No primarchs ...

[SvenIronhand]

You make your own fun.

[Orange Knight]

16 hours ago, SvenIronhand said:

You make your own fun.

 

Exactly this.

 

If you don't want Primarchs or Knights, simply arrange a game that doesn't include them.

[TheArtilleryman]

1 hour ago, Orange Knight said:

 

Exactly this.

 

If you don't want Primarchs or Knights, simply arrange a game that doesn't include them.

I think that on balance this is a fair comment. If you have a group happy to do this then that’s brilliant. If you’re playing pick-up games at a local store or going to events then it’s not so easy to do.
 

I think some of this developmental direction is definitely influenced by video game trends, particularly with younger gamers. Games have so much pay2win embedded in them nowadays, along with monetisation models that encourage constant spending and continuous content drops, with “the next bigger thing” always around the corner.

Big, “I win” models are a development of this “buy this to increase your chance of winning” mentality that unfortunately is now part of 40K. Everything has to be bigger, tougher, with more attacks and more guns. Like every new SM model is like the old version but with a better profile, more guns and better value for points, to encourage you to buy it.
 

Drop Robot GirlyMan on the table and he’s harder to deal with than his equivalent points value in other units. The way this affects the game is when it makes such characters an auto-take in armies. The Lord Solar in IG is a prime example of this. I definitely think that tournaments should go back to the old “no named characters” rule that they used to have back in the day.

Edited April 29 by TheArtilleryman

[MegaVolt87]

Thinking about it more, old 40k lore vs new. Old 40k it was fine for the setting to spin its wheels, have a cap point (13th black crussade). Its also ok for characters to be dead but still playable, (Tycho, Abaddon killing Eldrad). Or characters being able to have different states RG- cpt Shrike vs Chaptermaster Shrike. I'll never understand peoples issue with playing with a dead named character that still has updated rules and an official model. When those characters appear, they just exist up to their death/ change, they don't have to move the story forward more in that instance and thats actually ok. Non playable primarchs doing things on the 40k timeline was great, chaos ones was ominous, potential sightings of loyalist ones exciting (Vulkan, Corax, Russ etc). Them returning as playable in 40k robs both settings, it de-mystifies them both, makes HH less special and they are forced into a leading role that overshadows other named characters who are big fish in the smaller ponds spread across the wider galaxy in 40k. 

 

Whats worse, they even rob the gravatis of other major 40k characters who are also a big deal making their debut or returning (Silent King and Vashtor) or other big players (Belekor, other greater named demons, loyalist chapter masters, named CSM characters, Saint Celestine, other important Inquisitors/ ordos members, list goes on). We didn't need returning primarchs to move the story forwards or immortal named characters with models. 

[Antarius]

The Daemon Primarchs should absolutelt be around in the lore, in the game I could sort of take or leave them. Bringing back loyalist primarchs was a very bad idea, from both perspectives, but yeah, enough people apparently want them that they make sense from a sales pov.

[Marshal Reinhard]

I can buy the idea that bringing back loyal primarchs could be bad for the lore, there's an argument to be had there, but you cannot convince me its hurting the game if deamon primarchs already exist.

[Antarius]

Well, I don't know if I can convince you, but I think one reasonable argument would be that while Greater Daemons are at about the same level as Primarchs in the game not every army needs a Greater Daemon equivalent (a related point being that both Primarchs and Greater Daemons are much more powerful now than Greater Daemons were in say, 5th edition). Also, the problem with Primarchs is more or less just another aspect of the Apocalypsification of regular 40K; "super heavies" being incorporated into standard size games just isn't very good for the game experience, whether they're called Baneblades, Knights or Lion'El Jonson.

[Marshal Reinhard]

Well no, not enough. You need to explain why Chaos can have primarchs while at the same time loyal ones are specifically bad for the game.

Or, if you're of the idea that all super heavies of any kind, including deamonic primarchs ones are bad for the game, I'll let you off the hook.

 

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

I would absolutely love it if every Primarch, including Sanguinius, Horus and Curze returned. In no way have super heavies or Primarchs dammed the game or lore for me. It's just makes things better. 

 

Go Go Go GW. 

[SvenIronhand]

Primarchs aren't even that strong right now, game-wise.

[The Unseen]

Everyone commenting "Primarchs aren't even good right now" seem to have totally ignored like half the posts in this thread.

 

There are 2 related but distinct problems here. One is that gameplay wise, the Apocolypsation is caused more by Knights, or the Daemon Primarchs, where you have to have tools in your army to handle killing a real tough model or collection of models that standard anti-infantry weapons just won't do the job. In previous editions stuff like Monoliths or Land Raiders took this spot, but crucially, most of them were very expensive and potentially ignorable on the table. You didn't need to kill the monolith to win the game, you DO have to have a plan to kill an army of Knights or you're gonna get rolled, so lethality across the board has been raised to accommodate having to kill those models in a timely fashion, leaving stuff that isn't hyper durable basically made of paper.

 

The 2nd issue is more focussed on the named characters like loyalist Primarchs, and is more lore/theme/feel based. When Guilliman, or Morty, and so on show up to what amounts to a tiny skirmish, over and over and OVER, it makes the universe feel ridiculously small, and the feeling of "your dudes" is totally lost. 

 

The fact that Gman or the Lion aren't winning tournaments doesn't really matter for that last bit, it's that them being playable characters rather than mythological figures strips all the mystery out of the universe

[Cenobite Terminator]

I find it interesting what will be the next loyalist Primarch to return. I have heard from reputable sources BA are going to get a massive glow up BT level so I can the Sanguinor being pumped up.

[DemonGSides]

8 hours ago, The Unseen said:

Everyone commenting "Primarchs aren't even good right now" seem to have totally ignored like half the posts in this thread.

 

 

Expecting anyone to read on the internet is a fools game.  Especially a forum!

[Nephaston]

10 hours ago, Antarius said:

not every army needs a Greater Daemon equivalent

Counter argument: yes they do, they just need to fit the faction. Like minor bio titans for Tyranids, things like mobile cathedrals (or rather chaypels) for sisters, battlefrotresses or minor gargants for Orks, mini-silver towers, plague towers, woe machines, towers of skulls for chaos, further avatars for Eldar (lets say they managed to chip some out of slaanesh in some gambit), minor ordinatus for admech, Oversized Pain Engines for dark eldar, minor seraptek constructs for necrons, giant tau auxilia species no one's ever heard of before would all be very welcome to me if pulled off well.

Perhaps even expand the concept of something like Imperial Saints and offer it as a generic option to imperial armies to go wild with. Like an Admech Saint on a hellish contraption leaking sacred radiation, or a guard saint surrounded by a zealous entourage and maybe an optional custodian, a radical inquisitor mounted on some insane contraption like karamazov.

 

8 hours ago, The Unseen said:

One is that gameplay wise, the Apocolypsation is caused more by Knights, or the Daemon Primarchs, where you have to have tools in your army to handle killing a real tough model or collection of models that standard anti-infantry weapons just won't do the job.

While true, this is imo more of a problem due to the rules writers being seemingly unable to imagine anything beyond rigid shooting and melee. Why can't my jump infantry hop on a knights carapace and try to tear off the hatch to get to the pilot? Why can't swarms like rippers or scarabs squeeze into a rhino or leman russ to attack the innards? Why can't armies with the access to communication call in air- or orbital strikes? Because the writers apparently can't into fun and creative rules that consider what a unit could do beyond their main gun and chopping implement.

 

9 hours ago, The Unseen said:

When Guilliman, or Morty, and so on show up to what amounts to a tiny skirmish,

Imo that's an down to presentation. In my head our standard battlefields are just snippets of the larger conflict, where we, the supreme beings controlling the narrative focus our gaze at the moment. And beyond the battlefield edge the battle spreads in every direction, instead of just neatly cutting off. It's not a tiny skirmish, it's the very center of a country wide slaughterfest, the core of a jungle offensive, the lynchpin of a massive hive city siege. Or perhaps they are simulations, the hypothetical musings of the characters involved, or a scenario played out on a regicide board. They only feel small if we let them be small, but for me every game I play is a crucial turning point in a campaign on a battlefield spanning the horizon with my little window perspective being the focus. Like the PoV in an RTS game.

 

 

[TheArtilleryman]

1 hour ago, Nephaston said:

Counter argument: yes they do, they just need to fit the faction. Like minor bio titans for Tyranids, things like mobile cathedrals (or rather chaypels) for sisters, battlefrotresses or minor gargants for Orks, mini-silver towers, plague towers, woe machines, towers of skulls for chaos, further avatars for Eldar (lets say they managed to chip some out of slaanesh in some gambit), minor ordinatus for admech, Oversized Pain Engines for dark eldar, minor seraptek constructs for necrons, giant tau auxilia species no one's ever heard of before would all be very welcome to me if pulled off well.

Perhaps even expand the concept of something like Imperial Saints and offer it as a generic option to imperial armies to go wild with. Like an Admech Saint on a hellish contraption leaking sacred radiation, or a guard saint surrounded by a zealous entourage and maybe an optional custodian, a radical inquisitor mounted on some insane contraption like karamazov.

Much of this already exists. Orks already have Stompas. T’au already have the Stormsurge and those big FW mechs. Eldar have wraithknights and the avatar, and that other weird god thing. Sisters, or any Imperial faction, have access to Knights. Tyranids have titans in Forge World but not in plastic in the main codex so could be a candidate for a new model, but if it was going to be any time I would have thought it would have been this edition, you know … LEVIATHAN …

 

Necrons and Dark Eldar don’t have anything bigger AFAIK but there’s no reason why not if it makes sense. The saints idea makes me shiver a little tbh though, and not in a good way…
 

1 hour ago, Nephaston said:

While true, this is imo more of a problem due to the rules writers being seemingly unable to imagine anything beyond rigid shooting and melee. Why can't my jump infantry hop on a knights carapace and try to tear off the hatch to get to the pilot? Why can't swarms like rippers or scarabs squeeze into a rhino or leman russ to attack the innards? Why can't armies with the access to communication call in air- or orbital strikes? Because the writers apparently can't into fun and creative rules that consider what a unit could do beyond their main gun and chopping implement.

This sort of thing was represented in earlier editions by assaulting troops using the rear armour value, so massed infantry could do some serious damage to vehicles and walkers in close combat. This is where the widespread introduction of knight-a-likes forced a rule change, because people bemoaned the fact that a) a knight could be one-shotted and b) these close combat monsters were extremely vulnerable to close combat. It became too easy to wreck vehicles and they got weak. If you look at some of the criticism directed at heresy 2.0, everyone is saying vehicles are weak because of the F/S/R armour value system, while dreadnoughts, that have a primarch-challenging stat line, are considered to be OP.

[Antarius]

14 hours ago, Nephaston said:

Counter argument: yes they do, they just need to fit the faction.

Counter-counter argument: no, not really. I don't think every army should necessarily have access to everything, even if it's reskinned to fit their look. You're obviously free to disagree with me, but I just wanted to point out that my point is actually a game design point, as much as an aesthetic/lore point.

Edited May 5 by Antarius

[Antarius]

On 5/4/2024 at 9:04 PM, Marshal Reinhard said:

Well no, not enough. You need to explain why Chaos can have primarchs while at the same time loyal ones are specifically bad for the game.

Or, if you're of the idea that all super heavies of any kind, including deamonic primarchs ones are bad for the game, I'll let you off the hook.

 

It's pretty simple really. Greater Daemons were much less powerful back in earlier editions, so they weren't a problem. I thought I made that pretty clear, but maybe I didn't.

Daemon Primarchs were an apocalypse thing and seemed to work well enough in that setting.

That being said, it is also perfectly possible to have one faction have something as their "special thing" without it being a problem for the game, while at the same time recognising that extending that same thing to every faction changes the game drastically. I'm sorry if this sounds snarky because that honestly isn't my intention, but I think that's fairly basic game design point.

Edited May 5 by Antarius

[Marshal Reinhard]

57 minutes ago, Antarius said:

It's pretty simple really. Greater Daemons were much less powerful back in earlier editions, so they weren't a problem. I thought I made that pretty clear, but maybe I didn't.

Daemon Primarchs were an apocalypse thing and seemed to work well enough in that setting.

That being said, it is also perfectly possible to have one faction have something as their "special thing" without it being a problem for the game, while at the same time recognising that extending that same thing to every faction changes the game drastically. I'm sorry if this sounds snarky because that honestly isn't my intention, but I think that's fairly basic game design point.

You're still avoiding giving any game health related arguments as to why there can't be greater deamon level units (on a level you find unproblematic) on the other sides. You've yet to provide a game based reason why loyalist having ""greater deamons"" is detrimental. What specifically makes this bad?

 

Not everyone having access to everything is necessarily good? Very vague. Okay? Care to give me a reason why specifically in this case?

Because I can flip this statement on you while also not substantiating: "It's not necessarily bad either."

What specifically makes it so the combination of loyalist units + our hypothetical ""greater deamon"" so that it is bad for the game when the traitor side largely mirrors the same units and do have greater deamons?

 

What's the special thing that loyalists have as their thing that they don't need ""greater deamons"", in fact including them is detrimental. If it's so "basic" as you (in my opinion condescendingly rather than snarkily) put it, why isn't it readily apparent?

[Antarius]

I’m sorry if it comes off as condescending, my point is just that factions have access to different things, which is what makes them feel and play differently - whether this is a good thing is obviously a matter of taste. I purposely didn’t go into specifics because I consider it a point of principle but surely, loyalists have always had access to plenty of units and equipment that traitors didn’t (and Orks and Tyranids and so on). Daemons, both lesser and greater used to be one of those things that made traitors more than just loyalists with less options and a different look.

 

I am fundamentally against the idea that everybody needs to have access to all unit types, as I feel it makes the game more boring and the factions more samey. Personal preferences aside, factions are defined by what they don’t have as much as by what they have. The reason I call that a basic game design point is just that -it’s a basic feature of the game/faction design and so, it’s not really something I can “prove” to you.

 

Then there is the point about power levels; turning the power up on “Greater Daemon equivalents” is obviously closely connected (but not the sole reason) to the above point, which is why I keep repeating it. Having them be “supers” means the game starts to revolve more around them and then you pretty much need to give everybody one - and then we’re back at my first point.

Edited May 6 by Antarius

[Special Officer Doofy]

15 hours ago, Marshal Reinhard said:

What's the special thing that loyalists have as their thing that they don't need ""greater deamons"", in fact including them is detrimental. If it's so "basic" as you (in my opinion condescendingly rather than snarkily) put it, why isn't it readily apparent?

 

For starters: ranged, vehicles, transports, drop pods etc.. Are we going to give T12 transport vehicles with ranged weapons to daemons?

 

Your post comes off more condescending than @Antarius's is. Marines can already do more than every codex and have the most unit selection. They need big monster characters as well? Well daemons need vehicles, transports, ranged, droppods, more characters, units in different armor types (more leader options)... Daemons need greater daemons to function as a faction. Marines don't need primarchs.

Edited May 6 by Special Officer Doofy

[gideon stargreave]

The asymmetrical nature of the game (and the lore for that matter) is a really interesting point.

back when I didn’t need glasses to paint minis, you knew that if you weren’t facing guard you wouldn’t be facing lots of armour, if you weren’t facing chaos, you wouldn’t have to deal with a greater daemon, if you weren’t facing etc etc. for me it certainly meant a level of list building that rewarded risk. I could absolutely take a death company army, or a codex compliant one, and expect a fun and interesting game each time. Once every army got its armour, it’s demon equivalent etc etc, it meant that I needed to always field a combined arms detachment of some sort.

 

that isn’t a good or a bad thing per se. it’s just an observation. 

in terms of background, it was way cooler reading about a single marine lost on a planet having to kill a carnifex, (from inferno issue 2 I think) than a mega character fighting an avatar. 

back to gaming: it was a real event fighting against an avatar once upon a time. Same as a couple of basilisks could really cause tactical challenges. Once baneblades and multigreaterdaemon armies rolled in, tactics became about threat neutralization rather than board control. Why bother with tactical marines when they can get deleted in a turn? 
 

 

[ZeroWolf]

50 minutes ago, gideon stargreave said:

The asymmetrical nature of the game (and the lore for that matter) is a really interesting point.

back when I didn’t need glasses to paint minis, you knew that if you weren’t facing guard you wouldn’t be facing lots of armour, if you weren’t facing chaos, you wouldn’t have to deal with a greater daemon, if you weren’t facing etc etc. for me it certainly meant a level of list building that rewarded risk. I could absolutely take a death company army, or a codex compliant one, and expect a fun and interesting game each time. Once every army got its armour, it’s demon equivalent etc etc, it meant that I needed to always field a combined arms detachment of some sort.

 

that isn’t a good or a bad thing per se. it’s just an observation. 

in terms of background, it was way cooler reading about a single marine lost on a planet having to kill a carnifex, (from inferno issue 2 I think) than a mega character fighting an avatar. 

back to gaming: it was a real event fighting against an avatar once upon a time. Same as a couple of basilisks could really cause tactical challenges. Once baneblades and multigreaterdaemon armies rolled in, tactics became about threat neutralization rather than board control. Why bother with tactical marines when they can get deleted in a turn? 
 

 

To be fair we still do get stories about non named characters doing pretty amazing things, like the recent Lamenters one where an Eliminator tracked a Tyranid Prime. So fiction that wasn't about Calgar/Guilliman/The Lion etc is still being written and at greater numbers than what the primarchs get.

[Kallas]

On 5/6/2024 at 6:45 PM, gideon stargreave said:

back to gaming: it was a real event fighting against an avatar once upon a time. Same as a couple of basilisks could really cause tactical challenges. Once baneblades and multigreaterdaemon armies rolled in, tactics became about threat neutralization rather than board control. Why bother with tactical marines when they can get deleted in a turn? 

Yeah, for sure and this is what some of us have been saying in this thread for a while: the game has moved away from a handful of squads being able to influence the game and towards numerous squads of singular large units (ie, Knights, Primarchs, etc). Before, a game could hinge on that Tactical Squad managing to hold on vs that Basilisk barrage, but the scale of the game has increased to make that fight much smaller as it has zoomed out. And part of this scale change is due to the large models that somewhat demand a larger scale to accomodate them.

 

Again, this isn't necessarily an issue - Knights, Primarchs, Stompas, all that jazz, they're all cool! I love Titans, I love Baneblades, they're great 40k things...but they do warp the way the game plays, and for the story/setting the focus on only the largest of named characters reduces the setting into a less interesting single-thread narrative, rather than the dispersed setting where multiple different stories can be told with varying focuses, both big and smaller. Now, it's certainly not impossible to still make those stories, but the (to borrow a phrase) 40k gaming/story Overton window has shifted upwards.

[ThePenitentOne]

Just to play devils advocate (because I only work witth Crusade, so I'm not as in tune with match victory conditions), isn't it usually controlling objectives that wins games, not killing things?

 

And if so, what's the OC of a Baneblade or knight or Guilliman compared to the OC of the average battleline unit?

[DemonGSides]

57 minutes ago, ThePenitentOne said:

Just to play devils advocate (because I only work witth Crusade, so I'm not as in tune with match victory conditions), isn't it usually controlling objectives that wins games, not killing things?

 

And if so, what's the OC of a Baneblade or knight or Guilliman compared to the OC of the average battleline unit?

 

The really obvious answer to this line of reasoning is; if those smaller units become mulch for the bigger guys, they can't score, can they?