Warhammer and Such

[thin ibex]

But still think they're neat, out there aggressively hugging

[rocky shale]

They're just mostly bad in the subfaction made for them because they come in units of 2

[bright dove]

The distraction Carnifex is still valid to my knowledge

[desert jay]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/08/29/warhammer-nova-preview-warhammer-40000-roadmap-revealed/
Most recent roadmap, Knights aren't mentioned in the vid but are in the article, some time 2025 but no mention which quarter, presumably after Guard and CWE

[south axle]

We need more bullpup weapons in the imperium

[mental birch]

https://tenor.com/view/monkeys-paw-paw-monkey-gif-17535679

[south axle]

Bullpup Stub pistols?

[mental birch]

The classic

[jaunty dawn]

I mean it's hardly a monkey's paw to show the reason why we need more bullpups xP

[south axle]

Give us bolter p90s >:D

[desert jay]

Bullpup plasma pistol

[south axle]

Famas style lasgun

[jaunty dawn]

votann plasma pistols are bullpup, evidently

[south axle]

Just remembered that Elysians had bullpup lasguns

[desert jay]

Pennywen: That's not that bullpup

[paper bluff]

Is it a meaningful difference if an energy weapon is bullpup?

[south axle]

Are we gonna go on degrees of pullpup

[south axle]

Balance is like one thing it would benefit from I guess

[jaunty dawn]

it could be more bullpup if it was a stocked pistol

but otherwise the magazine extends (horizontally) past the bottom of the grip so

although arguably you can probably take the cooling element to indicate the location of the action

so that's what would need to be behind the trigger, but I dont think any plasma weaponry really have a barrel like that

as in the action is pretty much always right behind the the front end regardless

las weapons probably do care about having a barrel though, for whatever reason, so bullpup does make a difference

[paper bluff]

You know what would be cursed?

Bullpup ork weapons

They would bullpup something and it would also have the other receiver and the logic would be "fires twice as fast now. Takes in twice the amount of ammo it does"

[jaunty dawn]

yeah

hmmmm

this is kinda p90/g11 style bullpup almost

[paper bluff]

Reminds me, I wish we could get something like war of the beast series but with the great crusade. I wanna know about the orks that took legions to fight

[jaunty dawn]

if it loads from the rear side of the drum

it's real

they seem very concerned about fumes

[paper bluff]

Yep. Called it. I love the concept of orks so much

[pulsar cairn]

what's that abomination

[paper bluff]

An ork (h)'eavy bolta(bolter) that i called the design of

[past sphinx]

thats just a slightly modified space marine heavy bolter of that age

man i do miss the shoulder slung special weapons in a way

[uneven ember]

https://www.tumblr.com/jetblackraider

[hard whale]

We callz it the Pre Shur dial cuz im pre' shur it aint workin wivvaht it

[pulsar cairn]

i dont understand what's happening in the image

[jaunty dawn]

cherub stole her pistol

so she's htitting it with her reliquary

[pulsar cairn]

Oh

[thin ibex]

So is tu shan still the salamanders chapter master?

[junior robin]

acording to lexicanum, yes

[thin ibex]

Hmm ok so he's just never had rules/a model

[turbid sonnet]

salamanders need more love

I hope vulkan comes back someday soon

[junior robin]

it does feel a bit strange that only 5 out of 9 main chapters have a chapter master model.

[turbid sonnet]

Vulkan is the only missing primarch who is definitely not dead unless they just decided to kill him in the interim period while he's been gone

I don't think jaghatai or leman are dead either since it isn't fully confirmed but they're way more likely TO be dead compared to vulkan

How are primarchs balanced anyway

because I know in lore they're buck fusted

[tepid stratus]

To use gameplay as a power gauge, in the Horus heresy rules they're basically untouchable by all but the best duelists in melee and take nothing short of a firing line of lascannons to kill them quickly from ranfe

And that's as a baseline. The duelist and tank primarchs are even scarier

[turbid sonnet]

yeah that seems about right

[tepid stratus]

Like nothing can really harm the Lion or Fulgrim in melee that isn't a custodes character or better

[paper bluff]

Good ole valdor

[tepid stratus]

The only non-primarch to beat one in a duel

And if course there's narrative power if you go by the novels. Bullshit like blocking lascannons with their hands or surviving being stepped on by titans

[paper bluff]

He is in the primarch slot so....is he really non primarch

[tepid stratus]

In terms of raw numbers, yes

Putting him in the primarch slot is more a catch all for giving him all the special rules associated with the keyword

[floral herald]

The Emperor beat a few :^)

[thin ibex]

Iirc vulkan wasn't a duelist in the same way as other primarchs, but he listed amongst the best warriors amongst all of them, and was definitely the physically strongest

Hes*

[tepid stratus]

Vulkan definitely falls under the "tank" category. He hits hard and just can't be reasonably stopped

[turbid sonnet]

Vulkan is the goat

not as much as alpharius and omegon though

[runic swallow]

Literally cannot be stopped, he’ll come back

[paper bluff]

Gotta remember his hammer is also a hammer

[mental birch]

Didn't they nerf primach killer crabman

[tepid stratus]

I'm talking narrative not gameplay. Valdor has canonically beaten Dorn in a duel

[mental birch]

Ahh

[thin ibex]

yeah, and reasonably certain valdor was capable of taking on the other primarchs with some confidence

[paper bluff]

He did have 1000 years of fighting experience on them

How easily we forget valdor fought in the unification wars

[thin ibex]

hmm, dakka marines redux is a list idea today, gotta feature the gladiator reaper

and probably a doubly onslought redemptor

i wanna play a mission with the special rule that every unit must split fire at as many units as they are able to target at once whenever possible

DAKKA!

primary anti armor is just volume fire

[finite compass]

All this talk of Bullpup weapons and we didn't include the GOAT

[runic swallow]

Love the Space French

[finite compass]

Wouldn't those be the Krieg?

[runic swallow]

Those are a French-German mashup

[south axle]

I did mention the goats

[finite compass]

Well yes, but there were no pictures

How can I be expected to read if there are no pictures?

[thin ibex]

I want more Elysian weapons in darktide

[finite compass]

Ogryn Heavy Bolter

Or Autocannon

Or a Guardsman heavy stubber

[thin ibex]

autocannon is on my wishlist

heavy stubber so we can be the guy in the art for the vet

i do so sorely wish they did melee+ranged weapons similar to saltzpyre

so that we could have laspistol/chainsword

or ogryn nade launcher + shield

give us ogryn shield!

brute shield i mean

to go with slab shield

[pulsar cairn]

Think we would still go to war with the Eldar if the Imperium wasnt super duper crazy? i feel like the answer is yes but im curious to see people's takes

[thin ibex]

how do you mean?

I think the eldar would at times not give us a choice, in that they would happily attack us if the farseers saw a path through us to a greater victory, or would happily guide an ork waaagh into our laps to save a single one of their own

or the deldar, we'd go to war to stop them from enslaving us

[granite basin]

the eldar aren't the same kind of evil, but they would force just about anyone else's hand who had a fighting chance

[thin ibex]

a major reason why, even if the imperium were less dogmatic and more open to negotiation, they'd still screw us over is because they look at our species as lesser from a starting point

[granite basin]

yeah, they're still p bigoted towards us, and even if they don't fight us, they still wouldn't really respect us

[pulsar cairn]

yeah and i was also thinking about their farseers

[granite basin]

the deldar are a bdsm murder cult who have to kill and torture to survive, so like. yk

[pulsar cairn]

Yeah deldar are a problem in every scenario i think

Honestly now that i think about it

[floral herald]

Who is “we” in this context?

[pulsar cairn]

The Imperium being less dogmatic is not an escape from the grimdark

[granite basin]

the imperium i'm p sure

[floral herald]

The imperium already has a semi-official “no first action” rule when it comes to craftworlds

[finite compass]

Even then, Craftworld Eldar tend to do shit like "We manipulated this giant Ork WAAAGH to absolutely destroy an Imperial sector, killing billions, because our Farseers saw that if it continued its present course it would lead to the deaths of a few dozen Eldar."

[thin ibex]

not that the imperium would necessarily know that at the time

[solemn gull]

In fairness a eldar dying is really shit compared to a person dying

Because of the soul stuff

[pulsar cairn]

i did not know they avoided drawing the first shot against craft worlds

Interesting

Still tho killing entire sectors is pretty bad...

[solemn gull]

Arguably still not as bad

[thin ibex]

i feel like the macro argument of it not being as bad falls short at th ground level

like

the suckiness olympics doesnt make getting hit by a waaagh to spare the eldar somehow more palatable

[paper bluff]

A craft world is very very very big even in the world of 40K ship sizes. You don't really want to fight one of them

And generally the eldar don't want to fight what with the whole "every eldar life is precious" to the eldar

[granite basin]

isn't that, like, the difference btwn a ship that is a megacathedral, and a ship that is its own arcology?

like, one is a huge structure, as 40k is rife w. but the other is literally A City In Space

[paper bluff]

A craft world is on average a continent is space

One place I saw said the biggest ones are like small planets

[granite basin]

the imperium, ignorant as they are, might have some idea not to punch That far above their weight lmao

[finite compass]

Yeah, Craftworlds are fucking massive

[floral herald]

It’s mostly that the Eldar explicitly told them that they were burning planets or subsectors in retaliation and then did that enough times for the message to sink in

[paper bluff]

Abouts the only thing to match it is the phalanx and there's only one of those known

[paper bluff]

Oh right! And the craft worlds can travel by web way

[granite basin]

an entire planet-sized ship just fucking off into the abyss, or appearing from it. Horrifying.

[floral herald]

It’s worth noting that craftworlds are a lot bigger than the Phalanx

But also aren’t really warships

[thin ibex]

i think most commonly raids take place on craftworlds (by which i mean in the rare cases where the imperium attacks a craftoworld, the target is rarely to destroy it)

you'd probably need a sector battlefleet to take on a craftworld and its attendant ships and corsairs; and some way for it to not just leave

[wild fog]

The Eldar are much faster and difficult to pin down, so it will suck for Imperial ships the whole way

They're likely to suffer hit and run strikes constantly wearing them down as other Aeldar run interference and use the web way to escape easy counterattack.

It's just generally not worth the effort

[thin ibex]

There are always bigger, more immediate threats that make that kind of commitment not worth the material cost to the Imperium

[floral herald]

I had meant craftworld Eldar in general in my first post, not just on a craftworld itself.

[brisk mountain]

Not to be an eldar apologist (but very much being one), they are a dying race who's main objective is just Survive

With a capital S

So it's consistent internal logic to see millions of human lives as inferior to a dozen or so of your own when you're rapidly approaching extinction

At least in a setting where everyone is bad guys

[rocky shale]

Farseers are just in an eternal trolley problem where not pulling the lever is "something destroys a craftworld" and the other track is "someone else dies"

[thin ibex]

I think my point isn't that they're illogical for their goals, my point is that their goals inevitably draw them into conflict with the Imperium regardless of the Imperiums belligerence and unreasonable nature

An Eldar going "it's OK because my species is dying, so your lives are less valuable" will never be a reasonable negotiating point that makes offering humans up to the sacrificial altar acceptable to humans; even in a hypothetical way less insane Imperium

The Eldar making someone else the fall guy in order to live is logical, but the logic being sound does not make it permissible to the fall guy

Who also wants to live

[rocky shale]

I mean, they must just see the imperium sacrificing humans constantly and think that they like being used as meat shields

[floral herald]

Yeah it’s just respecting human cultural mores

[finite compass]

"They've got a few trillion to spare, I'm sure they won't mind."

[wild fog]

Let's not get it twisted though. Eldar were cruel enough to everyone that they accidentally created a torture god. And the most common phase a teenage Eldar goes through is pirate raider

[floral herald]

They get sad if they don’t get to stuff another billion humans into a literal or proverbial meat grinder

It’s messed up but it’s important to respect their wishes

[finite compass]

Human morality is meaningless to the Eldar, and to the dark side of the Eldar mind all life is to be expended at a whim. Cruelty and generosity are but the impulse of a moment. Beauty and sensuality are virtues that can be expressed in bloodshed just as easily as in song. To an unfettered Eldar mind there is neither sanity nor madness, but merely a wave of perfect existence fulfilled by its own savage momentum.

[floral herald]

Craftworld Eldar are the ones who realized that was messed up and bailed tbf

[pulsar cairn]

man

being alive in year 40k fricking sucks

unless ur an ork

[past sphinx]

the frogs really fucked over everybody there

[bright dove]

Except the Orks.

[cosmic tulip]

Tau (:

[thin ibex]

it all traces back to the frogs not wanting to cure the necron of their genetic super ultra cancer or whatever

[bright dove]

Now to be fair to the frogs

Even Super Ultra Cancer Necrons were jackasses.

[floral herald]

The necrontyr had really bad vibes though

[past sphinx]

they did genocide everything they came across iirc

[bright dove]

Like, all the dynastic shit and the like was made before they got the metal bodies.

They just ran into something they couldn't bully and the frogs said "Actually, you guys kinda suck. You can just die."

[past sphinx]

"i know we killed all those planets but please stop the space god cancer we promise to stop"

[cosmic tulip]

Yall

Are Stormcast pretty good for angel representations

[past sphinx]

witch angel

theres like 3?

4?

[floral herald]

Probably not since stormcast are elevated mortals not divine servitors

But there’s a lot of angelic setups

[cosmic tulip]

Just the overall vibe

The angels my dnd party is fighting are made of marble and gold with a lot of eyes and deathmasks

[past sphinx]

i mean if your building off dnd sure

[floral herald]

Angels usually don’t have free will which I think is a pretty different vibe

[past sphinx]

im sorry cyan were in a theology fight rn

[floral herald]

Milton isn’t theology just elevated fanfiction :^)

[past sphinx]

so is most of western canon

like robocop

[marsh haven]

And the Phalanx is extremely undermanned

It was built to house a full legion

Not a mere chapter’s worth of astartes

[tired cairn]

Wait, how do they fall then?

[floral herald]

See

[marsh haven]

Ask a theologian

[floral herald]

More seriously, in Christianity angels usually have free will but since they don’t have original sin they just make right choices (with some exceptions)

[past sphinx]

sometimes they just got that dog in em

[floral herald]

In Judaism angels generally do not have free will and are essentially embodied “thoughts of god” which do simply exist during the time needed to complete a task for god

[marsh haven]

Is it mentioned where normie human souls go when they die?

[past sphinx]

into the warp

[marsh haven]

In 40k

[past sphinx]

painfully

[tired cairn]

They don't last long as coherent souls in the warp aiui

[marsh haven]

Yeah but like randomly or do they get autoshunted into the Golden Throne’s fuel cells?

[floral herald]

I think Islam kinda splits the difference with angels having simply enough free will to make their praise of god authentic

Yeah human souls are torn apart in the warp

[tired cairn]

I know that doctrinally, the Emperor can save them. I don't know if that's empirically true though

[floral herald]

Psychic souls last a long time in the warp and feel it the whole time

Eldar souls get claimed by Slaanesh and do not expire

[marsh haven]

Man, it really is the win condition to be born with the Pariah Gene

[floral herald]

No one knows what happens to ork souls - they don’t know or care

[past sphinx]

i believe the emperor has a realm of chaos described as a weeping man kneeling in a cathedral filled with bones

[tired cairn]

Now I'm wondering if Demon: the Descent was influenced by this (something called angels fall when they get free will)

[past sphinx]

not much of an afterlife if he did pluck you up

[floral herald]

Yeah very much so I think

[tired cairn]

The emperor might just make sure your soul is snuffed out extra fast. Seems more his speed

[marsh haven]

He’s not sentimental, i think if he could he’d probably repurpose it for something “useful”

[tired cairn]

Well, I also wonder how much he's affected by the collective belief of the Imperium's religion (being definitely not a chaos god and all)

[floral herald]

If the emperor does anything with souls he probably just consumes them

[marsh haven]

There’s still an actual guy under there, only when he dies do we get the full p-zombie chaos god

[tired cairn]

Hey, that could be faster than the alternative

[marsh haven]

Or rather, just a god because he’s not fueled by base emotion

[past sphinx]

an actual guy but an actual guy whos an absolute dick

[tired cairn]

Truly the worst guy

[floral herald]

Yeah, it probably is

[marsh haven]

Yeah, which is why he wouldn’t have any final reward waiting for his faithful, just another task to use them for

[past sphinx]

imperial demon engines when

[marsh haven]

They’re called Penitent Engines/s

[granite basin]

penance engine would go hard tho

[marsh haven]

Sure its not a daemon stapled to that mech but it may or may not be powered by psychotic zeal which is close enough

[rocky shale]

Celestine in a mech suit

[marsh haven]

She’s technically still wearing power armor so that’s just normal celestine

I forget do we have any POV writing for Living Saints?

[floral herald]

I don’t think there is any

[raw vessel]

Is the Celestine novel not POV?

[marsh haven]

Cuz if we’re going with the “Living Saints = Greater Daemons”, then its not really the original Celestine in there

Just something that looks like her

[turbid sonnet]

why the fuck do admech cost so much it’s not fair

[past sphinx]

a true shame we didnt get a saint sabbot model

[upper canopy]

There's a Celestine model

[turbid sonnet]

i just want to have little skitarii in my house

[upper canopy]

or novel

guh

[floral herald]

I don’t think that’s really accurate I think it’s just one of those categorical shorthands people like to use online

[rocky shale]

Newer kits tend to cost a little more and thier points per dollar are awful

But have been worse

[turbid sonnet]

i should buy their weird drill-pod vehicle and use it as a pillbox

[tired cairn]

I think people mostly call Celestine a greater demon as like, a half joke

[floral herald]

Admech P/D aren’t so bad post codex

But they used to be actually the worst army for that

[tired cairn]

Though I don't think demon is well defined in Warhammer? At least not without explicitly being in relation to a chaos god?

[floral herald]

I mean, that is the definition

[turbid sonnet]

i wonder who’s worse now

[floral herald]

There are other warp entities but they aren’t daemons

[tired cairn]

How does belakor and vashtor fit in there though?

This is looks fish or worms or trees isn't it. "Well, they have demon vibes"

[finite compass]

Be'lakor is a Daemon Prince

In fantasy at least, I THINK it's the same in 40k, Be'lakor was the first Daemon Prince

[floral herald]

If you ignore the low hanging fruit of forge world only armies like DKOK resin or Vraks Militia or similar I think it’s GSC now

[marsh haven]

Yeah Beta Build Lorgar

[turbid sonnet]

of course it’s gec

[marsh haven]

Elevated by all Four

[turbid sonnet]

gsc*

pain

[finite compass]

And then cursed when he thought he could usurp them.

[turbid sonnet]

isn’t votann really expensive too or is it just because their range is tiny or sumn

[floral herald]

Same in 40k yeah - he’s the last “joint god daemon prince” before they realized that was a problem

[finite compass]

It's because their range is tiny

[marsh haven]

I wish Chaos Undivided wasn’t such a nothingburger

[finite compass]

It seems to vary from edition to edition.

[floral herald]

Vashtorr is weird - either a “fallen daemon” who broke away from a god or some other kind of warp entity

[marsh haven]

The Four are just parodies of themselves at this point

[tired cairn]

I mean, they tore the galaxy in half

[finite compass]

Apparently Old World is going with solely undivided.

There aren't going to be any mono-god armies

And then there was the stuff in the Ruinstorm list. The Aetheric Dominion stuff.

[marsh haven]

I meant more “Chaos Undivided as something other than The Four working together”

[finite compass]

Where there are 4 that map perfectly onto the existing gods

But then there are four more.

[tired cairn]

What else would it be?

[marsh haven]

Their purviews have become so bloated as to be all encompassing

[finite compass]

Two of which are almost perfect matches for both Vashtorr and Malal

[thin ibex]

So I often see a lot of talk minimizing the presence or influence of the chaos gods and Daemons. Why is that? I was under the impression that you effectively encounter nothing but Daemons who are shards of the chaos gods for the most part and that the four make up a great volume of the warp itself by being effectively hyperobjects that reflect its broad nature

[floral herald]

That’s all it’s ever been

[marsh haven]

Primordial Chaos, ancient, unknowable

The Four are too anthropomorphic

[finite compass]

Weird Shit ™️ that's not perfectly related to any of the big four

[thin ibex]

And like, I was under the impression that the 4 were effectively all encompassing

[marsh haven]

The Four used to be Three so that wasn’t always the case

[thin ibex]

I think the 4 being too anthro has more to do with fan choices in portrayal than the setting

[finite compass]

There are Undivided Daemons

[thin ibex]

Well, time doesn't work like that in the warp

[finite compass]

Furies and a lot of the FFG stuff.

[thin ibex]

There were three, and now there were always 4

Is not a sequential order of events in the warp

When khorne was first born, by being born, there was always khorne. Their existence tracks in every temporal "direction"

[marsh haven]

Yeah but in realspace that means there was enough outside of the three such that they didn’t encompass it before Slaanesh came along

[thin ibex]

Ah yeah I follow

[marsh haven]

The Four are also solipsistic fountains of bullshit so how they “reckon” their existences is immaterial

[thin ibex]

I figured the chaos gods are like one of those browser blob games, that just like absorbed the more fractious entities over time

Until they were pretty much the most important players and folded the rest under themselves respectively. By absorbing the smaller blobs, perse

Cause they had P2W benefits by feeding off of their "domains"

As well as the other entities

[marsh haven]

But like Chaos Undivided as this primordial, alien force, elder, stronger, stranger than the Four who are but transient, anthropomorphic expressions of its ineffable truth

[floral herald]

It’s kinda hard to say since the gods existed retroactively, so mapping a “before” to them is pretty hard

[marsh haven]

The center of the eight pointed star and all that jazz

[tired cairn]

The chaos gods are probably localized to the Milky Way right? I think warp and any entities outside of it is supposed to be extra strange and dangerous

[marsh haven]

The Warp doesn’t exist beyond the milky way

psychic stuff does but the extradimensional realm known as the warp does not

[floral herald]

The actually aren’t, but it doesn’t come up very much

In general you can ignore the rest of the universe as anything but a source of tyranids though

It’s just not a part of the setting

[tired cairn]

Ah, ok

[floral herald]

But the chaos gods have been to and know where the “center of the universe” is far beyond the galaxy

[marsh haven]

The Chaos Gods are full of shit though

[floral herald]

Ok, that wasn’t something they said

[marsh haven]

They’re fueled by the collective instinct of the milky way’s sapient races.

[tired cairn]

in a sense everywhere is the center of the universe

[floral herald]

It's a specific spot and they've been there

[marsh haven]

Like key thing to know about the Chaos Gods is that, because they’re gestalts of the galaxy’s psychic dysfunction, they aren’t really as big or as powerful as their followers claim

They’re big chatbots being jerked every which way by everyone’s limbic system

[tired cairn]

Yeah, 40k cosmology is quite different from real cosmology lol

[floral herald]

Not something their followers claimed!

It was an omniscient narrator thing

[marsh haven]

I think The Old Ones probably went there and the Chaos Gods know where it is because of that

[spice flicker]

Why does this mtg card look like a chaos champion from fantasy or aos?

[rocky shale]

If you can find the old combat patrol just buy like 3 of them and it makes gsc affordable

[turbid sonnet]

i won't get into gsc until i know i like playing the game and have another army under my belt because they're pretty complex to paint and play

but i will find a way to play gsc and not go broke if i want to

because they're so cool

[rocky shale]

They are pretty cool

[turbid sonnet]

i don't care if they're bad or whatever i just love ambush tactics and shit like that

[rocky shale]

They were monsters at the start of the edition

Absolutely disgusting

[turbid sonnet]

really??

did their codex just fuck them or something

new rules

[rocky shale]

Points nerfs mostly took them down. The codex wasn't really too bad.

They were quite cheap and had more reliable resurrection mechanics, as well as some rules jank around one-shot weapons that has since been erratad

[turbid sonnet]

pity

i dont care about the viability of whatever army i buy into though because i will never play competitively i'll just hope whoever 'm going up against isn't a massive sweat

[rocky shale]

Iirc they aren't suffering toooo bad right now

Just kinda a small range so if a key unit gets nerfed they don't really get alternative options

[turbid sonnet]

ic ic

are necrons having a bad time right now i feel like i remember getting random grumblings about it on twitter a while ago

or was it just people being mad they can't do c'tan bullshit as easily

[pulsar cairn]

necrons went to war with space frogs

a long long time ago

i liked the space frogs

[floral herald]

No the meta just shifted

[pulsar cairn]

actually i just like frogs in general

[paper bluff]

To be fair, the necons won. The necrotyr it was dicy

[solemn gull]

Why did the space frogs decide to not help the necron?

[floral herald]

They were really strong because the best 3 armies in the game were

• Eldar, who just shot you off the board with crazy cheap strong shooting
• Custodes, who stat checked every melee army to death
• Imperial Knights, who were basically unkillable for even points and highly lethal
• GSC who had lots of deep strike and respawning guys which largely negated the advantages of the meta builds for the above 3 armies

[rocky shale]

Necrons have been thriving ever since thier codex

[turbid sonnet]

ok so it's just people malding lmao

[floral herald]

It was basically a quirk of the meta combined with them being both fairly strong, fairly cheap, and highly nontraditional

[rocky shale]

I miss 150pt fire prisms 😦

They did nothing wrong

[floral herald]

People just say shit on the internet its very hard to follow the meta without just looking at tourney numbers

And people just pull random wins out of hats sometimes

Like that major-winning Custodes list which took the detachment everyone agreed was pure garbage

[turbid sonnet]

funny

[tardy vault]

Yeah, like a single army winning or getting smashed in a tournament doesn't mean anything. A really weak army randomly winning doesn't necessarily mean it's secretly strong. It could just mean that area has a really good player that just loves that army. Flip side, a really good faction that isn't winning could just be there were better players are every tournament.

[turbid sonnet]

it's like fighting games

(which is something i have a lot of experience in)

people tend to view single instances as representative of the larger meta

[tardy vault]

It's like season 1 SFVI Gief taking a major tournament

[turbid sonnet]

just because a low tier character wins doesn't mean they're suddenly goated it probably means they're being played by someone who put in the work to git gud

[floral herald]

This was actually a problem with GSC in 9e - they had a small but very dedicated player base in tourneys which made them look really solid

[turbid sonnet]

SNAKE EYEZ 💪

unless it was itabashi

[floral herald]

When they kind of sucked but all the competitive GSC players at the time were freaks

[turbid sonnet]

i didnt pay much attention to pro sf6 in season 1 lol

[tardy vault]

Snake Eyez the time I was thinking

[turbid sonnet]

im just gonna assume it was snake eyez because he's a legend

good

[bright dove]

Things have to keep happening consistently in different tourneys.

But the true meta outside of tourneys is honestly do something you have fun with.

[tardy vault]

Yeah, from what I understand GSC requires a massive brain to play and the people that play them are just the right type of stubborn to figure it out

[floral herald]

It's less true than it was but yeah they're a weird technical army

[tardy vault]

Like, I remember Poorhammer did an episode on your starting faction and for GSC they went "Don't start GSC unless you just reflectively said 'Fuck you I'm playing GSC' because that's the type of person required to play it."

[jagged dawn]

we would probably fail horribly at playing GSC but we still want to play GSC because we like their vibe

[rocky shale]

My favorite example of this is every Aeldari list that's just a random mess of phoenix lords

I'm consistently baffled by how they work

[floral herald]

Yeah there's a number of Eldar tourney lists which I just don't get

But they win

[rocky shale]

I saw one that was running asurmen with 5 dire avengers just on foot

[bright dove]

You play the objectives ig

[rocky shale]

Eh, I guess for 115points asurmen kinda has crazy melee

[tardy vault]

The flip side of popularity and win rates is Stormcast Eternals in AoS. Rn their win rate is on the low side, but they're the fucking Space Marines so they're being dragged down by being super popular.

[rocky shale]

6A 2+ 6S -3 3D dev wounds wow and good pistols

[floral herald]

Happens to both loyal and chaos space marines 2

CSM have mid win rates when they're merely decent to good because they're consistently like the second or third most common army

[rocky shale]

I think agents will be this editions "all tournament players are dedicated lunatics" faction

[bright dove]

You know what's a wild win rate over in AoS? The Maggotkin of Nurgle.

[rocky shale]

They had like a 45% WR before they even had detachments at all

[floral herald]

Everyone who played agents on the index was probably just a closeted IK player tho

Just looking for a way to launder in a lot of cheap OC :p

[rocky shale]

I'm in the discord, most people were running like 2-3 armigers

This was before they even had transports of thier own

[jagged dawn]

we like weird armies in general as shown by our posting history here.
effectiveness is secondary to vibes

All wraith-construct Eldar army
GSC where we spend 1/4 of the points on a baneblade because the rules let us
Chaos Knights
Admech
maybe T'au (we just like battlesuits)
and, somewhat inspired by space marine II, Iron fists army painted up as the Retributors from Astartes

[rocky shale]

But also the henchmen were a lot better

[tardy vault]

Oh god whats going on with them

[past sphinx]

its a nurgle army thats what going on

[floral herald]

They don't look particularly wild to me

The really outta line army rn is Nighthaunt though

Though I'm not exactly sure why

[tardy vault]

And Lumineth

[floral herald]

yeah

I think these are the newest stats? https://woehammer.com/2024/07/23/age-of-sigmar-4th-edition-meta-stats-21st-july-2024/

[tardy vault]

there's one for the 8th

[bright dove]

The out of line is in the other direction.

For Maggotkin.

[tardy vault]

Nighthaunt and Lumineth are both top

[jagged dawn]

Seriously this guy did a really good job on some

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/s/0CFt8fdm7s

[floral herald]

tfw you accidentally metachase

[floral herald]

They look pretty solidly middle of the pack here

A little lower than the middle but there's a HARD cluster around 49% there

[tardy vault]

https://woehammer.com/2024/09/11/age-of-sigmar-4th-edition-meta-stats-8th-september-2024/

[floral herald]

ooh

[bright dove]

A 44% WR is not really middle of the pack.

... Hold on, I just saw Blades of Khorne.

How

[floral herald]

It is on that cluster

[tardy vault]

Also RIP Kharadron Overlords lol

[floral herald]

Though in the newer stats they've fallen

[bright dove]

Yeah, it doesn't surprise me they've fallen.

[jagged dawn]

We briefly mistook lumineth for Sylvaneth and got excited

We just want the trees to be good, and not ridiculously expensive because you have to buy multiple instances of $75 terrain just for your abilities to work

[bright dove]

They're slow, don't have good armor for the most part unless you go for the Blightkings.

[tardy vault]

They can move through terrain, ignore rend (AP in 40k), can reanimate, hit like a truck, and move fast

[tardy vault]

Sadly, Sylvaneth is not great rn

[bright dove]

I'm not sure how I'd get a Sylvaneth army to work.

[tardy vault]

tho their win rate seems to have climbed

[floral herald]

Ah, I think the terrain stuff was what I wasn't understanding

[tardy vault]

They spooky ghosts

[jagged dawn]

Yeah we’ve known that for a while

[tardy vault]

they just fly through walls because spoooky

[bright dove]

I can at least see how to get Maggotkin wins.

With a human-focused army, you have some seriously tanky bois.

So you can just camp on objectives and the like and soak punishment.

[tardy vault]

Ok, I have a feeling Kharadron Overloads is being held up win rate wise by a single player lol

Looking at the player stats

and they're super unpopular

[bright dove]

Agreed there.

[tardy vault]

But they have a top tier player

Who I suspect is just boosting the win rate for the entire faction

[floral herald]

That's relatively common with low play rate factions

[jagged dawn]

Kinda sucks that the two armies we’d play in AoS (if we could ever wrap our head around the mechanics) both have flaws

Sylvaneth aren’t very good, and are expensive

Skaven are expensive in terms of models since their units are cheap, and we don’t like most of the sculpts (the new ones look nice but seriously there’s sculpts older than us in the line)

[bright dove]

There's some good stuff in the Sky Dorfs.

[floral herald]

Since the people who aren't really dedicated tend to bring something else

[tardy vault]

The issue with the overlords is they're paying for 3rd

where people would actively avoid playing you in casual matches if you brought them

because it was like someone brought a Tau list to an AoS game

[floral herald]

What does paying for third mean?

[tardy vault]

3rd edition

they were really good before 4th

Because they could sit in their ships and shoot you across the map

[floral herald]

Ah ok

[tardy vault]

So they got smashed with the nerf bat

[jagged dawn]

Seraphon seem fun though, big lizards sound cool

[bright dove]

But yeah. I do dislike how the Maggotkin have zero ranged options.

Seraphon are great and the army I'd be making right now if not for the request for Maggotkin.

[tardy vault]

Seraphon are popular for a reason. Dinos riding Dinos is a winner

[bright dove]

Like, you can take a Seraphon army in whatever direction you want really.

It's great.

Want to be a horde army? Go for it.

Want to be elite? Hey, that's on the table!

Want to be ranged? Super viable and easy!

Melee focus? Got you covered man.

[tardy vault]

Want to play lots of big monsters? You're in the right place.

[bright dove]

Precisely!

Like, they just work

[tardy vault]

Meanwhile Daughters of Khaine either have elite-ish or horde

And due to having no fucking kits those lists are basically static.

[bright dove]

Yeah.

They're in a better spot army-building wise than last edition at least.

[tardy vault]

You either run Morathi and an Ironscale with snakes or Cauldron and Krethusa with Aelf spam.

[bright dove]

I despised their basic battlelines in 3rd

They still didn't win my least favorite army award at least.

[tardy vault]

We're building the Cauldron and Krethusa comp because Krethusa is a cool sculpt and we like buff stacking.

[jagged dawn]

Though thank god for those new skaven models because they were sorely needed (in our opinion anyway). Those stormvermin look awesome, among other new models

[bright dove]

That "honor" goes to Sons of Behemat.

That army has no variety.

[tardy vault]

And heaping buffs then sending a group of 20 Witch Aelves screaming across the board to one shot a 40 wound model is

[floral herald]

I mean, if you're playing Sons you know what you're here for

I'm not picking sons to choose little guys

[bright dove]

There's, like, 5 options in all of Sons is my problem.

I don't mind building Just Big Guys.

[tardy vault]

(someone mathed it out btw, and Witch Aelves can, in fact, almost one shot the chunkiest Sons of Behemat model with the right buffs)

[bright dove]

I don't like an army that goes "These are the five things you can take. Make a thing."

You can have bad units, but at least have some variety.

[upper canopy]

I mean it's just the Knights model

[thin ibex]

oh black library humble bundle seems ot be on going https://www.humblebundle.com/books/tales-space-marine-chapters-2024-black-library-books?hmb_source=&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_1_layout_type_threes_tile_index_2_c_talesspacemarinechapters2024blacklibrary_bookbundle

[bright dove]

Knights do give you some build variety. Yes, you are building Big Stompy, but you can take that in a few different directions thanks to weapons. Sons have:
Main Special Hero
Destruction Faction Overboss Kragnos
4 Types of Mega-Gargant
Mancrushers

[floral herald]

I mean that's not that different from knights

[upper canopy]

The Knights have 2 models

how you gussy them up is up to you

[bright dove]

The point is there is some more input on how you can do a Knight army.

[thin ibex]

So like it'd be neat to have "throwing rocks guy" and "uses a giant shield guy"

Instead of 5 guys with tree trunks?

[bright dove]

Tree Trunk, Anchor, etc.

[thin ibex]

Like have em feel like they actually fulfill a niche in your list of big guys

[bright dove]

Exactly!

Because you're sorta pigeonholed into Big Melee Guys.

[thin ibex]

Like with knights you can have anti Armor guy, stands back and shoots guy, only melee guy etc

Where with sons it's 5 big dudes who all pretty much do the same thing

[bright dove]

That sums it up exactly, yeah.

[floral herald]

I don't think they really do just do the same thing though, they've got some weird moves on each of em

AoS is just a somewhat more homogenous game in terms of fighting because its more melee oriented

But you can throw objectives around and such

[pulsar cairn]

the rats have miniguns and i think that's real neat

do other people have guns in AoS? or is it just the rats?

[floral herald]

Yeah there's others

[pulsar cairn]

i imagine most of them are simple guns

[floral herald]

Not necessarily, like this minigun

[tardy vault]

Cities of Sigmar have a tank

[pulsar cairn]

oooh cool

[floral herald]

And some pretty basic guns as well

[bright dove]

Yeah, there's plenty of guns around in AoS.

[tardy vault]

Cities is based on like 1500s-1600s tech

[bright dove]

It's great.

[tardy vault]

Where you have cannons, muskets, but still also have guys with longswords

[bright dove]

Skaven are just operating off of WWI tech in comparison.

And bio-engineering.

[tardy vault]

WWI tech built by a mad scientist that specifically hates the person operating it

[bright dove]

And force fields, of course.

[floral herald]

They're kinda all over the place - the ones I linked look pretty inspired by like 14th century handgonnes

[jagged dawn]

Look you can pull off some crazy things technologically if you have little regard for safety

[tardy vault]

Skaven have two modes: actual horror movie and slapstick humor

[bright dove]

Skaven are smart enough to build up generational knowledge, and go through generations fast. 😛

[floral herald]

But they also have some much fancier stuff

[tardy vault]

And Skaven players are wouldn't have it any other way

[jagged dawn]

And the Skaven are not accountable to OSHA

[bright dove]

Like Gyrocoptors and bombers!

[tardy vault]

Magical Cancer Rocks does wonderful stuff!

[jagged dawn]

Dammit now we have a joke in our head from a TWWh3 video of “Setra does not serve the IRS”

[bright dove]

The Seraphon have a thing made out of stone that summons snakes from pocket dimensions.

It's one of my favorite weapons tbh.

[solemn gull]

Rpg about legacy play of skaven inventors

Where your last rat exploded your new one steps in

[bright dove]

Repurpose Paranoia, understood

[jagged dawn]

Funnily enough we’ve had the periodical urge to kitbash/commission a Skaven GSC army

It feels appropriate

[bright dove]

Entirely fair!

But yeah, I dig AoS. It's real neat.

[pulsar cairn]

i'll say

a building based game with skaven could be fun

[past sphinx]

god i need to play paranoia again

Friend computer did well they did a lot of things wrong but they had a good heart

[thin ibex]

I know I'm slow but real happy to be able to look at this guy fully put together

[jaunty dawn]

hell ye!

[thin ibex]

I realized if I magnetized everything I literally couldn't hold on to anything

So I glued the secondaries in

[solemn gull]

What if paranoia but you are a bunch of tech-serfs and general mechanicus nerds working for a very very eccentric magos

[pulsar holly]

And the corsairs took that personally

[pulsar holly]

I love that the Tau unintentionally caused the birth of a new warp deity…and that deity just wants to help and keep them alive. Even if a fair number of the Tau are horrified that this deity exists now

[turbid sonnet]

which tau suit is this it looks fucking cool

as a tau fan i really dont know shit about the tau's warfare

[rocky shale]

Ghostkeel

[mental birch]

ghosty boy

the most annoying suit in the game

[turbid sonnet]

what faction do most people hate fighting against? or does that vary too wildly based on the faction you're playing to be easily canvassed

[upper bluff]

I hate gray knights. Only because of their librarian with the vortex of doom

Like it's the swingiest unit it 10th

[turbid sonnet]

what's it do

[bold halo]

usually whatever faction had some busted shit slip through most recently

can't imagine people were big fans of seeing eldar across the table early 10th ed, the skew was real

[upper bluff]

roll a d6 on a 1 they take a d6 mortal wounds, on a 2-5 they deal 2d3 mortal wounds to the target, 6 they deal 2d6

[turbid sonnet]

oh dear

[thin ibex]

Self indulgent but I've finally finally finally built them all

[plucky token]

[rocky shale]

I play Aeldari so anyone with tons of deep strike and teleporty stuff that invalidates movement fuckery

[thin ibex]

I think my most hated is probably nids cause the person I played against most often played them and was much much more experienced

Also they kept catapulting gaunts or stealers with an advance + charge into my lines back in 8th

Which was rough

[thin ibex]

I misplaced my crisis guns

Damm me

I should have glued

To save my forgetful ass

[pastel rampart]

https://fixupx.com/Aqueltipo21102/status/1836234815789765022

[finite compass]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMV_H3Q8ubQ

[pastel rampart]

https://x.com/rnrqkq123/status/1836481635149332811?t=4xu2aFNntymeoi2HzE1bBA&s=19

Octosoup 🐙 ( COMMS CLOSED! ) (@rnrqkq123) on X

Guardsman officer & Commissar

Commission work 🐙

Twitter · Sep 18, 2024, 7:05 PM

[mental birch]

me or folks in general

[thin ibex]

list concept for tonight?

[floral herald]

This is an old beef but Imperial Guard - at the time (5th edition) they just had unusually good tools for dealing with my army and fighting them was always an uphill battle

[turbid sonnet]

which army do you play

[turbid sonnet]

either or

[floral herald]

At the time orks, but I play CSM now

[thin ibex]

I remember in 8th I did flabbergast my nid opponent by one rounding their winged prime using the shokk attack gun on the mek

Back when all its stats were rolled

[mental birch]

currently it's any army that overloads on one threat profile that's garbage into my anti infantry

usually

tonk spam

[wild fog]

The classic armies everyone hates at a given time tend to be Tau, Aeldari. I've also seen Custodes despised among a certain casual crowd

More broadly any skew list in a casual setting just because nobody signed up to play rock paper scissors in a friendly game

[past sphinx]

ive never met someone who hated tau that knew how to play the gma

game

their the perfect pretzel stomp army

[thin ibex]

I see people with deep hate for tau even now, when we haven't had a cheapo meta carrying us despite being relatively mediocre for years

[past sphinx]

memes are the dna of the soul as a wise man once said

ideas carried on through digital culture

[bright dove]

Oh, my hatred is simple as a former khornate main.

[thin ibex]

Stodes I can see being a wall for some, if the dice don't go your way they feel impossible

[bright dove]

FIGHT ME IN MELEE YOU COWARDS

There we go, my entire hatred for Tau.

[thin ibex]

Ironically a buddy of mine is WE and we want to face off some day. I suspect he has the advantage tbh

[past sphinx]

khorne also counts as not knowing how the play the game

[thin ibex]

With angron

[past sphinx]

(as a follower of the 8 fold path)

[bright dove]

I know how to play the game. It's just more satisfying to go Unga Bunga with chainaxes.

[past sphinx]

precisely

in my heart i know strategy, planning and tactics and then i see the Great uncleanone get put ont he other side of the table and boom

[thin ibex]

I think knights are a common gripe but not hate, in casual scenes; cause even when you're just trying to have fun as a knights player, any list you make is a Stat check

[past sphinx]

brain defaults

[past sphinx]

nothing feels worse than rocking up with a couple armigers and just wrecking house because someone didnt understand that their your armies fodder and their armies top tier vehicle

i do really want a knight despoiler tho, i think they would pop with a grimy white paintjob

[thin ibex]

I realize now that you weren't responding to me, but I felt guard tank spam was too easy, so sm armor list

[wild fog]

I can see hating Tau in 3rd and 4th when jump shoot jump could mean they could play around terrain in a way that was very hard for armies to counterplay.

Much like Eldar--alpha strikes they've been paying for it in community sentiment ever since

[past sphinx]

Eldar have had yheir phases of being considered straight up cheating

[thin ibex]

I usually attribute tau hate to the abomination that is triptide and like 40 shield Drone

[past sphinx]

8th edition eldar flyers woof

[wild fog]

And the era of Tau indirect spam was unpleasant

[past sphinx]

Tritide meta sucked and always will

Knights with worse models

[thin ibex]

Triptide was was also criminal in being resoundingly fun sucking

[wild fog]

I mean Eldar were cracked early on in 10th with fate dice

[past sphinx]

The Yvrahra and Rvrahva fucks though

[thin ibex]

I want one still

Though they are dead and gone

Oh, votann, they still get hate despite never even being able to have their true op moment in the sun

Since they got pre-emptively nerfed

[wild fog]

To be fair, the average skill level of a warhammer player is lower than you'd think (this is not a diss)

So encountering anything that plays outside a "normal" game vexes players

[thin ibex]

It's why I thin a Detachment like anvil siege force skews way way better in casuals

[past sphinx]

Votann get the bat for being currently boring to look at and play against

[thin ibex]

Because shooting castle with +1 to wound go brr

[past sphinx]

With their checks notes 10ish kits?

9?

[thin ibex]

Personally I think they have a cool vibe

[wild fog]

I am still mad about the Votann

[thin ibex]

Just need more models

[wild fog]

Great vibe, I love the lore they bring to the table

Going on a year now and barely anything of substance

[past sphinx]

They got some good vibes and the cthonic boys with the tools-cum-weapons are top tier

And the mole mortar

[mental birch]

It's always triptide meta

[past sphinx]

Thunderkin fuck to

[thin ibex]

But yeah people still hate on them like vestigial from the hullabaloo about their pre release OP level

[wild fog]

Which existed exclusively in tabletop Sim games for like two weeks lol

[mental birch]

I'm only kinda joking somehow triptide has snuck into every edition as a meta tau list

[thin ibex]

Like knee jerk "I saw someone say they were op online one time a year ago and now I think that they are even now"

[mental birch]

Even nownin it's weaker form

[wild fog]

I should tabletop Sim to get more games of 10th ed in

[thin ibex]

Triptide now is like, not mandatory now

[mental birch]

Its still scary good

[thin ibex]

Though honestly I never would have built that way even back then

[mental birch]

As a mid board bullying tool

[thin ibex]

I might get one riptide in my army later

Cause I need a tank

Who can actually weather some fire

Hammerhead is many things, but tough isn't one

[mental birch]

It can't stand up to tanks in a face to face duel

[thin ibex]

Hammerhead is my next buy

Because it's iconic

And that gun is scary at all times

[wild fog]

Still a good looking tank despite being a pretty old model!

[mental birch]

The riptide I mean

The guns are more elite bullying ghns

[thin ibex]

I like to narratively imagine the broadside pilot and the Hammerhead pilot place wagers on who gets the most armor kills

Oh I know

I have railguns to punch tanks, when I get a rip it'll be to be a mid board asshole who can actually take a punch

So that I don't get steamed by aggro melee blobs

I wanna get kroot rampagers too

[cosmic tulip]

Hell yeah

[thin ibex]

And pirahna (cause they look neat, and I like to imagine them flying through the hive on patrol)

I'm also a weirdo who wants to get a firesight marksman

Despite it not being good at all

[mild glen]

Are you playing my list, Storm?

[turbid sonnet]

what chapter(s) do you have

[mild glen]

😜

[floral herald]

I have really mutt-y Black Legion

[thin ibex]

xD

[turbid sonnet]

mutt as in dog or mutt as in cobbled together from other model sets

dog marines…

nvm that exists it’s called space wolves

[jagged dawn]

Wait what?

That’s one hell of a lore reveal

[pulsar holly]

This was because of the humans and other more Warp sensitive species they brought into the empire (mostly the humans). Her name is T'au'va

She's essentially the God of The Greater Good.

[jagged dawn]

Huh

Neat

We have not kept up on recent lore so this is news to us

Though we also dislike whole “t’au mind control” thing that popped up in recent editions

Feels dumb and an excuse to make it so everything in 40k is equally awful

[floral herald]

I think that's if anything more prominent in older editions

But its certainly not new

I think it reached its apex with Xenology but the guy making that supposition in Xenology was probably just wrong

[cosmic tulip]

Agreed

[jagged dawn]

Eh in older editions it was framed as an imperial theory and now it’s sort of confirmed(?)

[cosmic tulip]

Well.. kinda

[jagged dawn]

Different contexts

[cosmic tulip]

New Vespid lore says it’s more inconclusive

So maybe they’re backpedaling

[floral herald]

Its no more or less confirmed

[jagged dawn]

Like we said, have not caught up on recent lore so our knowledge of new things is fragmentary at best

[floral herald]

Though mildly disconfirmed by Vespids being adhd sickos without the communion helm in the new Kill Team

[cosmic tulip]

It is worth noting that uh

The things Phil Kelly mentioned in the Farsight books haven’t really appeared again.

In the new codexes

[jagged dawn]

Idk even if it’s not 100% confirmed it does sorta feel like an excuse to make it so 40k is constantly grimdark

Like we’re fine with grimdark, but it just gets tiring sometimes

[cosmic tulip]

Yeah

[jagged dawn]

Like, cool, all this does is mean the setting remains horrible because a bunch of people got upset that the T’au were being portrayed as nice

You don’t need mind control to find fault with the T’au, they literally have a caste system

[mental birch]

I prefer tau as oblivious imperialist

[jagged dawn]

That too

Like there’s already enough moral grey to them

[floral herald]

To reiterate - there is no additional confirmation or anything of tau mind control, if anything there's less

[jagged dawn]

We know

Just going on a little rant

[cosmic tulip]

You’ve vocalized my thoughts about Warhammer for years ngl

It’s cool and all but like

It doesn’t change

Aos has a huge moral spectrum and changes a ton

40k has pigeonholed itself

[jagged dawn]

Idk we like to see the good in 40k even if it only shows how deep the shadows are

The book shadowsword is forever in our minds because the only reason the plot starts is because the Imperium comes to collect the tithe and the planet physically can’t pay up because it’s lost most/all of it’s population to conscription into the guard. So the imperium does the only sensible thing and fucking invaded

Of course then chaos shows up because you can’t have any kind of nuance about who the villains are but still

[jagged dawn]

The setting forgot it started out as satire and now everything is unironic

[jagged dawn]

We’d like more rebellions that aren’t secretly chaos tbh, would be a nice change of pace

[granite basin]

yeah i was just looking up ideas for my primarily space marine w&g game and reading about servitors for NPC ideas creates some very uncomfortable parallels. truly horrific shit.

it has these moments where you can easily clue in and go Oh! these guys are fascists, they commit industrial scaled violence and recruit children into a religious death cult, they're like Evil evil. but most portrayals of the imperium or really any faction kinda softball just how fucking hideously awful they are

and like, part of the imperium's thing is also that it's a dysfunctional byzantine nightmare which hinders itself almsot as much as it relishes killing others, so it's not like everyone else Knows about this or is complicit in it. but Still. you can apply this to any number of guys in the setting

[cosmic tulip]

It’s also pole

Like

It loops around to “this is so horrible why is anyone complying at all? Why are people even living?”

There’s a certain point where your disbelief is stretched and it rubberbands back to “this is kinda lame.”

[granite basin]

i mean, it being awful becomes funny once it's absurd enough

unfortunately, modern 40k doesn't have the same kind of political edge that 1e did. and 1e is comparatively campy as shit, but you also flatly just wouldn't be able to make anything with such blatant political commentary in the setting anymore, bc it's kinda come down to "everything sucks, so i guess it's for the best, oh well"

[floral herald]

I think there’s some moments where the edge shines through for 40K still

Like the new arbites models having bodycams lends them a weirdly modern update and touch in a good way

[cosmic tulip]

Why wouldn’t you?

[granite basin]

bc 1e's specific brand of commentary was... ridiculous. on purpose.

there's holdovers from that time, and more stuff that gets introduced over time as cyan stated, but you aren't going to get the kind of shameless translation of real world names and strife into the setting without raising some hackles.

[floral herald]

I’m going to sleep for real but my short form thesis on 40K is that the historical moment it is satirizing (Thatcherite Britain) has passed and the setting is left with a high octane aesthetic and is sort of adrift and uncertain of what to do with it besides make money

[granite basin]

oh no yeah that's p much where i'm at w it too

like, the setting decided to focus on the byzantine theofascists as the POV faction (granted, they Are humans) and so you walk the line btwn using the setting for its actual satire and giving your poster boys more material to make them cool and interesting. the latter is usually preferred

[floral herald]

I think the setting has evolved but feels less pertinent in modernity - the 1e space marine carries a paramilitary’s submachine gun and terrorizes their own people - the 10e space marine has an operator’s rifle and terrorizes the outsiders to the imperial core

There’s still something there as a criticism of imperial violence but it’s more confused and less pointed

Anyway 😪

[granite basin]

not a fan of how it often becomes Fascism is Necessary, Actually in the text but that's kinda just the result of what happens with a property like 40k, which exists in a variety of contexts but is above all a brand made to sell hobby figures, so you want the hobby figures to be cool

[granite basin]

also i'm specifically referencing the goofy shit like Ghazghkull's full name which almost never gets said bc it's Very on the nose

bc Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka is a mouthful, sure, but also any englishman with even a whiff of reading comprehension can figure out very quickly what that's meant to reference

OG 40k is a product of specifically the mid-late 80s, borne of spite and archetypal english cynicism

it just kinda got serious and decided to flesh out its universe in a way where the overtly silly shit (where much of the specifically 80s satire resided) got sanded down, papered over or sidelined

[upper canopy]

I mean they did very recently make a very pointed covid bit

[granite basin]

oh? inch resting

where in-

[upper canopy]

It was a recent Tyranid bit

where basically they did Covid but it was the Ecclesiarchy denying Tyranids were real even during an active invasion

[granite basin]

that does track, that's p funny

[brittle salmon]

Thought for the day: Necrons have among the best Black Library novels and that's great

[arctic lynx]

Poor Tau, they have one good full novel, and the rest is Phil Kelly.

[brittle salmon]

Yeah that is pretty tragic

Meanwhile: Infinite and the Divine + Twice-Dead King

Triumphant novels

[pine matrix]

Dark Eldar have got some good stuff too recently, I still need to read the Lilith and More Dakka novels

[brittle salmon]

Ooh

Might need to look into those

[pine matrix]

Plus there was a dark eldar trilogy as part of the Path of the Eldar series

[arctic lynx]

GW hands the most generic ass names for some of the best books out there.
See Fire Caste and Genestealer Cults by Peter Fehervari.

Neither of which are entirely about what's on the title.

[tardy vault]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/09/19/start-organising-your-skaven-collection-with-this-free-points-download/

Skaven Points are out

[jaunty dawn]

neat

[floral herald]

It’s worth noting that Andy Chambers has given the origin of that name - he LARPed previously and knew some of Tolkien’s black speech of Mordor. Ghazkhull is named “Metal Skull Big Orc Leader” in it, though I think he noted it in the interview as pretty cool that people interpreted it the way they did

So it may have been a nod at the time just not a primary cause

[jaunty dawn]

also my hot (honestly, cold) take is that 40k and frankly, that entire scene, was just never good at satire

it was just edgy comic writers

[thin ibex]

I feel as though 40k was never a like... shining example of subtlety and nuanced writing. It generally came off to me as like a "3 dudes riffing off of each other in a garage with OG punk music blaring in the background while reading 2000AD"

And like expanding from that as a foundation

[south axle]

Do we know how many regiements you can have in one AoS army?

[jaunty dawn]

uh like 5 I think

yeah 5

only one regiment of renown though (ally)

[ebon forge]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7maYQnXHk3E (2 years ago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvEwz6XflTY (1 year ago)

It's interesting how how the Iron Hands kinda evolved, from 'the weak should die' to 'ok let's recover our humanity without losing who we are'

[pulsar cairn]

Oh did they now?

[ebon forge]

The new Chapter Master Kardan Stronos really took the Iron Hands in a direction I am liking a lot

[thin ibex]

"Guys, maybe Ferrus wasn't about the whole the flesh is weak thing"

[ebon forge]

Yeah it's a really interesting evolution for the Chapter

So now is becoming more "Let's use all the logic we can but please don't be the Iron Warriors"

[thin ibex]

I kinda think they should probably stay massive assholes tbh

despite the ideological shift internally

[ebon forge]

But for that
We need a new Iron Hands novel...

[turbid sonnet]

i hate the iron hands for one reason

[pulsar cairn]

they could still be assholes

[turbid sonnet]

their primarch was named Iron Hand (ferrus manus)

how much of a narcisisstic jackass do you have to be to name your chapter your own name

[pulsar cairn]

uuhh

[turbid sonnet]

maybe that;s why he got his head taken off

[pulsar cairn]

it was the emperor who named them

which is still weird

[turbid sonnet]

well then i blame the emperor for being a bad dad

[pulsar cairn]

he's a very bad dad yes

[ebon forge]

With their flagship, Fist of Iron?

[turbid sonnet]

is it actually claled that

[ebon forge]

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Fist_of_Iron :3

[turbid sonnet]

iron hands are the most mid original chapter im sorry

and this is coming from me, the robot/cyborg/transhumanist lover

[ebon forge]

It is the closest Ad Mech Marine chapter you get, sorry not sorry

[turbid sonnet]

i know

this is why i just like admech

[thin ibex]

iron hands were the first chapter that interested me in 40k

i moved on to space wolves and they became my first army ever

and space wolves and naming are even sillier

[pulsar cairn]

ultra marines also like naming everything after themselves

[thin ibex]

everything is named wolf something

[turbid sonnet]

my favorite original chapter is alpha legion because i don't fully consider them to be chaos space marines and you can't convince me otherwise

oh space wolves have dumb named shit too but i blame that on the alcohol

[ebon forge]

I can't take the Space Wolves serious because of that
and they fucking HOWL

THEY LITERALLY GO AWOO

[turbid sonnet]

or the poison masquerading as alcohol

[pulsar cairn]

awooooo

i like space wolves

[turbid sonnet]

i do too but man they need a range update a lot of their stuff looks old and chunky

i hope russ comes back from the warp eventually

[pulsar cairn]

alcohol is a poison

[ebon forge]

When I was playing Rogue Trader and Ulfar literally went awoo when an ally went down I just had to stop
And think about what happened

[thin ibex]

To be fair, have you ever been physically in the presence of a bunch of feral howling athletes or whatever? It can be pretty intimidating

[pulsar cairn]

like, i'm pretty sure it's classified as a poison i could be wrong tho

[turbid sonnet]

i hope every primarch who is currently up in the air about their status turns out to be alive and come back and then they make things worse

[ebon forge]

Also do tell, what made you think the Iron Hands were so dope?

[thin ibex]

Nothing too deep, I just was down for the cyborg parts and vehicle/dread focus

[pulsar cairn]

cyborgs are pretty cool

[thin ibex]

very surface level

[turbid sonnet]

i think the only primarchs who are stable, good, helpful dudes are guilliman (and he's stuck up) and vulkan

[thin ibex]

"Those guys look sick"

[turbid sonnet]

vulkan is perfect

he has never done anything wrong

[pulsar cairn]

about that....

[turbid sonnet]

Don't do this to me

[pulsar cairn]

the aeldari have something to say about that

[turbid sonnet]

oh yeah i forgot about that whole bit

was vulkan still around for that because he fucked off after the horus heresy or was that pre-heresy

[pulsar cairn]

i'm talking about the time where.... ya know

he went berserk on an aeldari child .w.

[turbid sonnet]

this i am not aware of

i do know the salamanders have fireblasted the eldar a lot though

why couldn't they let just one of the primarchs be a stand up guy

(i mean yes i know why but still)

(cmon now. just one)

[thin ibex]

oh what i was gonna say earlier; Space Wolves have Wolf Lord, Wolf Priest, Wulfen, Thunderwolf, Herald Deathwolf, Long Fangs, Hounds of Morkai, Wolf Scouts... I think there's more

[turbid sonnet]

there's definitely more

[ebon forge]

On his defence, Kurze forced him and he regrets that immensely

[turbid sonnet]

oh it was kurze's fault?

[ebon forge]

Kurze is such an hypocrite asshole

[pulsar cairn]

he does regret it yes

[turbid sonnet]

kurze is also dead as fuck

thank god

[ebon forge]

Yeah, basically said "So is better yo uto do that .... Because the Night Lords are coming :)"

[thin ibex]

P sure Vulkan still like... burned worlds at big E's order back during the crusade

[turbid sonnet]

everyone breathed a sigh of relief when that happened across the galaxy

kurze was a generational asshole

[ebon forge]

Even after reading the Nightlord novel I just-
Can't with the Nightlords
Bunch of asshole

[thin ibex]

i kinda like that about the nightlords in the setting; the most unrepentant assholes even before the fall to chaos

[ebon forge]

"Preysight" activates targetting fuck off

[turbid sonnet]

yeah

nightlords were really bad even before the heresy

they are just the worst

[ebon forge]

yeah

[thin ibex]

and they knew it, "What the fuck did you expect, we're all fucking murderers and r*pists, of course we're going to do terrible heinous shit"

[turbid sonnet]

alpha legion are my favorite loyalist chapter tho even more than shit like raven guard and dark angels

(YOU CANNOT CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE)

(THEY ARE SECRET GOOD GUYS)

well

"good guys"

imperium is not the "good guys" but you know what i mea

[thin ibex]

i feel like alpha legion shot themselves in the foot with hte layers of secrecy

[jaunty dawn]

iron hands rock because they're all sad and mad about it and also they have cool chapter organisation

[pulsar cairn]

for sure

[jaunty dawn]

also they keep getting tricked a lot

[thin ibex]

and now you have alpha cells who secretly work for good, straight up terrible guys, guys pretending to be good for bad, and everything in between

[jaunty dawn]

like they tricked themselves into thinking a robot with one of manus' arms was the primarch returned and also the admech tricked them by rewriting their bible

[pulsar cairn]

i'm pretty sure you have many pockets of the Alpha legion who think they are loyalist and other who think they are traitors

[turbid sonnet]

i hate rogal dorn for many reasons but most of all because he cut off alpharius's head when he was trying to tell him something very clearly important

rogal dorn was not very smart

[thin ibex]

to be fair wasnt that like... during a straight up battle? Hesitance gets you killed

and "please wait i have something important to say" is classic ploy to stab a dude

[turbid sonnet]

this is true

i will still hold it against dorn

[jaunty dawn]

famously trustworthy primarch of the backstabber legion

[ebon forge]

In the latest book is shown they are kinda lost atm and without a head to follow

[turbid sonnet]

i will especially hold it against dorn if he ever comes back somehow

[pulsar cairn]

i really like the Alpha legion

[thin ibex]

oh do yall think the black library humble bundle is a good deal?

[turbid sonnet]

alpha legion are my favorites

[ebon forge]

Yeah I really like how they have the organization on clans and they switch up soldiers do cover certain weakness during operations

[thin ibex]

my favorite csm legions are Alpha, WE, Night Lords, Black Legion (for different reasons each)

[pulsar cairn]

i like Alpha legion and Thousand sons

[turbid sonnet]

world eaters are another favorite just because i like khorne

[thin ibex]

Night Lords because they're just like... the most asshole evil guys and chaos just encouraged them

[pulsar cairn]

they would be horrible even withou chaos lmao

like they were already

[turbid sonnet]

honestly i think i would like thousand sons the most but they actually curve around to making me so sad to where i can't like them as much as world eaters because i feel bad

[pulsar cairn]

they just changed targets

[thin ibex]

they see Drukhari and go "Bet."

[pulsar cairn]

also what's hilarious

they dont like demons and stuff

[turbid sonnet]

it's weird that they're considered part of "chaos undivided" because they aren't really

[pulsar cairn]

which also means chaos corruption isnt even much of a factor on their crazy stuff

[turbid sonnet]

they don't give a fuck about chaos

it's like the followers of bile

they've got their own brand of shittery going on

[pulsar cairn]

dont they have some very chaosy folks in their warbands tho?

[jaunty dawn]

I mean

[pulsar cairn]

jetpack guys?

[past sphinx]

their closer to pirates and renegades then chaos legionares but they absolutely bend to chaos

[turbid sonnet]

man. fabius bile. what a guy

[past sphinx]

love that shit

[jaunty dawn]

a significant amount of the night lords are worshipping raptor god

[pulsar cairn]

yeah that

what are they called again?

[jaunty dawn]

or have just become daemonkin themselves

raptors haha

[thin ibex]

i think night lords have the "I dont want to be anyone bitch, I don't follow chaos gods" and then immediately following a chaos entity because they convince themselves that its in service to themselves

"Haha im so clever and immune to chaos"

"not like those other chaos guys"

[bright dove]

The Thousand Sons. :p

[jaunty dawn]

the foot (aka the chumps of jetpack legion) are the ones going around talking about how cool and independent they are

[turbid sonnet]

fabius bile's conversation with slaanesh is so fucking funny to me

[pulsar cairn]

where's that mean of all the chaos undivided legions thinking that when looking at each other?

[bright dove]

His conversation with Trazyn is also great.

[thin ibex]

a lot of the chaos... joke, is like "Haha no longer am I under the unjust yoke of the false Emperor, I've thrown off my shackles!" and confidently locking more evil, shittier, and impossible to unlock shackles onto their wrists all on their own

[turbid sonnet]

HE TALKS TO TRAZYN?

[bright dove]

"Huh, neat that a primitive figured out how to do the body swapping thing!"

[thin ibex]

"Look at how free I am" am resoundingly not free

[jaunty dawn]

could a slave to darkness do THIS? [enacts the plans of chaos]

[thin ibex]

its also very grimdark irony/on theme

that they rebel to no longer be imperial slaves, only to become slaves to darkness

[turbid sonnet]

yeah

another good example of that being the gsc

[bright dove]

The only person who can say "I'm not a slave to the gods" is over in AoS

[turbid sonnet]

"we shall rise up against our imperial oppressors and open the door to harmony with the starchildren!"

gets eaten

[bright dove]

Good Ole Archaeon the Everchosen

There's a man who actually figured out how to play the Chaos Gods

[thin ibex]

doesn't belakor hate his guts for it

[bright dove]

Yes

[paper bluff]

Bile is one of the all time great character in 40k and I genuinely feel like I could talk to him and he would be willing to talk to me

[bright dove]

Trazyn also loves talking to people

[paper bluff]

Ahem
"SETTRA DOES NOT SERVE!"

[bright dove]

Hey, Settra just said no

Archaeon is their chosen champion they're starting to get worried about

Because he could just get on their level

[paper bluff]

Trayzn does it because it amuses him like a talking parrot I feel.

[bright dove]

No, there is another good thing. He gets cultural context

[paper bluff]

Bile would do it to remind him of his goals for humanity and to hear you out then convince you why his way is best

[thin ibex]

i feel like bile would talk but would also have absolutely no issue at all with murdering you off hand

[bright dove]

Man is an archaeologist first

[paper bluff]

This is also true

[thin ibex]

bile has effectively no empathy for normal people

[paper bluff]

Zealots i would more say

[thin ibex]

eh, i think he just doesn't really care about other people in general

zealots, normal people, whatever

[turbid sonnet]

bile is a fascinating character and i need to read his shit

[bright dove]

Trazyn gets moments of "You know what I miss? My kind being able to make art."

[thin ibex]

his heart and soul is in his work pretty much

[paper bluff]

I feel like Bile could meet ciaphus cain, cain would ask if he could leave, and there is a none zero chance Bile would let him

[thin ibex]

i think trazyn's propensity to engage with people has a bit of his like... core self peeking through the loss of his soul

[turbid sonnet]

didnt trazyn show up in one of the new animated warhammer thingies

or was it someone else

[paper bluff]

It was him

[turbid sonnet]

good

love trazyn

[paper bluff]

Hammer and bolter iirc

[bright dove]

Some Chaos Terminators tried to steal from his collection

[thin ibex]

trazyn effectively was replaying the events following, what was it, a dark eldar and chaos terminator chosen squad

and seeing how it plays out each time