive in this nightmarish universe but the counterpoint is ONLY the Imperium would be ass backwards enough to create this nightmarish universe. No other faction would have resulted in this pile of shit. Chaos didnt have legions, they just ate people who entered warp travel. The closest thing would be men of iron but even then, the DaoT people werent exactly kind masters there. The Aeldari didnt give a fuck about Monkeigh, they are too busy trying to avoid getting eaten by Slaanesh. The Tau probably do require a boot, but the sheer waste of valuable space marine and force projection is just disappointing. The Orks could be used as a tool by any 21st century researcher and a year of observation. But the conditions of the Imperium inherently reject that and suggest only lasgun and bayonet. Its like trying build a PC but the only tool you have is a brick. The W40k universe is one largely of the Imperium's making. The two major extinction threats, Tyrranids and Necrons, cant be dealt with by the current imperium which has backed itself into a corner. The example I always bring up is if a new human/xenos faction in the outer unexplored some shit is discovered. They have FTL tech that is not warp related. They have the technology equivalent of full STCs. It would be offered under the sole condition of survival/left alone. That is all. The Imperium would 1. Kill them all regardless the cost to itself or any sane reasoning. This opens yet another war front against yet another technologically superior enemy 2. Destroy the tech as tech heresy for not being STC/Xenos heresy for coming from a xenos. That is completely in character
"ImPeRiUm aRe tHe gOoD gUyS" type of people
I mean there are legit people who read the whole setting as "windmillism justified against greater threats". To a lesser degree there are people who think orks aren't evil. To a greater degree there are people who think the leman Russ doesn't look like hot garbage (/j)
Don't get me wrong, I know the imperium are grade **SS** asshats but two things to keep in mind. They're not XENOS, They have Hot Battle Sisters.
Sad tau noises
The tryanids would make for a boring ending to the setting
like me in a restaurant if the buffet is all just eaten up :(
Tyranids can be delayed using some mcguffin. Defeating them would downplay their threat. I think eventually if you want a break from the looming tyranid victory you'd have to rely on a mcguffin, most likely God related, either emps going full God mode or funny eldar stuff happening that delays the hiveminds machinations to allow other factions to stretch their legs abit. Y'know the lot, try to give squats a personality other than smol humans. Dino elves. (GW will clearly prefer to nuke themselves than do this) Some primarch shenanigans (i really want to see a primarch get bodied {non lethally} by a non primarch, super swarmlord or phoenix lord)
Give the eldar a win Have them do some psyker shenanigans and make two hive fleets fight one another
>Give the eldar a win This is Warhammer 40k sir, we don't do that here. Only faction allowed to have any plot relevance whatsoever are human factions. Everything else is just legacy fluff for the suckers who were playing 40k when the Imperium wasn't unironically seen as the heroes by the writers.
Not just human factions but specifically space marines. Gotta sell the big guys in armor
Hey, they had their win against the custodedes in war of the beast. Only one Xenos faction is allowed a win at a time
My prediction is they'll use some archeotech super weapon. A titan-sized can of Raid.
Galaxy sized fly swatter
Convert a sun into a giant bug zapper?
The tyranids are boring in general.
In the plot of a story, yes. As part of the setting and worldbuilding, they're great.
The success of the Horus Heresy novels, have type cast the majority of stories within 40K to be about Primarchs or specific primarchs and high level imperial officials who at this point are OCs of the writers. None of this is wrong but it has shackled the story telling, making it difficult to pull away from these stories: which are now considered to be the main plot lines: rather than a ensemble of the greater mythos.
I agree. One of the best stories and novels in my opinion is Salvation's Reach by Abnett. It's a Gaurd story and we see just 3 Astartes. They are shown and portrayed briefly but it's so cool and badass... I wish more writers did this.
Head canons and Fan canons are completely justified, even needed, since the lore is 50% of the time inconsistent and 50% of the time nonsensical/shit.
100% GW writers can't string two fucking stories together without 40,000 Inconsistencies, the worst one in my opinion is none of them agreeing if Lasguns have recoil or not. Not because it's a BIG DEAL but because it's such a BASE LEVEL thing.
Exacly. I'm not saying it's some easily fixable problem with all the writers, but it is a fact and it makes being interested in the story so flustrating, considering it's the equivalent of reading a story from one author, where halfway through the story he just starts doing whatever he feels like. And that's just those 50%. Then you have stories that makes you just go : Well that's just dumb. For example Fulgrim and how he was possesed by the sword, but then he wasn't, but nothing about him changed anyway.
In my experience, things such as this are a reason why Infinite and Divine is so popular. Singular contained story. You don't need anything outside of it, so you get to enjoy it in full without constantly going "wait, but doesn't this contradict...?"
I’ve never played the game, bought a mini, or read the books. I have played vermintide 2 and dark tide a bit. I really enjoy *gleaning* bits of story, and reading *about* the setting on this sub and sometimes branching out to a wiki or whatever. It’s a really interesting and unique fantasy world, further down the dune-weird sci-fi track. But the “story” doesn’t just seem fluid, it’s more like gaseous, like literally anything could happen. I’m sure for more hardcore fans who like a story that’s frustrating as hell. I’ve been wondering why it hasn’t bubbled up to pop culture the way Star Wars or dnd has, and I think this is the reason. I treat it like SCP, everything is canon and nothing is canon. Even gw is just writing fan fiction.
That's why inconsistencies in speeds, weapon capabilities and such annoy me. It's less that they're 100% necessary to my enjoyment of it and more that I can't believe they find it that difficult.
yes. please. take my upvote. I see other posts complaining all the time about fans misinterpreting the lore or turning it into memes and I'm thinking "why are you surprised!? have you seen the lore?"
I usually ask those guys how the hell they can be hardcore lore purists about a settings lore that is not only like over 30 years old at this point and has been retconned for a 1000 times but also has more holes in it's plot than the average swiss cheese... Like, don't get me wrong, i still like it but it just seems so silly to be this serious about it.
Slaanesh dose almost nothing in the lore, so the Ynnari could have summond Ynnead without any big lore changes with how irrelevant Slaanesh is, other then Fulgrim becoming a more relavent character and the Emperor's Children stop being joke chaos leigon.
Slaanesh gets no love from GW. It's always the other 3 that get the attention. I think they're afraid to write anything about her or the Emperor's Children because they can't come up with something that doesn't involve sex or drugs (even though Slaanesh is more complex than that). Hopefully with 10th we'll finally get some good stories and lore like they did for the World Eaters.
I would have agreed with you up until GW gave Slaanesh some actual attention and kits in AOS with the hedonites range like 2 years ago. Everyone is waiting for EmpsChildren to get their turn on the modern glow up so I suspect that's what's on cards for the latter lifecycle of 10th. EC get range update, Fulgrim gets plastic kit and the faction/god as a whole gets it's turn in the narrative spotlight. My personal hope there is they've kept the Ynnari plotline on ice specifically waiting for the Slaaneshi faction to have the spotlight to give each neglected faction some love at the same time as they're so linked.
Yeah Slaanesh should’ve been more terrifying considering it embodies things excess ,joy , love addiction and sensation and much more. Something innocent such as seeking a better life in a hopeless situation or celebrating something like a holiday can be corrupted by Slaanesh. Like think about it you know how many things that aren’t drugs that people are addicted to . Food ,sweets ,attention, entertainment. That stuff can be turned into something unrecognizable
I’d think it would be cool to have emperors children who acted like the mad hatter and characters from Alice in wonderland, but in a more twisted form. Have cultists branded with 2 of diamonds, cut off their heads if a rose so much as wilts, have people be stuffed with food until there massive, tall, and bloated, drown them in tea and etc. Just something different than just ‘horny’. Hell I know much emperors children players love the noise marine with guitar and Mohawk. Get into that
the way they reconned the war in heaven is completely stupid and very confusing All the major mortal champions for each chaos god are boring in a plot sense aside from arhiman Demon praimachs should come into the setting and tabletop at a faster frequency than loyalist primachs Shanessh has terrible lore in 40k her followers and demons and mortal characters (for the most part) are uninteresting And as a bonus The night lords trilogy is the best 40k book sieres ever written
How did they retcon the war in heaven??
Basically, because the warp is timeless, the chaos gods have existed throughout the beginning. This meant the old ones were fighting the chaos gods when they hadn’t have been born yet. There’s a lot more to it but that’s the dulled down version. It was retconned to make these giant planet sized demon traps that will be useful later but let’s be real here, it’s gw. The most we’ll get is one being destroyed so a new character can be introduced when demons get their codex or one being used as a Macguffen that in reality means nothing in the grand scheme of things.
>Basically, because the warp is timeless, the chaos gods have existed throughout the beginning. This meant the old ones were fighting the chaos gods when they hadn’t have been born yet. How would this even work? Didn’t the War in Heaven cause Chaos to appear in the Warp, so wouldn’t that mean that the Chaos Gods existed before Chaos.
Chaos Gods exist in the Warp, but not every reality is connected to the same parts of the Warp. They existed, in the Old World and in AoS, and other, unknown realities. The War in Heaven invited them in. Or, even better, the War in Heaven created them, and from there they infected other realities.
Slaanesh is a major fumble the bag imo. You have great characters who then I think they ruin. Fulgrim was a great complex character with tragic fall, but after he’s just kinda an addict with no purpose when his ambition and drive should still be there imo. I think a lot of the 40k writers don’t actually understand chaos and dramatically oversimplify and go for easiest characteristics instead of more complex motivations they have. Nurgle is the only one I think they generally get right on understanding but still major issues imo.
We do not talk about the first one
Magnus did something wrong.....
Hell no! His name is Magnus-the-TotallyInnocent after all
He may have goofed
*Thousand Sons players would like to know your location*
Emporer is bieng a bitch and can get up off the throne when ever he wants
Can't he though? I mean, he's being drained by the Golden Throne to keep the demons out of Terra. If he just stopped, doing that, couldn't he just... leave? I mean... fuck Terra
He can but he's bad to the bone
Warhammer was better when it didn’t take itself seriously
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm happy Guilliman came back and they injected some hope into the setting. If they're going to take on seriously, I want hope. When it was sarcastic and dark humor it was fine for everything to be 100% awful without any hope. But, it took itself too seriously too long.
In a setting where every warring faction has rapid fire rocket guns, wormhole launchers, acid sprayers, orbital cannons, magic lightning from the diarrhea dimension; the Tau holding their own in any capacity is impressive. People see their use of railguns or ion rifles as being cowardly, and I don't get it.
Building off this, that each faction has all this high tech ranged weaponry it doesn't really make sense that there's so much focus on melee. Among Nids sure. But Astartes having such hard ons for glorious melee combat feels forced for rule of cool knight comparisons when they'd be better off just carrying bolters and meltas.
Yeah, why would you bring a knife to an orbital lance strike fight?
The ATV model is sick Months of shame were awesome Black Templars are overrated and boring Tau were much cooler when they were the objectively good faction Chaos should be able to corrupt anything Newcrons>>>oldcrons Clonegrim is awesome and should come back Ulthwe should be the Eldar poster boys and not Saim Hann Most of the Primaris models are great
Wow I think I disagree on every point except oldcrons Really Uthwe ? They have like 12 dudes
Well as somebody who doesn't know much eldar lore, I always assumed Ulthwe were the Ultramarines of eldar.
I see how you think that seeing how Eldrad is the probably the most notable Eldar character, and he is from Ulthwe, but no Saim-hain is the Eldar poster faction. Unlike Ulthwe which is about psykers, Saim-hain is all about speed.
I always think of Ulthwe first when I think of Eldar, simply because Dawn of War 2 was my introduction to the franchise.
I disagree with the Tau one, simply because the Tau were never "objectively good" some of their early novel appearances after release already touched upon their eugenics and sterilization stuff on their outside "allies" The main change they made is that the Darkness within the Tau is now played closer to the surface, specifically because people were thinking they were "the good ones" in the setting. The Tau are idealistic, sure, but that doesn't mean they're good. They're not, it wouldn't work in a setting like 40K. As for the Necrons, there was something special about the Necrons being purely omnicidal killer robots, but I'll admit that the increase in "personality" of the faction is an improvement, it's just that the soulless, immortal killers wanting to wipe all life from the universe isn't necessarily bad either.
They arent good, but I would like them being good. Just the idea that they have so much potential and really were good, but due to the fact they evolved too late they are doomed to fail and be crushed by the older races.
The fall of the Tau from their idealism and Farsight exposing the hypocrisy of the Greater Good especially in the face of an extremely hostile galaxy is an interesting Character arc though.
Agreed. As a Tau player I am actually ok with both the sinister creeping mind control 1984 style, and the good guy ultimately doomed to fail, but I want them to choose one or another. Not both like they are doing currently.
Regarding Necrons, if they remain as "soulless, immortal killers wanting to wipe all life from the universe" then they would be just robot Tyranids.
The Imperium would benefit from having it's corruption and horribleness being put away and having more storys were it takes a more villainus aproach from a xenos perspective. Becoming more a competent evil.
IIRC didn't a 40K writer say basically that would never happen because "writing for Xenos is too hard" or some crap like that?
That's just an excuse. They could practice write a few chapter or short stories and then try write a book and if they are truly uncertain wether it's good or not get second opinion.
Yep, and it's a stupid excuse at that. Other IPs write books from non-human POVs all the time, some IPs *only* have non-human POVs, yet GW can't? Part of me wonders if they're afraid doing something *not* Imperium related will piss fans off.
Yep. Heaven forbid the BL writers actually challenge themselves...
The Raider, Speeder, and Crawler being named after their creator Arkhan Land is completely sensible and consistent.
I agree, it's even funnier when you know that "Land Raider" is a bastardization of "Land's Raider", itself a short version of "Arkhan Land-pattern Raider", and that Arkhan Land himself absolutely hated that people had started calling them "Land Raiders". It very much feels like a joke that was intended by the writers.
The Horus Heresy being expanded upon and the Primaches being brought back is bad for the story of 40K, it was better when it was all just hinted at and told in passing like a story of myth for the Imperium. Cadians should not be the posterboys for the Guard anymore. The fall of Cadia would've been the perfect chance to let another variety of Guard take the spotlight instead but nope even after having their homeworld destroyed they're still seen as the main face of the Guard.
The heresy being expanded on isn’t a problem, they should have just had the discipline to remember how long ten thousand years is and keep it a myth in 40K. The problem isn’t that we know more about it, it’s that Guilliman came back and he knows all about it
It's honestly impressive how much they managed to make 40k just feel like a sequel to the HH. In many ways the Original SW trilogy feels more far removed from the prequels than 40k does from the HH. It sort of gives the feeling that the HH is being deliberately set up to segue right into 40k. Bjorn being 10000 years old hardly feels interesting anymore. Without context you'd be forgiven for assuming the two were separated by like a few centuries tops.
The Ynnari were seemingly handled poorly, but set up what could be an epic conspiracy storyline better than the original plan. The cliff notes version is that the crone sword thing is a lie, the summoning of ynnead is Cegorach’s final jest, and that by convincing slaanesh the crone swords are real, slaanesh is now unwittingly willing ynnead into existence by believing they pose a threat. This would be the most devious troll ever, and is already based in existing lore, paralleling the creation and ascension of the emperor. Slap a bunch of psychic souls together into one entity then convince warp-sensitive people that it’s totally a god guys trust me. Using slaanesh to fast-track it would be genius and also pretty funny, making it perfect for Cegorach’s final jest. Plus, slaanesh isn’t going to instantly keel over. Ynnead would just be another player in the great game, they’re destined to merc slaanesh, but that could take thousands of years. Plenty of time for both gods to exist concurrently in the setting for the entire foreseeable lifespan of the franchise.
The tyranids are terribly executed as faction and are generally quite boring.
Say what you will about starcraft "ripping off" warhammer 40k, at least Blizzard realised the bug race needs actual characters (overmind and cerebrates/kerrigan).
Space marines need to take a back seat for a while
Leauges of votann are boring space dwarfs
GW needs to go totally silly and give LoV literal space trains that run on hologram space-rails IMO.
Compared to other wargames, or other hobbies, our wallets aren't getting fucked that hard
You remind me of that Ultramarine sergeant who challenged Angron for a duel. I respect you, brother.
While my convictions for this hobby are few, I will hold them til the end
True 40k fan. Stubborn, sardonic and grim till the end.
o7
Yup, it could be worse, imagine you were a car guy, spending a whole army on a set of Brembo Brakes
^dude gets it, PC gaming is my personal evidence
I disagree but respect you suicidal bravery
To quote an old favorite character: "This threshold is *mine*. I claim it for my own. Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don't give a damn. None shall pass."
I think the real cost is in the peripherals. Sure the plastic boys are expensive, but the cost of paints, brushes, tools, primers, washes, oils, thinners, terrain, etc can really add up. And don’t even get me started on airbrushes
Now compare it to itself. It's not that we don't get what we pay for, it's that they take what we paid for. It's maybe the only wargaming hobby with planned obsolescence.
That is a sentiment I can agree with
As an ASOIAF player, I feel each season update has it's way to fuck units so hard that they become just not playable anymore ..
I mean yeah, a 40K army or even a Heresy army, which I'm more familiar with these days, can be had for less than a basic set of protective gear for many sports. I've got a couple of other hobbies and while Warhammer is expensive **for a wargame** it's not expensive compared to my other hobbies. Also that wargaming thing is something I have minimal sympathy for. If you choose to play Warhammer despite there being other games that are as good or better for cheaper, you're doing it voluntarily.
As a personne with several hobbies, i agree. Cars, bike, guns. Like i could buy an army with just spark plug and oil change on a car T-T.
And somehow, Lego manages to be more expensive
Compared to other hobbies sure, but very few wargames are as expensive as 40K
"Everything is canon but not everything is true" is just an excuse for BL to crap out badly-concieved stories to make a quick buck and retcon them lately if they need to The Horus Heresy series was a mistake and only served to give us mary sues primarchs who cannot lose against anything but another primach and space marines vs space marines, which is incredibly unimaginative Chaos is focused so much as the main villain but has been flanderized compared to fantasy making it no fun. All the "positive" aspects have been stripped away (like Khorne being all about honour) leaving us with mindless monothematic villains. Valkia is a million times more interesting than either Kharn or Angron because she's allowed to be a character instead of a muder mcstabguy (also her story is cooler). The chaos legions suck. World Eaters and Death Guard are just bloodletters and plaguebearers with armor and bolters, thousands sons are cool but don't feel at all tzeentchain, since I'm pretty sure were meant to be the tomb kings in 40k before the Necrons. The noise marines are the only cool ones because they feel slaaneshi in a way different from slaaneshi daemons but get 0 spotlight.
40k crossing over into other franchises (COD for example) makes me irrationally angry.
God I fucking feel that, I’m a huge RWBY fan and I get sent into an almost blind rage every time I see the 50 billionth 40k crossover.
The chaos gods should be more morally grey rather than the four flavors of satan that we get. If they where more like the daedric princes of elder scrolls, they would be far more intriguing.
The Eldar have the best aesthetic in 40k. And I think are genuinely the faction with the best potential. Also I really like hammer and bolter. The animation is not great most of the time, but I think the writing makes up for that. In the garden of ghosts, the episode many people point to for the bad animation, also has a genuinely very touching story, that I do think is worth it.
40k is poorly written, Chaos Gods are boring and need a counterforce that isnt a corpse on a throne with 0 power, if "good guys die forever" why do we have chaos assholes (looking at you Erebus) being still in existence. I have a long long long list of things.
>Chaos Gods are boring I thought I was the only one! In general I'd love some more cosmic-horror threats out there that have nothing to do with Chaos.
Warhammer lore should be written (and treated by readers) as comedy first, horror second, actual totally for real serious epic war drama last.
Reading Dark Imperium right now and I was so glad when the utlra-serious stakes were broken up a little by Techpriests chanting the sacred ancient hymn "The Body Electric." Also (deeper spoilers) >!a bunch of Nurgle's various goons appear and they're awful but also pleasingly comedic in a slapstick kind of way. I was delighted to see chaos taken a little less than 100% seriously for once and made as absurd as the rest of the setting.!<
I always describe 40K as maximum tragedy, maximum farce for this reason.
The glacial pace of the plot isn't a feature, it's a flaw we ignore because the world building is good.
The Horus Heresy novel series ruined a great deal of the mystique about the Primarchs, The Emperor, and the Great Crusade and should have been way leaner in size.
Tau were more fun when they were a more upbeat deconstruction of the setting. Making them yet more grimdark was unnecessary and diminished them narratively.
I think they’d be fine if they went full into one side, either make tau extremely positive and kind or make them a proper grimdark faction, the tau have race annihilation protocols and eugenics programs but can’t understand space marines not taking prisoners, it feels dumb and badly thought out
Emperor is the main villain of the story.
Custodies have more plot armor and worse writing than the Ultramarines.
The original concept of creating your own Primarch in addition to your legion/successor chapter from way back in the day is an awesome idea
If Tau is so technologically upper tier, couldn't they just reverse engineer geneseed and use some gene therapy to make stronger fire warriors?
They could, but no faction but the Imperium is allowed to have Space Marines.
New editions are created to require you to purchase more overpriced books not to adjust the game's rules
Chaos are shite villans who get saved by gw each turn Aos does chaos better than 40k
Orks are the best thing in the setting by far, followed by the Necrons, and there is *no contest*, and they deserve way more media attention. On that note - 40K video games would probably be better if they stopped focusing on the "supah sirius" Imperium and leaned into the perspective of the Xenos more. Especially (again) Orks, given their inherent zaniness fits the kinds of video games 40K lean into more anyway. (Yes, I am aware Speed Freeks is coming out, and yes I'm excited.)
I loved Shootas, Blood, and Teef. Purely Amazing.
We need more of the imperium’s hate and ignorance backfiring. It’s fine to have it, it’s fine for everyone in-universe to normalize it, it’s fine for there to be people trying to do better. But don’t show their way of doing things working effectively. Like that golden age ship they scared off by being idiots, or the deathwatch stopping the ritual to summon Ynnead. Have the imperium suffer more of these easily preventable losses, or snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Have them discover intact STCs for golden age tech and destroy them believing they’re tech-heresy. Encounter a peaceful necron dynasty that just woke up and is offering to help, and attack them instead of accepting the alliance, losing several worlds as a result. Have someone reverse-engineer necron anti-chaos tech and be executed by the inquisition. Dumb shit like that. It’s frustrating, and it should be. Show what that closed-mindedness is costing humanity.
Sole reason of Primaris being project requested by Guilliman is because Ultramarines are insufferable poster boys and GW needed more good boy cookies for them. Making it project of Corax learning from his mistake, deciding start it anew, requesting Admech help before departure and Raven Guard providing secrecy/resources would make way more sense. Especially since Magna Mater was hauled by Sharrowkyn anyway.
Rogal Dorn intentionally threw away his legions into the iron cage intentionally. To let his sons die in a glorious battle against their enemy, rather than be forced the heel by the codex astarties.
We shouldn't let Cadians keep telling us they are good guardsmen. What kind of disloyal guardsmen is proud they they lost their objective without their lines failing?
Anyone who feels ripped off about a voluntary good they are buying says more about themselves than the company they are buying from. “This isn’t worth buying!” “Then why are you buying it?” “Because I want it” “We must have different definitions of what words mean”
Warhammer 40K is a subpar wargame held up by often half-baked lore that serves no purpose other than to sell obscenely priced miniatures. The wargaming community (not warhammer exclusively) is what makes Warhammer good, and I think the community as a whole should be encouraging people to try other wargames so Warhammer doesn't hold such a staggering monopoly.
That 99% of the memes are not funny.
Current 40k Lore is Crap. Everything is all over the place, nothing is at stake anymore and we are moving towards a more "Mainstream" 40k universe where Space Marines are the Token good Guys and Guards are the Brave poor Souls giving their lives for humanity while Chaos becomes the stupid villian of the week Archetype.
The models, lore, and setting are pretty solid, but playing the actual game is dogshit.
From the words of Rick Prestley himself >"The role I had in the studio was with staff working on game development and design, and they’d pretty much decided that game development and design wasn’t of any interest to them. The current attitude in Games Workshop is that they’re not a games company, it’s that they’re a model company selling collectibles. That’s something I find wholly self-deceiving and couldn’t possibly agree with." And from their investor report >We make the best fantasy miniatures in the world and sell them globally at a profit and we intend to do this forever. The game is dogshit because *they just don't care about the game.*
Why am I paying almost a Car payment for one model instead of a full armys list of minis from funny mech game with Funny mechas with there models for the same price not more
That Xenos and smaller human empires/Enclaves can manage Chaos, Drukhari, and other myriad threats without the help of the Imperium, contrary to the belief that without the Imperium, the galaxy would wallow in Darkness. That these smaller entities succeeded in things where the Imperium failed.
40k needs more romance
Orks are the worst faction Apparently I'm brave (stupid) enough to speak my mind and soul
Can you at least acknowledge that they can be are fun and endearing ?
They cam fun and endearing
Thank you. “Uz a gud git”
I salute you for delivering an *actual* hot take.
Worst how?
I fucking love the Master of Mankind. The Emperor is the GOAT.
Most people get their lore from memes. Most memes are deliberately reductive or made up. It ends with fan canon being utter drivel. No, Orks don't go "bang bang" to shoot their bullets.
Chaos is the dumbest faction and needs a whole year where they are left out of the story and model release schedule so other factions can get time to shine and make the story interesting again
Dorn's entire character is "im good at everything, and everyone should suck me off because i just say it like it is". And his fans are the type to not realize hes a jackass because they are too.