Your faction lore & look over time - feelings?

[Orion]

1 hour ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Thats what I thought about Krieg. 

They did or they would?

Might be a selfish notion, but I'd rather they not touch them any more than they have.

Leave it as a FW legacy and do another regiment.

[Helias_Tancred]

Blood Angels and Dark Angels. My two collections have had both of their lore advance, and I liked their past lore tons and I'm also enjoying how they have continued their lore. There is huge potential for great lore for the latter now that Lion has returned. Lots of contentious things to wrap up and also new directions to go. I'm still waiting to see if Dante does change the physical nature of Baal Secondus? I'd be hesitant, but Guilliman made good points. 

 

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by Eilio Tiberius

[Marshal Rohr]

3 hours ago, sonsoftaurus said:

I did love the design philosophy and breadth of range. 
 

It was entirely possible to see multiple IG armies that looked and played very differently, even if they were using the exact same units. 
 

Ever since the old Codex: Eye of Terror Lost and the Damned list went away, I’ve just been using IG rules for them, though there’s a lot lacking I’d like to see. Adding Cultists to CSM made that another option for some flavors, and the CSM index is even better IMO, more options and combos. Not everything, but a lot and feels a lot more like that Eye of Terror list than anything mainstream since. 

They need to toss out whatever corporate design direction they have and bring back Army Lists. You should absolutely be able to run the Guard list as Chaos aligned with some cultists and rogue psykers. As narrow as it is, the Heresy militia pdf still has more depth than the entirety of the Agents and Guard lists for 10th. 

[MegaVolt87]

I'll just say it- I like the new tau focus on battlesuits. I'll go one further- should be a second breakaway faction w/ rouge etherals that gives true equality to client races. So- cool battle suits for human pilots too, different xenos infantry types etc.  I like the new beast snagga's as well, even if they copied WoW's orc's to do it. 

[spessmarine]

12 hours ago, sonsoftaurus said:

I was not a fan of the idea initially. I thought it should have been left vague and mysterious, with only a few highlights really known (Isstvan, Terra).

 

Once it came out, there were some directions and books I didn’t care for, but a lot I liked. And it led to all the FW and now regular GW Horus Heresy game books, models etc. which have been great. 
 

One thing I think is funny/sad out of it is the Dark Angels. Their whole thing was hiding that sone turned traitor in the Heresy right? But in the expanded HH stuff, some of EVERY legion turned traitor, and surely everyone would assume that was true for the DA too, but they’re the only ones with the hangup. Have they addressed this in the DA lore as to why a) they think it’s actually a secret and b) why such a big deal given later HH stories?

 

Some HH stuff was written without much extensive planning or expectation to revisit it, this results in some setting jank. A discussion that popped up in another thread recently.

The DA's super special secret is one such thing and ends up a nothing burger, turns out the WS were in the same ballpark but cleared it.

[Orion]

21 minutes ago, MegaVolt87 said:

I'll just say it- I like the new tau focus on battlesuits. I'll go one further- should be a second breakaway faction w/ rouge etherals that gives true equality to client races. So- cool battle suits for human pilots too, different xenos infantry types etc.  I like the new beast snagga's as well, even if they copied WoW's orc's to do it. 

I... no. I can't tell if you're being serious. 

If they get a baby carrier I'm gonna lose it.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

I’ve noticed in the astorath book there a BA successor that’s focused on in the beginning, and one of the marines is an absolute whiney little brat.

 

so much for stoic, obedient, super soldiers.

in general I don’t like that so much lore in the form of BL stuff has focused so much on marines as characters. 
my understanding of marines before these books was that marines would be fairly personalityless, so all these books imho really destroyed that.

[spessmarine]

58 minutes ago, MegaVolt87 said:

I'll just say it- I like the new tau focus on battlesuits. I'll go one further- should be a second breakaway faction w/ rouge etherals that gives true equality to client races. So- cool battle suits for human pilots too, different xenos infantry types etc.  I like the new beast snagga's as well, even if they copied WoW's orc's to do it. 

 

Your stance probably reflects sales and is the conclusion GW drew.

[Marshal Rohr]

It defeats the purpose of the Tau but implementing Human Tau auxiliaries fills the one archetype missing from 40K that would sell decently: futuristic advanced tech humans. It’s always hilarious to scroll Instagram and see Tau and Votann converted to just be someone’s StarCraft stand in or “Xenophile” humans. 

[Orion]

Thing I never get, is why can't some people just settle for being blue?

Like is it hard to self insert or something?

[MegaVolt87]

33 minutes ago, JayJapanB said:

Thing I never get, is why can't some people just settle for being blue?

Like is it hard to self insert or something?

 

Honestly, the blame runs both way with Tau changes. The community who like the idea of a mobile suit type faction, said faction has potential for human battle suit pilots via a break away faction. Also with GW for listening to that in order to make a couple bucks from that vs sticking to the creative origin of Tau promoting an inclusive society, but client races being effectively second class citizens vs a Tau. 

[Marshal Rohr]

58 minutes ago, JayJapanB said:

Thing I never get, is why can't some people just settle for being blue?

Like is it hard to self insert or something?

Just so you are aware, every faction is a self-insert. That’s why people pick them. 

[Orion]

29 minutes ago, MegaVolt87 said:

 

Honestly, the blame runs both way with Tau changes. The community who like the idea of a mobile suit type faction, said faction has potential for human battle suit pilots via a break away faction. Also with GW for listening to that in order to make a couple bucks from that vs sticking to the creative origin of Tau promoting an inclusive society, but client races being effectively second class citizens vs a Tau. 

Do we need more sub-factions? Or more humans?

Just add some more auxiliaries and redo xv15s. 

This was the image that got me to collect them. More of this is much appreciated.

 

 

 

8 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Just so you are aware, every faction is a self-insert. That’s why people pick them. 

Gee, I must have been having a real moment the day I decided to collect Tyranids.

[Marshal Rohr]

The longer a player collects a faction the more the player looks like that faction. Like dogs and their owners 

[Orion]

1 minute ago, Marshal Rohr said:

The longer a player collects a faction the more the player looks like that faction. Like dogs and their owners 

Just hold your breath long enough and you'll release your inner Ethereal.

 

(please don't. this is a joke)

[MegaVolt87]

@JayJapanB, thats the Tau I remember playing against back in the day a lot as well. Great TAC type lists with a bit of everything not just mostly battlesuits. A new set of OG T'au sept rules in the OG orange scheme there that encourages a mix of forces would do wonders. 

[Orion]

2 hours ago, MegaVolt87 said:

@JayJapanB, thats the Tau I remember playing against back in the day a lot as well. Great TAC type lists with a bit of everything not just mostly battlesuits. A new set of OG T'au sept rules in the OG orange scheme there that encourages a mix of forces would do wonders. 

Yeah, dude. I love the ochre look.

And the sleek but heavy duty build of the vehicles.

 

[Magos Takatus]

7 hours ago, JayJapanB said:

Gee, I must have been having a real moment the day I decided to collect Tyranids.

There's no shame in that, we all get a little hangry sometimes.

 

I hadn't realised how much I miss Ochre T'au. 

[KenaiPhoneix]

Necrons would be my pick. I didn’t even like them when I first learn about 40K, they were this ominous dark robots that were so incredible OP in the lore (as far as I remember) but at the same time with some lack of personality (in their sub factions, they had back then a clear identity ofc). 
 

now they have factions, more personality to all units and, even if I don’t like the Egyptian theme, I really like them and think it is a positive change.

[Ahzek451]

Space marines, honestly feel like we could have done without the primaris lore. The schism feels force fed and out of place, rather just accepting that a new mark of armor is available and the the new vehicles and weapons are a natural progression of technology over the course of 10,000. And I know a big part of the mechanicus lore is not really advancing tech and holding on and maintaining what exists....10,000 years to get hover marine tanks doesn't seem too out of the realm of possibility without breaking this motif.
The return of the primarchs...on the fense. Kinda messes with that legendary feel a lot of us may have had if you started early on, but at the same time its kinda neat. Although, some of the interactions are written like sat morning cartoons.

Space wolves, I am certainly in the camp of cringe watching them advance to wolfy wolfer wolfington faction bit by bit. It could have been more subtle. And could lean more in the viking theme. What puts it over the top for me is the wolf riders and the santa sled pulled by wolves. I would have prefered Logan riding around in a viking modded storm speeder(NOT pulled by wolves), and the thunderwolves could have been a 1-3 strong unit of the big dogs they are now, but no riders, more cybernetics and armor, and maybe some ranged weapons added. And sprinkle in more storm shields among units that normally don't have them. 

Necrons, also on the fense. One of my first armies and jumped on them in their first incarnation with the 100% pewter army. I liked the mystery surrounding their agenda and relation to the C'tan. Big fan of the Pariahs. But in a universe where most things having some sort of diety over them, its interesting to see the tables flipped. Seeing personality added in to the lords in the forms of the Orikan and Trazyn is certainly entertaining. But this also takes away from that dreaded charm of where necrons came from. In the begining, we had this unkowable super threat. Now, some of that remains, but GW seems to have written in a sort of.....bumbling dumbness to them as well. In terms of necrons being super advanced alien robots with living metal...and yet, they look like they are falling apart half the time and abound with computational errors(mostly from leadership). It diminishes their threat in a way. But I take this as GW's roundabout way to keep one of the most powerful advanced races "in-line" with the rest of the universe. 

Its fun to see the Chaos Legions becoming more of a "thing". Back then, sans Abaddon, there was mystery as to what the legions were up to. A lot of real world years knowing that a lot of the chaos legions and warbands were(more or less) dimished and trapped in the Eye of terror. Forced to fight amongst one another or sending raiding parties into the universe. Thousand sons was the first army I picked up in this hobby, back when all there really was was a monopose pewter figure for the rubrics. And I remember a lot of discussions and arguments on forums about the viability of each legion holding onto any sense of unity. A lot of folks wanted to play one legion, many argued that everyone was organized into mixed warbands. I felt both were possible, but there were many that were soley convinced that the legions were truly broken and no more. Needless to say, I was estatic when GW dropped the new T.sons plastics and overwhelmingly confirmed that the T.sons as a united force was a thing. And I wished the same for all the other legions. Slowly but surely, we are getting this and I am here for it. 

[Rain]

11 hours ago, JayJapanB said:

Gee, I must have been having a real moment the day I decided to collect Tyranids.

 

Hello, fellow lobotomized murder-hobos.

 

Quote

A lot of folks wanted to play one legion, many argued that everyone was organized into mixed warbands. I felt both were possible, but there were many that were soley convinced that the legions were truly broken and no more. Needless to say, I was estatic when GW dropped the new T.sons plastics and overwhelmingly confirmed that the T.sons as a united force was a thing. And I wished the same for all the other legions. Slowly but surely, we are getting this and I am here for it. 

 

This was always an intentional misunderstanding of the lore, to back GW's push for the Happy Chaos Family army, because some pencil pusher was upset that people collecting Thousand Sons weren't buying Plague Marines boxes. A warband is just a catchall term for a group of Chaos Space Marines under what passes for central leadership in the Eye of Terror. It does not imply a mishmash. Furthermore, the strategic and operational level organization of Chaos Space Marine forces (such as it exists) has nothing to do with the relatively tiny forces that appear on the tabletop. Several Chaos Legions are at this point a shared cultural identity, color scheme, and MO, and not a top down military organization, but that does not mean that said shared identity, color scheme, and MO does not exist, and cannot manifest in how the army appears and plays on the tabletop.

 

Just because the World Eaters, Emperor's Children, Night Lords, and Alpha Legion are fractured into individual bands varying from a few dozen to a few thousand, does not mean that your army of a few dozen on the tabletop needs to be a hodgepodge of God-alignments and Legions to represent the fluff. The largest mono-Legion warbands are larger than a loyalist Chapter in size, and yet no one insists that loyalists are too fractured among the many chapters for someone to field a pure Imperial Fists or Dark Angels army. All to say nothing of the relatively unified and centralized Chaos Legions such as the Black Legion, Word Bearers, Death Guard, Iron Warriors, and arguably Thousand Sons.

[jaxom]

On 7/29/2023 at 9:15 AM, Marshal Rohr said:

Space Marines should look like Kopinski and Savier art. That’s the gold standard. 

Necron characters have aged poorly but the general models have been great. The bigger Tau suits are silly, again because of corporate design instructions. 

 

I really like both types of second edition art, so going over the top gothic or a more streamlined appearance were okay. I think adding Knight-class models and Flyers destroyed the coherent design-space for 40k and led to some very silly rule-to-lore interactions. T'au air superiority worked great against Knights/Titans for Epic, but once that had to translate to 40k... not so good.

 

On 7/29/2023 at 9:52 AM, nilsh said:

Two of my main factions when I still played 40k were Orcs and Chaos and for both I like the old whimsical lore from RT and 2nd edition way more than what they did after the 90s.

 

I really like how Orks are whimsical in their faction-perspective stuff, and then you see it from some Guardsman's POV and its terrifying.

 

On 7/29/2023 at 9:38 PM, Marshal Rohr said:

When it comes to lore the evolution of every faction has deteriorated with each iteration per edition since 3rd. Let’s use the Imperial Guard as the example:

 

-3rd Edition Codex 1st Edition had two pages of unique Regiments, their tanks, rough riders, etc. It was the old pamphlet style codex, so the lore was sparse, but the army shots made you feel like the faction was this massive organization with thousands of unique regiments and the only limit was your imagination. 
-Imperial Armor 1, Chapter Approved, Cityfight, Codex Armageddon came along and introduced different types of regiments, combined regiments, and these expansive army lists that let you create extremely personalized forces from light infantry to heavy infantry in chimaeras. 
-3rd Edition Codex, 2nd Edition Doctrines formalized the Regiment types. Fore World introduced Elysians and Krieg, made gorgeous Tallarn Models, expanded the lore with Taros, Vraks, etc. It was deep. It was cool. It felt real and grounded as a science fantasy can be. 
-5th Edition shows up. It’s ok. Not great. The lore gets silly. You have some gems like Assault Brigades. Mostly it just starts the beginning of the shrink. 

-6th and 7th see the faction contract further and further, especially after Chapterhouse (rest in [redacted]). Each new drop becomes more and more shallow, things like Vraks are long gone. 
-The 8th Reboot rips the soul out of the guard and just leaves them flapping in the wind until 8 months before 10th. The lore is phoned in. There’s no new releases. Everything is small and silly. There’s none of the spark that made Armageddon and Vraks so cool. 
-9th Edition was the silly reintroduction of combined regiments at the platoon level, an absolutely asinine devolution of the Chapter Approved combined Regiment List and utterly silly implementation with things like five Attilans attached to a ‘Platoon’ of Cadians. The Models were awesome though, too bad you can’t buy Kasrkin. 
-10th edition abandoned any pretense of normal organization with “platoons” of 25, and the lore in the rulebooks so far is more of the same drivel we’ve been spoonfed since the 8th Reboot. 
 

Ultimately they took a faction that had the authors use real world organization and equipment to influence the background in a very unique and cool way in Imperial Armor and the early 00s expansions and rip all of that out, little by little, until you have nothing but copyrightable units thrown together with no thought but what is effective in game only. People arguing about the optimal ratio of plasma guns in a regiment that isn’t supposed to have any. No way to build to theme. All of the cool support models and regiment specific units in Legends at best. It’s a perfect example of how badly the 40K IP has been managed since 2010. 
 

 

edit: How could I forget? Since 2005 there has been a Traitor Guard option to represent the most common and numerous of the types of army fighting under chaos banners, constantly referenced in lore and novels, and foundational to the setting itself. It went from an expansive army list in Vraks to a single squad and Fallen Commissar. That’s it. One unit and a leader. Absolute joke. 

 

I guess it's the push for new product, not just different product. There's also the weird way that 40k swung from, "here's an org structure you have to follow" to "do what you want to use the minis you think are cool" without anysort of logical in-between.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

It took me a while to organize my thoughts for this thread, and then @Scribe hit my particular nail with his commentary on the Iron Hands, so I wasn't sure if I even needed to grab my own hammer.  Well, whether it's needed or not, I already grabbed the hammer from my toolbox so it's time to drive that thing in all the way.

 

 

I fell in love with the Iron Hands and their lore in 3rd Edition, shortly after I started playing the game, when I bought a copy of Index Astartes III from my LGS.  They are the first article in the book, so aside from conversations with other players about their favorite Chapters, this was my first in-depth exposure to a loyalist Chapter's background (my first army & codex being the infamous 3.5 Chaos book, so I had gotten some fluff from there) and I was hooked.  To me, they embodied the grimdark of the setting.  They sacrificed their humanity to be this hard and unyielding weapon -- and weapon they are.  These are not defenders like the Ultramarines or the Fists, nor are they crusaders like the Black Templars (a popular choice at my LGS) out to expand humanity's reach.  Oh no.  They are vengers.  The tagline of the article is "The Hand of Justice."  If you hurt humans, these inhuman monsters are going to break your backs.  This is a Chapter that re-conquered an entire subsector (4-6 systems) and once all the rebels were dead they then systematically murdered 33% of the remaining population (of half a dozen solar systems, mind you!) as a warning to the rest: don't let this happen again.  To commit such atrocities, the Iron Hands needed to be cold, hard, and unfeeling so they do their duty with no emotion.

 

 

It reminds me of Raynald de Chatillon's line from Kingdom of Heaven: "I am what I am.  Someone has to be."  Alternatively, Kyle Reese on the T-800: "It can't be bargained with.  It can't be reasoned with.  It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear.  And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

 

 

That being said, there's lots of Chapters with reputations for brutality in the name of saving humanity.  The Marines Malevolent hit civilian encampments with artillery in order to kill a few orks.  The Space Wolves, even then, carried much of their barbarian tribal trappings.  The Dark Angels would turn on allies if it meant keeping their dark terrible secret.  So what made the Iron Hands so different?

 

 

It's their organization.  They are as removed from their brother Astartes as all Astartes are from baseline humanity.  Chaplains?  We don't believe the Emperor is a god, so we don't need your priests.  Chapter Master?  We've seen what happens when one person has autocratic power, so we're going to lead by committee.  "Reserve Companies?"  Pssshh.  We don't have reserves; every company is a completely independent force with it's veteran & scout squads.  A Chapter is a big family?  Nooooope.  We're going to skirmish with each other because iron sharpens iron.  And in complete contrast to the Dark Angels -- who won't let their Techmarines into the Inner Circle because of "split loyalties" to the Mechanicus -- these Astartes follow their Techmarines because machines are stronger, tougher, and easier to repair than people.

 

 

There's been a slow degradation of all this lore that started, subtly, in 5th Edition when a reference was made to the Chapter having a Chapter Master.  6th Edition threw it into high gear, and then David Guymer's books having basically kicked the wheels off and let it spin out of control.  Everything that made me fall in love with this Chapter is being stripped away.  Ferrus wanted to remove the metal from his arms.  Cybernetics are bad.  "Without a soul we are nothing."  Instead of a council of 10, now it's a council of like, 40-something people including representatives of the Mechanicus which is ridiculous!  The idea that any Chapter would give a complete other branch of the Imperial bureaucracy any measure of control over their operations is mind-numbingly stupid, especially when you consider that the Adeptus Mechanicus had already been censured by Terran authorities once for using the Steel Confessors as their own pet Astartes -- and here they are, doing it again!

 

I could go on.  There's been plenty of little changes, most of them bad IMHO, to the lore aside from some of this macro-level stuff but I think I made my point.  Old lore good, new lore bad.

[Marshal Rohr]

29 minutes ago, Iron Father Ferrum said:

It took me a while to organize my thoughts for this thread, and then @Scribe hit my particular nail with his commentary on the Iron Hands, so I wasn't sure if I even needed to grab my own hammer.  Well, whether it's needed or not, I already grabbed the hammer from my toolbox so it's time to drive that thing in all the way.

 

 

I fell in love with the Iron Hands and their lore in 3rd Edition, shortly after I started playing the game, when I bought a copy of Index Astartes III from my LGS.  They are the first article in the book, so aside from conversations with other players about their favorite Chapters, this was my first in-depth exposure to a loyalist Chapter's background (my first army & codex being the infamous 3.5 Chaos book, so I had gotten some fluff from there) and I was hooked.  To me, they embodied the grimdark of the setting.  They sacrificed their humanity to be this hard and unyielding weapon -- and weapon they are.  These are not defenders like the Ultramarines or the Fists, nor are they crusaders like the Black Templars (a popular choice at my LGS) out to expand humanity's reach.  Oh no.  They are vengers.  The tagline of the article is "The Hand of Justice."  If you hurt humans, these inhuman monsters are going to break your backs.  This is a Chapter that re-conquered an entire subsector (4-6 systems) and once all the rebels were dead they then systematically murdered 33% of the remaining population (of half a dozen solar systems, mind you!) as a warning to the rest: don't let this happen again.  To commit such atrocities, the Iron Hands needed to be cold, hard, and unfeeling so they do their duty with no emotion.

 

 

It reminds me of Raynald de Chatillon's line from Kingdom of Heaven: "I am what I am.  Someone has to be."  Alternatively, Kyle Reese on the T-800: "It can't be bargained with.  It can't be reasoned with.  It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear.  And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

 

 

That being said, there's lots of Chapters with reputations for brutality in the name of saving humanity.  The Marines Malevolent hit civilian encampments with artillery in order to kill a few orks.  The Space Wolves, even then, carried much of their barbarian tribal trappings.  The Dark Angels would turn on allies if it meant keeping their dark terrible secret.  So what made the Iron Hands so different?

 

 

It's their organization.  They are as removed from their brother Astartes as all Astartes are from baseline humanity.  Chaplains?  We don't believe the Emperor is a god, so we don't need your priests.  Chapter Master?  We've seen what happens when one person has autocratic power, so we're going to lead by committee.  "Reserve Companies?"  Pssshh.  We don't have reserves; every company is a completely independent force with it's veteran & scout squads.  A Chapter is a big family?  Nooooope.  We're going to skirmish with each other because iron sharpens iron.  And in complete contrast to the Dark Angels -- who won't let their Techmarines into the Inner Circle because of "split loyalties" to the Mechanicus -- these Astartes follow their Techmarines because machines are stronger, tougher, and easier to repair than people.

 

 

There's been a slow degradation of all this lore that started, subtly, in 5th Edition when a reference was made to the Chapter having a Chapter Master.  6th Edition threw it into high gear, and then David Guymer's books having basically kicked the wheels off and let it spin out of control.  Everything that made me fall in love with this Chapter is being stripped away.  Ferrus wanted to remove the metal from his arms.  Cybernetics are bad.  "Without a soul we are nothing."  Instead of a council of 10, now it's a council of like, 40-something people including representatives of the Mechanicus which is ridiculous!  The idea that any Chapter would give a complete other branch of the Imperial bureaucracy any measure of control over their operations is mind-numbingly stupid, especially when you consider that the Adeptus Mechanicus had already been censured by Terran authorities once for using the Steel Confessors as their own pet Astartes -- and here they are, doing it again!

 

I could go on.  There's been plenty of little changes, most of them bad IMHO, to the lore aside from some of this macro-level stuff but I think I made my point.  Old lore good, new lore bad.

Exactly how I feel about BT. I had hundreds of them. Hundreds. After 6th Edition I just lost all mojo. 

[jaxom]

I feel like creating historical “snapshots” as mini-settings, and in some there are more/less/different tech available and philosophies prevalent.

 

For example, the Frontier Wars after the Scouring, when Mk7 becomes prevalent and the Dark Angels don’t know the Fallen exist yet. 
 

War of the Beast, Orks get a lot of new stuff.

 

The Vandire Times, Drukhari have a field day, etc.

 

The Thorian Reformation, new Land Raiders, etc.