Your favorite volume of Imperial Armour (particularly standalone books)

[LightningClawLeonard]

23 hours ago, TheTrans said:

I think the golden age of GW from a 'non main line product' perspective is long dead, it seems no one is allowed passion projects anymore and I think the universe and system is much poorer for it!

 

The bad news? I agree.  The reason why I am so interested in the Imperial Armour books is both because I think they are pretty eternally interesting/useful, and also because I think they aren't coming back.  I was an avid Magic the Gathering player for ages, and slowly realized that the time I was spending on the hobby was limited to just writing up decklists, as I was playing fewer and fewer games.  From the art, to the rules, to the formats, the aspects of game I enjoyed just aren't there any more, as WotC moved away from them. And they have widened their audience and greatly increased their profits by getting rid of those things, so they have little incentive to change course, very similar to the success Games Workshop getting consolidating Forge World into the larger company, abandoing Imperial Armour and replacing the Black Books with a much weaker line of campaign books.  

 

The key difference is that in a card game, the lore and rules are printed on the card. Since you can't functionally modify those things, if you aren't playing with a deck, you are essentially building a stamp or coin collection or something, just making curated acquisitions.  I was rarely playing, and without that I was just kind of organizing card stock. That realization really sucked. So I wanted a hobby with a cool game, but also where even if 99% of the time I spent engaging with it was planning, and building by myself, I was still "doing the hobby" for the most part.  Models themselves are inherently modifiable and the rules and lore aren't literally printed on them, so Warhammer seemed pretty optimal.  But about six months into building an army for 10th Edition, I was just pretty disinterested.  It felt like the rules, points and abilities were so fluid that I couldn't really plan a project and see it to fruition, let alone have it feel like a narrative force when I was done.  There was no foundation for me to build my hobby upon.

 

The good news? GW might have moved away from letting guys like Bligh work on passion projects, but due to the inherent nature of the hobby and strength of the setting, hobbyist/wargamers still have the ability to have their own passion projects. And that has a ripple effect: I started down the road of looking into older 40K rulesets and books after getting into HH2.0 and finding actual list building and customization potential there, then trying to find when 40K was more like that. But what made me look into HH2.0 and start buying rules and and models for an army? Discovering Liber Badab.  I had read something about one of the chapters in the Badab War, looked up the conflict, discovered Imperial Armour, then when looking into if people still played games around the setting, found your ruleset.  I have a couple little lists drawn up for Executioners, Raptors, Carcharordons, etc. No idea if I will ever find another hobbyist in my area who will want to play your specific rendition. But even if I don't, just the inspiration from those listbuilding exercises got me into HH2.0 and 4th Edition, one being a game that I know I can find other people to play, and another where it is at least somewhat likely.  I want to get some IA books not just because for future hobbying, but because they've already inspired what I do now.

Edited March 6 by LightningClawLeonard
excessive typos for my taste

[Redcomet]

The one with Tau in it, Taros?? I think it was. That felt like a real historical document.

 

If allowed then The Badab war 1 and 2 are a close second