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New 40k

Canas said:
In fairness, that'd only be helpfull if the imperium could concentrate all its forces on a specific threat.
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Oh totally agree. The Imperium literally cannot destroy Chaos, they don't have the capacity to do it. In the lore, the Imperium is very much on the back foot right now even with the return of a Primarch and the reveal of a whole new crusade worth of supersoldiers.

I'm thinking more along the lines of game terms, where the Imperium has a much larger player base (at least everywhere I've played in the past few years) due to the massive range of models, different armies with different playstyles and different themes available to them. For so long there have been 2 flavours of Chaos - Marines and Daemons with little to no differentiation between subfactions until only very recently. Throughout that same timeframe Space Marines got 7 or so subfactions WITHIN their core codex supported by rules, plus more through supplements and more again with their own standalone codices. Marines sell (hell I had a Black Templar army at one point) and I don't begrudge a company from aiming to make the most of a successful product, but it did lead to a lot of games being me vs one of many flavours of the same power armoured dudes. Most people I've met who play non-Imperium armies still at least own an Imperium army, and I only got rid of mine within the last few years.

Canas said:
Also, with the whole grimdark setting the "bad' guys got a good bit of plot armor. After all the "good" guys may never do more than hold the incoming tide while slowly being overwhelmed. If they actually manage to push the tide back it's not all that grimdark anymore...
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Also agreed. On a grand scale the Imperium have no hope without some kind of outside interference. The problem I find is that too often these smaller scale campaigns and battles tend to end up in favour of the Imperium I've been reading a fair bit of Black Library recently and most of them feature a relatively small imperial force prevailing against what should be unwinnable odds. Warriors of Ultramar was particularly guilty of this, having a small group of Deathwatch destroying a single Tyranid Hive Ship and thus ending the full scale Tyranid invasion of some fairly insignificant planet and securing victory for the Imperium. Yes there's a throwaway comment every now and then about how the system will never be the same and the planet will never fully recover but the actual FEEL of what happened was that it was most definitely a decisive win.
 
Fhanados said:
Oh totally agree. The Imperium literally cannot destroy Chaos, they don't have the capacity to do it. In the lore, the Imperium is very much on the back foot right now even with the return of a Primarch and the reveal of a whole new crusade worth of supersoldiers.

I'm thinking more along the lines of game terms, where the Imperium has a much larger player base (at least everywhere I've played in the past few years) due to the massive range of models, different armies with different playstyles and different themes available to them. For so long there have been 2 flavours of Chaos - Marines and Daemons with little to no differentiation between subfactions until only very recently. Throughout that same timeframe Space Marines got 7 or so subfactions WITHIN their core codex supported by rules, plus more through supplements and more again with their own standalone codices. Marines sell (hell I had a Black Templar army at one point) and I don't begrudge a company from aiming to make the most of a successful product, but it did lead to a lot of games being me vs one of many flavours of the same power armoured dudes. Most people I've met who play non-Imperium armies still at least own an Imperium army, and I only got rid of mine within the last few years..
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That's quite possible, to be honest this seems to be a general problem for the game. Seems to be due to both certain factions not being all that powerfull and some of them just having the reputation of just being rather lame (e.g. tau being communist weabo space smurfs).Though I'm not sure how they should fix it... apart from just focussing on something not imperial for a while.


Fhanados said:
Also agreed. On a grand scale the Imperium have no hope without some kind of outside interference. The problem I find is that too often these smaller scale campaigns and battles tend to end up in favour of the Imperium I've been reading a fair bit of Black Library recently and most of them feature a relatively small imperial force prevailing against what should be unwinnable odds. Warriors of Ultramar was particularly guilty of this, having a small group of Deathwatch destroying a single Tyranid Hive Ship and thus ending the full scale Tyranid invasion of some fairly insignificant planet and securing victory for the Imperium. Yes there's a throwaway comment every now and then about how the system will never be the same and the planet will never fully recover but the actual FEEL of what happened was that it was most definitely a decisive win.
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True, to be honest I wish they'd stop having 1 massive imperium ruling 90% of everything and instead would have multiple empires (xenos or otherwise). It'd allow one of them to be in the ascendant, occasionally switching which one as they want to put focus on a different faction, with sporadic invasions by tyranids and chaos from the outside to upset the status quo every so often. Having the various faction be in the ascendant or decline would allow them to progress towards new stuff more easily, it'd allow for alliances to be made (and betrayed) and most of all, it'd change the story so that the empire's can change. Right now all you have is 1 giant empire in a constant state of decline and loss. But it never actually gets destroyed, nor is there ever any significant resurgance. Guilliman's return is the first event that I know off where (a part) of the imperium might actually regain some former glory. Instead of just the usual "meh, at least chaos only blew up 1 planet and several billions of people before we pushed them back, let's prepare for next week's waaagh now"
 
Also, I just realized another issue xenos and chaos factions have. None of the xenos are all that interested in cooperation with anyone and frequently they're not even interested in building an empire (e.g. chaos just wants to do horrible horrible things to you). Which makes putting any faction besides the imperium in the ascendant pretty much impossible.

The imperium, the rebellious tau & the eldar are the only ones for whom relative peacefull coexistant with other factions would even be a theoretical option. Those three could be convinced to simply leave their neighbour alone provided their neighbour doesn't bother them either and eventually even to open trade deals and create actual alliances. But for basicly every other faction this'd be impossible. Which makes it very difficult to do all that much with the story, or with the various factions in terms of new units.
 
Canas said:
Also, I just realized another issue xenos and chaos factions have. None of the xenos are all that interested in cooperation with anyone and frequently they're not even interested in building an empire (e.g. chaos just wants to do horrible horrible things to you). Which makes putting any faction besides the imperium in the ascendant pretty much impossible.

The imperium, the rebellious tau & the eldar are the only ones for whom relative peacefull coexistant with other factions would even be a theoretical option. Those three could be convinced to simply leave their neighbour alone provided their neighbour doesn't bother them either and eventually even to open trade deals and create actual alliances. But for basicly every other faction this'd be impossible. Which makes it very difficult to do all that much with the story, or with the various factions in terms of new units.
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This is typical of GW - giving the humans all the glory. I think the reason the Eldar and the Tau are most peaceful is because they are the closest things to actual heroes in 40K - the Tau are tolerant and accepting of all aliens who want to join them and the Eldar are trying to do all they can to make the galaxy a better place. In fact I would categorise all the factions in the following way:

Good: Eldar, Tau (Eldar just want to keep the peace and Tau are tolerant of all aliens, only fighting them if the other species declares war on them)

Neutral: Necrons, Orks, Tyranids (Necrons want to rule over everyone, Orks just want to fight everyone and Tyranids just want to eat everyone - they don't show any hatred or 'preferred enemy' towards a particular species)

Evil: Imperium, Genestealer Cults, Dark Eldar, Harlequins, Chaos (Imperium is evil is because they are a nationalistic dictatorship that doesn't care about its population and they hate all species who are not human in some way, GC will fight alongside the Imperium to protect their worlds and then betray them, Dark Eldar want to inflict as much pain as possible to feed themselves, Harlequins kill people to entertain themselves in their dances and Chaos just wants to slaughter and mutate everyone and everything)
 
Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl said:
This is typical of GW - giving the humans all the glory. I think the reason the Eldar and the Tau are most peaceful is because they are the closest things to actual heroes in 40K - the Tau are tolerant and accepting of all aliens who want to join them and the Eldar are trying to do all they can to make the galaxy a better place. In fact I would categorise all the factions in the following way:

Good: Eldar, Tau (Eldar just want to keep the peace and Tau are tolerant of all aliens, only fighting them if the other species declares war on them)

Neutral: Necrons, Orks, Tyranids (Necrons want to rule over everyone, Orks just want to fight everyone and Tyranids just want to eat everyone - they don't show any hatred or 'preferred enemy' towards a particular species)

Evil: Imperium, Genestealer Cults, Dark Eldar, Harlequins, Chaos (Imperium is evil is because they are a nationalistic dictatorship that doesn't care about its population and they hate all species who are not human in some way, GC will fight alongside the Imperium to protect their worlds and then betray them, Dark Eldar want to inflict as much pain as possible to feed themselves, Harlequins kill people to entertain themselves in their dances and Chaos just wants to slaughter and mutate everyone and everything)
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To be honest in terms of good/bad I'd rank them as follows:
  • Good: noone
  • Gray, erring on the side of good:
    • The imperium/humanity as a whole. On the whole they mostly just want to be left alone and live a happy life. Their hatred of other species stems from every other species trying to murder and eat them or their souls. In better circumstances they'd be willing to trade and ally. Similarly with their disregard of the population, this is only "evil" in such that when you have billions upon billions of civilians a few million dying to a plaque is about as significant as 10 people dying to the common cold each year in a modern country. Their deaths just don't matter much in the grant scheme of things.
    • The rebbelious tau: they're more or less the same as humans, just considerably less scared of aliens as they haven't been eaten/attacked all that much yet.
    • Eldar, they'd be good if they weren't so horrendously arrogant and would consider other races important.
  • True Gray/neutral: basicly noone.
  • Gray, erring on the side of evil:
    • Harlequins
    • Specific imperial factions that have more questionable morals. E.g. the inquisition or officio assasinarum.
    • Necrons: they don't seem to want to rule over anyone, they seem to want to just be the only one around for the most part & then rule.
    • The main tau faction with their mind control & systematic genocide to incoperate others into their empire. At least the imperium doesn't pretend they like you. The tau might not fight you, but they do Always seem to try and conquer the others.
  • Evil: everyone else
    • Orks & tyranids are a force of nature kind of evil. The main reason they aren't neutral but evil is due to how they purposely seek out conflict with other factions. Yes it's in their nature and they're evil in the same way a wolf is evil to sheep. But due to how they purposly seek out stuff to destroy, as opposed to staying in their own habitats and only hurting others when they invade their space I'd class them as evil.
    • Chaos
    • Dark eldar
    • Genestealers.
    • The proper corrupt parts of the imperium.
 
Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl said:
the Eldar are trying to do all they can to make the galaxy a better place
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Kind of... the Eldar are trying to do everything they can to make the galaxy a better place for themselves. Biel-Tan (which form a decent number among the Ynnari) would very much like to see humanity wiped out and some Eldar believe humanity is directly responsible for the current mess that the Galaxy is in because of the events of the Horus Heresy and several thousand years of turmoil thereafter fuelling the daemonic gods within the Warp. Not to mention the Imperium keeps trying to colonise Eldar maiden worlds and blow up their Craftworlds and otherwise just be a pest. Short term, Eldar are more than willing to co-operate with (or use) humanity to get the upper hand against enemies that they simply cannot prevail against alone, it just so happens that snuffing out Chaos, purging Ork infestations, getting rid of the Necrons (their most ancient foe) and combatting Tyranids makes the galaxy a safer place for everyone!

That said Eldar are definitely more tolerant than a certain other galaxy spanning empire...

In context of the 40k galaxy Tau are probably the closest thing to good you'll find, but in comparison to modern human social standards they're still pretty horrible and dictator-y.

I don't really have a good/evil ranking system (although I'm sympathetic towards the traitor legions they are 100% not at all good in any way shape or form). There are some Eldar who are good, some who are horrible despicable creatures who are worse than the worst humanity has to offer. Likewise there are Tau who genuinely believe their purpose is to expand their empire across the stars and bring about an era of peace and prosperity to the galaxy, and others who want to subjugate everything and rule as tyrants. Humanity is the same, and not all terrible warlords are on the Chaos side of the fence. There is just such a vast scope of motivations and attitudes within a faction or subfaction.

I LIKE the fact that it's so hard for me to decide who is good and who is bad, so instead I chose to throw my lot in with the Legions. I feel genuinely bad for Magnus during his "folly" and the burning of Prospero, but now he's a a vengeful ass and his entire Legion are self interested knowledge hoarding maniacs. Kurze's struggles and the Emperor's total dismissal of them is so sad because it strikes close to home on a real human level as our society as a whole is still struggling to accept and understand mental disorders (he's also a super cool badass!) but his Legion are such unabashed terrible human beings that have no redeeming features.
 
Canas said:
To be honest in terms of good/bad I'd rank them as follows:
  • Good: noone
  • Gray, erring on the side of good:
    • The imperium/humanity as a whole. On the whole they mostly just want to be left alone and live a happy life. Their hatred of other species stems from every other species trying to murder and eat them or their souls. In better circumstances they'd be willing to trade and ally. Similarly with their disregard of the population, this is only "evil" in such that when you have billions upon billions of civilians a few million dying to a plaque is about as significant as 10 people dying to the common cold each year in a modern country. Their deaths just don't matter much in the grant scheme of things.
    • The rebbelious tau: they're more or less the same as humans, just considerably less scared of aliens as they haven't been eaten/attacked all that much yet.
    • Eldar, they'd be good if they weren't so horrendously arrogant and would consider other races important.
  • True Gray/neutral: basicly noone.
  • Gray, erring on the side of evil:
    • Harlequins
    • Specific imperial factions that have more questionable morals. E.g. the inquisition or officio assasinarum.
    • Necrons: they don't seem to want to rule over anyone, they seem to want to just be the only one around for the most part & then rule.
    • The main tau faction with their mind control & systematic genocide to incoperate others into their empire. At least the imperium doesn't pretend they like you. The tau might not fight you, but they do Always seem to try and conquer the others.
  • Evil: everyone else
    • Orks & tyranids are a force of nature kind of evil. The main reason they aren't neutral but evil is due to how they purposely seek out conflict with other factions. Yes it's in their nature and they're evil in the same way a wolf is evil to sheep. But due to how they purposly seek out stuff to destroy, as opposed to staying in their own habitats and only hurting others when they invade their space I'd class them as evil.
    • Chaos
    • Dark eldar
    • Genestealers.
    • The proper corrupt parts of the imperium.
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When I classed Orks and Tyranids as neutral, I did so because they don't specifically choose which factions to fight - they'll both just as gladly fight Chaos as they would fight the Imperium, for example, and they feel no more hatred towards one particular race than any other. The Imperium on the other hand is still a nationalist dictatorship like the Galactic Empire from Star Wars. They believe they are the greatest and that all aliens, regardless of alignment, should be destroyed even if the aliens are not doing any harm. They also look down upon variants of their own kind like Ogryns, Squats, Beastmen and Ratlings. Certainly some chapters of space marines like the Dark Angels, who are no better than the Inquisition in the way they constantly seek to slaughter Chaos Marines in revenge, and the Blood Angels, who consider themselves high and mighty but view all aliens with an especially great amount of racism, are very close to being evil. However other Chapters like the traditionalist Ultramarines, who want to just keep order in the galaxy like the Emperor wanted them to, the Grey Knights who wish to protect the Imperium from Daemonic Incursions and the Space Wolves who believe only in honourable combat and protecting the weak, are closer to the good side.
 
I didn't make it, I just googled it.

I've no idea as to Necrons actual motivation at the moment to say where they would sit...
 
Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl said:
When I classed Orks and Tyranids as neutral, I did so because they don't specifically choose which factions to fight - they'll both just as gladly fight Chaos as they would fight the Imperium, for example, and they feel no more hatred towards one particular race than any other. The Imperium on the other hand is still a nationalist dictatorship like the Galactic Empire from Star Wars. They believe they are the greatest and that all aliens, regardless of alignment, should be destroyed even if the aliens are not doing any harm. They also look down upon variants of their own kind like Ogryns, Squats, Beastmen and Ratlings. Certainly some chapters of space marines like the Dark Angels, who are no better than the Inquisition in the way they constantly seek to slaughter Chaos Marines in revenge, and the Blood Angels, who consider themselves high and mighty but view all aliens with an especially great amount of racism, are very close to being evil. However other Chapters like the traditionalist Ultramarines, who want to just keep order in the galaxy like the Emperor wanted them to, the Grey Knights who wish to protect the Imperium from Daemonic Incursions and the Space Wolves who believe only in honourable combat and protecting the weak, are closer to the good side.
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That's why I split up the empire. On the whole it's neutral-ish good. But it has significant parts that are considerably shadier or just outright corrupt & evil.

Orks and tyranids are sort of a "fair" kind of evil. They don't target anyone in particular, but they're still merely forces of destruction. Chaotic neutral fits reasonably well, but to be honest "chaotic" tends to be used to excuse some extremely horrible behaviour to get someone to be "good" (or at least "neutral") while they might easily do things worse than lawfull evil


As for the tau, their overlords are too evil & shady with the indoctrination of the greater good. At least the imperium has a very clear reason behind it being a dictatorship, it's simply an empire under perpetual martial law since it's constantly at war. Within the context of perpetual war it's one probably as close to 'good' as you can really get. If it is ever explained what in the world the greater good actually is, and why for example that 1 tau enclave rebelled this might shift a bit.

Fhanados said:
I LIKE the fact that it's so hard for me to decide who is good and who is bad, so instead I chose to throw my lot in with the Legions. I feel genuinely bad for Magnus during his "folly" and the burning of Prospero, but now he's a a vengeful ass and his entire Legion are self interested knowledge hoarding maniacs. Kurze's struggles and the Emperor's total dismissal of them is so sad because it strikes close to home on a real human level as our society as a whole is still struggling to accept and understand mental disorders (he's also a super cool badass!) but his Legion are such unabashed terrible human beings that have no redeeming features.
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True, shades of gray are interesting. However warhammer has so many "evil" factions, especially in 40K fantasy has it a bit better, that it ends up making stories very difficult to build. There's too many factions who's main motivation is just murder/eat/rape/dominate everything, and too few factions that just want to live in peace and quiet. The humans eldar tau are the only ones who'd even theoreticly consider purposely subjugating the other races and not just use them as slave fodder but actually give them some semblance of rights. And without a couple millenia of them peacefully existing side by side none would see any other race as their equals. Even the tau with their greater good rely heavily on indoctrination, forced population control and outright genocide.

As a consequence noones willing to work together and you just get perpetuall war. Which is fine for a game, but not that good for a story :p
 
Won my first game of 40k tonight :D
 
Ritual said:
I didn't make it, I just googled it.

I've no idea as to Necrons actual motivation at the moment to say where they would sit...
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NIGHTBRINGER said:
Necrons definitely don't feel like a neutral army to me.
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Trust me, I play Necrons and I know their motives. They are just trying to reclaim what was rightfully theirs - it doesn't make it any easier with verminous humans, Orks, Tau and Eldar squatting on their Tomb Worlds.

The Necrons just wish to subjugate all other races of the Galaxy so they don't give them any trouble.

I'll also give alignments to all the armies in fantasy:

Lawful Good: Lizardmen (of course)
Neutral Good: High Elves
Chaotic Good: Dwarfs
Lawful Neutral: Bretonnia, Wood Elves
True Neutral: The Empire, Tomb Kings
Chaotic Neutral: Orcs and Goblins
Lawful Evil: None
Neutral Evil: Warriors of Chaos, Chaos Dwarfs
Chaotic Evil: Daemons of Chaos, Vampire Counts, Skaven, Beastmen, Dark Elves
 
Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl said:
Trust me, I play Necrons and I know their motives. They are just trying to reclaim what was rightfully theirs - it doesn't make it any easier with verminous humans, Orks, Tau and Eldar squatting on their Tomb Worlds.

The Necrons just wish to subjugate all other races of the Galaxy so they don't give them any trouble.
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My experience with the Necron lore is from the pre matt ward era, namely this book...

196928-Codex_Necrons_3E.jpg



They definitely have a much more darker feel to them. They are definitely not neutral, especially the C'tan. You could be correct about the lore that comes afterwards though. Much like in the case of AoS, I don't subscribe to any of the bastardized (imho) fluff that comes after it.
 
Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl said:
Lawful Good: Lizardmen (of course)
Neutral Good: High Elves
Chaotic Good: Dwarfs
Lawful Neutral: Bretonnia, Wood Elves
True Neutral: The Empire, Tomb Kings
Chaotic Neutral: Orcs and Goblins
Lawful Evil: None
Neutral Evil: Warriors of Chaos, Chaos Dwarfs
Chaotic Evil: Daemons of Chaos, Vampire Counts, Skaven, Beastmen, Dark Elves
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You forgot the Ogre Kingdoms.
 
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