Codex: Space Marines | Multi-Part Intercessor & Vanguard Vet Teaser | Legends Culling

[Marshal Reinhard]

35 minutes ago, Antarius said:

I agree almost completely with your whole post and almost-almost completely with this. But I think there is an element of "lightning in a bottle" about 40K that is probably just impossible to sustain forever, especially since I think they originally came up with the "secret sauce" by a mix of deliberate design and happy accident and I'm not sure the recipe was ever precisely understood or written down by anyone.

It sounds very pessimistic, I know, but I think there is simply an element of time wearing away at the magic of the setting that probably can't be entirely avoided. Individual decisions can still be lamentable, of course and going corporate rarely does a lot of good for any artistic endeavour, but even without all that, I think keeping the setting fresh for 40ish years was always going to be a tall order.

I think the whole, keeping the magic alive prospect goes doubly for enjoyers of the hobby as well. To those of us who've been here a long time, the magic of certain things does indeed fade, while for newcomers, it may be as vivid as ever.

[Halandaar]

51 minutes ago, Griefbringer said:

Nowadays some companies even add what looks like intentional misspellings to some of their product names to establish even stronger (more distinctive) trademarks, though so far GW has not really strayed into that sector

 

Oh no, GW are definitely into this, see Orruks, Ogors, Fyreslayers and Aelves in AoS (and specific units like Null-Khemists), and in 40K in the Votann stuff like the Brokhyr, Hearthkyn, Arkanyst, and many more I've doubtless failed to reference.

[Bouargh]

7 minutes ago, Halandaar said:

 

Oh no, GW are definitely into this, see Orruks, Ogors, Fyreslayers and Aelves in AoS (and specific units like Null-Khemists), and in 40K in the Votann stuff like the Brokhyr, Hearthkyn, Arkanyst, and many more I've doubtless failed to reference.

 

Gosh, I was so mistaken! All that time I thought that the big K trend (Null-Khemist, Lord Kakophonist...)  was instead an attempt for luring Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian into the hobby... 

 

More seriously, for a company which main asset is its IP and associated Licences, trying out any trick and exploting legal gaps that allow getting renewal of your trademarks is an understandable and affordable strategy. Not that shocking per se. Depending of course if you use it as a purely defensive tool or if you are then taking th eopportunity for hammering all and any competitor with it (a.k.a. building a monopoly by drying out others' right to do).

[Antarius]

When it comes to trademarks and copyright, I think the name issue is probably both true (you can't trademark "eldar" but possibly/probably "aeldari") and somewhat overstated.

I mean they definitely want trademarks, don't get me wrong, but it's not like they actually have an effect on the issue where people mostly bring it up, namely 3rd party bits and miniatures, because no matter whether GW calls space elfs eldar or aeldari, they can't prevent anyone from creating their own "space elf" miniatures and bits that are compatible with GW games.

Edited Friday at 09:31 AM by Antarius

[deathspectersgt7]

Well lads , I retired my firstborn to the attic of the lost. And played taps and closed the door.

[Griefbringer]

1 hour ago, Antarius said:

When it comes to trademarks and copyright, I think the name issue is probably both true (you can't trademark "eldar" but possibly/probably "aeldari") and somewhat overstated.

 

Trademarks apply to specific products (and registered trademarks to specific product categories), and the strength of a trademark is always in relation to that category. If you check the UK government Intellectual Property Office registry, GW has actually once upon time registered Eldar as their trademark back in 1992 (for use in "Games; toys; board games; miniatures and models;" etc.) , though apparently decided to give it up in 2019 by not renewing the registration:

 

https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00001498855

 

The strength of the trademark depends on the product, and whether it is descriptive or not. Amongst general public (or at least the portion familiar with fantasy literature), the term eldar is generally associated with an elf (thanks to JRR Tolkien), and thus using the term for a space elf (or miniature presenting one) could be argued to be essentially descriptive, and thus not valid for trademark protection in that particular context. However, in some other context where it is not descriptive (e.g. strawberry ice cream) it could make for a strong trademark.

 

Technically, the product names can also enjoy copyright protection as a literary work, though claiming two words put together (even in particularly original form) as a literary work may not find much support in a court. On the other hand, graphic elements used as product identifiers (such as various Warhammer 40,000 logos over the years) tend to easily qualify for both copyright and trademark protection.

 

Halandaar made a good point about the wonky AoS names, kudos to him for that. Personally, I have been trying to pretend that AoS does not exist since late 2015 (the original AoS release was too shocking), especially when in a place like B&C which is dedicated to the 40K setting.

 

As for peculiar spellings, such as substitution of letters with K and Y, this may be partially attempt to make more distinctive terms for trademarks, but also an attempt to make terms that sound more arcane by giving them "Ye Olde Ynglish spellings" - at least to my eye arkanyst looks even more arcane than arcanist.

[Karhedron]

6 hours ago, Lathe Biosas said:

I had a thought. Maybe they are trying to make the vehicle style divide between the Space Marines and Imperial Guard wider.

 

Possibly more the Sisters of Battle who also wear power armour and ride in Rhinos. 

[Griefbringer]

2 hours ago, Bouargh said:

More seriously, for a company which main asset is its IP and associated Licences, trying out any trick and exploting legal gaps that allow getting renewal of your trademarks is an understandable and affordable strategy. 

 

Renewing registered trademarks does not to my knowledge require any particular legal trickery - you just need to fill in some paper work every 10 years and pay a renewal fee to the registry. For the process in UK, see the governmental website:

 

https://www.gov.uk/renew-your-trade-mark

[DemonGSides]

2 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

Possibly more the Sisters of Battle who also wear power armour and ride in Rhinos. 

 

And also making distinction between Loyalist and Chaos.   Chaos Space Marines are still very visually obviously Space Marines, as are Loyalists, while not being just "Daniel" and "Evil Daniel".

[MoriyaSchism]

1 hour ago, DemonGSides said:

 

And also making distinction between Loyalist and Chaos.   Chaos Space Marines are still very visually obviously Space Marines, as are Loyalists, while not being just "Daniel" and "Evil Daniel".

Shouldn't Chaos Space Marines for the most part be raiders? Even most of their recruitment comes from outside and someone else's geneseed. The only thing I'd change about Chaos vehicles would be the Aquila on the tank treads, just get rid of that. The idea that Chaos Space Marines should all have Heresy and Crusade era equipment in M42 is a ridiculous idea. Many chapters went renegade in the past 10,000 years and surely they would have raided, captured, occupied Imperial manufacturing facilities and brought their old Imperial gear with them. Members of the original traitor legions having access to some old pattern equipment I can see, it's reflected in the common armour marks and unique vehicles (Plague Crawler) of the main four cult legions. Red Crosairs and recent warbands rolling around in Deimos vehicles, having completely corrupted Dreadnoughts and tons of Daemon Engines would be seriously lacking in flavour. 

[Indy Techwisp]

18 minutes ago, MoriyaSchism said:

Shouldn't Chaos Space Marines for the most part be raiders? Even most of their recruitment comes from outside and someone else's geneseed. The only thing I'd change about Chaos vehicles would be the Aquila on the tank treads, just get rid of that. The idea that Chaos Space Marines should all have Heresy and Crusade era equipment in M42 is a ridiculous idea. Many chapters went renegade in the past 10,000 years and surely they would have raided, captured, occupied Imperial manufacturing facilities and brought their old Imperial gear with them. Members of the original traitor legions having access to some old pattern equipment I can see, it's reflected in the common armour marks and unique vehicles (Plague Crawler) of the main four cult legions. Red Crosairs and recent warbands rolling around in Deimos vehicles, having completely corrupted Dreadnoughts and tons of Daemon Engines would be seriously lacking in flavour. 

 

I would rather have actual vehicles to use in my Chaos army rather than thematically unwitting weird fleshy disappointments that is GW's attempt at doing something "like" Armour support for Chaos.

 

The entire vibe of my faction is that 90% of the people in it are literally just sand in smooth clean armour.

Why can't my vehicles also have nice clean armour?

[Laurence]

9 hours ago, Griefbringer said:

 

Actually, the unit-naming sub-department of corporate lawyer demi-company is not really interested in copyright issues when it comes to unit names, but about how strong trademarks they can establish.

 

Ideally, a strong trademark is distinctive and non-descriptive of the product (in the minds of general public), as you cannot claim effective trademark to descriptive terms. If you ask a member of general public about what they associate term "Primaris Intercessor" (or whatever you had in mind) with and they answer is "Absolutely nothing!", then you have probably come up with a strong trademark.

 

Nowadays some companies even add what looks like intentional misspellings to some of their product names to establish even stronger (more distinctive) trademarks, though so far GW has not really strayed into that sector - unless you count some of the Orky names, but those kind of names have been part of Orkyness at least since early 1990's, well before corporate lawyers started to meddle with the product names.

 

"With the chainsword ... we wil purge!"

I'm still wondering whether or not Necromunda's Palanite Enforcers were the result of a typo or not.

[Rhavien]

58 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

The entire vibe of my faction is that 90% of the people in it are literally just sand in smooth clean armour.

Why can't my vehicles also have nice clean armour?

Should have thought about that before you signed with the god of change 

[Mazer Rackham]

1 hour ago, Indy Techwisp said:

The entire vibe of my faction is that 90% of the people in it are literally just sand in smooth clean armour.

 

9 minutes ago, Rhavien said:

Should have thought about that before you signed with the god of change 

 

*People going down to the beach, burying each other, playing ball, letting the dog have a widdle, minding own business*

 

Indy Techwisp: 'No, you brutes!' *thumps fist onto ground* 'Sand is people! Sand is PEOPLE!'

 

[Indy Techwisp]

49 minutes ago, Rhavien said:

Should have thought about that before you signed with the god of change 

 

Tbf the "Change" side of the faction is more realistically the "Just play AoS/TOW" side of it the Daemon Engines still don't fit.

[Rain]

3 hours ago, MoriyaSchism said:

Shouldn't Chaos Space Marines for the most part be raiders? Even most of their recruitment comes from outside and someone else's geneseed. The only thing I'd change about Chaos vehicles would be the Aquila on the tank treads, just get rid of that. The idea that Chaos Space Marines should all have Heresy and Crusade era equipment in M42 is a ridiculous idea. Many chapters went renegade in the past 10,000 years and surely they would have raided, captured, occupied Imperial manufacturing facilities and brought their old Imperial gear with them. Members of the original traitor legions having access to some old pattern equipment I can see, it's reflected in the common armour marks and unique vehicles (Plague Crawler) of the main four cult legions. Red Crosairs and recent warbands rolling around in Deimos vehicles, having completely corrupted Dreadnoughts and tons of Daemon Engines would be seriously lacking in flavour. 

 

The logic of what "most" of a faction should be fielding is flawed because what we actually field in the average game represents incredibly unusual events in the setting as a whole. The appearance of a primarch, or, well, any deployment of the Legio Custodes or a Traitor Legion warband would be an incredibly rare occurrence. There was a vignette in one of the Fabius Bile novels involving a loyalist Captain with ~300 years of experience fighting around the Mealstrom who finally fights traitor Astartes for the first (and last) time in his life, and is incredulous at the idea that he is facing an actual Heresy veteran as those are practically a myth to the vast majority of the Imperium for centuries at a time. So, the rule of cool predominates, and ancient Heresy relics are extremely cool.

 

If the tabletop represented the lore as far as frequency of faction or unit representation, 99.9% of games would be humans and orks, fighting other humans and other orks, and occasionally one another.

 

[MoriyaSchism]

21 minutes ago, Rain said:

 

So, the rule of cool predominates, and ancient Heresy relics are extremely cool.

 

Yeah, you had access to them forever ago then they became legends in 2020. They were completely deleted in 10th edition. I'm not against the option of relic vehicles for all sides or uncommon stuff in general. I'm just against one thing becoming a model and the other becoming completely unavailable for purchase. Just how it is with Space Marines now, I can't even make the decision if I want the shiny new Gladiator or the old and busted Mars Pattern Predator. Same thing would happen to Chaos, you'd have your slimed up fleshy version of the Deimos Predator up for purchase and nothing else. Hell, they won't even let some armies use equipment from the currently available range. The Emperor's Children Codex that came with their big refresh was laughable.

[Ahzek451]

4 hours ago, MoriyaSchism said:

Shouldn't Chaos Space Marines for the most part be raiders? Even most of their recruitment comes from outside and someone else's geneseed. The only thing I'd change about Chaos vehicles would be the Aquila on the tank treads, just get rid of that. The idea that Chaos Space Marines should all have Heresy and Crusade era equipment in M42 is a ridiculous idea. Many chapters went renegade in the past 10,000 years and surely they would have raided, captured, occupied Imperial manufacturing facilities and brought their old Imperial gear with them. Members of the original traitor legions having access to some old pattern equipment I can see, it's reflected in the common armour marks and unique vehicles (Plague Crawler) of the main four cult legions. Red Crosairs and recent warbands rolling around in Deimos vehicles, having completely corrupted Dreadnoughts and tons of Daemon Engines would be seriously lacking in flavour. 

Then I suppose an argument could be made that chaos marines could raid and use all those new fanangled grav vehicles. Makes sense right? 

Cheekiness aside, it's a weird spot to be in, and GW put it all in a weird spot. Personally, I am happy that 30k exists so I could chaos corrupt those heresy-era vehicles as it makes total sense in my head-cannon that they would still make up the bulk of Traitor armored forces. However, it also makes total sense to use some of new newer marked vehicles 1st born marines have been using forever(until now) especially for renegades. Meanwhile in the real world GW is removing those classic vehicles (still don't know the fate for chaos), are they being replaced by newer version later? Or not? So then...can chaos raid the primaris stuff? Too many options, some of those options going away. What are we doing here. 

 

4 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

The entire vibe of my faction is that 90% of the people in it are literally just sand in smooth clean armour.

Why can't my vehicles also have nice clean armour?

 

 

For tanks, you can. Just need to do a bit of creative modeling and painting. And don't use the spikey bits. As far as helbrutes and daemon engines though? Well that's just a product of GW not filling out the army yet with T.son unique toys. Things like the new defilers at least have those head bits. Helbrutes I just substitute with the old box noughts heavily converted. Heck, that's what we had to do in the old days. We had a lot less back then and so if you wanted something you made/converted it. On the other hand, we still don't know GW's full intent with the faction yet. 90% dust....I would skew the numbers a bit less as there are more mutant chaffe than people think. And the daemons have returned to the fold where they belong. And with Magnus's siren song going out attracting a bunch of fleshy psykers...well...lets see who fills in the army next. 

[Indy Techwisp]

18 minutes ago, Ahzek451 said:

 For tanks, you can. Just need to do a bit of creative modeling and painting. And don't use the spikey bits. As far as helbrutes and daemon engines though? Well that's just a product of GW not filling out the army yet with T.son unique toys. Things like the new defilers at least have those head bits. Helbrutes I just substitute with the old box noughts heavily converted. Heck, that's what we had to do in the old days. We had a lot less back then and so if you wanted something you made/converted it. On the other hand, we still don't know GW's full intent with the faction yet. 90% dust....I would skew the numbers a bit less as there are more mutant chaffe than people think. And the daemons have returned to the fold where they belong. And with Magnus's siren song going out attracting a bunch of fleshy psykers...well...lets see who fills in the army next. 

 

I mean it's been pretty clear what direction TSons is moving in when our Second wave was entirely AoS/WHFB imports and we've had exactly 2 unique units since, one being a character GW seem intent to price out of viability and the other are just actual robots which kinda clashes with the whole "Marines made of dust who move like robots" theme the Rubrics have going on.

 

41% of all TSons units are shared kits with AoS and that's a percentage that stands to grow if we start losing some of the few import units we got when we left CSM.

 

Also the statement about being able the use the Armour Vehicles is currently true but the concern is that we lose them with the codex to attain parity with EC and then get given a weird fleshy Daemon replacement in parity with Deathguard.

[MoriyaSchism]

48 minutes ago, Ahzek451 said:

Then I suppose an argument could be made that chaos marines could raid and use all those new fanangled grav vehicles. Makes sense right? 

Cheekiness aside, it's a weird spot to be in, and GW put it all in a weird spot. Personally, I am happy that 30k exists so I could chaos corrupt those heresy-era vehicles as it makes total sense in my head-cannon that they would still make up the bulk of Traitor armored forces. However, it also makes total sense to use some of new newer marked vehicles 1st born marines have been using forever(until now) especially for renegades. Meanwhile in the real world GW is removing those classic vehicles (still don't know the fate for chaos), are they being replaced by newer version later? Or not? So then...can chaos raid the primaris stuff? Too many options, some of those options going away. What are we doing here. 

If we had vehicle design rules anything would be fair game for Renegades and Chaos Marines. I even agree with your joke. Yeah, that's GW's problem now. How they figure it out is on them. Personally I'm checked out, I have more than enough for my alt-hammer or Oldhammer projects. I'll just "come back in 6 years" like what happened with the Scouts and Terminators. The "Legendary Proxy" thing popping up again is one of those "fool me twice" things. 

[Indy Techwisp]

17 minutes ago, MoriyaSchism said:

If we had vehicle design rules anything would be fair game for Renegades and Chaos Marines. I even agree with your joke. Yeah, that's GW's problem now. How they figure it out is on them. Personally I'm checked out, I have more than enough for my alt-hammer or Oldhammer projects. I'll just "come back in 6 years" like what happened with the Scouts and Terminators. The "Legendary Proxy" thing popping up again is one of those "fool me twice" things. 

 

IMO the funniest thing GW could do now is actually update all the Rhino Chassis vehicles and then only let CSM and the Cults have the tanks back.

[Scribe]

Pour one out for the boys. End of an era.

[Magos Takatus]

On 8/26/2026 at 4:11 PM, Griefbringer said:

Speaking of firstborn marines, what happened to that Mk 7 Power Armour marine statue that used to be in front on GW headquarters once upon a time? Do they have it still stored somewhere, or has it been melted for scrap metal?

I think it's still there, but they can only keep it out there with visitor's permission to use it.

On 8/28/2026 at 8:36 AM, Griefbringer said:

Nowadays some companies even add what looks like intentional misspellings to some of their product names to establish even stronger (more distinctive) trademarks, though so far GW has not really strayed into that sector - unless you count some of the Orky names, but those kind of names have been part of Orkyness at least since early 1990's, well before corporate lawyers started to meddle with the product names.

I would counter-argue that GW have been doing this for longer than you'd think, though it's more prevalent now.

 

 

Oddly it seems to be a common occurrence to spell "Viper" like this in branding yet I find no definition as a word or mythological creature. I would have also included "Wyrd"s in Necromunda, but that's apparently got an existing definition

 

Oddly, they only did this with the Vyper and not the Falcon or Fire Prism. I guess it was harder to do "cool" edgy typos for those names. . 

[Griefbringer]

Valid point about the Vyper, that has been around in the settign at least since 1990 (Space Marine 2nd edition boxed set rules). Looking at the other items in the Epic Eldar range of the time, there are no obvious misspellings. As for the reasoning behind, it may not have been particularly trademark driven, considering that at the time the Epic Eldar version was just a single small item on a big sprue of many other items. WH40K version, which was actually sold separately, only got relesed ca. 1997 despite having been present in the 2nd edition rules for a couple of years before that.

 

Going even further back, there is the word "daemon" which has been around since the Realms of Chaos books (1988), though the slightly earlier Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd edition (1987) rulebook still uses the word "demon". I am wondering if this was an attempt at more arcane flavour, or just something due to concerned parents of the 1980's ("Our books have absolutely no mention of demons!").

 

Then there are also GW products that do not contain misspellings, but are often misspelled by the gamers, such as Sentinel which is very often typed online as Sentinal (for reasons unclear to me). Never mind actual original words invented by GW writers - Slaanesh and Slann somehow get twisted into Slannesh and Slaan every now and then.

[Mogger351]

3 hours ago, Magos Takatus said:

I think it's still there, but they can only keep it out there with visitor's permission to use it.

I would counter-argue that GW have been doing this for longer than you'd think, though it's more prevalent now.

 

 

Oddly it seems to be a common occurrence to spell "Viper" like this in branding yet I find no definition as a word or mythological creature. I would have also included "Wyrd"s in Necromunda, but that's apparently got an existing definition

 

Oddly, they only did this with the Vyper and not the Falcon or Fire Prism. I guess it was harder to do "cool" edgy typos for those names. . 

You mean the fælcun and fyreprysm?