Gree Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 Pretty much, because I've yet to see a compelling, background-based(from any edition) reason to consider him a failure.I've already explained it to you. But from past experience, it's become apparent to me that debating with you is a pointless waste of time. If you really do wish to see the argument then I can send you a PM, because I do think I've derailed this thread long enough. If you really want to see failure then look to the Emperor. So much for "no gods". Are you are asking my opinion or interpretation of the Emperor? I don't really view him as being that much of a failure. At the very least, the Emperor certainly doesn't have the widespread memetic reputation that Abaddon has in the 40k fandom. For me that matters quite a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forté Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 To be honest, there's so many variations and gaps in the fluff that there isn't really a way to say "Abaddon failed" as he is still at it. That and the Imperium is being attacked from so many directions that who can tell how long before it collapses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrautScientist Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 And even if, just for the sake of argument, we consider Abaddon this big, incompetent loser -- so what? Does that mean playing, collecting and painting Black Legion is automatically out of the question? What if your BL warband doesn't even like Abaddon? What if they were just press-ganged into his service? Or joined up due to some early optimism when the legion was founded, an optimism that quickly turned sour, and now they want out? What if they actually ARE Sons of Horus 2.0, in a legion full of upstarts and mudbloods? There's a million stories to be told there, and each of them is more interesting and compelling than some guy on some forum killing my joy by dissecting my hobby choices. Again, just my two cents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gree Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 And even if, just for the sake of argument, we consider Abaddon this big, incompetent loser -- so what? Does that mean playing, collecting and painting Black Legion is automatically out of the question? What if your BL warband doesn't even like Abaddon? What if they were just press-ganged into his service? Or joined up due to some early optimism when the legion was founded, an optimism that quickly turned sour, and now they want out? What if the actually ARE Sons of Horus 2.0, in a legion full of upstarts and mudbloods? There's a million stories to be told there, and each of them is more interesting and compelling than some guy on some forum killing my joy by dissecting my hobby choices. Again, just my two cents. I would assume this is directed at me. I cannot speak for anyone else. If someone wants to play Black Legion even if they consider Abaddon a failure, then that is their right. I have no issue with other people playing that and I fully support a player's right to paint and collect whatever army they chose. I'm not trying to ruin anyone's fun. There's a number of Black Legion projects on this site that very much have beautiful models. Now as for me? I cannot knowingly play an army that I know are is led by a failure and is largely considered by the fandom to be memetic failures. I suppose I have a thin skin and all the memes eventually got to me. It was unfortunate, but I just don't want that stigma. For the time I had them I really honestly loved and enjoyed playing Black Legion as my army in the time I had them. However at this point I have long since made my choice and gone with my own DIY warband. I really enjoy the army I have and whatever regrets I might have had, this is the force I am sticking with. I think this suits me best as a hobbyist and a player and I've had good fun with it so far. That, I think is what ultimately matters in the end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KrautScientist Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 However at this point I have long since made my choice and gone with my own DIY warband. I really enjoy the army I have and whatever regrets I might have had, this is the force I am sticking with. I think this suits me best as a hobbyist and a player and I've had good fun with it so far. And that's excellent, of course! More power to your warband! I really wasn't really talking about you directly, though, but rather about that guy who seemingly thought talking you out of liking the Black Legion was worth the time of day. Seriously: You like what you like, and the fact that people would spend any meaningful amount of time to oppose that should tell you whether it's worth listening to them or not. So when somebody should try again to deflate your love for any given army, maybe you should just head for greener pastures (i.e. different parts of the board) instead of letting them ruin your fun! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Son of Carnelian Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 On a related note, I've always like the Violators as a concept. Regal blue is not a very Chaos color but then they pull you back into the concept with their name. Awesome hair metal stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loesh Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 I'm too tired at work, I'm not really amused or surprised. Then again I should have the BnC's most negative member award, ADB can sign it himself. You had a great two weeks of wearing that badge, months ago, but you're too secretly lovely to hold onto it for long. Neither of you guys need to worry, a couple more months of carefully cultivated seething contempt and self loathing and i'll be there to fill the void. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soldier of Dorn Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 I'm too tired at work, I'm not really amused or surprised. Then again I should have the BnC's most negative member award, ADB can sign it himself. You had a great two weeks of wearing that badge, months ago, but you're too secretly lovely to hold onto it for long. Neither of you guys need to worry, a couple more months of carefully cultivated seething contempt and self loathing and i'll be there to fill the void. Really? Who wouda thunk... the most negative member isn't jeske. (sorry, mods. I couldn't help myself.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marshal Rohr Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 The Imperium can't beat Abaddon simply because the Imperium is meant to lose. All the reinforcements in the galaxy, the rebuilding of Space Marine Legions, another Sebastian Thor/Macharius, all wouldn't really matter at the end of the day. Abaddon wins. Simple as that. Edit: Which is part of the reason 40K as a setting is so :cuss infuriating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kol Saresk Posted January 23, 2015 Author Share Posted January 23, 2015 I've never found 40K as setting infuriating. I actually find it hard to understand how it can be infuriating. Everything else, Star Wars, Star Trek, they covered so many little details that the only blank canvases were either ahead of the timeline, or behind it. But 40K? It's so blank you can jump into recorded events and not have a problem with fitting in there. But no, the Imperium will lose because contrary to certain opinions, it has not grown stronger over the past ten thousand years. It has stagnated and degenerated. Where once it could send hundreds, if not thousands of armies into the void with no supply train, it now can barely muster two or three in such a manner. Sure, it might be able to push back the 13th Black Crusade. But it cannot do that and defend itself from Hive Fleet Leviathan or reclaim Segmentum Pacificus. Heck, it can't even do what it can now without leaving minor outlying systems vulnerable to predation. And as it is, they've lost their entire supply infrastructure. Of the entire Cadian Sector, only the planet Cadia stands alone. And it is destroyed with only one fortress remaining. It might dominate the material space lanes, but the Chaos fleets live in the Eye of Terror, the strongest and largest warpstorm known to mankind. Sailing through the little ones surrounding the Eye to bypass the Imperial fleets and strike at the now undefended planets behind them will be nothing. That's why space domination meant nothing and still means nothing. Chaos fleets have always been able to bypass Imperial defenses. That's why you get the Night Lords wiping out a planet right next to Terra. And Abaddon leading an entire Crusade from the Eye of Terror to the Maelstrom. And it certainly didn't keep Cadia or Agripiina from falling. All in all, if the Imperium can throw its full weight at something, yes, it can beat it. But it can't, not without exposing uts back to more enemies than it will be crushing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forté Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 I'm too tired at work, I'm not really amused or surprised. Then again I should have the BnC's most negative member award, ADB can sign it himself. You had a great two weeks of wearing that badge, months ago, but you're too secretly lovely to hold onto it for long. Neither of you guys need to worry, a couple more months of carefully cultivated seething contempt and self loathing and i'll be there to fill the void. Really? Who wouda thunk... the most negative member isn't jeske. (sorry, mods. I couldn't help myself.) Don't do it again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marshal Rohr Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 I've never found 40K as setting infuriating. I actually find it hard to understand how it can be infuriating. Everything else, Star Wars, Star Trek, they covered so many little details that the only blank canvases were either ahead of the timeline, or behind it. But 40K? It's so blank you can jump into recorded events and not have a problem with fitting in there. But no, the Imperium will lose because contrary to certain opinions, it has not grown stronger over the past ten thousand years. It has stagnated and degenerated. Where once it could send hundreds, if not thousands of armies into the void with no supply train, it now can barely muster two or three in such a manner. Sure, it might be able to push back the 13th Black Crusade. But it cannot do that and defend itself from Hive Fleet Leviathan or reclaim Segmentum Pacificus. Heck, it can't even do what it can now without leaving minor outlying systems vulnerable to predation. And as it is, they've lost their entire supply infrastructure. Of the entire Cadian Sector, only the planet Cadia stands alone. And it is destroyed with only one fortress remaining. It might dominate the material space lanes, but the Chaos fleets live in the Eye of Terror, the strongest and largest warpstorm known to mankind. Sailing through the little ones surrounding the Eye to bypass the Imperial fleets and strike at the now undefended planets behind them will be nothing. That's why space domination meant nothing and still means nothing. Chaos fleets have always been able to bypass Imperial defenses. That's why you get the Night Lords wiping out a planet right next to Terra. And Abaddon leading an entire Crusade from the Eye of Terror to the Maelstrom. And it certainly didn't keep Cadia or Agripiina from falling. All in all, if the Imperium can throw its full weight at something, yes, it can beat it. But it can't, not without exposing uts back to more enemies than it will be crushing. Which is why it's infuriating . Cadia is in a perpetual limbo between being destroyed/lightly destroyed/Abaddon hasn't gotten there yet. We don't know how long Cadia actually took to fall, so anyone building a Cadian regiment standing against the Despoiler has a regiment that went from the Volscani Cataphracts betraying them to the entire planet being destroyed without a timeframe. Things like Armageddon have been stripped of their importance by years of retcons. Ursarker Creed, the guy picked to lead the defense of Cadia, isn't even on Cadia, because the studio doesn't want to confine characters to certain places (which is stupid). It would be like Winston Churchill deciding he was going to go help the US Marines take Guadalcanal. Any setting built on the one sides ability to do whatever it wants while the other has no freedom of maneuver to mount a defense is a weak setting and impossible. Not impossible like Daemon armies and green skinned pig-reavers driving ships that run on belief, impossible. Like impossible as in, human beings/civilizations don't work that way. If the Imperium is so broken it can't move men or materiel to fight its wars, its already dead. Not mostly dead, or that blank space between the life support being cut off and expiration, but its been in the ground for years dead. If it were real life, in that kind of situation, it would immediately begin to fragment into independent polities that can muster resources and provide security, because thats what happens to Empires who can no longer exercise any force at all in its defense. The Imperium cannot be so broken that defense is completely out of the question. It is one thing to say, 'at the operational level, the Imperium is losing', because that means the Imperium can be losing, but also winning. Germany wasn't winning in December 1944, but they kicked the dog :cuss out of the allies in December. The South was dying a slow death through the War in the West and Northern mobilization and would've been ultimately worn out over time, but they still had battles like Chancellorsville. Wars are almost always trying to get one side to quit fighting first. Its how they work, because thats how human beings work. Its pareto optimality in prisoner's dilemma, you pursue the course that leaves you in a position that maintains the status quo, because the unknown might give your opponent unseen advantages. Revanchist powers, like the Black Legion, can still be stopped with a hard enough kick in the balls, when you confront Abaddon with a prisoner's dilemma. To explain what I mean a little bit further, Abaddon can die, his armies can be defeated, and his plans could fail. They won't, hence the 'End of Days' setting, but they can. Because all of things things still apply, the setting fails because it doesn't show the Imperium maneuvering towards putting him in a position where he has to choose between the status quo of what he already has, and the unknown of what he doesn't know. Even with an army of seers at his back, he still can't know the future (Khayon says as much in ToH). If the studio doesn't present the Imperium as attempting to fight to put Abaddon in a stalemate, and only ever writes how they can't win, or even redeploy forces, half the factions in the universe are as pointless as the Tau. People love the Sabbat Crusade. People love the Badab War, Vraks, Orpheus War, and all the other painful military campaigns the Imperium fights, because they still have victories in those. The Empire Strikes Back is widely considered the best Star Wars movie, even though the good guys lost. Spock died to beat Khan. Victory and loss can be simultaneous. The studio writes no real victories or losses. It doesn't want to commit to something that may 'offend' a player from buying a character model. Thats why they are such mind-numbingly weak story tellers and worthless as a creative body. To put such spineless people, frightened by the fear people won't buy their toys, into the position of a creativity (where you stock up on talent, if anyone paid attention to business school) is ridiculous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vesper Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 My Black Legion warband was (/ is still) there, mostly on Vigilatum :). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
incinerator950 Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 I've had another lapse of decision determining if I want to continue my Wartorn concept, or just recycle the main elements of it and fold it into a Pyre warband. Also Kol, screw you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kol Saresk Posted January 23, 2015 Author Share Posted January 23, 2015 Except that people do it all the time. Because you get to decide when in the conflict your army exists and what they did in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marshal Rohr Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 You're gonna wanna read my edit :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kol Saresk Posted January 23, 2015 Author Share Posted January 23, 2015 I've had another lapse of decision determining if I want to continue my Wartorn concept, or just recycle the main elements of it and fold it into a Pyre warband. Also Kol, screw you. :D Glad I could help. Could do both? Rohr: Fair enough. I mean personally, I like it where it is, but I can see where you're coming from. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
incinerator950 Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 I could, I have the idea of using former WEs like with my Wartorn (including the former Apothecary named the Wartorn). Can make an emblem using the WE heraldry as a base but converting the teeth into flames. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaliGn Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 The Imperium can't beat Abaddon simply because the Imperium is meant to lose. All the reinforcements in the galaxy, the rebuilding of Space Marine Legions, another Sebastian Thor/Macharius, all wouldn't really matter at the end of the day. Abaddon wins. Simple as that. Edit: Which is part of the reason 40K as a setting is so :cuss infuriating. Nah, the tyranids win, the tyranids always win, even when they are all dead they win. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaeron Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 I could, I have the idea of using former WEs like with my Wartorn (including the former Apothecary named the Wartorn). Can make an emblem using the WE heraldry as a base but converting the teeth into flames. I swear you've put more thought into each of your rejected ideas than I ever have into anything. Although I know you often change between ideas, but I like your concepts and ideas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
incinerator950 Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 You should see me in character creation. Up to and over an hour. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenebris Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 So what do we have here, another altoholic? Greetings I am Tenebris and I roll on average 20 characters in a month. Damn you Skyrim. To me the fabled high levels are just that, a fable. What can I say, creativity can be a curse too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaeron Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 I wonder how much that influences each expansion of the known 'warbands' each Codex addition. As newer ones are added, the desire to mark them from their counterparts, differentiate colours and heraldry... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenebris Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 Well at the end of the day we can at least credit GW for trying. On the loyalist camp the main actors are usually always the same ones, Cadians, Ultramarines, Blood Angels... the primogenitors, while in the Chaos camp GW actually dared to create an ex novo warband, the Crimson Slaughter and it did support it with several novels, a supplement and artwork. So in a certain way they are actively trying to steer us away from the traitor legions, I tip the hat to that. On the other hand they have already placed the basis for an expansion in color schemes and warband themes with the Abyssal Crusade. In our current codex there is a dozen or more chapters which have turned traitor so the ground is fertile for a wealthy of new warbands. Now I do expect here and there a nod to the classic ones like the Flawless Host, The Pyre and so on but I think the Abyssal Crusade was placed on purpose to provide a narrative device for future "painting guides", a short story here and there and so on. Still we much acknowledge the effort put into the creation of the Crimson Slaughter. They have done much more for them than for one of the "legendary" chapters like Novamarines, Genesis Chapter, Black Dragons... etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaeron Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 Still we much acknowledge the effort put into the creation of the Crimson Slaughter. They have done much more for them than for one of the "legendary" chapters like Novamarines, Genesis Chapter, Black Dragons... etc. Absolutely. I still can't truthfully say that I like them - but it's a nice new path, so have to applaud the positivity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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