The Warhammer 40k Thread

[[cancerblack]]

Do you read the novels?

Not since the Heresy series decided to be 100 books long and go nowhere fast.

I dunno man, 8th edition was fun (haven't played 9th), Aeronautica Imperialis is fun, I've heard a ton of praise for Adeptus Titanicus, and Kill Team was neat. I've heard a lot of praise for Warcry, so maybe the new Kill Team will hew more in that direction.

First, I think you're misunderstanding me somewhat. Due to the social nature of wargaming, you can have Fun even with a completely broken, miserable set of rules as long as your opponent is a good bloke. But that says more about their and your own social skills than it does about the games themselves.

Personally I felt 8th was just an exercise in rolling rice with little to no real decision making beyond the list-building (aka purchasing) stage. This has been a problem with 40k and most GW games in general for a long time. 8th was an overall improvement on 7th, but that's not saying much because 7th was legitimately torturous to play.

AA, I can't comment since I don't think a single person in my country actually plays it.

Titanicus is basically BattleTech with dodgier rules and GW premium pricing.

Kill team, I found to have a lot of the same issues I just outlined for 40k, unless you happen upon an opponent with an asymmetrical strategy that forces you to think. Problem being the rules did not encourage those asymmetries in the first place, and where they did it was rarely a choice and more often a failure of design, rendering the situation moot since you just clean up anyway.

Warcry is quantifiably where KT is headed in the new edition, although not fully. From what people have figured out from the big video, certain elements have been directly ported over, while others seem very, very likely in connection with the proven stuff. On the face of it, this would be an improvement but I've learned never to underestimate the ability of GW to completely cock up what should be an easy win for them.

Like I said, you don't know what the rule set is. Maybe you have reason to be skeptical based on your past experiences but automatically discarding it wholesale before it's even out is, well... "you do you" I guess.

Thank you, I will. I'd love to be proven wrong, but 9th ed still just being about which (expensive, new) models you buy and spam ten of, then stack character buffs onto, like 8th was, does not fill me with hope that they've gotten any better at game design as opposed to the games being elaborate marketing for the toys themselves.

Also I'm of the opinion that they never stopped making cool lore.

It went down hill and never recovered around the same time the head office mandated that everything needed branded/repetitive names, like having a Space Wolves Wolf Lord with Wolf Totem and Twin Wolf Claws riding a Cyber-Wolf.

I want to say, 2009 ish? I remember being excited for Blood Angels finally getting a new book after a decade of neglect, only to find it was full of Bloodstrike Missiles and Blood Talons and almost entirely recycled second edition fluff.

Now we're at the point where 40k is an ongoing narrative with Primarch MCs, rather than a sandbox setting.

[Local Trouble]

Maybe they should bring back Matt Ward to fix the rules.  Just imagine what he'd do with Guilliman.

[Xenomrph]

Do you read the novels?

Not since the Heresy series decided to be 100 books long and go nowhere fast.

It's about 50, and although it's got (a lot of) filler, apparently the series does have some winners in it.

(this guy's channel is really good, by the way)

I've only read like the first 6 HH books before I got bogged down with other stuff I wanted to read and never got caught up, and I doubt I'll ever have the time to plow through all 50 books, but I might read through some of the stand-outs.

AA, I can't comment since I don't think a single person in my country actually plays it.

It's a good time; the models are cool, the risk/reward system of pushing your airplane keeps things exciting, I dig it all around.

Avoid the PC game like the plague though. It's literally the tabletop game in digital format, but tries to condense the dogfights into "real time" (which is way worse than it sounds) and strips out all of the social aspects of the game (and obviously all of the hobby/painting stuff).
Dakka Squadron is a way better time if you really need a 40k dogfighting videogame.

Also I'm of the opinion that they never stopped making cool lore.

It went down hill and never recovered around the same time the head office mandated that everything needed branded/repetitive names, like having a Space Wolves Wolf Lord with Wolf Totem and Twin Wolf Claws riding a Cyber-Wolf.

I want to say, 2009 ish? I remember being excited for Blood Angels finally getting a new book after a decade of neglect, only to find it was full of Bloodstrike Missiles and Blood Talons and almost entirely recycled second edition fluff.

Now we're at the point where 40k is an ongoing narrative with Primarch MCs, rather than a sandbox setting.

That's why I opt to read non-Space Marine stuff, although there have been some winners published after 2009 - 'The World Engine' (pub 2016) tells the story of the single greatest Space Marine chapter ever making a ridiculous suicide run against a Necron Death Star and fighting to the last man before blowing the thing up and saving a sub-sector. It f**king owns.

There have been 3 really awesome Necron stories recently ('Severed', 'War in the Museum', and 'The Infinite and the Divine') that are all totally awesome. I'm listening to 'Lords of Silence' right now and it's pretty cool, too.

We also got the recent Sabbat Worlds lore book and the Liber Xenobiologis book, both of which are excellent.

Saying "it's all Space Marine bullshit, and has been for over a decade" feels like you're painting things with an unnecessarily broad brush.

[Local Trouble]

I'm reading Godblight right now since Roboute Guilliman is the de facto MC of 40k these days.

[[cancerblack]]

Now, Xenomrph, we're not going to agree on these books because I loathe, body and soul, the 2011 changes to the Necron faction.

Maybe they should bring back Matt Ward to fix the rules.  Just imagine what he'd do with Guilliman.

You jest, but Ward wrote one of their best rule sets ever, pretty much on his own (War of the Ring), and every codex he did for 40k had near perfect internal balance and gave you the freedom to take whichever models appealed to you and still stand a chance competitively.

The two big issues were that A) he was most notable as a codex writer during the time GW started being very transparent with its corporate bullshit (things like BLOODSTRIKE MISSILES or the GK baby-carrier model come to mind first), and B) totally incompetent codexes with zero internal or external balance written by absolute chucklef**ks like Robin Cruddace being what Wards' books were up against.

5th edition could have unironically been the best edition, despite some serious flaws in the core book and the fluff starting to turn sour, if they'd gotten Ward to write every codex. Remember if everything is over-powered, nothing is.

Having said that, I hear what he did in the late WHFB is totally unforgivable, but that game was dead for at least 5 years before they pulled the plug so I wouldn't know personally.

[Local Trouble]

What's wrong with the Necrons?

[[cancerblack]]

They went from "beep boop soulless machines here to harvest you for our nightmarish star-gods" to "AKSHUALLY the gods are splintered and are now Pokemon, also high ranking Necrons have cartoon villain personalities and get up to ZANY ANTICS YO"

People will say that there is still a sub-faction that is deluded/insane and still acts like the old ones did, and that this should be enough, but it's more of a slap in the face than anything.

[Xenomrph]

I love what they did with the Necrons - they went from soulless machines who were basically incapable of having unique characters,  and instead allowed players to personalize their army however they want. If you want your dynasty to still be soulless machines that's absolutely possible (and you can make up why they're like that - maybe they're just waking up, maybe they got memory-wiped due to degradation in their programming, etc), but if you want to make up lore for your own army you have actual options and sub-factions and a lot more character. There's reasons for infighting, politics, alliances, etc.
if you want soulless creatures bent on nothing but death, the Tyranids still exist.

And the Necron special characters are hilarious. For a race of unstoppable killer robots with technology so advanced it might as well be magic, they've got characters like a kleptomaniac asshole, a time-traveling oracle asshole, literally a Wooster & Jeeves/Don Quixote & Sancho Panda pastiche, Erwin Rommel, and Mengele. It's like the authors realize that the UNSTOPPABLE MURDER ROBOTS idea is inherently ridiculous and are in on the joke, I love it.

The C'tan were interesting in a sort of Lovecraftian horror motif, but we already had that with the Chaos gods. Taking the focus away from the C'tan and putting it on the actual Necrons themselves (you know, the minis you're buying and personalizing and moving around on the table) was a wise move.

[[cancerblack]]

Hard disagree to all of that, sorry.

If you want your dynasty to still be soulless machines that's absolutely possible (and you can make up why they're like that - maybe they're just waking up, maybe they got memory-wiped due to degradation in their programming, etc)

This part especially. Oh, you spent a thousand dollars and hour upon hour building and painting your space terminators and their eldritch god? Well GOOD NEWS! You can still play like that if you admit that your dudes are wrong/broken!

Nah, f**k off GW.

[Xenomrph]

They're not wrong or broken, though. They're just different.
I'd much rather have a faction where people are encouraged to customize their stuff and get creative and tell their own stories as opposed to one where you're absolutely locked down and have to present them in a certain way. That's boring and stifles creativity.

Not to mention that it was essentially impossible to portray the old Necrons in the fiction as anything other than personality-less boogeymen (a niche already cornered by the Tyranids). Necron POV stories were essentially impossible.

Oh well, to each their own.

Point was that there's a lot more than just mediocre Space Marine bolter porn out there, so complaining that it's Space Marines all the way down is silly.

[[cancerblack]]

They're not wrong or broken, though. They're just different.

"My Necrons are soulless automatons who serve an eternally thirsting star-god"

"The fact they lack whacky personalities means they're damaged or corrupted in some way, also your god is dead and they're being tricked by a splinter of his left foot lol"

It really rubs one the wrong way after a significant dollar investment and years of mental investment.

I'd much rather have a faction where people are encouraged to customize their stuff and get creative and tell their own stories as opposed to one where you're absolutely locked down and have to present them in a certain way. That's boring and stifles creativity.

You have roughly 30 of those, and it was also entirely possible for both players and GW to add more variety and individuality to Necron forces without making them Tomb Kings of Khemri, or invalidating years of buildup around the Ctan conspiracy and the Pariah gene.

Not to mention that it was essentially impossible to portray the old Necrons in the fiction as anything other than personality-less boogeymen (a niche already cornered by the Tyranids). Necron POV stories were essentially impossible.

Objectively incorrect, there are stories older than and contemporary with the 3e Necron codex both from a Necron perspective and featuring them, where Lords have individuality, personality, and are even capable of guile and deceit up to and including infiltrating an Inquisitorial facility in a human-suit. None of this required shitting all over the Ctan, or Rick and Morty style antics.

Point was that there's a lot more than just mediocre Space Marine bolter porn out there, so complaining that it's Space Marines all the way down is silly.

I don't believe I ever made that complaint, the complaint I made was that it has shifted into an ongoing, evolving narrative where The Latest Events drastically shape and alter the setting.
Obviously this will be Imperium-centric, which wasn't my complaint either, I was ass-pained about several Primarchs becoming central characters to that ongoing narrative, rather than long-lost mythical figures (Imperial) or background plot devices (Chaos).

Bringing any of them to the fore (as in-game characters or in novels/fluff) is off-putting to me.

[Xenomrph]

"My Necrons are soulless automatons who serve an eternally thirsting star-god"

"The fact they lack whacky personalities means they're damaged or corrupted in some way, also your god is dead and they're being tricked by a splinter of his left foot lol"

Yeah but that's not what the current lore says - it says some of them have full personalities, some have quirky personalities, and some have no personality. All for various reasons. Pick the one that suits you.

If you're going by the OldCron lore, all of the Necrons were damaged - they'd nearly been stripped of their personalities. Even the old lore had semi-sentient, "damaged", or not-quite-aware Necrons.

it was also entirely possible for both players and GW to add more variety and individuality to Necron forces without making them Tomb Kings of Khemri

For example?

or invalidating years of buildup around the Ctan conspiracy and the Pariah gene.

This is a more valid complaint, although "the C'tan did everything" is boring IMO, and given how often the term "Pariah" has been name-dropped w/r/t Necrons in the last, like, year, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they made a comeback.

Lords have individuality, personality, and are even capable of guile and deceit up to and including infiltrating an Inquisitorial facility in a human-suit.

...and all of that is still possible in the current lore.

None of this required shitting all over the Ctan, or Rick and Morty style antics.

The C'tan complaint is valid, although I don't agree with it - I think the Necrons as a faction are a lot more interesting when their lore is focusing on the Necrons themselves.

It's worth pointing out that not all of the Necrons are zany goofballs, or even most of them - out of the 8 named characters in the most recent codex, 5 of them are Serious Business with tactical acumen and arguably all of their mental faculties. The existence of a couple eccentric characters doesn't somehow ruin "The Lore" any moreso than the existence of Ciaphas Cain. If you want to have an old-school Necron army with a Serious Business Overlord and mindless, ruthlessly efficient troops, that's still absolutely on the table. Outside of the C'tan being nerfed, none of the old lore was outright invalidated - you could even put Pariahs in your own lore even if you can't field them on the tabletop; as mentioned, the recent fiction has been hinting at it since the 7th edition Necron codex.

It seems like your problem is that they allowed Necrons to have personalities other than Serious Business, and it just seems like a weird complaint. Some people want to be creative with their army in a creative hobby, it seems like a good idea to let them do that instead of gatekeeping them and say "no, your Necrons must always be Serious Business 100% of the time or you're breaking The Lore".

the complaint I made was that it has shifted into an ongoing, evolving narrative where The Latest Events drastically shape and alter the setting.

That seems like an objectively good thing, though?
An ongoing, evolving narrative lets GW introduce new ideas, minis, campaigns, etc, especially after the narrative had been essentially static for 3 decades.
The latest events haven't "drastically" altered anything though - 3 Primarchs have come back, and what has actually changed? There are new Better Space Marines, but what has actually changed? Chaos has a new warp rift cutting the galaxy in half, but what has actually changed? The galaxy is still at war, the Imperium is still beset on all sides and on the verge of collapse, and everything still sucks all the time for everyone.

Not to mention, they only started advancing the narrative when 8th edition dropped in 2018, but you cited 2009 as when the problems started?

Primarchs becoming central characters to that ongoing narrative, rather than long-lost mythical figures (Imperial) or background plot devices (Chaos).

I can totally get this, having the Horus Heresy and its characters be this distant poorly-remembered memory was neat and lent a "mythical" quality to the history of the lore. But the moment the HH books started and the Primarchs started actually being written as complex characters with flaws and individual motivations, it opened the door to bring them back in the modern setting because they weren't just mythical demigods anymore.

Like I said I get why you'd object to it (I initially did as well, ultimately I'm pretty ambivalent about it).

[Local Trouble]

[Xenomrph]

ONE OF US

ONE OF US

ONE OF US

[Local Trouble]

Did you agree to disagree?