EC Rumours

[01RTB01]

I've not generally been a fan of the modern artwork but genuinely the artwork in today's article is immense. 

 

The guard need to provide better ear defenders...

[LSM]

Said article.

 

//

 

"The Codex goes into fine, filigreed detail, explaining how the degenerate duellists known as the Flawless Blades alter their bodies and faces to look more like beguiling daemons before pumping themselves full of stimms and hurling themselves into barbaric assaults."

 

Okay, like.... This whole release must have had two different co-project leads who didn't talk to one another.

 

One told the artists to paint everything purple and gold, and the other told 'Eavy Metal that the scheme was pink and black.

 

One told the sculptors to make barbaric Bladesmen who modify themselves to look like daemons and juice themselves on Combat Drugs, and the other told the rules writers to make elegant Bladesmen who seek daemonic patrons while refusing to share their forms.

 

One maintained the idea of Slaanesh's Cult Legion being suffused with the drugged-fueled depravities of the Sonic Cult, and the other had six detachments made for un-Augmented 30k duellists.

 

One told the sculptors to give all the Noise Marines Doom Sirens - one of the iconic weapons of the Third - and the other told the rules writers not to incorporate that beyond one model's ability.

 

 

//

 

This codex seems filled to the brim with Mikhail Savier art, which is just... the best. Absolutely brilliant.

 

(I wish that the models had hewed more closely. Like below - an Infractor, with leather straps, leather gloves, a breast plate, a speaker on the shoulder pad, big old gemstone belt buckle, speaker greave, horror-movie face.)

 

 

 

Edited Thursday at 04:47 PM by LSM

[ZeroWolf]

13 minutes ago, LSM said:

Said article.

 

//

 

"The Codex goes into fine, filigreed detail, explaining how the degenerate duellists known as the Flawless Blades alter their bodies and faces to look more like beguiling daemons before pumping themselves full of stimms and hurling themselves into barbaric assaults."

 

Okay, like.... This whole release must have had two different co-project leads who didn't talk to one another.

 

One told the artists to paint everything purple and gold, and the other told 'Eavy Metal that the scheme was pink and black.

 

One told the sculptors to make barbaric Bladesmen who modify themselves to look like daemons and juice themselves on Combat Drugs, and the other told the rules writers to make elegant Bladesmen who seek daemonic patrons while refusing to share their forms.

 

One told the sculptors to give all the Noise Marines Doom Sirens - one of the iconic weapons of the Third - and the other told the rules writers not to incorporate that beyond one model's ability.

 

 

//

 

This codex seems filled to the brim with Mikhail Savier art, which is just... the best. Absolutely brilliant.

 

(I wish that the models had hewed more closely. Like below - an Infractor, with leather straps, leather gloves, a breast plate, a speaker on the shoulder pad, big old gemstone belt buckle, speaker greave, horror-movie face.)

 

 

 

Remember, the sculptors pretty much make what they want within the brief, then that is given to the rules writers to work with. The rule writers are the bottom rung of a very long ladder, dealing with the fallout of decisions made several floors above them.

[LSM]

5 minutes ago, ZeroWolf said:

Remember, the sculptors pretty much make what they want within the brief, then that is given to the rules writers to work with. The rule writers are the bottom rung of a very long ladder, dealing with the fallout of decisions made several floors above them.

 

Surely the sculptors send a little brief, as to what they were thinking. Or the writers have access to that information. Or the models tell their own story.

 

"We made some future-Palatine Blades, based on Adrian Smith's iconic piece of art, who are all hopped up on combat drugs (which traditionally offer boosts, in exchange for risking self-harm)."

 

"So... seek daemonic patrons for a boost, in exchange for risking self-harm."

 

The rules team has to write for what they're provided. They don't get to veto the sculptors, they don't get to tell them "hey, we had this idea, can you change the sculpt to match it". But they shouldn't then write stuff that is incongruent with those models. If they are beholden to the sculpts, they need to be beholden to the sculpts. If the Noise Marine models have Doom Sirens, they should have some sort of rules for Doom Sirens. If Lucius, Flawless Blades, and Obsessionists have prominent Combat Drug Dispensers, they should have some sort of rule that acknowledges their Combat Drug Dispensers.

 

[Rain]

2 minutes ago, LSM said:

 

Surely the sculptors send a little brief, as to what they were thinking. Or the writers have access to that information. Or the models tell their own story.

 

"We made some future-Palatine Blades, based on Adrian Smith's iconic piece of art, who are all hopped up on combat drugs (which traditionally offer boosts, in exchange for risking self-harm)."

 

"So... seek daemonic patrons for a boost, in exchange for risking self-harm."

 

The rules team has to write for what they're provided. They don't get to veto the sculptors, they don't get to tell them "hey, we had this idea, can you change the sculpt to match it". But they shouldn't then write stuff that is incongruent with those models. If they are beholden to the sculpts, they need to be beholden to the sculpts. If the Noise Marine models have Doom Sirens, they should have some sort of rules for Doom Sirens. If Lucius, Flawless Blades, and Obsessionists have prominent Combat Drug Dispensers, they should have some sort of rule that acknowledges their Combat Drug Dispensers.

 

 

 

The current rules are highly abstract, so I think one could argue that their combat drugs are just abstracted into their profiles. As for the risk of self harm (as was the case with EC and DE combat drugs historically) I think GW is trying to move away from models ODing in game as that's seen as "not family friendly." I don't want to get into a debate about family friendliness in a faction like the EC, but that would be my best guess.

 

The Doom Sirens are a bit murkier, but could just written off as "Slaaneshi backpacks" with the siren bits again being rolled into their general rules. Maybe some of those attacks are really opponents being killed by short range sonic bursts. 

 

Overall, I like the models quite a lot, and I'm very tempted to buy some (I've already pre-ordered a scalped codex on a whim for the art and lore), but I agree that the "demon heads" on the FB are the one low point. They do appear to have a lot of alternate head options, however.

[DemonGSides]

Idk about family friendliness, but it's probably more or less "People don't like self inflicted damage in their games and always try to minimize it."

 

Just give all their melee weapons hazardous if it's that important. The combat drugs are already applied in their statline otherwise. 

[LSM]

The thing with the 'Blades is... they do hurt themselves for a boost in prowess. They just do it via daemonic patrons, instead of the Combat Drug Dispensers that are on the models.

 

And I'd have loved a creative way to incorporate the Doom Sirens, if you didn't want to give Noise Marines two guns. Make them their melee attack, for example. Drop the:

• Close Combat Weapon: A3, WS3+, S4, AP0, D1

And give them:

• Doom Siren: [Sustained Hits 2] A1, WS2+, S5, AP-2, D2

There. That's not bloated, nice and simple.

 

Being close to a Noise Marine should be dangerous to one's health.

 

Edited Thursday at 04:57 PM by LSM

[Rain]

21 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

Idk about family friendliness, but it's probably more or less "People don't like self inflicted damage in their games and always try to minimize it."

 

Just give all their melee weapons hazardous if it's that important. The combat drugs are already applied in their statline otherwise. 

The Flawless Blades have a rule where one of them blows up if they don’t kill the unit they are fighting, or something along those lines. It’s just written as being demonic disfavor, and not too much booger sugar.

 

Edit: Yeah, what LSM said above. Also, CSM Dark Pacts can kill your own guys. They haven't really gotten rid of your abilities killing your own guys.

Edited Thursday at 05:11 PM by Rain

[jaxom]

5 hours ago, Macidious said:

Yeah I think I’m trying to decide between coterie and rapid evisceration  

 

45 minutes ago, LSM said:

 

Surely the sculptors send a little brief, as to what they were thinking. Or the writers have access to that information. Or the models tell their own story.

 

Nope. It’s the same way we ended up with Suppressors. The interview with rules writer was quite clear. They got the models and had no idea what their deal was. Ended up going with the now maligned “moon bounce from place to place; have to be static to shoot.”

[Ahzek451]

2 hours ago, LSM said:

 

On Daemons, there are two interesting things to note (that we have not seen referenced at all yet):

• They have the 'Summoned' keyword, which is new.

 

This is interesting. Personally, as long as daemons remain as a faction, I dont need to have access to every unit, honestly just exclude some of the named chaaracters and I am fine. But having the mortal followers summon in daemonic allies is very classic and a great return to form. But would massively prefer them living in the army and not in a detachment. 

[Rain]

 

3 minutes ago, Ahzek451 said:

This is interesting. Personally, as long as daemons remain as a faction, I dont need to have access to every unit, honestly just exclude some of the named chaaracters and I am fine. But having the mortal followers summon in daemonic allies is very classic and a great return to form. But would massively prefer them living in the army and not in a detachment. 

 

It would be interesting if what they do is allow all detachments to summon demons from reserve, like back in the day, but allow the specific "Demon detachment" to deploy them like any mortal unit. This would represent the especially zealous demon worshippers' abilities to keep their patron demons tied to realspace. Pretty sure they will be detachment limited, though. Time will tell.

[LSM]

That'd be cool.

 

(Hypothetical) Pact of Excess Faction Ability:

• Up to 25% of your army may be Legion of Excess units even though they don't share the Emperor's Children keyword.
• Any unit with the Summoned keyword must start the game set up in Reserves (doesn't impact normal limit) and enter the game via Deep Strike. 

And then Carnival of Excess boosts the allowance. (Though if that were the case, I'd have expected 'Carnival to mention Pact of Excess.)

 

And modify the Daemonic Pact rule in Index: CD to disallow allying if the army already contains Summoned units.

 

(The Daemons in C:EC already have different rules than the ones in I:CD, so if the Index is sticking around it will probably need updating.)

 

 

Edited Thursday at 06:12 PM by LSM

[EmprahsStrongestGuardsman]

You know the lack of EC big heavy stuff would open a path for GW to re-release some kind of updated version of the old Epic Slaanesh titans. I wouldn't want to credit GW with that kind of foresight though.

 

 

The last ones were quite small I think, maybe only Armiger size, so easily doable. 

[Ahzek451]

Each god faction had quite a few unique toys to play with. Hoping GW uses these as inspiration. As pointed out above, similarly:

World Eaters would have cannon of khorne, cauldron of blood, doomblaster of khorne. tower of skulls, etc. 
Death Guard would have plague towers and contagion
Thousand Sons would have Fire lord, doomwing, silver tower, etc. 

Plenty of inspiration to be drawn from old epic for new units for the god legions. 

[Macidious]

with this detachment , if you kill for example a 5 man Intercessor squad with a captain attached , does that count as killing 1 unit or 2?

[Dr_Ruminahui]

It counts as 2 - see the box "Attached Units" on page 12 of the Core Rules, which states:

 

"For the purposes of rules that are triggered when a unit is destroyed, such rules are still triggered when one of the individual units that made up an Attached unit is destroyed (the Leader or the Bodyguard unit)."

Edited Thursday at 11:09 PM by Dr_Ruminahui

[Marshal Loss]

I'll reiterate what I said earlier in the thread about the lore and the art: everything they've shown so far looks absolutely spectacular and I couldn't be more happy with it. It's dark and horrible and reinforces just how far the legion has fallen in ways that I think a lot of previous lore has failed to do so (and nicely reiterates that the surface-level memes and banter about the legion that I see plaguing many online 40k communities could not be further from the mark). Whatever my qualms and confusion about why GW has approached things like the roster in the way it has, it's pretty clear this project has been a labour of love for the sculptors, writers and artists. 

 

The nugget in the most recent article about Terminators stealing armour from corpses reminds of a character in the Lucius novel, Afilai. 

 

Afilai had never worn Terminator armour in the days of the Crusade, nor had he during the bloody years of the Cthonian Failure. He had never ascended to the hallowed ranks of the Phoenix Guard, the primarch’s own huscarls, and been bestowed with the priceless war-plate reserved only for the Legion’s elite. All this was denied to him, though he coveted it above all else. Afilai would come to the armour in his own way, through murder. As the Legion fled from the failed siege, pursued and hounded into the Eye of Terror by a vengeful Imperium, Afilai watched with patience for his opportunities, and took them as they came. One by one he killed his brothers, building his armour of betrayal piece by piece. Their names still proudly adorned the plates they had contributed to his desire. Bands of fibre bundle musculature thick as a man’s arm caught and locked around his limbs, restricting his movements. Afilai snorted. The armour was fighting him again. The merging of so many different suits had produced a uniquely feral abomination of a machine-spirit within the war-plate’s core. It knew what Afilai had done to create it, and it hated him for it.

 

I suspect they've chosen this route primarily as justification for why our Terminators don't fit in with the newer models, but I'd love to see the theme continued when/if we hopefully receive our own bespoke Terminator unit down the line. Some hulking patchwork gluttonous brutes (preferably festooned with sonic weaponry) would be right up my alley. 

[dice4thedicegod]

Emperors children and world eaters terminators seem like generic placeholders… some kind of phoenix guard or red butchers would be awesome.

 

maybe 11th Ed will bring them

[Rain]

4 minutes ago, dice4thedicegod said:

Emperors children and world eaters terminators seem like generic placeholders… some kind of phoenix guard or red butchers would be awesome.

 

maybe 11th Ed will bring them

Whats’s aggravating is that Red Butchers was a pre-game strat back in 9th. You’d pay 2 CP pre-game to significantly buff a unit of Terminators for the entire game by making them into “Red Butchers.” Then the codex dropped, and we not only didn’t get a dedicated RB unit, but we lost the strat.

 

It’s annoying because I love Terminators, but the current WE Termies are aggressively mediocre, and E8bound are just better.

[Nephaston]

Tinfoil hat time in regards to terminators; The next heresy starter box allegedly features a new suit of terminator armour. Depending on how that one is styled I wouldn't be surprised to see it adapted for either EC or WE in 40k. That way we end up with at least 4 distinct kinds of terminator armour with no repeats between the cult legion.

 

As long as either WE or EC of course gets pinned with Indomitus when this new suit goes to the other. Or Indomitus stays as the undivided option and one just gets ultimate patchwork terminators made from all over.

[HeadlessCross]

2 hours ago, Rain said:

Whats’s aggravating is that Red Butchers was a pre-game strat back in 9th. You’d pay 2 CP pre-game to significantly buff a unit of Terminators for the entire game by making them into “Red Butchers.” Then the codex dropped, and we not only didn’t get a dedicated RB unit, but we lost the strat.

 

It’s annoying because I love Terminators, but the current WE Termies are aggressively mediocre, and E8bound are just better.

There's an argument to using WE Terminators in the Grotmas Detachment, but yeah their use is definitely limited. 

[Mogger351]

1 hour ago, HeadlessCross said:

There's an argument to using WE Terminators in the Grotmas Detachment, but yeah their use is definitely limited. 

The biggest issue for them, imo is the unit like. Any of the minor bonus once you units dying tend to be a problem.

[Marshal Loss]

An anonymous gent on Facebook has the box and is sharing answers to questions about the build (he's shared some pictures). Most has already been figured out (generally by chief hedonist LSM), but two points I thought were worth posting:

• 15 heads in the Noise Marine box
• Lord Exultant only comes with one backpack icon, but you can swap it out for the others that come with the Infractors/Tormentors

Size comparison picture

 

Parts leftover after building Infractors

 

 

5x Infractors

 

[Comandante Alexos]

They look huge! The Champion looks slightly taller than the Berserker and almost Primaris height.

[Tokugawa]

Leftover bits + cheap mk6 bodies = extra squads.