Betrayer. Thoughts, queries, equestions. Spoilers, duh.

[Wade Garrett]

What happened at Pydna was that Roman manipular array charged headlong into the enemy phalanx and was driven back.

 

As the phalanx pushed forward, it's formation became staggered

due to some parts of the front meeting fiercer resistance and some less so, and once things broke down into catch as catch can brawling the Roman swords proved superior to the long spears.

 

I consider it World Eatery because Paullus was a skilled general well aware of the ill things that could befall anyone who attacked a phalanx from the front on level ground, who attempted to delay battle until the Macedonians could be caught in rough terrain but was forced into fighting on the plains of Pydna by the aggressiveness and insubordination of his junior officers.

 

("Something's wrong." he said. "All squads, fall back. Put distance between the tanks as well. The fleet can annihilate this plaza from orbit.")

[A D-B]

best part of the book for me was after The world eaters led by Khârn Crash into the wall of shielded Ultras.....they take their beating lose men like the WE always do....then right before the nails truly kick in Khârn snarls ....."Our Turn"...... ing AWESOME

That scene realistically was bull:cuss i dont care how angry you get its impossible to break a shieldwall on anger alone.

It obviously wasn't anger alone. It was a charging horde of strength-enhanced berserkers armoured like walking tanks with chainsaws in both hands, who get even stronger when they're angry.

How do you think shield-walls did break? It wasn't prayer, and it was very rarely down to skill, either. Skill tended to mean very little in the close-ranked formation fighting of the Ancient World. Throwing large numbers of men at them over and and over again was literally the most common way, when lacking cavalry to attack from the flank (which many Ancient World armies did indeed lack). Whether we're talking Macedonian phalanx, the Roman maniple, or the Saxon shield-wall, just because Khârn was angry it's obviously not the only reason the wall breaks. The fact the World Eaters solidly outnumber the Ultramarines and liberally decorate the formation with thrown grenades has a little more to do with it.

[Marshal Rohr]

Stop it A D B you're making sense using historical analysis.

[daveNYC]

On the other hand, for that kind of character in 40k we have the Tyranids and Daemons. World Eaters in 40k must capable of at least some forethought and restraint, or else, for example, when Devourer of Stars dropped out of over Armegeddon it would have contained nothing but daemon Angron and a giant pile of bloody skulls.

 

And the Death Star is a bad example of a one of a kind superweapon. In the original trilogy the Empire built two of them, four if you count the EU, and five if you count the one built by Durga the Hutt.

 

The thing is, if you reduce the World Eaters to simply being a force of nature, or (bad) slasher film antagonist, then there will never be another story about the World Eaters.  There will be stories with the World Eaters in them, but those stories will all be about the people on the other side.  Jaws was the story about the guys hunting the shark, Twister (stupid as it was) was about the people chasing the storm, and slasher films are about the people getting killed and the one or two people that manage to turn the tables and survive.  Falling to chaos is pretty bad, falling to chaos and being reduced to a plot device for all eternity is worse.

 

The fact that the EU had something is almost proof right there that whatever it was is bad writing.  Thanks folks, I'll be here all week, try the veal.

There's a big difference between the second Death Star in the original trilogy and the kingships in the HH series.  In BftA, the Abyss was basically the first Death Star.  A hellishly powerful machine that was going to destroy the good guys' planet.  And both the Death Star and the Abyss were defeated using standard underdog tropes of heart, spirit, guile, and cunning.  In the case of the Abyss they even made that explicit by having the brute force naval battle end with the good guys getting crumped.  

Now in Return of the Jedi, the Death Star wasn't an active threat like it was in the first movie.  It was also years later in the timeline, implying the amount of resources and time needed to build one of the things, especially as it was looking about 60% completed.   And that's the key difference.  BftA basically had the Word Bearers building the 40k plot equivalent of the Death Star, then Betrayer comes along and says, well actually they built three of them.  And like I said, if you build one, you can say it's super difficult and it's unique.  You build two, and maybe you can say that maybe it's a sister ship that came from the same dock (which explicitly it didn't), you build three and you start thinking that what the Hell, there's like an assembly line producing them like Toyota Camrys or something.

 

 

 

On the one hand, I kind of get what Legatus is saying.

 

For instance, the great white shark in Jaws was a big shark that liked to eat people. That's all it needed to be, adding a backstory where it was a mommy shark that wanted revenge because Quint caught and cooked its babies would have been silly.

 

On the other hand, for that kind of character in 40k we have the Tyranids and Daemons. World Eaters in 40k must capable of at least some forethought and restraint, or else, for example, when Devourer of Stars dropped out of over Armegeddon it would have contained nothing but daemon Angron and a giant pile of bloody skulls.

 

And the Death Star is a bad example of a one of a kind superweapon. In the original trilogy the Empire built two of them, four if you count the EU, and five if you count the one built by Durga the Hutt.

Not to mention the Eye of Palpatine, the Eclipse, the Suncrusher, the Conqueror... The list of superweapons in Star Wars EU is longer than the runtime for Doctor Who.

 

Reminds me of the big deal that GW made of the Planet Killer back in the 13th Black Crusade days.  Oooooo... a Warhammer ship that can destroy a planet.  I mean between cyclonic torpedoes and virus bombs, is there a Imperial ship out there that can't destroy a planet?  Just one of those times that 40k attempted to dial things up to 11 but discovered that they were already there.

 

While I have nothing backing this, I believe that Angron's gladiator brothers were corrupted by chaos.  That the Emperor could see this and knew that there was no debating it.  They had to die.  At least I think it makes for a reasonable explanation.

 

So instead of the Emperor kidnapping Angron, forcing him to leave his friends behind to die, and then dumping super-angry-Demigod on his legion for them to sort out.... we have the Emperor kidnapping Angron, discovering that the guys he'd been hanging out with for years/decades were corrupted by the Emperor's (and humanity's) greatest enemy,  forcing him to leave his chaos corrupted friends behind to die, and then dumping super-angry-Demigod who had been living with chaos corrupted warriors for years/decades on his legion of super-soldiers who would do anything for him for them to sort out?

 

The first is stupid, and I'm glad Betrayer just highlighted how messed up things were for that while not trying to handwave a reason for it.  The second is just crazy.

[Legatus]

 

The thing is, if you reduce the World Eaters to simply being a force of nature, or (bad) slasher film antagonist, then there will never be another story about the World Eaters.  There will be stories with the World Eaters in them, but those stories will all be about the people on the other side.  Jaws was the story about the guys hunting the shark, Twister (stupid as it was) was about the people chasing the storm, and slasher films are about the people getting killed and the one or two people that manage to turn the tables and survive.

 

And that is perfectly fine. People still root for Jason or for other supernatural villains. People will still want to play such a character in a game, or play such a faction. The World Eaters are a villain faction, not a protagonist faction. Sure, there might be some people who are asking for a more characterised portrayal of Jason Voorhees, and to get a story from his point of view. But you would also have a lot of people being totally put off by such an approach, as that would also ruin the appeal for a lot of people.

[daveNYC]

 

 

The thing is, if you reduce the World Eaters to simply being a force of nature, or (bad) slasher film antagonist, then there will never be another story about the World Eaters.  There will be stories with the World Eaters in them, but those stories will all be about the people on the other side.  Jaws was the story about the guys hunting the shark, Twister (stupid as it was) was about the people chasing the storm, and slasher films are about the people getting killed and the one or two people that manage to turn the tables and survive.

 

And that is perfectly fine. People still root for Jason or for other supernatural villains. People will still want to play such a character in a game, or play such a faction. The World Eaters are a villain faction, not a protagonist faction. 

 

And so it's an OK thing to reduce an entire faction to cardboard cutouts because they're the bad guys?  Or because people will still root for them?  That's all totally irrelevant to me because what would be lost is far more important than any of that.  They would be reduced to generic sources of ultra-violence.  From a story standpoint, there'd be no reason why you couldn't do a find/replace and change them into Orks.

 

Like I said, there'd be no more stories about the World Eaters.  There'd be stories with World Eaters, but the story would actually be about everyone else.  And given the characters created and fleshed out in Betrayer, that'd be a damn shame.

[Wade Garrett]

Now in Return of the Jedi, the Death Star wasn't an active threat like it was in the first movie.

Say what now?

 

"The Death Star...is...fully operational! Ah heh heh heh!"

 

As for the World Eaters being a villain faction, I'd actually rank them fairly high in what passes for 40k morality, since if you fall into their clutches you can expect a *chop* "Next! More blood for the Blood God!"

 

Compared to, say, the Imperium ("The heretic's soul will be cleansed of heresy by the righteous excruciation though it take centuries!"), Nurgle ("Have my horrible flesh rotting plagues made you my friend yet? No? Then have some more!"), or Slaanesh ("Bite the barbed wire pillow, new flesh!") they're practically D & D paladins. ;)

[betrayer41]

best part of the book for me was after The world eaters led by Khârn Crash into the wall of shielded Ultras.....they take their beating lose men like the WE always do....then right before the nails truly kick in Khârn snarls ....."Our Turn"...... ing AWESOME

That scene realistically was bull:cuss i dont care how angry you get its impossible to break a shieldwall on anger alone.

Unless......Your Khârn and the 8th assault squad

[Kol Saresk]

best part of the book for me was after The world eaters led by Khârn Crash into the wall of shielded Ultras.....they take their beating lose men like the WE always do....then right before the nails truly kick in Khârn snarls ....."Our Turn"...... ing AWESOME

That scene realistically was bull:cuss i dont care how angry you get its impossible to break a shieldwall on anger alone.

Unless......Your Khârn and the 8th assault squad

As well as a Destroyer squad and several thousand other World Eaters.

[daveNYC]

It didn't drive the final confronation.  Ep. IV, you've got the Death Star closing in on Yavin with a countdown until it's able to destroy the planet.  Whatever the trope is named, it's played straight.  The rebels have 30 minutes or whatever until the Death Star is able to take the shot and kill all the good guys.  In Ep. VI, the Death Star is a location to be destroyed, and it's shooting at things, but it's a passive player as far as pushing the plot forward.  The fact that it's operational is another way for the Emperor to turn the screws on Luke (and spout one of the most epic and spite filled lines in movies "No witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!  Commander, fire at will.", good stuff) but it isn't what is driving the action in the throne room, the orbital battle, or on the surface.  The target of all the action in the last third of the movie isn't the Death Star, it's the Emperor, who just happens to be on the Death Star.  If the Death Star didn't even have running water and just sat there, the space battle and the fight in the throne room would have still happened, but they wouldn't have been nearly as exciting.  So when I said 'a threat', I should have probably been more precise and said 'a threat that's driving the plot'.

[betrayer41]

i also know at one point it talked about the WE phsyically ripping shields away form ultras and creating gaps after the nails had kicked in

[Kol Saresk]

Why do we keep going back to Star Wars and Voorhees?

 

It might be my imagination, but I could have sworn this was about the Horus Heresy novel titled Betrayal.

[Legatus]

 

And so it's an OK thing to reduce an entire faction to cardboard cutouts because they're the bad guys?  Or because people will still root for them?

 

Yes. That is entirely acceptable for "the bad guys". You don't need to see their inner monologues or their point of view. You only need to see how badass and evil they are.

 

 

 

From a story standpoint, there'd be no reason why you couldn't do a find/replace and change them into Orks.

 

I would find ork protagonists much more viable than Khorne Berserker protagonists. You can have Orks squabbling among themselves or even communicate with the enemy. However, when you have a heavy armoured red berserker warrior from a hell dimension that can singlehandedly tear apart an entire base of Guardsmen, it looses a lot of the appeal once he start's talking "Yarr, I'ma gonna kill you to get more favour from ma god!"

 

Yeah, you can have a talking Berserker act in a story. But he is a lot less effective as a mortal threat from an sinister outworldly dimension.

 

Unfortunately, with the "pre-Chaos" Legions in the Horus Heresy series, with the Imperial Armour books about the Red Corsairs, and perhaps even with the past few Chaos Codices, a lot of that "hell dimension" theme has been downplayed.

[daveNYC]

 

 

And so it's an OK thing to reduce an entire faction to cardboard cutouts because they're the bad guys?  Or because people will still root for them?

 

Yes. That is entirely acceptable for "the bad guys". You don't need to see their inner monologues or their point of view. You only need to see how badass and evil they are.

 

That's it, I'm outa here.

[betrayer41]

best part of the book for me was after The world eaters led by Khârn Crash into the wall of shielded Ultras.....they take their beating lose men like the WE always do....then right before the nails truly kick in Khârn snarls ....."Our Turn"...... ing AWESOME

That scene realistically was bull:cuss i dont care how angry you get its impossible to break a shieldwall on anger alone.

Unless......Your Khârn and the 8th assault squad

As well as a Destroyer squad and several thousand other World Eaters.

haha NOPE pretty sure it was just Khârn and skane

[Wade Garrett]

Legatus, you're mixing up Daemons of Chaos (who should indeed be written as incomprehensible things with motives no sane mind can comprehend) with Chaos Space Marines/Chaos Worshippers, whose drives and desires are, in the main, perfectly understandable:

 

Greed, revenge, ambition, a desire for glory, fear of dying, all that good stuff.

[betrayer41]

Also,  at this point, they're still space marines.....as crazed and corrupt as some are they are still space marines, and when they're not taken by the nails they still act as such. I think it's fantastic what ADB did for the World Eaters, i have always loved the world Eaters but it wasn't until Betrayer that i REALLY liked the world eaters and chose to throw most of my 40k aside and focus on HH

[Kol Saresk]

Legatus, you're mixing up Daemons of Chaos (who should indeed be written as incomprehensible things with motives no sane mind can comprehend) with Chaos Space Marines/Chaos Worshippers, whose drives and desires are, in the main, perfectly understandable:

 

Greed, revenge, ambition, a desire for glory, fear of dying, all that good stuff.

The drive to protect one's friends and family, love for a woman/man, the need to protect one's people and lead them into greatness, you know, all the things that drive the Ultramarines.

 

That's 40K. The only thing that separates the bad people(the Imperium) from the Worse People(Servants and Allies of the Ruinous Powers) are just how far one group is willing to go. And since you have Relictors, Radical Inquisitors, Grey Knights and Exorcists, that line is very thin and very easy to cross. There is no good. There is only bad, and worse. Everyone is a villain. The person who saved you today is just as likely to hang, shoot, draw and quarter you tomorrow before banishing your soul to the lowest depths of Slaanesh's Palace Dungeons. So if all villains do not need stories and well-thought and well-developed characters, then Black Library does not need exist. After all "there is only war". But because everyone and everything makes Vlad the Impaler in a bad mood with pike in hand look like a cuddle buddy, we do need well-thought and well-developed characters. Otherwise, we just have "I will do anything to protect the Imperium" and "War!" and "WAAAAAAAGH!" as motivating factors and let's face it, bolter porn does get old after a while.

[Legatus]

 

Legatus, you're mixing up Daemons of Chaos (who should indeed be written as incomprehensible things with motives no sane mind can comprehend) with Chaos Space Marines/Chaos Worshippers, whose drives and desires are, in the main, perfectly understandable:

 

Greed, revenge, ambition, a desire for glory, fear of dying, all that good stuff.

 

That may be true for "newbs" who just started discovering the ruinous entities that can grant them powers. However, spending ten thousand years in a hell dimension kinda changes one's outlook on things.

 

 

 

 

Everyone is a villain. (...) So if all villains do not need stories and well-thought and well-developed characters, then Black Library does not need exist.

 

Obviously the Imperium is the protagonist faction. And human civillians are "good", in that all they want is to live their lives in peace. All the draconian actions and decisions by various Imperial authorities are meant to protect them. In comparison, there are no innocent Orks or peaceful Chaos worshippers whom the violent Orks and Chaos followers seek to protect.

 

The Eldar could similarly be classified as "good", but we are seeing their actions from the perspective of the human protagonist faction, so they often come across as dangerous.

[Captain Idaho]

The World Eaters were great. Totally berserk and uncontrollable when in the throws of the Nails, yet made sense outside combat as they can't be uncontrollable all the time or they just wouldn't work as anything other than caged animals.

 

If you don't like that then you're not just a minority but going to have to lump it. That's the way it is.

 

Oh, and no more Star Wars talk please.

[godking]

best part of the book for me was after The world eaters led by Khârn Crash into the wall of shielded Ultras.....they take their beating lose men like the WE always do....then right before the nails truly kick in Khârn snarls ....."Our Turn"...... ing AWESOME

That scene realistically was bull:cuss i dont care how angry you get its impossible to break a shieldwall on anger alone.

Because shieldwalls have never been broken by charging people right?

Besides, who cares, they're Astartes! You try holding back a small walking tank running as fast as a motorcycle on the highway!

Physics man, physics!

Shieldwalls are broken by missile troops uneven terrain or if the opponent has a huge numerical advantage . As long as the numbers are relatively even your not breaking a well maintained shieldwall simply by charging it.

There is a reason why shieldwalls in one form or another survied until the 1800s.

[Brother Captain Kezef]

One thing about a shield wall being "impossible" to break on anger/courage/brute strength alone. It can be done and has been done.

 

Look at History and you see tales of shield walls, Greek Phalanxes and Roman formations being broken. Sure they are not exactly common, but it DOES happen.

 

Hell in the wars against Napolean, Kings German Legion Hussars broke several French squares and that was supposed to be impossible.

[godking]

I agree with Kol. Look at the Battle of Pydna, where Roman legions under Aemilius Paullus broke the Macedonian phalanxes (the shieldwalliest shieldwalls to ever form a wall of shields) by...throwing themselves at it over and over.

The romans used their velites and exploited gaps in the plalanx to destroy it. They did not simply charge it over and over.

[Kol Saresk]

best part of the book for me was after The world eaters led by Khârn Crash into the wall of shielded Ultras.....they take their beating lose men like the WE always do....then right before the nails truly kick in Khârn snarls ....."Our Turn"...... ing AWESOME

That scene realistically was bull:cuss i dont care how angry you get its impossible to break a shieldwall on anger alone.

Because shieldwalls have never been broken by charging people right?

Besides, who cares, they're Astartes! You try holding back a small walking tank running as fast as a motorcycle on the highway!

Physics man, physics!

Shieldwalls are broken by missile troops uneven terrain or if the opponent has a huge numerical advantage . As long as the numbers are relatively even your not breaking a well maintained shieldwall simply by charging it.

There is a reason why shieldwalls in one form or another survied until the 1800s.

The numbers weren't even though. In that square, you had several thousand World Eaters with chainaxes, bolt pistols, grenades and rad weaponry facing off against a few hundred Ultramarines with shields, swords and a bolters. Moving horde versus stationary Lego piece. And the horde is wearing boots. Lego piece loses. It's not the Twin Towers were Aragon leads the charge of a few hundred warriors into thousands of Uruk-Hai. This is the wild where the pack of fifty wolves tear apart the lone, injured moose.

[Marshal Rohr]

Wolves on an elk might be more appropriate.