The oldest of chapters

[twopounder]

I'm reading some of my really old work. It's surprising to think that much of it was written 15 years ago... more than a decade, when I was in high school. Sometimes I can't believe how much this hobby has changed since then. Since 2nd edition. Honestly, it becomes hard to separate 7th edition rules from 3rd edition. I still remember playing my best friends back in high school, my Dark Angels vs their old screamer carnifex with four sickle claws or gazghull barely the size of a terminator were the biggest threat on the battlefield.

 

Back then, Games Workshop didn't have a webstore and their website totaled about 3 pages. Mail order trolls took checks and the occasional card for any bit off any sprue you could think of. The cool thing was that they would chat with you about your purchase and make sure you were buying the right boxes. Brother Bethor was still our standard bearer (at least for a time)  Hell, I remember trying to order him and the trolls being confused because he wasn't in the system anymore... they had changed him to a generic standard bearer and it took half an hour to figure that out. Imperial Literature was the premier site for any kind of fan fiction.

 

The Super Mall store was still in the Super Mall and run by Rob. I think. Man, no, he had the 1st and 2nd Dark Angel companies, there was a manager before him but I can't remember his name. But I remember the rest of the managers like Rob and Cliff, and Tommy. There was another employee with a name that started with T that was super cool. Trevor. Even one of the guys I went to high school with worked there. He wanted us to call him twinky, but I always called him spanky. Then came the Armageddon campaign where we played games that were registered online with a final outcome determined by actual games in the store and revealed by an interactive flash system on the website. Everyone back then had painted armies and you had to wait in line to get a table, even at 1000 points.

 

Anyway, I digress. I started a series of short stories for Dark Angels under the pseudonym Brother Gideon. I still prefer that moniker and any Company master (save first or second) will always be known as Gideon. They remain to this day on the fortress... all but one. I'm sure Shadow Guard had his reasons for not publishing it. Going back to read them, I remember many things that started me in the hobby. Running cloud and the Native American theme, Jonson and Russ racing together to save Terra, Dark Angels that were tricked to believing Jonson had betrayed chaos and who later became renegades or repentant.

 

 Those interesting story arks, three-dimensional stories with multi-cultural overtones pulled me into the hobby and held me tightly. Now, what do I read? Jonson the traitor, Dark Angels as chaos marines, the white status quo, just like space wolves, blood angels, and ultramarines.

 

Interestingly enough, I just created a narrative for a prospective new player that included the Native American overtones we used to enjoy and hooked him. He's starting space wolves (ironically, he loves wolves and works at a Native American college, while I'm a volunteer there). But the point is, it's that depth of literature that caught his imagination. Not the models, not the part time staff who knew nothing about the game.

 

What I mourn for more than a solid codex is our old identity. Our depth and color behind "they're just chaos". Maybe that's why it invokes such a negative emotion in me. We used to be so much more. We had so much content, so much story, so much lineage. Suddenly we're just corrupt because a single writer feels we should be so.

 

That is the great injustice I feel. I feel the loss of our identity. I feel the pressure of trying to explain the full back ground to a bunch of pre-pubescent, snickering idiots who began playing 2 years ago. I feel the irritation and exhaustion of endlessly informing people that we are not the "shooty" or "plasma" chapter. I really am tired of it. So, so tired. As implacable as I am, and stubborn to a fault, there is only so much this mortal can do. 

[Isiah]

Great post twopounder. The nostalgia brought a (non-ironic) tear to my eye.

 

Cheers

I

[Master Avoghai]

What I mourn for more than a solid codex is our old identity. Our depth and color behind "they're just chaos". Maybe that's why it invokes such a negative emotion in me. We used to be so much more. We had so much content, so much story, so much lineage. Suddenly we're just corrupt because a single writer feels we should be so.

 

That is the great injustice I feel. I feel the loss of our identity. I feel the pressure of trying to explain the full back ground to a bunch of pre-pubescent, snickering idiots who began playing 2 years ago. I feel the irritation and exhaustion of endlessly informing people that we are not the "shooty" or "plasma" chapter. I really am tired of it. So, so tired. As implacable as I am, and stubborn to a fault, there is only so much this mortal can do.

Well any of us has to be the "snickering idiot who began playing 2 years ago" for someone else huh? ;)

 

The DA = Chaos just came from the fact that less and less people now understand 2nd or 3rd degree story. Gavin introduced this into the Angels of Darkness novel and everybody took it for real... Gav himself ended up by reminding everyone that the only source of such information was a captured fallen... But nobody understood that..

 

I'm also tired of the plasma iconography of the chapter... Particularly when it's for giving a useless plasma speeder.

Like you, I have the feeling that plasma weaponry began to become more important for creating DA unit that their role in the Hunt.

But worse : when I read some comments about the codex to be redone I see lots of "please give us centurions", "please give us a storm raven" etc etc Just like if DA should have their own options AND the vanilla options...

 

Choosing is always giving up something. When you chose your wife, you had to give up you single man life. When you chose your studies, you had to give up other kind of school orientation etc etc...

 

Actually I would like GW to just re adjust costs and special rules for already existing units but not creating new ones (and luckily, that's what they'll do), and if they create a new one, please without a plasma weapon. I love my DW knights for that and actually the main reasons why I love my BK are the corvus hammer and the genade launcher... :D

[twopounder]

What I mourn for more than a solid codex is our old identity. Our depth and color behind "they're just chaos". Maybe that's why it invokes such a negative emotion in me. We used to be so much more. We had so much content, so much story, so much lineage. Suddenly we're just corrupt because a single writer feels we should be so.

That is the great injustice I feel. I feel the loss of our identity. I feel the pressure of trying to explain the full back ground to a bunch of pre-pubescent, snickering idiots who began playing 2 years ago. I feel the irritation and exhaustion of endlessly informing people that we are not the "shooty" or "plasma" chapter. I really am tired of it. So, so tired. As implacable as I am, and stubborn to a fault, there is only so much this mortal can do.

Well any of us has to be the "snickering idiot who began playing 2 years ago" for someone else huh?

The DA = Chaos just came from the fact that less and less people now understand 2nd or 3rd degree story. Gavin introduced this into the Angels of Darkness novel and everybody took it for real... Gav himself ended up by reminding everyone that the only source of such information was a captured fallen... But nobody understood that..

I'm also tired of the plasma iconography of the chapter... Particularly when it's for giving a useless plasma speeder.

Like you, I have the feeling that plasma weaponry began to become more important for creating DA unit that their role in the Hunt.

But worse : when I read some comments about the codex to be redone I see lots of "please give us centurions", "please give us a storm raven" etc etc Just like if DA should have their own options AND the vanilla options...

Choosing is always giving up something. When you chose your wife, you had to give up you single man life. When you chose your studies, you had to give up other kind of school orientation etc etc...

Actually I would like GW to just re adjust costs and special rules for already existing units but not creating new ones (and luckily, that's what they'll do), and if they create a new one, please without a plasma weapon. I love my DW knights for that and actually the main reasons why I love my BK are the corvus hammer and the genade launcher...

My apologies. I didn't mean disrespect to new players, just that it feels like people just quote some poorly written book as gospel that DA are glorified chaos marines without bothering to look at our lineage.

Your point does underline my fear though. New players who are just content with good rules, while us old folks remember terrible codices punctuated with excellent background story. Now that we have a decent codex, our background has become stale. I miss the old days of massively overpriced terminators with amazingly colorful story. Do you realize how fun it is to explain the story behind the Deathwing and their feather? Or the final battle between Jonson and Russ?

Our chapter used to be human, diverse and full of struggle. But all of it pure and relatable. That's the legacy I want the new players to have.

[The Shadow Guard]

Anyway, I digress. I started a series of short stories for Dark Angels under the pseudonym Brother Gideon. I still prefer that moniker and any Company master (save first or second) will always be known as Gideon. They remain to this day on the fortress... all but one. I'm sure Shadow Guard had his reasons for not publishing it. Going back to read them, I remember many things that started me in the hobby. Running cloud and the Native American theme, Jonson and Russ racing together to save Terra, Dark Angels that were tricked to believing Jonson had betrayed chaos and who later became renegades or repentant.

Brther Gideon, have I missed you! I didn't realise you were in mufti as two pounder..... I loved your fan fiction.... no one writes them anymore... Those were the days when there was very little official fiction and fans wrote some great fiction.... Which story is unpublished? I wouldn't have left it out intentionally....

Very good post... walk down the memory lane...my eyes get misty... and I feel a new DA Code xin the offing...

SG

[Master Avoghai]

It also came from the fact that any identity HAS TO be represented in gaming term...

 

I mean, it's difficult to represent the hunt in gaming term, as well as the history of 2 head talking (+ I think there's an IP issue on this one)...

 

And GW wants difference in gaming term because it justifies why you have to buy different models that the ones you already own.

But they are not totally guilty for that... Look at the posts claiming for more plasma rules... re-roll the ones, plasma centurions etc etc

 

Players are claiming for difference in rules, more difference than they already have... But do we need more differences? Are the rules the only way to be different? Here we have the examples of lots of board members you collected IH and IF long before they get traits and therefore different roles. Just because the fluff only gave them the occasion to lay a different army list.

 

And here we have a codex that allows you to play 3 different armies and you want more differences?

 

I agree with you, GW has a lot of work fixing what doesn't work for now and writing new fluff (successors anyone?) to make people collecting more DA with more playstyle... You cannot rely all your armies' identity on the rule set.

[twopounder]

Anyway, I digress. I started a series of short stories for Dark Angels under the pseudonym Brother Gideon. I still prefer that moniker and any Company master (save first or second) will always be known as Gideon. They remain to this day on the fortress... all but one. I'm sure Shadow Guard had his reasons for not publishing it. Going back to read them, I remember many things that started me in the hobby. Running cloud and the Native American theme, Jonson and Russ racing together to save Terra, Dark Angels that were tricked to believing Jonson had betrayed chaos and who later became renegades or repentant.

Brther Gideon, have I missed you! I didn't realise you were in mufti as two pounder..... I loved your fan fiction.... no one writes them anymore... Those were the days when there was very little official fiction and fans wrote some great fiction.... Which story is unpublished? I wouldn't have left it out intentionally....

Very good post... walk down the memory lane...my eyes get misty... and I feel a new DA Code xin the offing...

SG

It's been a very long time, old friend! In truth, I had troubles logging in under my old name and by the time it was sorted out, I was adjusted to this one. Just as well. It gave me a level of anonymity to observe the rock, as is our way. My MSN account has long since been lost to chaos (hacked a very very long time ago by unscrupulous individuals) so I've mostly been lurking.

In all honesty, I want to refine and republish those old stories. As for the lost story, it involves some sisters of battle. It was quite some time ago, and I'm sure I could add more polish to it. Except that I don't believe I have any of those old stories anymore. Your site is all that is left of them.

Though in truth, I feel I'm moving more in the direction of Rado, though I haven't heard from him in a great long time either.

It also came from the fact that any identity HAS TO be represented in gaming term...

I mean, it's difficult to represent the hunt in gaming term, as well as the history of 2 head talking (+ I think there's an IP issue on this one)...

And GW wants difference in gaming term because it justifies why you have to buy different models that the ones you already own.

But they are not totally guilty for that... Look at the posts claiming for more plasma rules... re-roll the ones, plasma centurions etc etc

Players are claiming for difference in rules, more difference than they already have... But do we need more differences? Are the rules the only way to be different? Here we have the examples of lots of board members you collected IH and IF long before they get traits and therefore different roles. Just because the fluff only gave them the occasion to lay a different army list.

And here we have a codex that allows you to play 3 different armies and you want more differences?

I agree with you, GW has a lot of work fixing what doesn't work for now and writing new fluff (successors anyone?) to make people collecting more DA with more playstyle... You cannot rely all your armies' identity on the rule set.

The difference I seek is not in rules, but history. Gone is so much of the rich history we had with our Native American side and the promise of renegade Dark Angels with depth and purpose. Now it feels two dimensional. The almost chaos marines, as it were. I think what us old ones want is a return to the old ways. At least in the story line. Too few people know what the feather means on deathwing. It's sad.

[Marshal_Roujakis]

You should see what happened to the Black Templars... we practically 'Ouroboros'... we started as a paint scheme found in the Ultramarines book... earned our own identity in Codex: Armageddon, gained awesome background and fluff, becoming the heirs of the Great Crusade and continuing it via the Eternal Crusade and gained our own book during the 4th ed.

 

Come 14 years without a decent update and now... well... back to being a paint scheme in Codex: Space Marines and losing about 90% of our identity as a Chapter....

 

least you still have a book ;)

[Prot]

I have mixed feelings on this. And while I feel the Black Templar pain, many chapters have been treated poorly/better than others. The only constants really have been the golden boys; BA, SW....

 

Anyway the thing that drew me to DA was the legend of being the First, and all that entailed. The fleshing out of the Lion by non-Gav authors has been something I really enjoyed too. However, as ingrained as the whole Chaos thing is in the Legion, I've had my fill of it.

 

This is just me but I feel most Legions felt this. And as the Horus Heresy becomes more fleshed out, it turns out this is far from unique.... perhaps the White Scars had the greatest 'public' display of heresy without going full heretic... But that's really off topic. Pulling it back to the topic, I think the legion is much larger than the 'fallen' stuff, and it's almost a shame that almost the entirety of the fiction circles that idea.  I just think there's much, much more to tell and it's always lost in the details of the fallen.

[Master Avoghai]

difference I seek is not in rules, but history. Gone is so much of the rich history we had with our Native American side and the promise of renegade Dark Angels with depth and purpose. Now it feels two dimensional. The almost chaos marines, as it were. I think what us old ones want is a return to the old ways. At least in the story line. Too few people know what the feather means on deathwing. It's sad.

 

That's indeed what I'm saying.

I see people asking for "more rules to be different". They expect a lot from them to give an identity to their army. But you don't need more special rules to give their army a personality.

But fluff and history helps a lot and can influence as much people on the choice of their units than special rules...

 

Hence that's why I think the current DA codex needs more in depth histories than new rules and units...

[Phoebus]

Interesting.  I share many of your feelings, twopounder, albeit from a different perspective.

 

I was first exposed to the Unforgiven back in, oh, 2004.  My roommate at the time owned Codex: Angels of Death, and I was instantly captivated by the Dark Angels and their lore.  I remember flipping between their section and that of the Blood Angels, being mildly annoyed that Dante seemed the better fighter over Azrael... but also satisfied that Azrael was the better commander and noting that the background of the sons of Sanguinius was about as nuanced as a sledgehammer.

 

I saw the Dark Angels as drawing from the conspiracies and rumors that arose from the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon during and after their trials.  The thing is, they weren't a direct copy of a single "real world" faction.  The main twist, after all, was that it was the Dark Angels that carried out the persecution which their historical counterparts suffered at the hands of their masters.  And then there was that hint of Arthurian mythos: the Lion's disappearance following the destruction of Caliban, and his long sleep within the Rock.  Sure, I hated the ham-fisted attempt to re-imagine the Lion's real-world surname as having some sort of in-world meaning (El'Jonson as "Son of the Forest"?), but I loved the concept of a Tarzan-esque figure being rescued, educated, and in turn becoming a paragon of knights.

 

Ironically, my roommate exposed me to "Deathwing" after I had read the Codex.  I thought it was a decent enough story, but I wasn't exactly enthralled by what I had assumed to be Bill King's vision of the Dark Angels.  Mind you, I didn't check on the publication dates of this short story and the Codex until years after the fact, and it never occurred to me that King's tale preceded the stuff I really liked.  Dates aside, though, while the Order-As-Knights Templar wasn't exactly wholly original material, the Native American angle just seemed like a too-obvious effort to transpose a real-world culture unto a Chapter of Space Marines.  I felt no more excited by Sigismund's heirs or the "Plains World" theme than I did when reading Codex: Space Wolves, because that concept - "Native Americans in Space!" - appealed to me about as much as "Vikings in Space!" or "Mongols in Space!"

 

Angels of Darkness didn't bother me so much as it disappointed me.  The main thing here is that I never took Astelan's assertions at face value.  Whether it was Gav Thorpe's intent or not, I noted how Astelan would segue to another story or anecdote whenever Boreas called him out for the inconsistencies in his accounts.  I know this will sound somewhat disrespectful, but when people cited Angels as proof of the Lion's treachery during the Heresy, or as evidence that the Fallen were somehow the loyalists, I felt they were just pushing a lazy reading of the book - or, at any rate, reading into it what they wanted to believe to begin with, and ignoring what was actually in the book.  Angels was proof that their quest for redemption had made the Dark Angels sinister and brutal, not that they were traitors.

 

I think probably the only background material that bothered me was the increasing emphasis on the Unforgiven abandoning their allies* in order to pursue the Hunt.  Don't get me wrong, I understood the thought process behind the concept: that the Unforgiven will go as far as they need to in order get the Fallen.  I just thought it was a lazy way of showcasing this.  It went for shock value at the expense of the setting and its protagonists.  The whole point of the Unforgiven is that they are this ongoing conspiracy of Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes that secretly ignore the dictates of the Codex in order to catch the Fallen.  To this end, they coordinate their efforts on the Hunt, they hold secret conclaves, and so on.  On top of all that, they are led by a character who has been depicted as a strategic genius since the mid-late 1990s.  On the flip side, it's not as if the Fallen are by any means a common occurrence.  With that in mind, can I imagine scenarios wherein the Unforgiven would make decisions with terrible ramifications in the name of the Hunt?  Yeah, sure.  The idea that this sort of thing defines (in large part) the Unforgiven in the eyes of the Imperium bothers me, though.  At some point, it starts feeling like amateur hour.  How often is this calculating, covertly coordinated Secret Legion going to clumsily attract the attention of the very people they're trying to keep their sins hidden from?

 

Where rules are concerned, I've always felt that they and the background material can, indeed co-exist, and that Games Workshop has an obligation to provide systems that are true to the Chapter.  I think there have been successes in that department, but they haven't been consistent.  The current iteration (edit for clarification: 6th and 7th edition) is close, but not quite there.

 

* I want to emphasize that I see this as distinct and different from the firing on the Ophidian Gulf.  This may sound silly, but I felt there was a huge difference between the - IMHO - intellectually lazy idea of the Dark Angels abandoning their friends... and having to make a horrific decision to ensure one of the more fanatical Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes didn't escape with their direst secret.

[Bryan Blaire]

Sorry, but I never found a lot of depth to the Native American "Plains tribal" theme that GW had for the Dark Angels. It never seemed to have anything in the way of actually honoring a very real living people, but had more in common with the often superficial treatment of Native American culture found in things like Peter Pan, taking only a few elements of a very specific group, while ignoring the rich culture that exists among many different native peoples of the Americas North, Central and South that have some basic elements in common, but are as different from each other as any two European countries have (probably more).

 

There are so many ways to develop a tribal theme that don't require superficial treatment of any culture you take things from that I'm glad they have decided to move in a different direction. Anything that can be boiled down to "Native American" is superficial, as opposed to something that is fully vested in a basis from the Lakota, Arapaho, Apache or Pueblo that you could point to as an actual culture. GW did no one any favors with that theme when it could have been so much more rich and deep.

 

If GW wanted to move back to a tribal theme for the Dark Angels, there are hundreds of tribal cultures they could pull from, but if they are going to do some, make it actually deep with some real culture behind it, not just because tribal folks are cool and have neat feathers and war paint, or wear furry clothes and make seal bone jewelry.

 

Also, considering the direction GW has taken the DA, it would be totally out of place now. If they want to keep developing depth, we need to have some more of "what happened after the Fall" that changed the DA, how were their gene-traits shaping the early development of the Unforgiven, and how did the Order fracture up among the Dark Angels and their early kin. The real tragedy is that there has been so little development of the Unforgiven in all this time.

[twopounder]

Sorry, but I never found a lot of depth to the Native American "Plains tribal" theme that GW had for the Dark Angels. It never seemed to have anything in the way of actually honoring a very real living people, but had more in common with the often superficial treatment of Native American culture found in things like Peter Pan, taking only a few elements of a very specific group, while ignoring the rich culture that exists among many different native peoples of the Americas North, Central and South that have some basic elements in common, but are as different from each other as any two European countries have (probably more).

 

There are so many ways to develop a tribal theme that don't require superficial treatment of any culture you take things from that I'm glad they have decided to move in a different direction. Anything that can be boiled down to "Native American" is superficial, as opposed to something that is fully vested in a basis from the Lakota, Arapaho, Apache or Pueblo that you could point to as an actual culture. GW did no one any favors with that theme when it could have been so much more rich and deep.

 

If GW wanted to move back to a tribal theme for the Dark Angels, there are hundreds of tribal cultures they could pull from, but if they are going to do some, make it actually deep with some real culture behind it, not just because tribal folks are cool and have neat feathers and war paint, or wear furry clothes and make seal bone jewelry.

 

Also, considering the direction GW has taken the DA, it would be totally out of place now. If they want to keep developing depth, we need to have some more of "what happened after the Fall" that changed the DA, how were their gene-traits shaping the early development of the Unforgiven, and how did the Order fracture up among the Dark Angels and their early kin. The real tragedy is that there has been so little development of the Unforgiven in all this time.

 

I suppose the difference is that I'm part native and volunteer at a local tribal school. I don't want this go get political, but suffice to say it was a welcome change from the regular story and white washed marines. I fully understand that other chapters recruit from limited worlds. I always saw one of the Dark Angel's strengths in their varied recruiting worlds. Even the Deathwing remain as a tribute to the Native American lore it was borne from. Also, many of these things are still very strong tribal customs. The tribal school holds bazaars where members sell hand made bead jewelry, jade, blankets, etc. Salmon, paint and traditional leather and feather garbs are part of their pow-wow (yes, it's a real thing and extremely important in native culture). This is not marginalized. I realize, being on another continent, GW doesn't have real experience to draw from, but at least they were trying back then.

 

I feel there is much to be gained from exploring that angle. Dark Angels have always been heavy in story and character. It's what inspired me to play them. They are and always will be my primary army and interest in the hobby.

 

EDIT:

 

By the way, I'm not trying to invalidate anyone's opinion. We all started this hobby (and Dark Angels) for specific reasons. I guess the old fluff is what really grabbed me, and I wish GW had expanded on that instead of trying to apply the same template they did to other chapters.

[jlmb_123]

Your point does underline my fear though. New players who are just content with good rules, while us old folks remember terrible codices punctuated with excellent background story. Now that we have a decent codex, our background has become stale. I miss the old days of massively overpriced terminators with amazingly colorful story. Do you realize how fun it is to explain the story behind the Deathwing and their feather? Or the final battle between Jonson and Russ?

You've got the carpentry spot-on there, and I think this thread in general has (though I'm staying away from the politics of ethnicity ). A certain empirical bluntness seems to have overtaken the fiction side of the hobby and, if I'm hones, I think it was player-driven first. Hints in the fluff were taken as given by the fanbase (the internet helped that spread) and became fact and GW responded by making their fluff more obvious. Added to that, where under older rulesets a statement like "it is said that ..." would be a bit open-ended and mysterious whilst lately, any statement like that has a rule to back it up. I'm getting a bit tired of it, to be honest: it very much reminds me of people who obsessively tell you what the 0-60 speed or top speed on a car is when, in reality, that ain't going to happen too often on the road. I miss subtlety!

[Harleqvin]

I actually got into DA because I was reading the different codices a little bit before 3rd came out. I was initially going to go with Eldar because of the look of the army. Then as I was reading through the codices I picked up Angels of Death and just loved the background info for DA.

I will admit that I never really got into the feather Native American vibe/partial look they were doing with a few models. But that could have been just the fact that there wasn't really enough feeling or background pushing it. I really like the Knightly aspect though. The whole underlying Arthurian aspect.

The plasma thing never really bothered me. It really started with 3rd when they started fleshing out more differences in the armies, I understand a bit for it because of the whole thing about old tech. But currently plasma is no longer "the" old tech persay because of Grav weapons being brought in. But that is only since 7th started and I don't see them doing any changes to the new things they just made several years ago until "another" edition. I don't mind too much for being a bit shooty. But, at least they got rid of the "We have to stop moving forward and just shoot you when should be hitting cover," like in 3rd.
I also don't mind explaining to people about the plasma thing, either.

I've never felt that we were corrupt persay. But, the whole we keep covering it up has always been around since the first redoing of 40k of 2nd ed. So, it's nothing new. I do find it funny when people state stuff from Angels of Darkness by Astelan and then I go "but we know that isn't true because they were running up with the Wolves to get to Terra and the Wolves info corroborates it, plus Astelan is a Fallen Angel who is trying to make others fall, too. Of course he would lie about these things." to which they always go, "That's right..." lqtm 


I also just now noticed this thread is from almost a year ago. But because I typed all this down and don't want to feel I wasted some time I'm still posting it. lqtm

[jlmb_123]

I also just now noticed this thread is from almost a year ago. But because I typed all this down and don't want to feel I wasted some time I'm still posting it. lqtm

Twopunder broke the Dark Angel's prime rule of not digging too far!

[twopounder]

I also just now noticed this thread is from almost a year ago. But because I typed all this down and don't want to feel I wasted some time I'm still posting it. lqtm

Twopunder broke the Dark Angel's prime rule of not digging too far!

But that's where they hide all the good stuff!

To be fair, it was on my list of things to reply to, but I failed to look at when the last reply was. Totally my bad there.

[Bryan Blaire]

:tu: You're all good, I'm letting it stand even though it should be foul Threadomancy because there was good, insightful discussion in the response. Normally it wouldn't work, so go ahead and keep the discussion going!

[twopounder]

I actually got into DA because I was reading the different codices a little bit before 3rd came out. I was initially going to go with Eldar because of the look of the army. Then as I was reading through the codices I picked up Angels of Death and just loved the background info for DA.

I will admit that I never really got into the feather Native American vibe/partial look they were doing with a few models. But that could have been just the fact that there wasn't really enough feeling or background pushing it. I really like the Knightly aspect though. The whole underlying Arthurian aspect.

The plasma thing never really bothered me. It really started with 3rd when they started fleshing out more differences in the armies, I understand a bit for it because of the whole thing about old tech. But currently plasma is no longer "the" old tech persay because of Grav weapons being brought in. But that is only since 7th started and I don't see them doing any changes to the new things they just made several years ago until "another" edition. I don't mind too much for being a bit shooty. But, at least they got rid of the "We have to stop moving forward and just shoot you when should be hitting cover," like in 3rd.

I also don't mind explaining to people about the plasma thing, either.

I've never felt that we were corrupt persay. But, the whole we keep covering it up has always been around since the first redoing of 40k of 2nd ed. So, it's nothing new. I do find it funny when people state stuff from Angels of Darkness by Astelan and then I go "but we know that isn't true because they were running up with the Wolves to get to Terra and the Wolves info corroborates it, plus Astelan is a Fallen Angel who is trying to make others fall, too. Of course he would lie about these things." to which they always go, "That's right..." lqtm

I also just now noticed this thread is from almost a year ago. But because I typed all this down and don't want to feel I wasted some time I'm still posting it. lqtm

We have a bit in common. The very first time I was introduced to the hobby, about 6 of us were packed in a meeting room at the public library playing a Saturday game of 2nd ed DnD. A blood angel player popped out the models and showed us. I was immediately hooked and grabbed a little brochure the next time I was at the mall (which I still have! I should totally scan it and post it for posterity). I was in a toss up between Eldar and Space marines. Bear in mind I knew nothing of the story by that point. I thought the eldar helmets looked stupid, but otherwise liked their armor and vehicles.

I happened to come across a bit of material with the different chapters and their color schemes. A little green model with a sword through wings caught my eye. I did some research on these "Dark Angels" and became hooked. I had the happenstance of getting into the hobby right before 3rd edition launched, and was gifted the starter set for Christmas. I painted them green and never looked back.

Your point does underline my fear though. New players who are just content with good rules, while us old folks remember terrible codices punctuated with excellent background story. Now that we have a decent codex, our background has become stale. I miss the old days of massively overpriced terminators with amazingly colorful story. Do you realize how fun it is to explain the story behind the Deathwing and their feather? Or the final battle between Jonson and Russ?

You've got the carpentry spot-on there, and I think this thread in general has (though I'm staying away from the politics of ethnicity ). A certain empirical bluntness seems to have overtaken the fiction side of the hobby and, if I'm hones, I think it was player-driven first. Hints in the fluff were taken as given by the fanbase (the internet helped that spread) and became fact and GW responded by making their fluff more obvious. Added to that, where under older rulesets a statement like "it is said that ..." would be a bit open-ended and mysterious whilst lately, any statement like that has a rule to back it up. I'm getting a bit tired of it, to be honest: it very much reminds me of people who obsessively tell you what the 0-60 speed or top speed on a car is when, in reality, that ain't going to happen too often on the road. I miss subtlety!

I totally get that. In retrospect it could be why GW backed off, though they are more than a little ethnocentric.

You're right that GW is trying to hammer out a lot of the story much more firmly than it was previously and it's inevitable that there will be casualties. I still feel that one of the defining characters of Dark Angels is their predilection for recruiting from very diverse planets. In fact, this may be what keeps the geneseed so pure - there is no stagnation.

[Lostrael]

Yes, Eldar wear funny helmets. That's why I started to play Dark Eldar in the first place. You can glue the bare heads on.

I did so without reading their fluff... now I have to repent.

I started Dark Angels by reading the 4th edition fluff part of the codex and the Dark Angel part in the Deathwatch RPG book and loved it

What worries me most is the shrunken fluff in our new codex.

A while ago I wanted to lookup something about the Order. I did not remember where I read it, so was looking into the new Codex.

To my dismay, I found only half a page of Horus Heresy stuff where the two previous codices offered four pages.

[HaSY]

Read the Horus Heresy Dark Angels to experience the huge identity of First Legion, especially before Lion and Caliban had changed them forever. Vice versa, even the Order has to adapt to this changes when Lion took command of the Dark Angels, a name ironically given by Luther...

[twopounder]

Read the Horus Heresy Dark Angels to experience the huge identity of First Legion, especially before Lion and Caliban had changed them forever. Vice versa, even the Order has to adapt to this changes when Lion took command of the Dark Angels, a name ironically given by Luther...

 

If it has Gav Thorpe's name on it, i'd sooner eat it than read it.

[Lostrael]

Be careful if you use e-readers. They are hard to digest. It's like eating a whole library.

I already read/heard every book or short-story about Dark Angels I could find in the black library.

New players first only know what is in the codex. It is their first impression of the chapter.

So now they need to to read these books, to know more about where their chapters history.

Don't get me wrong, I loved many of these books. But many people just don't like spending their time by reading long books.

[twopounder]

Be careful if you use e-readers. They are hard to digest. It's like eating a whole library.

I already read/heard every book or short-story about Dark Angels I could find in the black library.

New players first only know what is in the codex. It is their first impression of the chapter.

So now they need to to read these books, to know more about where their chapters history.

Don't get me wrong, I loved many of these books. But many people just don't like spending their time by reading long books.

What can I say, I just hate Thorpe. If you read our early fluff, DA were actually heavily resistant to Chaos and never fell. Luther (who wasn't a space marine and didn't have the Lion's geneseed) was influenced and convinced the garrison that the Lion had joined Horus. Think about that for a moment. At a point when loyalists would do anything to counter Horus, Luther explicitly used that trait. Following the destruction of Caliban, existing lore of the time says the DA forces either became repentant or renagade - caring for neither the imperium or chaos. I think this adds a substantial layer of depth.

Are DA capturing loyalists?

Are DA conforming to Imperial creed at the cost of their souls?

What happens when Fallen fight for the imperium (which they DO?)

Nothing is ever said of the DA's exemplary record when defending humanity.

Nothing is ever said about the DA's unique ability to exterminate chaos.

Nothing is ever said about their crusade against chaos in the years following the Horus Heresy.

Nothing is ever said about them being the only marines that actually seek out and eliminate high level chaos marines.

Nope, the only thing you hear (and believe) is the voice of a traitor that would not have existed at the height of DA fluff.

Forgive me if I'm not impressed or interested in more of Thorpe's depravities.

[Lostrael]

I did not talk about Thorpes books. I know that's a quite controversial topic.

Maybe I'm too young in the hobby. He did not destroy my dreams of the legion with his stories, when I read his books.

Besides if I had to choose a favorite, it would be HH Descent of Angels, by Mitchel Scanlon, with its focus on the knightly tradition and heritage.

 

Many new DA players don't even read the BL stories. They just read their codex. Have you read the 7th edition codex.

More pictures than stuff to read... that was my point.