I can sympathise with this to some extent. Chaos Space Marines went from Bigger and badder than normal Space Marines due to the whole "entire army of veterans infused with the power of chaos and free from tactical and technological restrictions imposed by the Codex Astartes and general Imperial dogma" to "Space marines but without the good special rules and cool weapons" then kinda got shunted off to the background while other forces took centre stage as the new "Biggest threat to the Imperium Ever". On the other hand, the Space Marine range as a whole eclipses entire factions. The "Space Marines" option on the web store has a whopping 112 items. The closet contender for 2nd place here is the Astra Militarum with 77 and most armies have just under 50. Granted, this includes bundles, decals, upgrade bits and whatnot but it all still counts in my eyes. That's not even including variants like Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Deathwatch and Grey Knights.
meh too be honest the primaris marines make enough sense lorewise apart from one glaring error; How the hell is guilliman going to convince the various chapters that these new marines aren't heretical chaos spawn? Tampering with geneseed isn't exactly well liked within the imperium. And that's probably the biggest issue. the other issues people seem to have, likes "mere" technopriest improving on the emporers design are much less of an issue. The technopriest is capable and 10.000 years is plenty of time to figure out some improvements. Especially given the glaring flaws certain chapters have, like going insane over time ans becoming raging berserkers... Im just really curious how they are supposed to become part of existing chapters. Gillian just demanding they will be seems a bit of a stretch even for a primarch.
Yes I feel this is the most glaring "issue" with Primaris Marines. This is 40k, not 30k and the attitude towards the Emperor, his work, his goals and his warriors is VASTLY different to what it was back when Guilliman was still walking around commanding his Legion. In 30k Space Marines were supersoldiers - that was it. Yes they were held in awe and reverence and put on a pedestal as an example of how human biology could be improved upon and perfected, but they were soldiers first and foremost, and for the most part were treated as such. Fast forward 10,000 years and Space Marines are decidedly NOT soldiers. They are the living embodiment of Mankind's god. From the Imperium's perspective they are pure and holy brotherhoods of angels wrought from the flesh of demigods, ascended beings so far above normal humans that they are to be revered and feared in equal measure as the Emperor's wrath made manifest. The work of the God-Emperor created them, and his work is sacrosanct. To interfere with something that the Emperor himself created while he still walked among men is Heresy of the highest degree. Guilliman would likely have a lot of wiggle room on account of being the Emperor's "son". He's not an idiot, he'll use his own religious significance as leverage but not everyone is going to be cool with this. The Horus Heresy may be unknown to the masses and merely a legend to most who know of it, but there are powerful individuals and organisations who know full well that half the Primarchs turned against the Emperor in service of Chaos. Chaos is insidious and a big reason the Imperium is so rigid and strict is to try to prevent it's influence. Then along comes a Primarch, who by all accounts should be dead, emerging from an Eldar webway portal within the Sol system, appoints a bunch of new High Lords then reveals he's had an army of Space Marines made using altered geneseed stashed away for a rainy day this whole time? Sounds like some A grade heresy to me. I find it hard to believe some of the more religious forces would be OK with this. Again, I agree. The main reason to not tamper with Geneseed is that it's sacred. If this dude was alive long enough ago to cut a deal with Robute before his duel with Fulgrim, chances are he was alive during the Great Crusade and wouldn't have the same hang ups over it. The Emperor never intended the Space Marine Legions to be flawless. They were both an experiment and a mass produced army of supersoldiers at the same time. We KNOW he could do better, just look at the Custodes. Space Marines were just the next generation of Thunder Warriors - they were flawed and those flaws have become worse but they were never intended to last this long in the first place. They're not "Perfect Warriors", they're "Good enough to conquer the galaxy for now then be left on a shelf" warriors. Cawl took something that was imperfect and incomplete and made alterations to it. Corax tried to do the same thing but got screwed by the Alpha Legion, and before they even turned traitor the Emperor's Children were messing with it. Even the Space Wolves in 40k are secretly working to stabilise their own geneseed and they're semi-feral viking werewolf rednecks. The ABILITY to improve upon Space Marines is there, it's the desire to do so that is lacking.
I kinda feel like he should've only made them for the ultramarines. At least then he could've used the argument that they're his own. Should be slightly less heritical than also bringing new and improved versions of every chapter... on that note, could it include chapters that turned to chaos? I mean, they did say every chapter, and there are chapters that fell to chaos after the heresy. So it could be possible they used geneseed from one of them before they got corrupted. So what do you think guilliman can use to convine them?
Short question in between: Is there any halfway-short-ish history/timeline or a starting point in a wiki of the 40k (and apparently 30k as well?) universe that I could read? I don't understand half of what you are saying and the other half is so hilarious and/or bad and/or interesting and/or insane that I think I have to read a bit about it.
If you want a silly explenation If you want a more serious explenation And nah, I don't think there's anything "short". But just click through random articles they can be quite entertaining.
"Short" and "40k background" tend not to go hand-in-hand. Lexicanum is a pretty good source if you like getting lost in wiki articles. A lot of previous editions of the 40k rules and most Codexes (Codices?) have a timeline outlining important events, but some more recent additions like the War of the Beast aren't present in a lot of them. It also kind of depends on the perspective of the faction. If you want me to put together some kind of summary I'd be happy to, just send me a DM. Well moving on to news - again I've been lazy and suddenly get overwhelmed by stuff! I'll try to keep it short but you all know by now I have a tendancy to ramble when I'm excited. Tactical Reserves: Traditional reserves stuff like Deep Strike and Outflank are gone and any model with a similar ability will have a bespoke rule for it. I like this, it means they can be flexible without adding exceptions like "Can deepstrike but only roll 1D6 scatter" or "Can assault after deepstrike" and whatnot. Now they can just say "Set up X inches away from enemies then you can/can't/maybe act normally". We get the Trygon as an example, who can burrow up 9" away from enemies, bring a unit of troops with him, then assault. Nice. It also mentions that only 50% of the army may be held in reserves, so no more null deploy alpha strike BS. In matched play at the end of the 3rd battle round anything left in Reserves is destroyed automatically. Interesting that they say "Battle Round" instead of "Game Turn". Could this be an early hint that AoS style roll-for-turn could be implemented? Faction Focus Drukhari: Dark Eldar get an article and a fancy new name! Not unexpected. Nothing too telling in this one, just the usual prep-talk about how cool the army is. It does show a rule for Wyches that has a chance to prevent fleeing from combat, which is something I expect to see on other units as well, albeit fairly uncommon. Vehicles: Vehicles no longer have their own unique stats, they get the same profile as everything else now! It seems that they're trending to be middle-high to high toughness and middling armour saves (3+ or 4+), banking on a large number of wounds for protection. They also have WS. S and A characteristics. An interesting move, but kinda makes sense. I'm so used to being able to charge a tank with no fear of repercussions so it will take getting used to, but realistically a tank isn't going to sit still and do nothing while a bunch of chainsaw wielding psychos wail on it! Vehicles also suffer from shooting penalties for movement, but I imagine tanks like Leman Russ or Landraiders to have some way to ignore this. Close Combat Weapons: Pretty much what I expected, the profile format is largely unchanged but the details themselves are different. USRs like Shred, Unwieldy and Fleshbane are gone, but each weapon has a "Special Rules" column for any bonuses beyond the profile. A fair few profiles were revealed too, which I won't post here for the sake of saving space. Two big ones (for me anyway!) are: with Initiative gone Power Fists have a penalty to-hit rather than striking last, and Chainswords get to attack one extra time whenever the wielder fights. Time to dust off my Berzerkers. Faction Focus Imperial Knights: Again another fluffy "this army is great" article. This time we get our first PROPER look at degenerating stat lines, and it's pretty much exactly the same as AoS. Knights have a crazy amount of wounds (24) and you have to strip off half of them before they start feeling the pain, but we'll probably see the same kind of thing applied on a smaller scale to regular vehicles too. Stomp attacks are also gone, replaced with the "Titanic Feet" rule for the Knights. A bunch of their weapons stats are littered throughout the article which I won't go into, but suffice to say they look good. There's also the Superheavy Detachment, which consists of 3-5 Lords of War. Sorry guys, the Superheavy spam isn't over! Stronghold Assault: So Stronghold Assault seems to be rolled in to the Narrative way to play. It's what you'd expect, attacker and defender. Each side has different Stratagems depending on which role they take, and there's some extra rules for demolition and capturing buildings. I've always liked these kinds of games but by being an "extra layer" of rules on top of 7th we just never really used them. Lets hope that I get to lay siege to some Imperial Scum in 8th! Transports: This is one everyone was on the edge of their seats waiting for. They don't go in to the mechanics much, but we now know a few key things. You must disembark BEFORE the transport moves. Big change. Units can behave normally after disembarking, and that includes being able to charge. Another big change. If a transport explodes, roll a dice for each model and on a 1 they're dead. Hugely beneficial to anyone who isn't a Space Marine, where exploding transports were a deathtrap that would see your unit ruined. One thing that was mentioned was that a potential tactic could be disembarking your combat units, then having both the transport AND the unit charge the enemy. Chaos have had cool ways to make tanks killy up close in the past, so I'm hoping we see more of that in 8th. Faction Focus Tyranids: More of the same. They seem a bit like Seraphon, in that they benefit a lot from synergy and leaders passing out buffs and units improving the more models they take. Looks like PROPER Tyranid armies could make a comeback. They were my first army ever, so it would give me a warm fuzzy feeling to see swarms of Gaunts racked up with some big gribblies behind them for support.
I am looking forward to seeing how the Tyranid army plays. They were my first army as well and I would love to get my 3rd and 4th ed. army back on the table. Hordes of hormagaunt and genestealers backed by monstrous creatures. Good times.
Oh wow it's so much sooner than I thought! It's my birthday this weekend so I might nudge people to give me gift vouchers.... I love the Death Guard side of the starter kit but kinda don't like the Primaris guys. The basic troops are fine (could use a few spikes and blasphemous runes...), but the Inceptors and Gravis armour look really off to me. I also don't really like the Malignant Plaguecaster, he's just too much of a baby-face for me. I'm also worried that the inclusion of the hardback rulebook will push the box from "expensive but doable" into "instantly divorced" territory. The 7th ed rulebook is $140dollarydoos, so assuming the starter set is the same value as Dark Vengeance, once you tack on the hardback rules it's over $300.
HAHAHAHAHA... HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...
I'm thinking the box will be a bit more than Dark Vengeance due to the hard back rulebook inside, DV is £65, so could be looking at the £90 range for it.
I'm also in the "lol look at those flying garbage" camp. But I don't think the new starter set will be over £75 hopefully and I should be able to make some money back on the nurgle gurgles.
If I was a betting man I would put my money in the £95 camp. £75 is only a tenner more than Dark Vengeance and this is a hardback rules book which you know is gonna be £40 by itself...
The rules PDF is going to be free online, and £65 is still a reasonably high barrier of entry, the £20 Storm of Sigmar box is great for AoS and people walking in off the street. It'll depend who their target market is, but I would say people cruising in "new" won't be this things target market - this'll be people from last edition and AoS players. Guess we'll wait and see though!
that'd be ~110,- euro's which would be comparable with the AoS starterset.. that does seem plausible-ish. Though rather steep to entice any new players, especially if it doesn't come with paint.