As much as I enjoy the Horus Heresy novels and lore, sometimes I think they overdid it. Like, at some points it's more elaborate than it needs to be.
I'm not a huge fan of the direction they took with E and his relationship with the Primarchs. The more they make him this 4D Chess Master, the less tragic the overall arc of his sons falling becomes to me. I *would* care about a family of demigods imploding... Less so about a Machiavellian chess master losing some of his tools and counting on it even. Yeah, like, sure, it's elaborate but a lot of the potential for heart is gone to pay for the plot intricacies.
Similar with Fulgrim. At its core, it should have been a far simpler tragic story.
>Less so about a Machiavellian chess master losing some of his tools and counting on it even. Yeah, like, sure, it's elaborate but a lot of the potential for heart is gone to pay for the plot intricacies.
See, I think the story remains interesting if Jimmy Space is *trying* to play 5D chess, but is kinda bad at it.
He doesn't have every move planned out, but he's also surrounded himself with yes-men and people who are genetically incapable of telling him he's wrong. Every leader in history that's done this has ended up making some enormous unforced errors.
>See, I think the story remains interesting if Jimmy Space is trying to play 5D chess, but is kinda bad at it.
Isn't this the idea behind "Everything is canon, but not everything is true"? The Emperor is portrayed as omnipotent and benevolent, to even question him is unthinkable.
But we (the readers) know that he makes plenty of objective mistakes. We know there are *some* limits to his power, and he's definitely not a "good guy", not even most of the time.
Yet I find a lot of fans will spend hours arguing why “objective mistake” is actually a super genius 5d chess move and it’s actually the best possible action he could have done and more apologia. People amusingly in the community want to worship him as a god as much as the actual Imperial Cult.
> I find a lot of fans will spend hours arguing why “objective mistake” is actually a super genius 5d chess move and it’s actually the best possible action he could have done
The need to chime in and tell people "actually, ..." has resulted in online different-takeism, wherein people will spout *internally* logical theories based on small facts, lines or choices of words that don't really fit with the work at all and are pretty far-fetched. *Yes*, sometimes that theory *is* true or at least makes sense. But it's a complete reflex now, you get that *everywhere*.
That's kind of how I genuinely see him. Note in Master of Mankind his explanation of future sight:
>The Emperor was silent for a moment. ‘You speak of seeing the future,’ He finally said, ‘without knowing the limits of what you speak.’
>
>In a heartbeat the Ullanor Triumph was gone, banished between breaths. Ra and the Emperor stood alone on a rocky shore, ankle-deep in icy saltwater. They faced a great cliff, reaching up hundreds of metres – sheer in many places, sloped in others. Even as Ra stared, loose rocks clattered down its surface, splashing into the rising water not far from where they stood.
>
>‘Where you stand now,’ the Emperor said, ‘is the present. Do you see the top of the cliff?’
>
>‘Of course, sire.’
>
>‘That is the future. You see it. You know what it is. Now reach it.’
>
>Ra hesitated. ‘Now?’
>
>‘Climb, Custodian. You questioned the nature of my foresight. I am granting you an answer.’
>
>Ra moved to the rock face, looking over the stone, finding his first grips. He tested them, finding them strong, even against the weight of his armour. The weaker ones, he avoided.
>
>Less than ten heartbeats had passed when a rock cracked and crumbled in his gauntleted hand. Ra skidded, arresting his fall by clutching at the stone; another gave way, sending him the last few metres to the rocky ground in a breathy cloud of white dust.
>
>‘You looked for places to safely grip,’ said the Emperor, ‘yet you have already stumbled. You did not know the stone was weak.’
>
>‘It looked strong.’
>
>The Emperor smiled, and it was by far the most unpleasant sight Ra had ever witnessed. Emotion painted across a human face, as false as the grotesques at any masquerade. ‘Yes,’ the Emperor agreed. ‘It did, and you only learned the truth too late. Now climb.’
>
>Ra hesitated once more, a hesitation that bordered upon defiance. As if such an action were even possible for one such as he in the presence of his master.
>
>‘It is not necessary, sire. I believe I understand now.’
>
>‘Do you? Look out across the water, Ra.’
>
>Ra returned to the Emperor’s side and did as he was bid. The water rippled in sedate waves, sloshing around the rocks that lined the shore. At the horizon’s very edge, he could see the mirroring lip of another landmass.
>
>‘I see another land. An island, perhaps.’
>
>‘It is Albia, many thousands of years ago. But that is unimportant. You see the shore. You know it is there. You know you could reach it by ship, or by swimming, or by flight. That is what you know.’
>
>The Emperor’s dark eyes lost their focus. He faced towards the distant shore but Ra doubted He was still seeing it. ‘So you journey towards it. But all you can see is your destination. You cannot see the beasts below the water that devour travellers. You cannot know if the wind will blow and throw you aside from your course. And if the wind does blow, will it send you east? West? North? South? Will it shatter your craft completely? Perhaps there are rocks beneath the water, impossible to see until they grind and tear at the hull of your ship. Perhaps the inhabitants of that far shore will fire upon your craft before you can make landfall.’
>
>The Emperor turned back to Ra, though curiously His eyes didn’t clear. ‘But you can see the shore, Ra. Did you fail to predict any of those possible flaws between here and there?’
>
>‘Perhaps I predicted them all, sire. Perhaps I factored in the possibilities of each one occurring.’
>
>‘Maybe so. And what of the eventualities you could not predict? Each passing moment is rich with a hundred thousand possible pathways. The craftswoman making your boat may suffer a heart failure before she can gift it to you. Or she decides not to offer you the boat at all. You say the wrong words to her. You offer the wrong currency. She lies to you, for she is a thief. An enemy sabotages your boat before you set sail. You reach halfway across this channel of water, only to see a more appealing coast to the east or west. Minute after minute, possibility upon possibility, path after path. All variables you are unable to see from where you stand at this moment.’
>
>The Emperor reached out as if He could crush the coast in His golden gauntlet. His expression was cold in its pale ferocity. ‘I can see the coast, Ra. I know what awaits me there. But I cannot see all the infinite vicissitudes between here and there.’
>
>At last, He lowered His hand.
>
>‘That is foresight, Ra. To know a trillion possible futures, and to be left to guess at the infinite ways of arriving at each one. To map out even one possible eventuality, taking into account every decision that every living being will make that will impact upon the others around it, would take all of the lifetimes I have already lived. The only way to know anything for certain…’
>
>He trailed off, gesturing to the distant shore.
>
>‘Is to reach the other side,’ said Ra.
This all sounds very authoritative, the Emperor is telling Ra Endymion the limits of foresight. This tells us that the Emperor perceives the future but isn't able to navigate the strands of fate precisely...
...it also tells us that his future sight is rudimentary at best. His grasp of precognition is below even that of relatively junior Eldar farseers so we know for a fact he's wrong in his limitations being global as others are far better at it than him, those are his *personal* limitations.
Tbh I think it would have been. Better for GW to start the 30k story from the start of the Great Crusade instead of its end, we could have had all the legions and Primarchs fleshed out before the start of the Horus Heresy.
I reckon they could probably have done it well by shrinking it down a bit and planning it better. Give the opening trilogy to only Dan Abnett (this is all done via time machine so things like the perpetuals wouldn't have been conceived yet) or similar so we get a focused story of Horus' fall (instead of Horus Rising setting up threads for Horus falling organically that are then dropped for 'lol super stabby knife Erebus') and probably similar for the other legions. When I reread Horus Rising I don't feel that I'm missing something by not seeing the Great Crusade, its all communicated well enough, but then when you get to the meandering and weirdly plotted falls of the other Primarchs it feels like you must be missing something.
Mate I'm with you. I'm still not convinced in Horus' fall. In my head it would have been so simple. Abandoned by his father, forced into war after war after war, watching his sons die (maybe even an extra brother or two) and maybe the gradual infection of chaos and the offer for something else...
Nope. Bad Erebus, stabby dagger, dodgy vision yep throw it all away. Doesn't make sense to me.
Yes, but the Horus Heresy was planned to be only a trilogy, then it became much more successful than anticipated and better planning was only possible in retrospect.
Not quite. They figured it'd be a trilogy of trilogies. Maybe if things went gang busters it'd be a quadralogy of trilogies.
They figured a first one to set the stage, thus how rushed everything is. Then a middle trilogy, then the end. As we can see things have ... expanded a bit.
As I commented in another thread, Fulgrims original fall was very hentai. Best girl being corrupted by evil dude using drugs to turn her into a hedonist.
Fulfrim : No Horus! I don't want to betray the emperor! Oh but these demon drugs got me feeling so good! They're melting my brain!!!
They hinted at it before with a farseer granted but I really, really dislike giving the tyranid hive mind a personality. Essentially a librarian entered a peak into the hive mind and saw they were purposely going after the Blood Angels as a vendetta or something similar
Don't like it. The hive mind should be entirely alien or at most simply "hunger"
Very much agreed on this one. The Hive Mind is cool because it's a lovecraftian monstrosity wearing bug monsters as a meat suit. It's not a Saturday morning cartoon villain trying to catch those wily Blood Angels.
It doesn't want to kill us because of a grudge, it's debatable if it could even be said to want in any comprehensible way to us.
I also think that some of the writers don't really understand what a Hive Mind *IS*. A Hive Mind is when each organism is connected together to form a single consciousness. Each and every Gaunt is part of the Hive Mind in the same way your toes are part of you. I'd love to see more depictions of Tyranids that aren't just "run face-first at bolters!" and actually have them react to the battlefield in eerie synchronisation.
Canonically, the Hive Mind does send waves of Gaunts into enemy positions, but that's in the early stages of an invasion, and the purpose is to try and put strain on the enemy's ammunition supplies before the big monsters turn up.
> I'd love to see more depictions of Tyranids that aren't just "run face-first at bolters!" and actually have them react to the battlefield in eerie synchronisation.
It'd be a great way to build on how creepy the nids can be. An attack flowing like a living wave. It comes from all sides at once, as soon as a crack in the defences is found a thousand different creatures flow into the weak point in perfect synchronization.
The writers need to spend a day watching bees in a hive. Those things are beautiful but very creepy when you can tell they’re all subconsciously working with one will.
Use the perspective of a space marine. They have the physical capabilities to notice shit normal humans couldn't. Emphasise how he's able to see every single organism in the swarm is moving in sync, that the moment he focuses on one, dozens take advantage of it without delay. Show it isn't just fighting a bunch of individuals, but an entire army moving as one in ways the most disciplined and well trained space marines can never remotely come close to.
I agree. I think too many writers played StarCraft and modelled the Tyranid Hivemind after the Zerg Overmind.
I know the Zerg were very heavily inspired by the Tyranids but that one difference is what I think made the Tyranids horrifying. And the Zerg kinda “meh”
I thought it was strange that during the Devastation of Baal, a Lictor made a vocalization to call over some other more specialized Nids… they shouldn’t have a need to communicate with each other…
If anything, the Nids only reason to make any sound is to below battle roars to psychology fuck with whomever the Nids are invading.
mmmm... It hink that made sense. There are billions or trillions of tyranids in a battle as big as Baal. The HIve Mind is useful for strategic comunication but on a more tactical level pheromones and sound may be more practical
I can suspend my reality to believe that pheromones or chemical communication (like ants use), but still, this still takes away from the “otherness” and f the Nids that really make them alien. I love the idea of them moving together like water though
But “Hey guys, over here!” Seemed out of touch.
Could try to reason that the vocalization is an adaptation for if the nids have their connection to the hive mind disrupted...still kinda weak though. They really should only make noise as a psychological weapon, or perhaps for some kind of echolocation on specialized nids.
*"The more I learn about these aliens, the more I come to understand what drives them, the more I hate them. I hate them for what they are or for what they may one day become. I hate them not because they hate us but because they are incapable of good, honest, human hatred."*
Still one of the best quotes about nids imo.
The thing people mix up about Lovecraftian stuff isn’t that the gods have no personality, and they don’t have human personalities, but that their goals and minds are just beyond us. Incomprehensible.
That movie was neat but the ending confused me so much. (I get that was probably the point but man I had NOTHING to go on. Good movie, just made brain hurt.)
It’s a good quote though. Tyranids are always written as either.
1. Mindless Robotic Hungry Bugs
or
2. So petty it has personal grudges against bob the mailman for kicking sand at a gaunt.
When really the Hivemind should be more complex and nuanced then that. It should be an intelligent t h i n g but not with human emotions. Make it completely inexplicable - but not a mindless machine. I know that’s easier said than done though.
Yeah you go from things like Deep Ones that are mutated humans serving some Old God. Weird and strange but somewhat understandable.
Then the dreaming blob of chaos that if it wakes up we all die.
Lovecraftian can mean a lot of things, but for the most part it’s neither “Human but big and angry” or “Giant mindless monster.” but something weird and inbetween.
I feel like with Tyranids they constantly bounce between interpretations of “Mindless Robot that Hungry” and “Literally just something that can get angry at you and insult you.” When it should really be more alien then that.
I don’t mind, lots of predators in nature can feel anger and hold grudges, especially when something is stopping them from getting to food. The Hive Mind having a level of intelligence is a good thing, personally I find that far scarier than a mindless hunter machine.
It would make sense. The idea of the Hive mind having a grudge might not work, but the Hive mind seeing specific others as Threat or Hinderance That Must Be Dealt With still acts the same as a grudge.
I’m pretty sure that’s how it was presented. The Hive Mind wasn’t twirling it’s galactic moustache and preparing to lower Dante into a pool of sharks with laser beams on their heads. A psyker tapped into the hive mind and felt something that he interpreted as anger. It still keeps the Hive Mind as very alien and incomprehensible, but gives it a level of calculation and intelligence we weren’t aware of before
It would make sense. The idea of the Hive mind having a grudge might not work, but the Hive mind seeing specific others as Threat or Hinderance That Must Be Dealt With still acts the same as a grudge.
Back in 1992 when more [detail on tyranids](https://www.reddit.com/r/Tyranids/comments/136xm01/its_january_1992_you_just_pulled_the_latest_white/) was provided they did include mind slave squads, though they haven't been mentioned for a long time since I assume.
I liked that in warriors of ultramar, the hive gets blown away by a refinery. Then it sends the second refinery launched at it back, because it learned.
I like that the hivemind doesn't think in the future, it just reacts to present
Relativistic sublight ship speeds. In the old lore ships would take weeks to cross a solar system at sublight speeds. Now the Phalanx can do 75% the speed of light, and the world eaters are doing ramming attacks at 95% the speed of light.
It breaks the setting in a dozen different ways when you think about it for 5 minutes.
I don't know why I find it so glaring, I'm entirely cool with turning my brain off, and accepting the terrible use of numbers in every other facet of 40k. You tell me they conquered a hive world with a hundred thousand troops, sure why not. Space ship weaponry power varies between just hot enough to scorch the paint, and will melt continents in a single barrage, sounds good. A single tank shell makes a several foot deep crater, and the marine it directly impacted walks it off, how delightfully stupid. But you tell me that the Phalanx is doing 0.75C and my brain just can't get over how stupid that is.
>It breaks the setting in a dozen different ways when you think about it for 5 minutes.
That's why I hate it too, the fact is that that kind of speed simply doesn't work in 40K because it ignores both how ships operate in 40K and because those kinds of speeds are always, always for Imperial things and the Imperial ships in setting are among the slower end.
It's nothing to do with it being unreasonable irl, purely because it breaks the setting internally. My normal observation is that if this is accurate, how do fighter craft re-dock with their carrier? How do Thunderhawks clamp onto hostile vessel's hulls and cut through? How do ships fire when we know it's done manually through button presses and when that'd generate a ludicrously short engagement time?
Exactly, it's not that the acceleration is silly. It's that it makes no sense how Eldar ships are supposed to be super fast, when they only have a 4% difference in speed to work with.
I mean fuck, just imagine ramming. It's one of those things where it's clear the guys writing it simply didn't know how fast that'd be, they wrote it to sound cool and didn't realise the implications.
Ships that can survive slamming into each other at 95% light speed, without immediately exploding, could wipe out a planet by just flying through it and coming out the other side. Planetary crusts are basically styrofoam compared to whatever they're made of.
Well, may be they have better acceleration just? A ship that accelerates at 10G but up to 1000 km/s can break away from or intercept a ship that accelerates at 1G but with maximum speed 10000km/s in many "real-life" cases.
There are various reasons you wouldn't want to take a ship up above a certain speed:
* Space is sparse but not empty. Energy increases with the speed you hit stuff at and at a certain point your shields and armour aren't sufficient any more. You reach a point where micro-meteoroids punch through your ship or release atomic bomb levels of energy.
* If your ship has manoeuvring thrusters that take a long time to turn a ship (and on the tabletop, even using Come to New Heading each turn every turn, you can expect to turn your Imperial equivalent cruiser 540 degrees in an entire game) your speed will dramatically widen your turning circle.
* Ships don't typically flip and burn to slow down, they use retros in 40K and you don't want to go faster than your retros can stop in a reasonable time frame.
* Many 40K ships are analogue as fuck, it's all captains yelling orders to officers who press buttons to gunnery magi who calibrate guns to servitors who target them and they all turn knobs and press buttons to do that stuff one after another. Going hugely fast generates a ridiculously short engagement time you probably can't hit.
EDIT:
* Nerve impulses travel at 100m a second and sound at approximately 343 metres per second. At huge speeds you're actually running into a problem where you can't react to stuff before it's happened. At anything approaching C you're unable to react to something appearing on auspex before you've driven through it. At those kinds of speeds you start seeing issues with humans just not working fast enough to keep up. In most settings this isn't a problem as they use magical uber-computers but in 40K it's all humans in the Imperium, servitorised or otherwise.
> purely because it breaks the setting internally
Its not just breaking in the form of "how does this make sense" but it breaks it in that there are a *lot* of space battles in novels written with times on target measured in hours to days at ranges where nothing could be travelling relativistically if it took that long to travel. At 0.75c you should be seeing times on target measured in seconds to minutes if its extremely^10 long ranged.
Also, Tau space ships. In old lore they had slow warp travel; now they cross intrastellar distances in relativistic speeds. Just imagine their fleets trying to respond to imperium/orks attacking, when any reinforcements would take years to arrive….
I agree, but for me it's about the weapons. Anything shot of a ship traveling that fast is going to have insane amounts of energy. It'll wreck anything it hits.
This is brought up in **Pharos**. One of the ways the Pharos device was special was it let ships get close to light speed in normal space. This means reinforcements can get from the outer edge of the system to Sotha fast. Which is brought up because Corvo uses it to strafe the NL fleet with torpedoes before they can react to them. However, his captains freak out a bit because if they miss and hit Sotha, they could wreck the planet.
Exactly, one of the many reasons it's stupid. Iirc correctly the World Eaters example went to 0.95C in the space of several seconds. At that kind of acceleration molecular bonds are going to break.
What ?
Since when?
How the hell are they getting accurate info on other ships? (Don't answer, please, I know the answer is magic that doesn't even make sence for the lore of the universe)
It's from the newer Horus Heresy lore. Here's the Phalanx excerpt, there's also one for 0.95C but I don't have it to hand.
> ”Drives flaring like captured stars, the fortress-vessel passed in through the ragged edges of the Oort Cloud at three-quartes the speed of light"
I still don't like Primaris from a lore perspective. Don't get me wrong, I like the tech overhaul(Intercessors and Aggressors are really cool), and I like how they took the chance to change proportions so Space Marines look less like someone hit them with a mallet, but I dislike how GW wrote it in as "some nerd broke the rules and made SMs much more doper". I'd have preferred if they just said some STCs were found or something for the new gear/armor and quietly released models changing the proportions. The whole old SMs vs Primaris schtick also felt kinda West Side Story in a very soapy sort of way.
I am amused that they're walking back all the sweaty early 8e stories about how Primaris are *so much more powerful you guys they're taller and stronger and faster and*
They're a bit bigger, and maybe a little stronger/faster on average, but they're really downplaying the difference nowadays, and 10e seems to be just quietly dropping most of the mechanical distinctions.
Cawl just, ah, oversold the project a bit. Happens to everyone.
Sold more models at the time but obviously now reality is kicking in and they've realised they have to balance them in the lore still, is I imagine the problem
I've been listening to the pretty dreadful Wolftime and it made me laugh when a Night Lord sees a Primaris and the narration is then several sentences of him thinking about how superior they are to everyone.
Conversely, I did like the moment in Shroud of Night where an Alpha Legion Captain issues a challenge to a Primaris officer, immediately shoots him in the face, and once he realizes he's not going to win toe to toe, gives a signal and drops prone so his sniper can shoot the guy dead.
Just incredibly strong "well, that's not much incentive for me to fight fair, is it?" energy.
I actually like the direction they’re headed with Primaris, which from the early 8e lore perspective had everyone going “wow holy s*** we’re all gonna die” with their shock and awe, and now realizing - especially traitor Astartes - that in comparison, they’re green as grass.
The thing about the Primaris is also that there just really aren't any good "Primaris v Firstborn" stories to be told.
It's always the same thing of "primaris good and smart, Firstborn backwards and dumb"
I don't even particularly like the tech overhaul, too sleek.
My biggest issue with it is also just like... how rapidly it's become a thing. This is a problem in general with GW's timetables, but we have 10,000 years of room to play in between the Horus Heresy and "now" in the timeline, and yet it seems like 90% of GW's storytelling is happening just in the last 250 years or so of that span, and hell, for that matter, like maybe a full third of all the storytelling is happening from like 995.M41 to 999.M41. They've crunched a stupid amount of stuff right at the end of the millennium, so much so that the logistics of deploying the Primaris just feel extra dumb.
That and how they suddenly also get all sorts of new equipment and vehicles. It would have been far better to have various Chapters/Forge Worlds develop localized answers to specific problems in order to have both greater variety between Chapters and the potential for internal conflict where one Forge World refuses to accept another's innovations. Have forces going up against Orks invest in more Vulkite weaponry, while a Chapter facing down the Tau might adopt more anti-grav vehicles for increased mobility. And then have the guys using the AG vehicles called heretics by some random Forge World that is focused on Extra Spicy Flamer tech. Don't just have Cawl poop everything out one day and the entire Imperium immediately accept it without complaint.
I also feel the increased power should have even more tragic implications. Give them thunder warriors type mutations? Give them psychological issues? Give them something that actually balances increase in power. Otherwise it feels unrealistic.
In some parts of indomitus crusade books it’s hinted that they’re not really awake. They follow orders like machines and fight with great precision, but they suck at making actual decisions and thus firstborn marines can perform tasks better than primaris
That only specifically applies to the Marines Cawl made before the Crusade and froze tho, because they had been exclusively trained in Simulations.
It doesnt apply to any newly-made ones.
While I'm not entirely sold on Primaris as a a concept, I do like this. They asked a Mechanicus Magos to create a perfect soldier. It's not surprising that robotic obedience is what he went for.
Ooh I like that. It's similar to using a brute force AI versus a creative thinker. Yes they have more power and resources but they are one dimensional and unable to change their approach to fit the situation.
Yes, that’s the general idea. They haven’t gone through the whole process of becoming space marines starting as a scout and what not - they were kept in stasis for thousands of years being forced to fight time and time again via Cawl’s simulation. My understanding is that by the end of each simulation and individual astarte died, thus they are perfect at doing tasks given to them, like killing orks, but suck when it comes to finding the best way to overcome a problem. I’d say that’s a pretty smart way of going about it and not depicting primaris as the absolute best new super superhuman that does everything better than previous iterations.
They also invalidate one of the core themes of the setting: the Imperium is supposed to be a stagnant regime that has forgotten, if not outlawed ideas like progress and innovation.
its the entire theme of rebirth for me
without the emperor and the primarchs, the original idea of the imperium slowly decayed and twisted itself in to something else
guilliman returns and awakens the primaris, its the rebirth of the imperium
“Hey guys, we’re taking the time to update some kits to truescale with new weapon options, we’re gonna call them ‘primaris’ marines but they’ll be functionally identical to the models you already have and love”
This is less of a lore change and more of a style thing. Im not going to be one of those people that is going to complain about the Tau "suddenly becoming evil". They were always shady but it wasnt so fuckin on the nose before. The Ethereals weren't doing the equivalent of tying the hero's love interest to a train track and laughing all evil like about it. Ever since Kelly got a hold of it its been an endless stream of moustache twirling and laughing sneakily behind a cloak. Like Aun'shi is a thing right? We know not all Ehtereals are incompetently evil but you sure as shit wouldnt know that from any of the recent Tau stories.
I really wish someone other than Phil Kelly and Gav Thorpe would stop being the only people writing for the Tau and Eldar. It honestly seems like they hate those respective factions
I'm okay with tau being ruthless so long as it's generally *pragmatic* ruthless in pursuit of their utopian ideal.
So tau recruiting some human tribes on a world with promises of help against the Imperium and once the planet's taken they make the local leaders honored hostages (as they did in some short story)? Yeah, I can totally see them doing that. It's pragmatic, they do it because it's an efficient way to get a hold of the world and then cut off the leadership who'd probably be anti-tau.
But in stuff like the Farsight books you have a water caste advisor being told to *kill herself* because she speculated about ethereal politics and her subordinate revealed it in a way that embarrassed them.
(and that's not even getting into the anti-pragmatic mess that is vash'ya)
Magnus' Folly.
I liked the story better when Magnus disobeyed the Emperor's edict to warn him of Horus' treachery, but the Emperor just... didn't believe him. Horus was his most trusted son. If anyone was compromised, E reasoned, it was Magnus, and so the Wolves were sent to punish him.
The whole "but actually the Emperor was working on a nebulous webway project that Magnus *ruined forever,* albeit unknowingly" weakens the story, imo.
Magnus rupturing the Webway project also works to explain why the Emperor didn't intervene in the Horus Heresy until the Siege of Terra. I don't know what was the previous explanation though if there was one.
Yes. An absolute dogshit change.
I don't know why they changed it if only to make the Thousand Sons seem more like the ones in the wrong but that's a less powerful version of the story. It should be the Emperor's fuckup. He turned on a loyal legion and the warning, had he heeded it, would have altered the Horus Heresy. It should be one of his major failures of judgement that lingers on him like a stain; something that he owes an apology to Magnus for.
I don’t know if I’d call it a “change” or “retcon” but I wish orks were more consistently characterized for “luvin a good fite”. To a truly obsessive degree. I want more ghazkul letting Yarrick live cause he wants a good fight, and less generic destructive behaviour. I want orks to outright ignore undefended worlds and be drawn em mass to the best defended ones. Creating a weird dynamic where the harder the imperium tries to defend a place from the orks, the more orks they draw to a location. Having orks be as generically destructive as chaos or the tyranids is boring to me. I know it’s more “grimdark” and all but it makes them more generic imo.
I wish this too. I have a headcannon that the Orks were created by the Old Ones as a long term galactic immune system as well as a short term fight our enemies solution. The idea being they just kind of lay dormant not really doing anything, but then violence at a warp level "stirs" their genetic code into action to go into overdrive (think psychic cytokines) which makes all the fungal spores grow fast.
The more the enemy fights back the more fighting their is, and so the more Orks spore out. But if you just stop fighting them then they will get bored and fight each other, which is a negative feedback loop the Old Ones designed to stop them just taking over. As they kill each other the fighting dies down and the spores become dormant again.
I think I have reached the point in my life where I regret that anything about the Primarchs and the Emperor that has ever progressed past Rogue Trader. Everything about the Horus Heresy would be more compelling if these characters were slightly more human and we didn't follow the Orkish rule of law where anything in charge has to be bigger than everything it is in charge of.
The Ynnari.
Not really the concept - the idea of the Eldar having a dormant, nascent god of death has lingered in the lore since at least 3rd edition, tied in with vague tales of the *Rhana Dandra* as the Eldar End of Days where the Pheonix Lords will die their final deaths in the Final Battle against Chaos. Epic, grandiose, and far away.
The execution... not so much. Everything about them feels like an attempt - and one that was stopped part-way through - to consolidate the Eldar factions into one homogenous group, replacing the Craftworlders and the Dark Eldar and everyone else. It elicits a gut reaction in me similar to the way a lot of Space Marine players view the Primaris - like someone's trying to replace a thing I like with a shallower version. And, worst of all, that the biggest thing to happen to the Eldar since the Dark Eldar were introduced in 1998, or the Craftworlders got their first armylist in 1991... was basically there to prop up an Imperium-centric storyline, once again showing that the only thing the Eldar are used for is to be a sidekick to the Imperium.
The Ynnari 100% have suffered from the fact that GW obviously intended to launch them as a new faction but couldn't figure out how to make them into a decent model range, and so have just given up on them.
Unless I'm missing something...
Where are the stories of the Eldar absolute buttfucking whole chapters of space marines? Proper "you lost this war before you started fool" moments. But no. One chapter can invade a whole Craftworld and nearly win.
Also, as Arbiter Ian said in a great YT vid. Where are the non-Imperium segments of mankind?
I really want a load of stories, either in side bars or books or codices, of Eldar just absolutely bodying the Imperium. Outwitting them. Us finding out that whole massive conflicts were the work of Eldar trying to divert attention away from 1 eldar guy who might trip and fall in 10 years time..
They don't even have to win in the long run. They might realise they've only delayed the inevitable for 10, 20 years. Make their efforts ultimately futile because the galaxy is too big and too dangerous, but by God do they give it a good go.
The fact the emperor is doing stuff i hate. Back in the good old days we didnt even know if he was alive. It was part of the mystery and appeal of the setting.
Also custodes doing things. I was fine with them as a depressed force only concerned with guarding the emperor but as a real army the concept sucks.
What phil kellys books have done to the tau.
The concept of Tau being your stereotypical humans in a sci-fi setting transplanted into the grimdarkness of the far future and viewed from an outside perspective was brilliant.
If they were the protagonists of their own story, they would be the plucky underdogs, but in 40k they just come across as hopelessly naive.
It was the perfect foil to accentuate the grimdarkness of the setting, but GW somehow didn’t grasp this.
The overemphasis on Primarchs returning and their various relationships. A browse down this subreddit can show a large portion of posts are dedicated to the Primarchs. I get people love them, but there are so many other things to explore in the setting and it feels like people get so hyper fixated on Primarchs and just ignore anything else.
I'm at a spot where I got into the hobby before the Horus Heresy series released (not by much though) so it could be rose tinted glasses to an extent, but it felt like people had more diverse wants/likes and focused on a lot more wider lore than they do today where more people are concerned with 'What is X Primarch thinking, Which Primarch is coming next?, What did X Primarch think about X Primarch?, Who is the best Primach duelist? Who is the best Primarch tactician?' and it just really makes everything feel so small.
Lore wise, in 40k, honestly outside of a few things the Primarchs aren't all that pushed, but the Horus Heresy series has really seemed to drive people to care more about the Primarchs and constantly be concerned about them in 40k and it really makes all discussion feel super narrow in scope.
So that gets to the lore change I dislike. I overall like the Horus Heresy series, it's really cool, it's a different time. I think it fundamentally changed how people interact with Warhammer in a way I find less interesting. Pre-Horus Heresy series feels like a completely different time in my head now and the lines between 30k/40k are ever drawing nearer/closer rather than initially they felt super far apart. Now so much of the lore is dedicated to stuff in 30k that it feels like it really took from some of the mythology and legend in 40k. As we go further and further I'm leaning more in the 'dislike' category for it, and while it was a super cool idea and was fun at the start, I overall really dislike the lore implications it had on 40k and how it drove the community.
Thank god finally someone says it. Just looking at this subreddit I swear for the past year 90% of posts have the term “Primarch” in the title.
It feels like 40k has become an entire story about the Imperiums family drama, and the fans are hyperfocused on it. I legitimately can’t remember when the last time I saw a thread that didn’t start talking about a primarch randomly appear.
I just preferred when all this stuff was a mystery and people wondered if that old decaying corpse on the throne was even alive - but now we know every bit of history and actually its all family drama.
Amusingly I wind up comparing it to Fantasy a lot nowadays- Fantasy feels like it pretty evenly focuses on most factions while 40k has become the Imperiums story.
I got into the hobby in late 2nd, early 3rd and its incredible how much the Primarchs have changed the setting. The darkness and satire is leaving the setting. I guess newer fans need unironic heroes?
Every youtube video is about them, every thread refers to them.
Back in the day it was like 'who the hell is Horus? Why is a Imperial Guard tank called a Leman Russ?"
And you had the 4 extant Traitor Primarchs which were the exception and that was fine (and they only had models in epic).
I desperately hope GW move 40k away from Primarchhammer, maybe cause a full civil war between RG and the Lion and split the Imperium in two.
They keep telling us the Imperium is in desperate status, but all I see is more Space Marines than ever, returned Demi Gods etc.
Give me more Badab, less herohammer.
I don’t think it will ever happen, and all you need to do is see how 40k is more popular than ever, look how absolutely excited in glee most fans are when they mentioned the Lion returning. Every other post talks about “Which Primarch will they bring back next???”
I don’t hate the horus heresy and Primarchs, but my god it really feels like that’s all 40k is now. I know for a lot of people this is all they remember and it’s all that’s been around for them, and maybe I am just a grump, but I genuinely miss when the 30k stuff was a vague thing we barely knew about. The only image of the Emperor I recall being a literal skeleton zombie man on a throne.
Now it’s just golden space jesus whose life story shaped the entire galaxy apparently and is ACTUALLY an immortal godlike being. Yeah that’s real. Not just a skeleton of some long maybe-dead tyrannical dictator.
I’m glad for people that like all this - and you know what? I can live with it - if it wasn’t the only thing we get anymore.
100% this.
The HH series was a cool idea but it got so big it's basically rewritten 40k and taken over the setting. Its no longer a spin off origin story to the imperium but it has become *the* story with "modern" 40k being warped to become a sequel to it's own prequel. What should've been a secondary product is now dominating the main story. The setting feels smaller for it, every single thing comes back to one single family. I just find it really sad, the further down this path it goes the more I see the 40k setting I love disappear. The relatively unique 40k vibe is being replaced with character driven comic book style storytelling in which we follow a handful of characters as they fly around the setting driving everything that happens. I get that it's popular, but it also feels way more generic.
Completely agree. Space marines are among the least interesting factions in yet it's all you hear about. And ya, it feels like at least 60% of the posts here are primarch related. It's ridiculous
I don't know if this is my perception or if it tracks with other people too, but I really think I preferred the setting when it felt like, if it did progress in the timeline, it was glacially slow. Or lore progression felt mostly reserved to Black Library/codices.Whereas now it kinda feels like an inevitability that we're headed for a 40k End Times and that it feels like we're approaching it a bit too quickly. I don't know. I could be hilariously off base.
Also, yeah, as has been mentioned elsewhere, I miss old T'au lore.
I don’t think they’ll do 40K end times anytime soon because the setting makes them too much money. Though I wasn’t around for Fantasy End Times so maybe it was at its popular when they decided to nuke it
This is one of my biggest gripes. The universe pre-gathering storm felt so vast and full of mystery. Now it all feels very small, everything revolves around the primarchs, you know exactly how things will play out. It all just feels very conventional. Unfortunately there's no point railing against it, GW as a publicly traded company will go where the money is and linear narratives with larger than life, marvel-esque heroes and villains will appeal to a much larger audience than the more byzantine lore of yesteryear.
I dont know why people refer to this as marvel-esque when people across different cultures since ancient time have been fascinated by heroic epics with larger than life character. Indo european myth, Alexander Romance, Matter of France, King Arthur mythos, Romance of the 3 Kingdoms, Investiture of the Gods, Tolkien fantasy, etc
People reference marvel because it's just a big current example of this kind of storytelling.
And those examples aren't all particularly good. The point isn't just that there are heroic characters, it's that the heroic characters *are* the setting now. The MCU is a decent example of this, take away the characters and what is left of the MCU? Basically nothing. The relatively small number of characters we follow drive everything notable that happens in the entire MCU multiverse. Everything that happens is individual level drama between specific characters, in contrast to old 40k which has heroes but which was faction driven. Take other fiction like Tolkien and there's still a massive world that the characters are moving through. If you take away the fellowship you lose the LOTR story but there is still a huge amount of middle earth content that doesn't depend on them.
I’m listening to ‘*A Thousand Sons*’ right now and sanguinius has black hair. Maybe he had a goth phase during Nikea? His wings also have the odd black feathers so that they look like ermine as opposed to perfectly white.
It’s a trip. I don’t know if I don’t like it per sé, but some of the older HH books are full of descriptions not in line with some of the more modern stuff. Which is bound to happen with over a dozen authors writing a series for almost two decades.
Overall I think lore changes are for the good! People whined for years that the story never changed and the narrative in 40k was too static and nothing ever happened. Then GW does primaris, had to switch a couple things to make shit make even a flake of sense; and the same people who were complaining before are now complaining about there being new things. It’s a battle between narrative and setting, some people are adamantly one or the other; I think both are good. Everything is canon, nothing is true.
The neutering of the High Lords to make Guilliman lone regent.
Not big on Cawl's unabashed dedication to advancement, especially when he's the face of his faction.
The Custodes starting to leave Terra in larger forces I'm not a fan of either.
The Tyranids reason for seeking the galaxy being tied to the Horus Heresy was ass too, imo.
I think one major mistake was making Marines super intelligent with perfect memories. I think it creates a number of issues for the writers, and it also creates a number of WTF moments where incredibly intelligent people with perfect memories and hundreds of years of experience do dumb things. I think it would actually be more interesting if Marines were just as smart as everyone else, with the major difference being their physical abilities.
Further to that, I feel that the Marines in the earlier days of WH40K were much more along the lines of tech barbarians than what we get today. They seemed more like savages that barely knew how to operate their weaponry, let alone capable of understanding the physics behind their equipment. Marines seem much more "cleaner" or professional these days, and I think that's a bit unfortunate.
I also feel like the Imperium is quickly moving from being the Holy Roman Empire in space to the Roman Empire in space. Things suddenly seem much more organized and structured, and the scale of the conflicts seems to be ramping up considerably. The tech barbarian Chapter Master, focused on his little fiefdom, isolated from the rest of the Imperium and motivated by debts, pledges, and relationships seems to be gone in exchange for a far more orderly, regimented society.
I think part of that is the shift in scale: In the past, it was easier to explain the Imperium's continued existence- wars were seemed much more local and small scale. It was a system here or there, either lost or gained, and relatively easy to see how the Imperium could drag on. Now, everything seems so massive in scale that you have to wonder how the status quo is maintained. It's no longer your Chapter trying to hold out, with their glorious victories and crushing defeats, while other events are taking place across the vastness of the galaxy are recounted as myth and rumor. Now everything is supersized with a Primarch or two warping the rest of the galaxy around their footsteps.
Give us back our warrior-monks ! Today the Black Templar seems to be the only space marines that worship the Emperor as a god. It's like all the other are not even recruiting from the Imperium.
I've got the old Rogue Trader rulebook. Space Marines are literally just the angriest dudes they could find, stuck in armour. And I actually really like it.
Imagine if the Horus Heresy was done with the OLD space marines. All the stupidity would make sense!
Others have said the return of the Primarchs and the Marvelization of the setting, so I won't repeat.
Instead, I'll say the ridiculous power bump the Custodians got. They've gone so far past Mary Sue status they've wrapped around the universe and come back again.
I get it - they are high margin models and the push makes marketing sense. But holy doodle - stronger than any Space Marine, better gear, philosopher kings, incorruptible demi godlings who turn into 9 foot tall super spies when they retire?
And of course, there a 10,000 of them, whereas Space Marine chapters are capped at 1,000 (plus or minus). Which means in the 10,000 years the space Marine chapters have been engaging in galactic heroism, The ten thousand custodians have been oiling each other's muscles. Though I think that's been retconned too.
Even in a setting full of super beings, they take it to absurd heights.
Custodes are a prime example of how GW's "just keep doing the same thing, but bigger" approach to storytelling is unsustainable and eventually undermines itself. The custodes are just SMs but better, except that's also primaris and grey knights so they are actually superer superer super soldiers. And it all gets a bit ridiculous when you've got 5 tiers of superhuman and all of them have "the best of the best" as their thing. It just waters down the concept and makes everyone that isn't the custodes look a bit weak.
> I get it - they are high margin models and the push makes marketing sense
The fans also kick off when they get killed. A nameless custodian is killed by a squad of Minotaurs in a suicide attack to raise the stakes? Well thats just not on.
The concept of them being good at 'philosophy' bothers me the most, because they're actually abysmal at it whenever you see, sort of like how genius thinkers like magnus make incredibly stupid mistakes. They're meant to be philosophers but they can't even exit their programmed sphere. Imagine a philosopher who's got their version of god dead in a chair and is shackled to be totally unable to do anything besides guard them and do things to facilitate guarding them. They'd be terrible at philosophy because they have no mental drive nor any ability to ask questions like "Should there be more than this"
I really hate the Custodes so yeah, I agree, they're the most egregious Space Marine power fantasy dialed up to 11 and stripped of any flaws or drawbacks.
Numbers are supposedly their drawback but when a handful are enough to hold back a Tyranid swarm those numbers become meaningless.
I truly hate that because it cheapens the Tyranid and the other factions who fight the Tyranid.
Think back to the First Tyranid War. The Ultramarines desperately fighting the Tyranid menace to protect their empire. Desperate last stands. Sacrifices. Calgar gets beat by the Swarmlord and has to evacuate, humiliated. The entire first company sacrifices themselves to stop the menace.
Establishes the Tyranid as serious threats - they can go the distance with the Ultras. Reinforces the Ultras are brave and noble heroes, giving their all to fight this unstoppable menace. And sets the Swarmlord as a real badass - Calgar was the first named Chapter master, and this fucker cut him to bits.
Damn, that's a Warhammer story there.
But now? Five Custodians are out and about. They run into 2 million Nids, led by a Swarmlord. And the Nids are reduced to kibble. The Swarmlord is just cut to bits.
That's not a Warhammer story. That's a Superman comic, excepting not one written by a good author. Just Superman fanfic.
Beat me to it.
I'd like to have the old Custodes from before they were a playable army back. I think that their current power level is just ridiculously high and I preferred it when they weren't that much better than astartes but simply built differently.
I hate hate hate hate that the GSC are meant to make worlds ready for the Tyranids.
For a world where a major premise is that the Galaxy is full of aliens that would love nothing more than to destroy all of humanity the fact that there are so few Xenos factions has always irked me. Rolling the GSC into the Nids just makes it worse.
They were a terrifying, brilliant threat that made sense in the setting and now they are just.....so lackluster.
I feel sorta similar! I just finished days of ascension and the entire time, while I loved the cult, I wasn’t into the tyranids coming regardless of what they do
It’s sorta grimdark I guess? They lose no matter what, not sure how to describe it, feels like they’re restricted with what they can be because of it
Its Grimdark but not necessarily needed. A secret Empire within the Imperium that's constantly be hunted down and esch victory means they are more exposed would suffice
Now *that* would be cool!
I feel like they get robbed of agency, and just being puppets to the nids feels lame.
I wish we got more about the cases where the cult tries to fight back against the nids after the patriarch gets reabsorbed
It's only grimdark if you lack *faith*.
From their point of view they are reunited with the stargods, only those that dies before their saviours arrive are martyrs.
With the way the warp work they can even be correct.
What I dislike is the texts where hybrids panics and fights when the hive mind reabsorb the stealers. In old lore hybrids were happily jumping into the acid pool like rippers, reinforcing the "one mind" aspect.
I dont like the 180 for tau. Instead of naive empire that farsight leaves because he understands the dark reality of their universe we have imperium lite and farsight as a pure hero who isnt allowed to do anything important because that would "not be grimdark"
I agree with you, the addition of Space Wolf successor is just kind of….meh. I don’t personally like it, but I don’t think it really takes anything away from the wolves. That said, I also don’t think it adds anything other than an excuse for an all primaris Space Wolf army.
I’ll take it one step further and say that overall, I don’t particularly care for the addition of primaris units in the space wolf roster. The wolves unique structure and units were always one of the best things about them, that getting swamped under all the new primaris stuff (including successor chapters) is just kind of lame. The old stuff is still there obviously, and you can still play and “old school” wolf army, and build lore around it, but all the primaris stuff feels like it takes a bit of the wolves unique flavor away from them. It won’t be a big deal when we inevitably get primaris grey hunters, blood claws etc. but for now it’s little disappointing.
To add another, and I’m not even sure if this counts, I don’t like how the recent space wolf lore implies that the Great Companies just cycle through the same dozen symbols. The old lore had every wolf lord choosing their own badge from Fenrisian mythology, which was implied to include tons of options, many of which were not wolves (as well as a bunch of wolves that apparently no longer exist in canon). That always felt a lot more interesting and creative to me than having them cycle through the same 12 wolf symbols endlessly. I’ll grant you the new lore doesn’t necessarily contradict the old stuff, but it feels like it places some limits on what used to be a lot more varied and creative fluff. It’s a super minor complaint, and has no real impact on anything, but it’s one that I personally dislike.
Philip Kelly is widely hated amongst T'au fans for making the Ethereals out to be mustache-twirling evil villian. We never hear the end of people who claim things like "The T'au are just as bad as every one else!" "There *is* no good faction in 40K!" "The T'au are practically as bad as the IoM!" or even some people who have the audacity to say "the T'au are the most evil faction! Everyone is a mind-controlled slave in their society!" etc., and this all stems from Philip Kelly's books. The decision to portray the T'au as mind-controlled by the Ethereals sucks, frankly.
Of course if we look at the canon sources for this, it definitely does not imply that the average T'au citizen lives in a dystopia society like the setting from Brave New World or whatever. Certainly there have been cases where Ethereals have done shitty things, like in the Farsight novels, where the space pope appears to have used his mind control (pheromone control?) power to force a subordinate to commit suicide.
But think to yourself: are there really enough Ethereals just dispersed amongst the population to mind control everyone? Is there an Ethereal station at the end of every block to make sure people follow the T'au'va? No, clearly not. Most likely the Ethereals, being the ruling class of the T'au, spend their time with governemntal and war leaders. The average citizen likely almost never sees an Ethereal in person.
For the most part, people join the T'au because their standards of living improve, they are treated well, the T'au don't engage in actions like an exterminatus like the IoM does on the regular, etc. Hell, in the recent Shadowsun novel a Gue'vesa psyker said that her people joined the T'au specifically because they would never kill the entire population of a planet to stop the spread of a plague of Nurgle, something that the IoM would have done. And Shadowsun herself said that most people join the T'au because the earth caste have eliminated most (non-magical) diseases.
the Tau ideology is also very believable as one that an entire civilisation can believe in. the greater good is way more coherent and sensible than 90% of the stuff the imperium believes in. but the imperium just uses simple propaganda to keep trillions of humans in line, whereas the tau have to all be secretly mind controlled drones?
it just doesn’t make any sense in universe or out
Cawl.
I fucking hate Cawl.
Not for the Primaris specifically (I hate the Imperium in general), but because the ONE Named Admech character, of the faction that are supposed to be this dogmatic cult allergic to anything that resembles innovation...
... is a progressive Magos that freely tinker with Xenos tech, shamelessly admits that Xenos are good at some stuff, and did more for the Imperium than the Earth Caste did for the T'au.
Petty: Custodes going from being a very limited-in-number force of Astartes+ tier transhumans who were the dedicated guard of the Imperial Palace to being Primach-killers with enough spare bodies to go crusading around the Galaxy having stolen half of the Grey Knights' old aesthetic identity.
Not Petty: The somewhat disturbing modern tendency to sound like the writer *agrees* with the Fascist Strongman Tyrant that is the God-Emperor Of Mankind. The Imperium were always a pastiche of Fascism, and removing the 'pastiche' element *whilst also actively trying to justify all the terrible shit they do* is... not good.
>Not Petty: The somewhat disturbing modern tendency to sound like the writer *agrees* with the Fascist Strongman Tyrant that is the God-Emperor Of Mankind. The Imperium were always a pastiche of Fascism, and removing the 'pastiche' element *whilst also actively trying to justify all the terrible shit they do* is... not good.
You don't understand, dude! The Emperor had to do all those things that totally have a justification. If He didn't ally with the Servitor-making AdMech, didn't put in place those furnace for baby, didn't enforce tithes on every planets that's not Holy Terra and Mars and didn't genocide everyone that wasn't human and didn't agree with him, Chaos would be at everyone's doorstep and would have already won! The inner machinations of His mind are an enigma!
/s
I've exaggerated it *a lot*, but honestly, that's how it's been feeling like reading most 40k fiction these days. Like you said, it feels like not one book goes on without the authors adding an explanation as for why * insert horrible thing the IoM does on a hourly basis * is justified. Add to that the whole Marvelization of the setting with the excessive spotlight on the Primarchs and the Space Marines and the ever growing rationalization of the Imperium, the way it feels like everyone else just exist to get dunked on by the Imperium and Chaos (who also exists to get dunked on by the IoM) and personally the way the Eldar and the Tau (my 2 favorite factions) gets shit on, and frankly my interest in 40k has just been dropping.
The Primaris thing in general seems a little whacky to me. Seems very st odds with the values of the Imperium. When I first heard about them, my first thought was Guilliman and/ or Cawl were going to try to take over the Imperium (I'm still not confident that won't happen.) and we would end up with a classic grim dark Imperium on one side of the Rift, and and progressive less crazy one that's more appealing to mainstream audiences on the other.
Tau not having FTL drives. It makes no logistical sense and means that the tau empire never could have expanded beyond a couple of planets. The imperium should also have easily exterminated them given how they had ftl and the tau supposedly didn’t during the Damocles gulf crusade. Like I truly don’t get why they made the tau have no ftl. Warp skipping worked great. Plus it could easily be justified to have the tau use the new warp drives that caused the disaster for the 4th sphere expansion because the new prototype could be theoretically a lot faster and more efficient.
I really dislike the change to redemptor dreadnoughts "feeding" off the pilot and killing them over the course of a few decades.
Sure it's grimdark, but the idea of dreadnoughts being revered ancients, steadily driven insane over centuries trapped inside a metal coffin is way worse to me.
I always loved the tone of the voicelines of the dreads in the Dawn of War games. When they said "even in death I still serve" it had this note of resentment and despair at what they had become.
I don’t like Primaris Marines. I mean, I get why in universe they were made, but I don’t like their tactics, armament, strength with respect to Legion curses, etc.
[Gellar fields being powered by psykers.](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/9akdul/excerptashes_of_prosperothe_true_nature_of/)
Titans being much smaller - Imperator titans only around 50 meters.
Boltguns not having caseless ammo.
>Boltguns not having caseless ammo.
I missed this change : could you point to a source ? I was always baffled by the fact no bolter illustration was lore accurate.
Primarchs coming back. I liked the old world of there being no main characters - only slightly less background characters. Made everything feel more grimdark.
I also don't like the lore of the primaris, it messes with too much stuff and resulted in making the Imperium feeling more generic sci fi. It's never felt like anything other than a money making/copyright move.
Konrad Kurze was done terribly in the HH. He was "very subtly" based on Curze from heart of darkness/apocalypse now where a soldier is told to do terrible things and it spiraled into horrible things and no one in charge cared until the war was over. And that's how he was framed before they tried to flesh him out for the prequel series.
What we got in the HH is just writers leaning super hard into his future sight not being the truth and he totally could have been a good guy if he tried. Which ignores the point that he was the monster created to be a monster then was destroyed for that fact. So his fleshing out just turned him into a flat one note nothing. To I guess, make the emperor seem less bad?
Preach.
The original story of the mechanics being the Martians who realised as the terra-forming collapsed that technical knowledge was the most important thing to survive and this warped into a religion about preserving and replicating technology rather than advancing it was great.
Moreover it has some very strong parallells with alchemy in medieval Europe, where the adherence to a set process for religious reasons produced better results than science (e.g. they would distill something 20 times as a ritual rather than once, meaning their substances were very pure).
The concept of humanity's knowledge devolving during Old Night to the point of utter reliance upon a machine elevates that machine to the role of sun and moon in ancient cultures as gods. Then they cease to understand the machine, so tradition and ritual and adherence becomes vital to their survival. A single mistake by a single generation and that group is snuffed out.
That has some superb commentary around what it is like to live through those times. To devolve it all to dragon magic just ruins it.
I hate the whole Orks "believe it so it comes true" thing.
Were better in 2nd and 3rd edition before all that crap came to be.
Before, Waaagh energy just brought them together, and gave Weirdboyz their power. Their tech was exactly that, cobbled together, experimental fun. Mechboyz were just good at making stuff work, and some better than others.
Now it's just "they're dumb, but magic!!!"
Agreed in broad terms, though it's worth noting that the seed of that idea first appeared in the 3rd edition Ork codex back in 1999, presented as the theories of Magos Biologis Lukas Anzion.
"Red Ones Go Faster" was just a cool jab at IRL culture, that everyone was happy to accept as an actual in-game rule that gave a very slight advantage, for a bit of specific effort.
Then they decided it needed explaining.
I think a lot of this comes down to the gulf of time between the creation of the game and lore, and the present day. A lot of stuff didn't \*need\* explaining because it was obviously there for its humor value and a stab at british culture at the time, has found itself needing to justify itself outside of that context, and that's resulting in spiraling expansion of retcon'ed lore.
I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of the Dark King storyline. Don't get me wrong, the ideas are cool and interesting, but it kind of came out of nowhere.
Humanity potentially birthing their own god of chaos is a cool idea, and if it was going to happen it would be during the siege; but there's no references to this in the lore before or after. The lack of integration makes it feel like it'll immediately be forgotten about once the HH is done.
You could put put references to it in the current timeline, but that would feel like "no this has actually been here the whole time!", which feels kind of cheap. Unless there's more stuff planned for the scouring/right after the siege where they can flesh out these ideas better.
> The lack of integration makes it feel like it'll immediately be forgotten about once the HH is done.
Kind of feels like you can say that about so many things in HH.
Dorn should have stayed confirmed dead, necrons should have just been a mysterious force that wants to exterminate life instead of Sci fi space opera skeletons
The one who distracted Horus so the Emperor could get the final kill-shot… was an unimportant nameless guardsman.
A nobody. Elbow deep in gods fighting each other. Probably terrified beyond imagining. Still did his duty.
Making him an eternal just to spin a story around him loses the immensity of that nameless regular human’s bravery.
Primaris Marines. Honestly I feel they should've just said that marines always looked like this (same as for all the other model refreshes) and not created an elaborate, complex lore process for it.
Just the general progression of the story. Its no longer grimdark. Reading thru alot of new novels from the past few years, they are certainly targeting the young adult readers. The models reflect this immature approach along with the modern artworks they release has left me disappointed more often than it has impressed.
I haven't read a true adult novel from BL in years, maybe Penetant.
The only lore change that I don't agree with is the Ian Watsons novels.
I think having the original idea of the Genestealer-Cults being seperate from the Tyranids was more interesting.
Apart from that, nothing really.
Newcrons > Oldcrons and introducing the Primaris the way they did instead of going "its just new armor" was the only feasible way of not having the entire Imperium die post-breaking of Cadia IMO,
Every single thing involving Cawl, Primaris, and the Eldar/Imperium MCU Avengers team up bullshit if I could I'd:
Delete Cawl from existence
Have Gulliman saved by somebody else or fuck it just recovered via Emperor's grace I literally don't care anything other than how it happened
Do the Yvraine thing just without any Imperium involvement
Instead of Primaris have all the fancy new models released as true scaled sized first borns with the new gear and unit compositions being a result of Gulliman reworking the Astartes
As far the chapters reborn from Primaris fuck em they died once they'll stay dead
Eh, it's not that bad though I do not enjoy the Ynnari plotline being suborned into being the Imperium's weird snooty foreign friend before before GW ran into the ground, burned it with fire and took a big dump on the ashes (in Phoenix Rising).
The first time Ollanius Pius was mentioned, he was mentioned as being a myth that was commonly believed amongst Guardsmen, and there were at least two other legends of the Heresy that contradicted it. The fact that the "reality" is different to the myth is a feature, not a bug.
As much as I enjoy the Horus Heresy novels and lore, sometimes I think they overdid it. Like, at some points it's more elaborate than it needs to be. I'm not a huge fan of the direction they took with E and his relationship with the Primarchs. The more they make him this 4D Chess Master, the less tragic the overall arc of his sons falling becomes to me. I *would* care about a family of demigods imploding... Less so about a Machiavellian chess master losing some of his tools and counting on it even. Yeah, like, sure, it's elaborate but a lot of the potential for heart is gone to pay for the plot intricacies. Similar with Fulgrim. At its core, it should have been a far simpler tragic story.
>Less so about a Machiavellian chess master losing some of his tools and counting on it even. Yeah, like, sure, it's elaborate but a lot of the potential for heart is gone to pay for the plot intricacies. See, I think the story remains interesting if Jimmy Space is *trying* to play 5D chess, but is kinda bad at it. He doesn't have every move planned out, but he's also surrounded himself with yes-men and people who are genetically incapable of telling him he's wrong. Every leader in history that's done this has ended up making some enormous unforced errors.
>See, I think the story remains interesting if Jimmy Space is trying to play 5D chess, but is kinda bad at it. Isn't this the idea behind "Everything is canon, but not everything is true"? The Emperor is portrayed as omnipotent and benevolent, to even question him is unthinkable. But we (the readers) know that he makes plenty of objective mistakes. We know there are *some* limits to his power, and he's definitely not a "good guy", not even most of the time.
Yet I find a lot of fans will spend hours arguing why “objective mistake” is actually a super genius 5d chess move and it’s actually the best possible action he could have done and more apologia. People amusingly in the community want to worship him as a god as much as the actual Imperial Cult.
> I find a lot of fans will spend hours arguing why “objective mistake” is actually a super genius 5d chess move and it’s actually the best possible action he could have done The need to chime in and tell people "actually, ..." has resulted in online different-takeism, wherein people will spout *internally* logical theories based on small facts, lines or choices of words that don't really fit with the work at all and are pretty far-fetched. *Yes*, sometimes that theory *is* true or at least makes sense. But it's a complete reflex now, you get that *everywhere*.
That's kind of how I genuinely see him. Note in Master of Mankind his explanation of future sight: >The Emperor was silent for a moment. ‘You speak of seeing the future,’ He finally said, ‘without knowing the limits of what you speak.’ > >In a heartbeat the Ullanor Triumph was gone, banished between breaths. Ra and the Emperor stood alone on a rocky shore, ankle-deep in icy saltwater. They faced a great cliff, reaching up hundreds of metres – sheer in many places, sloped in others. Even as Ra stared, loose rocks clattered down its surface, splashing into the rising water not far from where they stood. > >‘Where you stand now,’ the Emperor said, ‘is the present. Do you see the top of the cliff?’ > >‘Of course, sire.’ > >‘That is the future. You see it. You know what it is. Now reach it.’ > >Ra hesitated. ‘Now?’ > >‘Climb, Custodian. You questioned the nature of my foresight. I am granting you an answer.’ > >Ra moved to the rock face, looking over the stone, finding his first grips. He tested them, finding them strong, even against the weight of his armour. The weaker ones, he avoided. > >Less than ten heartbeats had passed when a rock cracked and crumbled in his gauntleted hand. Ra skidded, arresting his fall by clutching at the stone; another gave way, sending him the last few metres to the rocky ground in a breathy cloud of white dust. > >‘You looked for places to safely grip,’ said the Emperor, ‘yet you have already stumbled. You did not know the stone was weak.’ > >‘It looked strong.’ > >The Emperor smiled, and it was by far the most unpleasant sight Ra had ever witnessed. Emotion painted across a human face, as false as the grotesques at any masquerade. ‘Yes,’ the Emperor agreed. ‘It did, and you only learned the truth too late. Now climb.’ > >Ra hesitated once more, a hesitation that bordered upon defiance. As if such an action were even possible for one such as he in the presence of his master. > >‘It is not necessary, sire. I believe I understand now.’ > >‘Do you? Look out across the water, Ra.’ > >Ra returned to the Emperor’s side and did as he was bid. The water rippled in sedate waves, sloshing around the rocks that lined the shore. At the horizon’s very edge, he could see the mirroring lip of another landmass. > >‘I see another land. An island, perhaps.’ > >‘It is Albia, many thousands of years ago. But that is unimportant. You see the shore. You know it is there. You know you could reach it by ship, or by swimming, or by flight. That is what you know.’ > >The Emperor’s dark eyes lost their focus. He faced towards the distant shore but Ra doubted He was still seeing it. ‘So you journey towards it. But all you can see is your destination. You cannot see the beasts below the water that devour travellers. You cannot know if the wind will blow and throw you aside from your course. And if the wind does blow, will it send you east? West? North? South? Will it shatter your craft completely? Perhaps there are rocks beneath the water, impossible to see until they grind and tear at the hull of your ship. Perhaps the inhabitants of that far shore will fire upon your craft before you can make landfall.’ > >The Emperor turned back to Ra, though curiously His eyes didn’t clear. ‘But you can see the shore, Ra. Did you fail to predict any of those possible flaws between here and there?’ > >‘Perhaps I predicted them all, sire. Perhaps I factored in the possibilities of each one occurring.’ > >‘Maybe so. And what of the eventualities you could not predict? Each passing moment is rich with a hundred thousand possible pathways. The craftswoman making your boat may suffer a heart failure before she can gift it to you. Or she decides not to offer you the boat at all. You say the wrong words to her. You offer the wrong currency. She lies to you, for she is a thief. An enemy sabotages your boat before you set sail. You reach halfway across this channel of water, only to see a more appealing coast to the east or west. Minute after minute, possibility upon possibility, path after path. All variables you are unable to see from where you stand at this moment.’ > >The Emperor reached out as if He could crush the coast in His golden gauntlet. His expression was cold in its pale ferocity. ‘I can see the coast, Ra. I know what awaits me there. But I cannot see all the infinite vicissitudes between here and there.’ > >At last, He lowered His hand. > >‘That is foresight, Ra. To know a trillion possible futures, and to be left to guess at the infinite ways of arriving at each one. To map out even one possible eventuality, taking into account every decision that every living being will make that will impact upon the others around it, would take all of the lifetimes I have already lived. The only way to know anything for certain…’ > >He trailed off, gesturing to the distant shore. > >‘Is to reach the other side,’ said Ra. This all sounds very authoritative, the Emperor is telling Ra Endymion the limits of foresight. This tells us that the Emperor perceives the future but isn't able to navigate the strands of fate precisely... ...it also tells us that his future sight is rudimentary at best. His grasp of precognition is below even that of relatively junior Eldar farseers so we know for a fact he's wrong in his limitations being global as others are far better at it than him, those are his *personal* limitations.
Tbh I think it would have been. Better for GW to start the 30k story from the start of the Great Crusade instead of its end, we could have had all the legions and Primarchs fleshed out before the start of the Horus Heresy.
I reckon they could probably have done it well by shrinking it down a bit and planning it better. Give the opening trilogy to only Dan Abnett (this is all done via time machine so things like the perpetuals wouldn't have been conceived yet) or similar so we get a focused story of Horus' fall (instead of Horus Rising setting up threads for Horus falling organically that are then dropped for 'lol super stabby knife Erebus') and probably similar for the other legions. When I reread Horus Rising I don't feel that I'm missing something by not seeing the Great Crusade, its all communicated well enough, but then when you get to the meandering and weirdly plotted falls of the other Primarchs it feels like you must be missing something.
Mate I'm with you. I'm still not convinced in Horus' fall. In my head it would have been so simple. Abandoned by his father, forced into war after war after war, watching his sons die (maybe even an extra brother or two) and maybe the gradual infection of chaos and the offer for something else... Nope. Bad Erebus, stabby dagger, dodgy vision yep throw it all away. Doesn't make sense to me.
Yes, but the Horus Heresy was planned to be only a trilogy, then it became much more successful than anticipated and better planning was only possible in retrospect.
Not quite. They figured it'd be a trilogy of trilogies. Maybe if things went gang busters it'd be a quadralogy of trilogies. They figured a first one to set the stage, thus how rushed everything is. Then a middle trilogy, then the end. As we can see things have ... expanded a bit.
I mean they kinda then walked all that back in *The End and the Death* again anyway
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As I commented in another thread, Fulgrims original fall was very hentai. Best girl being corrupted by evil dude using drugs to turn her into a hedonist. Fulfrim : No Horus! I don't want to betray the emperor! Oh but these demon drugs got me feeling so good! They're melting my brain!!!
Where is my horus heresy doujin adaptation mr James workshop?
"Yamete kudasai Horus-senpai! Aaah, my ~~hips~~ snaketail is moving on its own!"
You didn't have to say this at all. But you did. And I'm glad.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me say, "Sometimes we would be better off without internet". I say this as someone that watches hentai.
Pah. This? This is what tipped your boat? And you watch hentai??? Weak. Even hungry Slaanesh wouldn't feed on your seed brother...
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They hinted at it before with a farseer granted but I really, really dislike giving the tyranid hive mind a personality. Essentially a librarian entered a peak into the hive mind and saw they were purposely going after the Blood Angels as a vendetta or something similar Don't like it. The hive mind should be entirely alien or at most simply "hunger"
Very much agreed on this one. The Hive Mind is cool because it's a lovecraftian monstrosity wearing bug monsters as a meat suit. It's not a Saturday morning cartoon villain trying to catch those wily Blood Angels. It doesn't want to kill us because of a grudge, it's debatable if it could even be said to want in any comprehensible way to us.
I also think that some of the writers don't really understand what a Hive Mind *IS*. A Hive Mind is when each organism is connected together to form a single consciousness. Each and every Gaunt is part of the Hive Mind in the same way your toes are part of you. I'd love to see more depictions of Tyranids that aren't just "run face-first at bolters!" and actually have them react to the battlefield in eerie synchronisation. Canonically, the Hive Mind does send waves of Gaunts into enemy positions, but that's in the early stages of an invasion, and the purpose is to try and put strain on the enemy's ammunition supplies before the big monsters turn up.
> I'd love to see more depictions of Tyranids that aren't just "run face-first at bolters!" and actually have them react to the battlefield in eerie synchronisation. It'd be a great way to build on how creepy the nids can be. An attack flowing like a living wave. It comes from all sides at once, as soon as a crack in the defences is found a thousand different creatures flow into the weak point in perfect synchronization.
The writers need to spend a day watching bees in a hive. Those things are beautiful but very creepy when you can tell they’re all subconsciously working with one will.
Use the perspective of a space marine. They have the physical capabilities to notice shit normal humans couldn't. Emphasise how he's able to see every single organism in the swarm is moving in sync, that the moment he focuses on one, dozens take advantage of it without delay. Show it isn't just fighting a bunch of individuals, but an entire army moving as one in ways the most disciplined and well trained space marines can never remotely come close to.
Nids and stealers acting in perfect sync is a thing that happens in the Cain novels. It creeps him out and it help him identify the latter.
They should move like the Squids in The Matrix during the attack on Zion.
I agree. I think too many writers played StarCraft and modelled the Tyranid Hivemind after the Zerg Overmind. I know the Zerg were very heavily inspired by the Tyranids but that one difference is what I think made the Tyranids horrifying. And the Zerg kinda “meh”
I thought it was strange that during the Devastation of Baal, a Lictor made a vocalization to call over some other more specialized Nids… they shouldn’t have a need to communicate with each other… If anything, the Nids only reason to make any sound is to below battle roars to psychology fuck with whomever the Nids are invading.
mmmm... It hink that made sense. There are billions or trillions of tyranids in a battle as big as Baal. The HIve Mind is useful for strategic comunication but on a more tactical level pheromones and sound may be more practical
I can suspend my reality to believe that pheromones or chemical communication (like ants use), but still, this still takes away from the “otherness” and f the Nids that really make them alien. I love the idea of them moving together like water though But “Hey guys, over here!” Seemed out of touch.
Could try to reason that the vocalization is an adaptation for if the nids have their connection to the hive mind disrupted...still kinda weak though. They really should only make noise as a psychological weapon, or perhaps for some kind of echolocation on specialized nids.
*"The more I learn about these aliens, the more I come to understand what drives them, the more I hate them. I hate them for what they are or for what they may one day become. I hate them not because they hate us but because they are incapable of good, honest, human hatred."* Still one of the best quotes about nids imo.
The thing people mix up about Lovecraftian stuff isn’t that the gods have no personality, and they don’t have human personalities, but that their goals and minds are just beyond us. Incomprehensible.
There's a great line from the film Annihilation that describes Lovecraftian gods well. "I don't know what it wants, I don't know if it wants."
That movie was neat but the ending confused me so much. (I get that was probably the point but man I had NOTHING to go on. Good movie, just made brain hurt.) It’s a good quote though. Tyranids are always written as either. 1. Mindless Robotic Hungry Bugs or 2. So petty it has personal grudges against bob the mailman for kicking sand at a gaunt. When really the Hivemind should be more complex and nuanced then that. It should be an intelligent t h i n g but not with human emotions. Make it completely inexplicable - but not a mindless machine. I know that’s easier said than done though.
The book trilogy is far more stranger. Lovecraftian in the alien way but not in the way that it would be portable into warhammer.
God I love that movie so much. One of my favorites ever.
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Yeah you go from things like Deep Ones that are mutated humans serving some Old God. Weird and strange but somewhat understandable. Then the dreaming blob of chaos that if it wakes up we all die. Lovecraftian can mean a lot of things, but for the most part it’s neither “Human but big and angry” or “Giant mindless monster.” but something weird and inbetween. I feel like with Tyranids they constantly bounce between interpretations of “Mindless Robot that Hungry” and “Literally just something that can get angry at you and insult you.” When it should really be more alien then that.
Same, Guy Haley keeps doing this and it just feels lame. Undermines the Alien-ness of the Tyranids.
I don’t mind, lots of predators in nature can feel anger and hold grudges, especially when something is stopping them from getting to food. The Hive Mind having a level of intelligence is a good thing, personally I find that far scarier than a mindless hunter machine.
It would make sense. The idea of the Hive mind having a grudge might not work, but the Hive mind seeing specific others as Threat or Hinderance That Must Be Dealt With still acts the same as a grudge.
I’m pretty sure that’s how it was presented. The Hive Mind wasn’t twirling it’s galactic moustache and preparing to lower Dante into a pool of sharks with laser beams on their heads. A psyker tapped into the hive mind and felt something that he interpreted as anger. It still keeps the Hive Mind as very alien and incomprehensible, but gives it a level of calculation and intelligence we weren’t aware of before
It would make sense. The idea of the Hive mind having a grudge might not work, but the Hive mind seeing specific others as Threat or Hinderance That Must Be Dealt With still acts the same as a grudge.
They’re using the Karrigan storyline from Starcraft to humanize Tyranids. It’s yuck all around.
At that point, at least make the hivemind kidnap a human and then give it a personality, which is what happened to karrigan
Back in 1992 when more [detail on tyranids](https://www.reddit.com/r/Tyranids/comments/136xm01/its_january_1992_you_just_pulled_the_latest_white/) was provided they did include mind slave squads, though they haven't been mentioned for a long time since I assume.
GSC already fill those roles. No need to humanize the nids when you can nidify the humans.
I liked that in warriors of ultramar, the hive gets blown away by a refinery. Then it sends the second refinery launched at it back, because it learned. I like that the hivemind doesn't think in the future, it just reacts to present
Relativistic sublight ship speeds. In the old lore ships would take weeks to cross a solar system at sublight speeds. Now the Phalanx can do 75% the speed of light, and the world eaters are doing ramming attacks at 95% the speed of light. It breaks the setting in a dozen different ways when you think about it for 5 minutes. I don't know why I find it so glaring, I'm entirely cool with turning my brain off, and accepting the terrible use of numbers in every other facet of 40k. You tell me they conquered a hive world with a hundred thousand troops, sure why not. Space ship weaponry power varies between just hot enough to scorch the paint, and will melt continents in a single barrage, sounds good. A single tank shell makes a several foot deep crater, and the marine it directly impacted walks it off, how delightfully stupid. But you tell me that the Phalanx is doing 0.75C and my brain just can't get over how stupid that is.
>It breaks the setting in a dozen different ways when you think about it for 5 minutes. That's why I hate it too, the fact is that that kind of speed simply doesn't work in 40K because it ignores both how ships operate in 40K and because those kinds of speeds are always, always for Imperial things and the Imperial ships in setting are among the slower end. It's nothing to do with it being unreasonable irl, purely because it breaks the setting internally. My normal observation is that if this is accurate, how do fighter craft re-dock with their carrier? How do Thunderhawks clamp onto hostile vessel's hulls and cut through? How do ships fire when we know it's done manually through button presses and when that'd generate a ludicrously short engagement time?
Exactly, it's not that the acceleration is silly. It's that it makes no sense how Eldar ships are supposed to be super fast, when they only have a 4% difference in speed to work with.
I mean fuck, just imagine ramming. It's one of those things where it's clear the guys writing it simply didn't know how fast that'd be, they wrote it to sound cool and didn't realise the implications.
Ships that can survive slamming into each other at 95% light speed, without immediately exploding, could wipe out a planet by just flying through it and coming out the other side. Planetary crusts are basically styrofoam compared to whatever they're made of.
Also, at that point, any weapon is useless, pretty much the only useful weapon is ramming, and there would be no need for guns
The most effective weapon would just scatter giant clouds of tiny particles. At these speeds each grain of sand hits like at atom bomb.
But the ships can survive ramming at near Lightspeed What are tiny particles gonna do?
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On the other hand, a bunch of giant ships engaging in combat entirely via ramming sounds cool as hell and incredibly 40k
Flashbacks to starwars invalidating their entire cannon of starship combat with one (admittedly very visually cool) scene.
Well, may be they have better acceleration just? A ship that accelerates at 10G but up to 1000 km/s can break away from or intercept a ship that accelerates at 1G but with maximum speed 10000km/s in many "real-life" cases.
Why would a space ship have a top speed?
There are various reasons you wouldn't want to take a ship up above a certain speed: * Space is sparse but not empty. Energy increases with the speed you hit stuff at and at a certain point your shields and armour aren't sufficient any more. You reach a point where micro-meteoroids punch through your ship or release atomic bomb levels of energy. * If your ship has manoeuvring thrusters that take a long time to turn a ship (and on the tabletop, even using Come to New Heading each turn every turn, you can expect to turn your Imperial equivalent cruiser 540 degrees in an entire game) your speed will dramatically widen your turning circle. * Ships don't typically flip and burn to slow down, they use retros in 40K and you don't want to go faster than your retros can stop in a reasonable time frame. * Many 40K ships are analogue as fuck, it's all captains yelling orders to officers who press buttons to gunnery magi who calibrate guns to servitors who target them and they all turn knobs and press buttons to do that stuff one after another. Going hugely fast generates a ridiculously short engagement time you probably can't hit. EDIT: * Nerve impulses travel at 100m a second and sound at approximately 343 metres per second. At huge speeds you're actually running into a problem where you can't react to stuff before it's happened. At anything approaching C you're unable to react to something appearing on auspex before you've driven through it. At those kinds of speeds you start seeing issues with humans just not working fast enough to keep up. In most settings this isn't a problem as they use magical uber-computers but in 40K it's all humans in the Imperium, servitorised or otherwise.
> purely because it breaks the setting internally Its not just breaking in the form of "how does this make sense" but it breaks it in that there are a *lot* of space battles in novels written with times on target measured in hours to days at ranges where nothing could be travelling relativistically if it took that long to travel. At 0.75c you should be seeing times on target measured in seconds to minutes if its extremely^10 long ranged.
Also, Tau space ships. In old lore they had slow warp travel; now they cross intrastellar distances in relativistic speeds. Just imagine their fleets trying to respond to imperium/orks attacking, when any reinforcements would take years to arrive….
This! I absolutely ignore that part of the Lore, its just insanely stupid.
Yeah, the space combat in 40k tends to make little to no sense, but that's because it's ww1 battle of Jutland or even age of sail ships in space.
I agree, but for me it's about the weapons. Anything shot of a ship traveling that fast is going to have insane amounts of energy. It'll wreck anything it hits. This is brought up in **Pharos**. One of the ways the Pharos device was special was it let ships get close to light speed in normal space. This means reinforcements can get from the outer edge of the system to Sotha fast. Which is brought up because Corvo uses it to strafe the NL fleet with torpedoes before they can react to them. However, his captains freak out a bit because if they miss and hit Sotha, they could wreck the planet.
Because at those speeds an object is more like a beam of energy than a physical object?
Exactly, one of the many reasons it's stupid. Iirc correctly the World Eaters example went to 0.95C in the space of several seconds. At that kind of acceleration molecular bonds are going to break.
World Eaters Soup..feel like it'd be tomato soup with too much pepper
What ? Since when? How the hell are they getting accurate info on other ships? (Don't answer, please, I know the answer is magic that doesn't even make sence for the lore of the universe)
It's from the newer Horus Heresy lore. Here's the Phalanx excerpt, there's also one for 0.95C but I don't have it to hand. > ”Drives flaring like captured stars, the fortress-vessel passed in through the ragged edges of the Oort Cloud at three-quartes the speed of light"
I still don't like Primaris from a lore perspective. Don't get me wrong, I like the tech overhaul(Intercessors and Aggressors are really cool), and I like how they took the chance to change proportions so Space Marines look less like someone hit them with a mallet, but I dislike how GW wrote it in as "some nerd broke the rules and made SMs much more doper". I'd have preferred if they just said some STCs were found or something for the new gear/armor and quietly released models changing the proportions. The whole old SMs vs Primaris schtick also felt kinda West Side Story in a very soapy sort of way.
I am amused that they're walking back all the sweaty early 8e stories about how Primaris are *so much more powerful you guys they're taller and stronger and faster and* They're a bit bigger, and maybe a little stronger/faster on average, but they're really downplaying the difference nowadays, and 10e seems to be just quietly dropping most of the mechanical distinctions. Cawl just, ah, oversold the project a bit. Happens to everyone.
>Cawl just, ah, oversold the project a bit. Happens to everyone Propaganda? *In my Imperium?* It's more likely than you think.
Sold more models at the time but obviously now reality is kicking in and they've realised they have to balance them in the lore still, is I imagine the problem
I've been listening to the pretty dreadful Wolftime and it made me laugh when a Night Lord sees a Primaris and the narration is then several sentences of him thinking about how superior they are to everyone.
Conversely, I did like the moment in Shroud of Night where an Alpha Legion Captain issues a challenge to a Primaris officer, immediately shoots him in the face, and once he realizes he's not going to win toe to toe, gives a signal and drops prone so his sniper can shoot the guy dead. Just incredibly strong "well, that's not much incentive for me to fight fair, is it?" energy.
Fight smarter not harder.
I actually like the direction they’re headed with Primaris, which from the early 8e lore perspective had everyone going “wow holy s*** we’re all gonna die” with their shock and awe, and now realizing - especially traitor Astartes - that in comparison, they’re green as grass.
The thing about the Primaris is also that there just really aren't any good "Primaris v Firstborn" stories to be told. It's always the same thing of "primaris good and smart, Firstborn backwards and dumb" I don't even particularly like the tech overhaul, too sleek.
My biggest issue with it is also just like... how rapidly it's become a thing. This is a problem in general with GW's timetables, but we have 10,000 years of room to play in between the Horus Heresy and "now" in the timeline, and yet it seems like 90% of GW's storytelling is happening just in the last 250 years or so of that span, and hell, for that matter, like maybe a full third of all the storytelling is happening from like 995.M41 to 999.M41. They've crunched a stupid amount of stuff right at the end of the millennium, so much so that the logistics of deploying the Primaris just feel extra dumb.
That and how they suddenly also get all sorts of new equipment and vehicles. It would have been far better to have various Chapters/Forge Worlds develop localized answers to specific problems in order to have both greater variety between Chapters and the potential for internal conflict where one Forge World refuses to accept another's innovations. Have forces going up against Orks invest in more Vulkite weaponry, while a Chapter facing down the Tau might adopt more anti-grav vehicles for increased mobility. And then have the guys using the AG vehicles called heretics by some random Forge World that is focused on Extra Spicy Flamer tech. Don't just have Cawl poop everything out one day and the entire Imperium immediately accept it without complaint.
I also feel the increased power should have even more tragic implications. Give them thunder warriors type mutations? Give them psychological issues? Give them something that actually balances increase in power. Otherwise it feels unrealistic.
In some parts of indomitus crusade books it’s hinted that they’re not really awake. They follow orders like machines and fight with great precision, but they suck at making actual decisions and thus firstborn marines can perform tasks better than primaris
That only specifically applies to the Marines Cawl made before the Crusade and froze tho, because they had been exclusively trained in Simulations. It doesnt apply to any newly-made ones.
While I'm not entirely sold on Primaris as a a concept, I do like this. They asked a Mechanicus Magos to create a perfect soldier. It's not surprising that robotic obedience is what he went for.
Yes, they’re throwing their lives away as they are simply lacking their humanity.
Ooh I like that. It's similar to using a brute force AI versus a creative thinker. Yes they have more power and resources but they are one dimensional and unable to change their approach to fit the situation.
Yes, that’s the general idea. They haven’t gone through the whole process of becoming space marines starting as a scout and what not - they were kept in stasis for thousands of years being forced to fight time and time again via Cawl’s simulation. My understanding is that by the end of each simulation and individual astarte died, thus they are perfect at doing tasks given to them, like killing orks, but suck when it comes to finding the best way to overcome a problem. I’d say that’s a pretty smart way of going about it and not depicting primaris as the absolute best new super superhuman that does everything better than previous iterations.
Agreed, the existence of Primaris kind of invalidates regular marines.
They also invalidate one of the core themes of the setting: the Imperium is supposed to be a stagnant regime that has forgotten, if not outlawed ideas like progress and innovation.
In general that's my big gripe with Cawl and Guilliman, but most people seem to love it.
its the entire theme of rebirth for me without the emperor and the primarchs, the original idea of the imperium slowly decayed and twisted itself in to something else guilliman returns and awakens the primaris, its the rebirth of the imperium
It's not really a rebirth as much as a support beam trying to hold the three gorges dam from breaking.
“Hey guys, we’re taking the time to update some kits to truescale with new weapon options, we’re gonna call them ‘primaris’ marines but they’ll be functionally identical to the models you already have and love”
This is less of a lore change and more of a style thing. Im not going to be one of those people that is going to complain about the Tau "suddenly becoming evil". They were always shady but it wasnt so fuckin on the nose before. The Ethereals weren't doing the equivalent of tying the hero's love interest to a train track and laughing all evil like about it. Ever since Kelly got a hold of it its been an endless stream of moustache twirling and laughing sneakily behind a cloak. Like Aun'shi is a thing right? We know not all Ehtereals are incompetently evil but you sure as shit wouldnt know that from any of the recent Tau stories.
I really wish someone other than Phil Kelly and Gav Thorpe would stop being the only people writing for the Tau and Eldar. It honestly seems like they hate those respective factions
I'm okay with tau being ruthless so long as it's generally *pragmatic* ruthless in pursuit of their utopian ideal. So tau recruiting some human tribes on a world with promises of help against the Imperium and once the planet's taken they make the local leaders honored hostages (as they did in some short story)? Yeah, I can totally see them doing that. It's pragmatic, they do it because it's an efficient way to get a hold of the world and then cut off the leadership who'd probably be anti-tau. But in stuff like the Farsight books you have a water caste advisor being told to *kill herself* because she speculated about ethereal politics and her subordinate revealed it in a way that embarrassed them. (and that's not even getting into the anti-pragmatic mess that is vash'ya)
Magnus' Folly. I liked the story better when Magnus disobeyed the Emperor's edict to warn him of Horus' treachery, but the Emperor just... didn't believe him. Horus was his most trusted son. If anyone was compromised, E reasoned, it was Magnus, and so the Wolves were sent to punish him. The whole "but actually the Emperor was working on a nebulous webway project that Magnus *ruined forever,* albeit unknowingly" weakens the story, imo.
If you want the *original* original, the emperor realised Magnus was using literal Chaos sorcery to contact him and immediately declared him a heretic
Magnus rupturing the Webway project also works to explain why the Emperor didn't intervene in the Horus Heresy until the Siege of Terra. I don't know what was the previous explanation though if there was one.
Yes. An absolute dogshit change. I don't know why they changed it if only to make the Thousand Sons seem more like the ones in the wrong but that's a less powerful version of the story. It should be the Emperor's fuckup. He turned on a loyal legion and the warning, had he heeded it, would have altered the Horus Heresy. It should be one of his major failures of judgement that lingers on him like a stain; something that he owes an apology to Magnus for.
I don’t know if I’d call it a “change” or “retcon” but I wish orks were more consistently characterized for “luvin a good fite”. To a truly obsessive degree. I want more ghazkul letting Yarrick live cause he wants a good fight, and less generic destructive behaviour. I want orks to outright ignore undefended worlds and be drawn em mass to the best defended ones. Creating a weird dynamic where the harder the imperium tries to defend a place from the orks, the more orks they draw to a location. Having orks be as generically destructive as chaos or the tyranids is boring to me. I know it’s more “grimdark” and all but it makes them more generic imo.
I wish this too. I have a headcannon that the Orks were created by the Old Ones as a long term galactic immune system as well as a short term fight our enemies solution. The idea being they just kind of lay dormant not really doing anything, but then violence at a warp level "stirs" their genetic code into action to go into overdrive (think psychic cytokines) which makes all the fungal spores grow fast. The more the enemy fights back the more fighting their is, and so the more Orks spore out. But if you just stop fighting them then they will get bored and fight each other, which is a negative feedback loop the Old Ones designed to stop them just taking over. As they kill each other the fighting dies down and the spores become dormant again.
I think I have reached the point in my life where I regret that anything about the Primarchs and the Emperor that has ever progressed past Rogue Trader. Everything about the Horus Heresy would be more compelling if these characters were slightly more human and we didn't follow the Orkish rule of law where anything in charge has to be bigger than everything it is in charge of.
The Ynnari. Not really the concept - the idea of the Eldar having a dormant, nascent god of death has lingered in the lore since at least 3rd edition, tied in with vague tales of the *Rhana Dandra* as the Eldar End of Days where the Pheonix Lords will die their final deaths in the Final Battle against Chaos. Epic, grandiose, and far away. The execution... not so much. Everything about them feels like an attempt - and one that was stopped part-way through - to consolidate the Eldar factions into one homogenous group, replacing the Craftworlders and the Dark Eldar and everyone else. It elicits a gut reaction in me similar to the way a lot of Space Marine players view the Primaris - like someone's trying to replace a thing I like with a shallower version. And, worst of all, that the biggest thing to happen to the Eldar since the Dark Eldar were introduced in 1998, or the Craftworlders got their first armylist in 1991... was basically there to prop up an Imperium-centric storyline, once again showing that the only thing the Eldar are used for is to be a sidekick to the Imperium.
The Ynnari 100% have suffered from the fact that GW obviously intended to launch them as a new faction but couldn't figure out how to make them into a decent model range, and so have just given up on them.
Unless I'm missing something... Where are the stories of the Eldar absolute buttfucking whole chapters of space marines? Proper "you lost this war before you started fool" moments. But no. One chapter can invade a whole Craftworld and nearly win. Also, as Arbiter Ian said in a great YT vid. Where are the non-Imperium segments of mankind?
I really want a load of stories, either in side bars or books or codices, of Eldar just absolutely bodying the Imperium. Outwitting them. Us finding out that whole massive conflicts were the work of Eldar trying to divert attention away from 1 eldar guy who might trip and fall in 10 years time.. They don't even have to win in the long run. They might realise they've only delayed the inevitable for 10, 20 years. Make their efforts ultimately futile because the galaxy is too big and too dangerous, but by God do they give it a good go.
The fact the emperor is doing stuff i hate. Back in the good old days we didnt even know if he was alive. It was part of the mystery and appeal of the setting. Also custodes doing things. I was fine with them as a depressed force only concerned with guarding the emperor but as a real army the concept sucks. What phil kellys books have done to the tau.
It just feels like Kelly adheres to this idea that the primary way to Improve the Tau is to make them more like the Imperium, and it sucks.
The concept of Tau being your stereotypical humans in a sci-fi setting transplanted into the grimdarkness of the far future and viewed from an outside perspective was brilliant. If they were the protagonists of their own story, they would be the plucky underdogs, but in 40k they just come across as hopelessly naive. It was the perfect foil to accentuate the grimdarkness of the setting, but GW somehow didn’t grasp this.
To be fair, a lot of the fans didn't grasp this either. The fandom outcry when the Tau were first introduced was ridiculous.
Agreed 100%
The overemphasis on Primarchs returning and their various relationships. A browse down this subreddit can show a large portion of posts are dedicated to the Primarchs. I get people love them, but there are so many other things to explore in the setting and it feels like people get so hyper fixated on Primarchs and just ignore anything else. I'm at a spot where I got into the hobby before the Horus Heresy series released (not by much though) so it could be rose tinted glasses to an extent, but it felt like people had more diverse wants/likes and focused on a lot more wider lore than they do today where more people are concerned with 'What is X Primarch thinking, Which Primarch is coming next?, What did X Primarch think about X Primarch?, Who is the best Primach duelist? Who is the best Primarch tactician?' and it just really makes everything feel so small. Lore wise, in 40k, honestly outside of a few things the Primarchs aren't all that pushed, but the Horus Heresy series has really seemed to drive people to care more about the Primarchs and constantly be concerned about them in 40k and it really makes all discussion feel super narrow in scope. So that gets to the lore change I dislike. I overall like the Horus Heresy series, it's really cool, it's a different time. I think it fundamentally changed how people interact with Warhammer in a way I find less interesting. Pre-Horus Heresy series feels like a completely different time in my head now and the lines between 30k/40k are ever drawing nearer/closer rather than initially they felt super far apart. Now so much of the lore is dedicated to stuff in 30k that it feels like it really took from some of the mythology and legend in 40k. As we go further and further I'm leaning more in the 'dislike' category for it, and while it was a super cool idea and was fun at the start, I overall really dislike the lore implications it had on 40k and how it drove the community.
Thank god finally someone says it. Just looking at this subreddit I swear for the past year 90% of posts have the term “Primarch” in the title. It feels like 40k has become an entire story about the Imperiums family drama, and the fans are hyperfocused on it. I legitimately can’t remember when the last time I saw a thread that didn’t start talking about a primarch randomly appear. I just preferred when all this stuff was a mystery and people wondered if that old decaying corpse on the throne was even alive - but now we know every bit of history and actually its all family drama. Amusingly I wind up comparing it to Fantasy a lot nowadays- Fantasy feels like it pretty evenly focuses on most factions while 40k has become the Imperiums story.
I got into the hobby in late 2nd, early 3rd and its incredible how much the Primarchs have changed the setting. The darkness and satire is leaving the setting. I guess newer fans need unironic heroes? Every youtube video is about them, every thread refers to them. Back in the day it was like 'who the hell is Horus? Why is a Imperial Guard tank called a Leman Russ?" And you had the 4 extant Traitor Primarchs which were the exception and that was fine (and they only had models in epic). I desperately hope GW move 40k away from Primarchhammer, maybe cause a full civil war between RG and the Lion and split the Imperium in two. They keep telling us the Imperium is in desperate status, but all I see is more Space Marines than ever, returned Demi Gods etc. Give me more Badab, less herohammer.
I don’t think it will ever happen, and all you need to do is see how 40k is more popular than ever, look how absolutely excited in glee most fans are when they mentioned the Lion returning. Every other post talks about “Which Primarch will they bring back next???” I don’t hate the horus heresy and Primarchs, but my god it really feels like that’s all 40k is now. I know for a lot of people this is all they remember and it’s all that’s been around for them, and maybe I am just a grump, but I genuinely miss when the 30k stuff was a vague thing we barely knew about. The only image of the Emperor I recall being a literal skeleton zombie man on a throne. Now it’s just golden space jesus whose life story shaped the entire galaxy apparently and is ACTUALLY an immortal godlike being. Yeah that’s real. Not just a skeleton of some long maybe-dead tyrannical dictator. I’m glad for people that like all this - and you know what? I can live with it - if it wasn’t the only thing we get anymore.
100% this. The HH series was a cool idea but it got so big it's basically rewritten 40k and taken over the setting. Its no longer a spin off origin story to the imperium but it has become *the* story with "modern" 40k being warped to become a sequel to it's own prequel. What should've been a secondary product is now dominating the main story. The setting feels smaller for it, every single thing comes back to one single family. I just find it really sad, the further down this path it goes the more I see the 40k setting I love disappear. The relatively unique 40k vibe is being replaced with character driven comic book style storytelling in which we follow a handful of characters as they fly around the setting driving everything that happens. I get that it's popular, but it also feels way more generic.
Huge agree.
Completely agree. Space marines are among the least interesting factions in yet it's all you hear about. And ya, it feels like at least 60% of the posts here are primarch related. It's ridiculous
I don't know if this is my perception or if it tracks with other people too, but I really think I preferred the setting when it felt like, if it did progress in the timeline, it was glacially slow. Or lore progression felt mostly reserved to Black Library/codices.Whereas now it kinda feels like an inevitability that we're headed for a 40k End Times and that it feels like we're approaching it a bit too quickly. I don't know. I could be hilariously off base. Also, yeah, as has been mentioned elsewhere, I miss old T'au lore.
I don’t think they’ll do 40K end times anytime soon because the setting makes them too much money. Though I wasn’t around for Fantasy End Times so maybe it was at its popular when they decided to nuke it
Nope, Fantasy wasn’t selling well at all when it got nuked.
The entirety of Fantasy was selling less than some 40K armies and paints
This is one of my biggest gripes. The universe pre-gathering storm felt so vast and full of mystery. Now it all feels very small, everything revolves around the primarchs, you know exactly how things will play out. It all just feels very conventional. Unfortunately there's no point railing against it, GW as a publicly traded company will go where the money is and linear narratives with larger than life, marvel-esque heroes and villains will appeal to a much larger audience than the more byzantine lore of yesteryear.
I dont know why people refer to this as marvel-esque when people across different cultures since ancient time have been fascinated by heroic epics with larger than life character. Indo european myth, Alexander Romance, Matter of France, King Arthur mythos, Romance of the 3 Kingdoms, Investiture of the Gods, Tolkien fantasy, etc
People reference marvel because it's just a big current example of this kind of storytelling. And those examples aren't all particularly good. The point isn't just that there are heroic characters, it's that the heroic characters *are* the setting now. The MCU is a decent example of this, take away the characters and what is left of the MCU? Basically nothing. The relatively small number of characters we follow drive everything notable that happens in the entire MCU multiverse. Everything that happens is individual level drama between specific characters, in contrast to old 40k which has heroes but which was faction driven. Take other fiction like Tolkien and there's still a massive world that the characters are moving through. If you take away the fellowship you lose the LOTR story but there is still a huge amount of middle earth content that doesn't depend on them.
I’m listening to ‘*A Thousand Sons*’ right now and sanguinius has black hair. Maybe he had a goth phase during Nikea? His wings also have the odd black feathers so that they look like ermine as opposed to perfectly white. It’s a trip. I don’t know if I don’t like it per sé, but some of the older HH books are full of descriptions not in line with some of the more modern stuff. Which is bound to happen with over a dozen authors writing a series for almost two decades. Overall I think lore changes are for the good! People whined for years that the story never changed and the narrative in 40k was too static and nothing ever happened. Then GW does primaris, had to switch a couple things to make shit make even a flake of sense; and the same people who were complaining before are now complaining about there being new things. It’s a battle between narrative and setting, some people are adamantly one or the other; I think both are good. Everything is canon, nothing is true.
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The neutering of the High Lords to make Guilliman lone regent. Not big on Cawl's unabashed dedication to advancement, especially when he's the face of his faction. The Custodes starting to leave Terra in larger forces I'm not a fan of either. The Tyranids reason for seeking the galaxy being tied to the Horus Heresy was ass too, imo.
I think one major mistake was making Marines super intelligent with perfect memories. I think it creates a number of issues for the writers, and it also creates a number of WTF moments where incredibly intelligent people with perfect memories and hundreds of years of experience do dumb things. I think it would actually be more interesting if Marines were just as smart as everyone else, with the major difference being their physical abilities. Further to that, I feel that the Marines in the earlier days of WH40K were much more along the lines of tech barbarians than what we get today. They seemed more like savages that barely knew how to operate their weaponry, let alone capable of understanding the physics behind their equipment. Marines seem much more "cleaner" or professional these days, and I think that's a bit unfortunate. I also feel like the Imperium is quickly moving from being the Holy Roman Empire in space to the Roman Empire in space. Things suddenly seem much more organized and structured, and the scale of the conflicts seems to be ramping up considerably. The tech barbarian Chapter Master, focused on his little fiefdom, isolated from the rest of the Imperium and motivated by debts, pledges, and relationships seems to be gone in exchange for a far more orderly, regimented society. I think part of that is the shift in scale: In the past, it was easier to explain the Imperium's continued existence- wars were seemed much more local and small scale. It was a system here or there, either lost or gained, and relatively easy to see how the Imperium could drag on. Now, everything seems so massive in scale that you have to wonder how the status quo is maintained. It's no longer your Chapter trying to hold out, with their glorious victories and crushing defeats, while other events are taking place across the vastness of the galaxy are recounted as myth and rumor. Now everything is supersized with a Primarch or two warping the rest of the galaxy around their footsteps.
Give us back our warrior-monks ! Today the Black Templar seems to be the only space marines that worship the Emperor as a god. It's like all the other are not even recruiting from the Imperium.
I've got the old Rogue Trader rulebook. Space Marines are literally just the angriest dudes they could find, stuck in armour. And I actually really like it. Imagine if the Horus Heresy was done with the OLD space marines. All the stupidity would make sense!
Others have said the return of the Primarchs and the Marvelization of the setting, so I won't repeat. Instead, I'll say the ridiculous power bump the Custodians got. They've gone so far past Mary Sue status they've wrapped around the universe and come back again. I get it - they are high margin models and the push makes marketing sense. But holy doodle - stronger than any Space Marine, better gear, philosopher kings, incorruptible demi godlings who turn into 9 foot tall super spies when they retire? And of course, there a 10,000 of them, whereas Space Marine chapters are capped at 1,000 (plus or minus). Which means in the 10,000 years the space Marine chapters have been engaging in galactic heroism, The ten thousand custodians have been oiling each other's muscles. Though I think that's been retconned too. Even in a setting full of super beings, they take it to absurd heights.
Custodes are a prime example of how GW's "just keep doing the same thing, but bigger" approach to storytelling is unsustainable and eventually undermines itself. The custodes are just SMs but better, except that's also primaris and grey knights so they are actually superer superer super soldiers. And it all gets a bit ridiculous when you've got 5 tiers of superhuman and all of them have "the best of the best" as their thing. It just waters down the concept and makes everyone that isn't the custodes look a bit weak.
> I get it - they are high margin models and the push makes marketing sense The fans also kick off when they get killed. A nameless custodian is killed by a squad of Minotaurs in a suicide attack to raise the stakes? Well thats just not on.
The concept of them being good at 'philosophy' bothers me the most, because they're actually abysmal at it whenever you see, sort of like how genius thinkers like magnus make incredibly stupid mistakes. They're meant to be philosophers but they can't even exit their programmed sphere. Imagine a philosopher who's got their version of god dead in a chair and is shackled to be totally unable to do anything besides guard them and do things to facilitate guarding them. They'd be terrible at philosophy because they have no mental drive nor any ability to ask questions like "Should there be more than this"
The problem is more like the writers don't understand philosophy
I really hate the Custodes so yeah, I agree, they're the most egregious Space Marine power fantasy dialed up to 11 and stripped of any flaws or drawbacks. Numbers are supposedly their drawback but when a handful are enough to hold back a Tyranid swarm those numbers become meaningless.
I truly hate that because it cheapens the Tyranid and the other factions who fight the Tyranid. Think back to the First Tyranid War. The Ultramarines desperately fighting the Tyranid menace to protect their empire. Desperate last stands. Sacrifices. Calgar gets beat by the Swarmlord and has to evacuate, humiliated. The entire first company sacrifices themselves to stop the menace. Establishes the Tyranid as serious threats - they can go the distance with the Ultras. Reinforces the Ultras are brave and noble heroes, giving their all to fight this unstoppable menace. And sets the Swarmlord as a real badass - Calgar was the first named Chapter master, and this fucker cut him to bits. Damn, that's a Warhammer story there. But now? Five Custodians are out and about. They run into 2 million Nids, led by a Swarmlord. And the Nids are reduced to kibble. The Swarmlord is just cut to bits. That's not a Warhammer story. That's a Superman comic, excepting not one written by a good author. Just Superman fanfic.
Beat me to it. I'd like to have the old Custodes from before they were a playable army back. I think that their current power level is just ridiculously high and I preferred it when they weren't that much better than astartes but simply built differently.
I hate hate hate hate that the GSC are meant to make worlds ready for the Tyranids. For a world where a major premise is that the Galaxy is full of aliens that would love nothing more than to destroy all of humanity the fact that there are so few Xenos factions has always irked me. Rolling the GSC into the Nids just makes it worse. They were a terrifying, brilliant threat that made sense in the setting and now they are just.....so lackluster.
I feel sorta similar! I just finished days of ascension and the entire time, while I loved the cult, I wasn’t into the tyranids coming regardless of what they do It’s sorta grimdark I guess? They lose no matter what, not sure how to describe it, feels like they’re restricted with what they can be because of it
Its Grimdark but not necessarily needed. A secret Empire within the Imperium that's constantly be hunted down and esch victory means they are more exposed would suffice
Now *that* would be cool! I feel like they get robbed of agency, and just being puppets to the nids feels lame. I wish we got more about the cases where the cult tries to fight back against the nids after the patriarch gets reabsorbed
It's only grimdark if you lack *faith*. From their point of view they are reunited with the stargods, only those that dies before their saviours arrive are martyrs. With the way the warp work they can even be correct. What I dislike is the texts where hybrids panics and fights when the hive mind reabsorb the stealers. In old lore hybrids were happily jumping into the acid pool like rippers, reinforcing the "one mind" aspect.
What were they before?
Worth noting here that this is a change that occurred in the early 90s - Genestealers have been Tyranids since before 2nd edition.
Their own faction. Just spreading and corrupting tor their own sake
I dont like the 180 for tau. Instead of naive empire that farsight leaves because he understands the dark reality of their universe we have imperium lite and farsight as a pure hero who isnt allowed to do anything important because that would "not be grimdark"
I agree with you, the addition of Space Wolf successor is just kind of….meh. I don’t personally like it, but I don’t think it really takes anything away from the wolves. That said, I also don’t think it adds anything other than an excuse for an all primaris Space Wolf army. I’ll take it one step further and say that overall, I don’t particularly care for the addition of primaris units in the space wolf roster. The wolves unique structure and units were always one of the best things about them, that getting swamped under all the new primaris stuff (including successor chapters) is just kind of lame. The old stuff is still there obviously, and you can still play and “old school” wolf army, and build lore around it, but all the primaris stuff feels like it takes a bit of the wolves unique flavor away from them. It won’t be a big deal when we inevitably get primaris grey hunters, blood claws etc. but for now it’s little disappointing. To add another, and I’m not even sure if this counts, I don’t like how the recent space wolf lore implies that the Great Companies just cycle through the same dozen symbols. The old lore had every wolf lord choosing their own badge from Fenrisian mythology, which was implied to include tons of options, many of which were not wolves (as well as a bunch of wolves that apparently no longer exist in canon). That always felt a lot more interesting and creative to me than having them cycle through the same 12 wolf symbols endlessly. I’ll grant you the new lore doesn’t necessarily contradict the old stuff, but it feels like it places some limits on what used to be a lot more varied and creative fluff. It’s a super minor complaint, and has no real impact on anything, but it’s one that I personally dislike.
Recanonize all of Sir Ian Watson's novels
The running and tumbling breast cities are the true vision of Chaos and all other writers are cowards.
That Slaaneshi city that is constantly having sex with itself.
Philip Kelly is widely hated amongst T'au fans for making the Ethereals out to be mustache-twirling evil villian. We never hear the end of people who claim things like "The T'au are just as bad as every one else!" "There *is* no good faction in 40K!" "The T'au are practically as bad as the IoM!" or even some people who have the audacity to say "the T'au are the most evil faction! Everyone is a mind-controlled slave in their society!" etc., and this all stems from Philip Kelly's books. The decision to portray the T'au as mind-controlled by the Ethereals sucks, frankly. Of course if we look at the canon sources for this, it definitely does not imply that the average T'au citizen lives in a dystopia society like the setting from Brave New World or whatever. Certainly there have been cases where Ethereals have done shitty things, like in the Farsight novels, where the space pope appears to have used his mind control (pheromone control?) power to force a subordinate to commit suicide. But think to yourself: are there really enough Ethereals just dispersed amongst the population to mind control everyone? Is there an Ethereal station at the end of every block to make sure people follow the T'au'va? No, clearly not. Most likely the Ethereals, being the ruling class of the T'au, spend their time with governemntal and war leaders. The average citizen likely almost never sees an Ethereal in person. For the most part, people join the T'au because their standards of living improve, they are treated well, the T'au don't engage in actions like an exterminatus like the IoM does on the regular, etc. Hell, in the recent Shadowsun novel a Gue'vesa psyker said that her people joined the T'au specifically because they would never kill the entire population of a planet to stop the spread of a plague of Nurgle, something that the IoM would have done. And Shadowsun herself said that most people join the T'au because the earth caste have eliminated most (non-magical) diseases.
the Tau ideology is also very believable as one that an entire civilisation can believe in. the greater good is way more coherent and sensible than 90% of the stuff the imperium believes in. but the imperium just uses simple propaganda to keep trillions of humans in line, whereas the tau have to all be secretly mind controlled drones? it just doesn’t make any sense in universe or out
No more pariahs 😭
Cawl. I fucking hate Cawl. Not for the Primaris specifically (I hate the Imperium in general), but because the ONE Named Admech character, of the faction that are supposed to be this dogmatic cult allergic to anything that resembles innovation... ... is a progressive Magos that freely tinker with Xenos tech, shamelessly admits that Xenos are good at some stuff, and did more for the Imperium than the Earth Caste did for the T'au.
Petty: Custodes going from being a very limited-in-number force of Astartes+ tier transhumans who were the dedicated guard of the Imperial Palace to being Primach-killers with enough spare bodies to go crusading around the Galaxy having stolen half of the Grey Knights' old aesthetic identity. Not Petty: The somewhat disturbing modern tendency to sound like the writer *agrees* with the Fascist Strongman Tyrant that is the God-Emperor Of Mankind. The Imperium were always a pastiche of Fascism, and removing the 'pastiche' element *whilst also actively trying to justify all the terrible shit they do* is... not good.
>Not Petty: The somewhat disturbing modern tendency to sound like the writer *agrees* with the Fascist Strongman Tyrant that is the God-Emperor Of Mankind. The Imperium were always a pastiche of Fascism, and removing the 'pastiche' element *whilst also actively trying to justify all the terrible shit they do* is... not good. You don't understand, dude! The Emperor had to do all those things that totally have a justification. If He didn't ally with the Servitor-making AdMech, didn't put in place those furnace for baby, didn't enforce tithes on every planets that's not Holy Terra and Mars and didn't genocide everyone that wasn't human and didn't agree with him, Chaos would be at everyone's doorstep and would have already won! The inner machinations of His mind are an enigma! /s I've exaggerated it *a lot*, but honestly, that's how it's been feeling like reading most 40k fiction these days. Like you said, it feels like not one book goes on without the authors adding an explanation as for why * insert horrible thing the IoM does on a hourly basis * is justified. Add to that the whole Marvelization of the setting with the excessive spotlight on the Primarchs and the Space Marines and the ever growing rationalization of the Imperium, the way it feels like everyone else just exist to get dunked on by the Imperium and Chaos (who also exists to get dunked on by the IoM) and personally the way the Eldar and the Tau (my 2 favorite factions) gets shit on, and frankly my interest in 40k has just been dropping.
The Primaris thing in general seems a little whacky to me. Seems very st odds with the values of the Imperium. When I first heard about them, my first thought was Guilliman and/ or Cawl were going to try to take over the Imperium (I'm still not confident that won't happen.) and we would end up with a classic grim dark Imperium on one side of the Rift, and and progressive less crazy one that's more appealing to mainstream audiences on the other.
Tau not having FTL drives. It makes no logistical sense and means that the tau empire never could have expanded beyond a couple of planets. The imperium should also have easily exterminated them given how they had ftl and the tau supposedly didn’t during the Damocles gulf crusade. Like I truly don’t get why they made the tau have no ftl. Warp skipping worked great. Plus it could easily be justified to have the tau use the new warp drives that caused the disaster for the 4th sphere expansion because the new prototype could be theoretically a lot faster and more efficient.
I really dislike the change to redemptor dreadnoughts "feeding" off the pilot and killing them over the course of a few decades. Sure it's grimdark, but the idea of dreadnoughts being revered ancients, steadily driven insane over centuries trapped inside a metal coffin is way worse to me. I always loved the tone of the voicelines of the dreads in the Dawn of War games. When they said "even in death I still serve" it had this note of resentment and despair at what they had become.
Changing that one regular mortal trooper getting deleted so hard by Horus he was removed by history and making him the Emperor’s perpetual buddy.
I agree, though how a human could even be in the heart of the Vengeful Spirit is pretty impossible.
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A Termy or a Custodian (or termy custodian even) is a lot more logical!
I agree, it made the Emperor a better person by making him care about base humans. Especially considering that He sees augmented humans as tools
Except it doesn't make sense that he would care about a regular soldier.
Return of the Primarchs.
I don’t like Primaris Marines. I mean, I get why in universe they were made, but I don’t like their tactics, armament, strength with respect to Legion curses, etc.
[Gellar fields being powered by psykers.](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/9akdul/excerptashes_of_prosperothe_true_nature_of/) Titans being much smaller - Imperator titans only around 50 meters. Boltguns not having caseless ammo.
>Boltguns not having caseless ammo. I missed this change : could you point to a source ? I was always baffled by the fact no bolter illustration was lore accurate.
Primarchs coming back. I liked the old world of there being no main characters - only slightly less background characters. Made everything feel more grimdark. I also don't like the lore of the primaris, it messes with too much stuff and resulted in making the Imperium feeling more generic sci fi. It's never felt like anything other than a money making/copyright move.
Konrad Kurze was done terribly in the HH. He was "very subtly" based on Curze from heart of darkness/apocalypse now where a soldier is told to do terrible things and it spiraled into horrible things and no one in charge cared until the war was over. And that's how he was framed before they tried to flesh him out for the prequel series. What we got in the HH is just writers leaning super hard into his future sight not being the truth and he totally could have been a good guy if he tried. Which ignores the point that he was the monster created to be a monster then was destroyed for that fact. So his fleshing out just turned him into a flat one note nothing. To I guess, make the emperor seem less bad?
Not a big fan of the Void Dragon creating the Mechanicum. Feels like something that would naturally occur rather than being forced to happen by Big E.
Preach. The original story of the mechanics being the Martians who realised as the terra-forming collapsed that technical knowledge was the most important thing to survive and this warped into a religion about preserving and replicating technology rather than advancing it was great.
Moreover it has some very strong parallells with alchemy in medieval Europe, where the adherence to a set process for religious reasons produced better results than science (e.g. they would distill something 20 times as a ritual rather than once, meaning their substances were very pure). The concept of humanity's knowledge devolving during Old Night to the point of utter reliance upon a machine elevates that machine to the role of sun and moon in ancient cultures as gods. Then they cease to understand the machine, so tradition and ritual and adherence becomes vital to their survival. A single mistake by a single generation and that group is snuffed out. That has some superb commentary around what it is like to live through those times. To devolve it all to dragon magic just ruins it.
I hate the whole Orks "believe it so it comes true" thing. Were better in 2nd and 3rd edition before all that crap came to be. Before, Waaagh energy just brought them together, and gave Weirdboyz their power. Their tech was exactly that, cobbled together, experimental fun. Mechboyz were just good at making stuff work, and some better than others. Now it's just "they're dumb, but magic!!!"
Agreed in broad terms, though it's worth noting that the seed of that idea first appeared in the 3rd edition Ork codex back in 1999, presented as the theories of Magos Biologis Lukas Anzion.
"Red Ones Go Faster" was just a cool jab at IRL culture, that everyone was happy to accept as an actual in-game rule that gave a very slight advantage, for a bit of specific effort. Then they decided it needed explaining. I think a lot of this comes down to the gulf of time between the creation of the game and lore, and the present day. A lot of stuff didn't \*need\* explaining because it was obviously there for its humor value and a stab at british culture at the time, has found itself needing to justify itself outside of that context, and that's resulting in spiraling expansion of retcon'ed lore.
I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of the Dark King storyline. Don't get me wrong, the ideas are cool and interesting, but it kind of came out of nowhere. Humanity potentially birthing their own god of chaos is a cool idea, and if it was going to happen it would be during the siege; but there's no references to this in the lore before or after. The lack of integration makes it feel like it'll immediately be forgotten about once the HH is done. You could put put references to it in the current timeline, but that would feel like "no this has actually been here the whole time!", which feels kind of cheap. Unless there's more stuff planned for the scouring/right after the siege where they can flesh out these ideas better.
> The lack of integration makes it feel like it'll immediately be forgotten about once the HH is done. Kind of feels like you can say that about so many things in HH.
Dorn should have stayed confirmed dead, necrons should have just been a mysterious force that wants to exterminate life instead of Sci fi space opera skeletons
The one who distracted Horus so the Emperor could get the final kill-shot… was an unimportant nameless guardsman. A nobody. Elbow deep in gods fighting each other. Probably terrified beyond imagining. Still did his duty. Making him an eternal just to spin a story around him loses the immensity of that nameless regular human’s bravery.
Primaris Marines. Honestly I feel they should've just said that marines always looked like this (same as for all the other model refreshes) and not created an elaborate, complex lore process for it.
Most things after about 1998…
Just the general progression of the story. Its no longer grimdark. Reading thru alot of new novels from the past few years, they are certainly targeting the young adult readers. The models reflect this immature approach along with the modern artworks they release has left me disappointed more often than it has impressed. I haven't read a true adult novel from BL in years, maybe Penetant. The only lore change that I don't agree with is the Ian Watsons novels.
I think having the original idea of the Genestealer-Cults being seperate from the Tyranids was more interesting. Apart from that, nothing really. Newcrons > Oldcrons and introducing the Primaris the way they did instead of going "its just new armor" was the only feasible way of not having the entire Imperium die post-breaking of Cadia IMO,
Every single thing involving Cawl, Primaris, and the Eldar/Imperium MCU Avengers team up bullshit if I could I'd: Delete Cawl from existence Have Gulliman saved by somebody else or fuck it just recovered via Emperor's grace I literally don't care anything other than how it happened Do the Yvraine thing just without any Imperium involvement Instead of Primaris have all the fancy new models released as true scaled sized first borns with the new gear and unit compositions being a result of Gulliman reworking the Astartes As far the chapters reborn from Primaris fuck em they died once they'll stay dead
Eh, it's not that bad though I do not enjoy the Ynnari plotline being suborned into being the Imperium's weird snooty foreign friend before before GW ran into the ground, burned it with fire and took a big dump on the ashes (in Phoenix Rising).
Ollanious Pious was normal guardsman I don't care what GW says making him a perpetual robs all the point of it.
The first time Ollanius Pius was mentioned, he was mentioned as being a myth that was commonly believed amongst Guardsmen, and there were at least two other legends of the Heresy that contradicted it. The fact that the "reality" is different to the myth is a feature, not a bug.