Warhammer 40,000

I'll delete the paints but leave the Primer for now (although, as I said I don't know if it fits the trope as I believe it came out before it was mentioned in the background - although that could count as an inversion).

In other news, next week's pre-orders are: The Shokkjump Dragsta and Kustom Boosta-blasta from the Speed Freek game released on their own; the Necromunda Ambot◊; Necromunda larger bases◊; Adeptus Titanicus upgrade sprues for the Warlords◊ and◊ Reavers◊; Adeptus Titanicus Transfers◊.

Edited by SebastianGray on Feb 25th 2019 at 6:03:59 PM

Man, I love the Dragsta. Awesome model, cool rules.

They are cool but of the new Ork vehicles my favourite is the Deffkilla Wartrike as it reminds me of the old 1st edition Nob Warbikes (that I can't seem to find a picture of).

Got my early subscriber issue of the March White Dwarf and from the quick skim through I have given it, there seems to be some interesting 40K stuff in it including: an article on creating maps for narrative campaigns using Vigilus as an example; an interview with James Swallow and the first part of a chronological reading order for the Horus Heresy series; a new 40k Tale of Four Warlords (Genestealer Cults, Black Legion, Orks, and Raven Guard); an article on Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Wrath & Glory; the second part of the Before the Storm short story from last month; and Index Imperialis: Assassins including updated background and rules (including 10 Stratagems) for Assassins.

I'll have to get that one, looks like...I wonder if an Imperial Agents codex is going to be released anytime soon.

Yeah, the Stratagem that allows Vindicare Assassins to shoot twice (although at a different target) could be useful. There is also a gallery of Assassin miniatures painted by the Studio team and a painting guide for Vindicares. The Featured Army of Knights is also quite impressive

Edited by SebastianGray on Feb 28th 2019 at 1:42:14 PM

Bunch of fun stuff there. The Eversor is a blender.

I just had a look at the YMMV page for 40K and it is a bit of a mess. Looking at the Ensemble Dark Horse section:

• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Adeptus Mechanicus, to a certain degree among the fanbase. Probably helped by their recently released codexes.
  • The Imperial Fists (and related Space Marines chapters) qualify. They have a much larger fanbase than the limited amount of fluff and overly generic nature should indicate. If they win, it is usually as part of a battle force consisting of multiple Space Marine chapters. If they are by themselves, they tend to lose more often that not. The defining characteristics are an increased emphasis on will power, pain being educational, and discipline. These are all defining characteristics of every single Space Marine anyways. They aren't one of the "never had anyone fall to Chaos" chapters, so they clearly do not have a will-power advantage in actual practice. Space Marines are already some of the most highly disciplined troops in the setting. Pain being educational is kind of meh when you consider most Space Marine candidates die during training. They don't lose enough to be The Woobie, they don't win enough to be Badass, and they are defined by being uniquely more generic than most Space Marine chapters. On the other hand they are excellent fighters of siege warfare, they were the only legion who were allowed to recruit from Terra, and they were one of the most important legions to the defense of Terra from Horus. Despite being Out of Focus they are the second most important chapter in the entire Imperium.
  • Thanks to some positive portrayals in various novels, and buffs to make them more viable on tabletop, the Imperial Guard have lately been enjoying extreme popularity. We can't imagine why.
  • Amongst the Imperial Guard, the Commissars, despite them in the game just being a unit that gives a small buff to statline and leadership, has a huge following to the point where it's almost mandatory for Imperial Guard novels to include at least one.
  • Khârn the Betrayer is the most popular named Chaos Space Marine character due to his unfailing ability to kill everything around him, his role as the protagonist of the excellent short story The Wrath of Khârn, and his starring in a series of comedic fanfics on 4chan that portray him as a pretty nice guy despite the Ax-Crazy. Thanks to his popularity, Khârn is set to have a book detailing one of his adventures.
  • For the first time ever since Matt Ward's relentless shilling reduced them to Scrappy status, some Ultramarine characters are this. Specifically, these characters are found in the Horus Heresy novels such as the Tetrarchs, whose main quality seems to be comically over-sized shields and badassery. The Sisters of Battle, after basically being written by Ward as mobile blood banks for his favored factions, are also seeing this treatment with the fans.
  • The Iron Warriors, despite not being the most prominent of the Chaos Legions, have a following for being much less Stupid Evil than the rest. The Thousand Sons are very popular amongst the Chaos Legions as well, mostly due to the sheer amount of undeserved shit they got during the Horus Hersey and their Primarch Magnus the Red being amongst the most sympathetic of the traitor Primarchs.
  • The daemon prince Doombreed has a surprisingly following for a character that's only referenced in the background.
  • Nemesor Zandrekh, an old timey honorable general too riddled with robo-Alzheimer's to fully appreciate what's happened to him, Vargard Obyron, his eternally loyal and long-suffering bodyguard, and Trazyn the Infinite, or "Trollzyn" as the fandom likes to call him. Even though the Newcrons catch lots of flack from some quarters, their characters remains rather popular.
  • The Black Templars due how they prove to be badass even among Space Marines. This popularity elevated them to full codex status during 4th edition and still retained their Chapter Tactics in 6th, an honor usually reserved for only First Founding Chapters (the Black Templars are a second founding of the Imperial Fists).
  • Tzeentch is probably the most popular of the Chaos Gods next to Khorne, despite receiving the least focus.
  • The Space Wolves standing against much of the Imperium's Kick the Dog against its own people helped earn them a sizeable following, prior to their 5th edition Codex where they were turned into a Tier Induced Scrappy because of how they were in a number of ways a better version of the vanilla marine codex. The Salamanders as well, for similar reasons; although they're relatively small-time compared to the other chapters, they have a very large fandom because they're pretty much the only Space Marines who will go out of their way to help and protect regular people. Shooting civilians is something they... frown upon.
  • There's a lot of people in the community who would like to see a codex for the Rak'gol, a relatively minor xenos race. Think the Reavers, except they're cyborg scorpion creatures... and they're even worse.
  • Malal is surprisingly popular despite apparently not existing in the current setting due to Games Workshop losing the rights to him.
  • The Adepta Sororitas, aka the Sisters of Battle, are extremely popular with some segments of the fanbase, with widely liked fluff and models, but have been completely sidelined by the company, with no physical codex or new models released since 2004, and 1/4th as many units as any other main codex. Their Ensemble Darkhorse status was actually enough to convince Games Workshop to finally start working on new models for them again in 2017, after they were inundated with demands for plastic Sisters in their first community survey.
  • The Salamanders went from a relatively unknown first founding chapters to one of the more popular ones due to recent fluff portraying them as champions of humanity; unlike other space marine chapters they are often found to defend the weak rather than parade their superiority over others. It helps that in 5th edition they received Vulkan He'Stan, who made Salamanders one of the more powerful Space Marine armies.
  • Thanks to the Badab War, Alot of Minor Chapters have recived followings. Such as the Carcharodons, Lamenters, Raptors, and Minotaurs
  • The Carcharodons as mentioned above, have little lore about them. Yet they seem to be a Very popular Chapter rivaling even the Black Templars for most popular Successor chapter.
  • The Dark Angels are fairly well-liked thanks to their nobility, aura of secrecy and unique "Repentance Warriors" gimmick. It helps that they're also one of the least ostentantious of all the Astartes and have something of a Memetic Badass reputation as spies and secret-keepers. Similarly, the Legion of the Damned are highly popular for being even more noble, badass, and mysterious than even the Dark Angels.
  • The Tyranids have the Swarmlord. The Swarmlord is an ancient, unique and incredibly powerful Hive Tyrant, made whenever the Hive Mind needs to come up with new tactics. It helps that the managed to take the Ultramarines down a peg, mostly through outwitting Marneus Calgar and beating him in a one-on-one fight.
  • Alessio Cortez, for being a major Badass Lore wise, and having a Cool looking model on the tabletop. Many Non-Crimson fists players have even converted his model for use for their own armies.
    • Perhaps not his official model◊, as quite a few people actually consider it to be one of Games Workshop's worst sculpts of all time. Pedro Kantor's model, on the other hand, is quite a popular starting point for custom Space Marine Captain conversions.
  • Out of all the unique Imperial Guard regiments, The Death Korps of Krieg are the most popular.
  • The Space Marine Chapter known as the Scythes of The Emperor, have had a sizeable fan base despite having most of their lore revolve around how they were devasted by the Tyranids. One reason for their fanbase is probably because of their nice looking color scheme. There is even a site dedicated to them.
  • Another popular Space Marine chapter is the Lamenters, a Blood Angels successor chapter who define themselves by the idea of self-sacrifice and defending the people of the Imperium, to the point that their chapter's motto is "For Those We Cherish." Being one of the most unquestionably heroic and selfless Space Marine chapters has won them a dedicated following, despite the very small amount of lore surrounding them. The Fact they also happen to be one of (if not) the the unluckiest factions in the setting, only adds to their popularity.
  • Among Chaos Renegade Warbands, The Sons of Malice remains one of the most notable and popular (though not on the levels of the Red Corsairs). This could be because they are the only offical army to be worshippers of Malal, who is also an Ensemble darkhorse.
  • The Men of Iron, the human-made A.I.s who Turned Against Their Masters and brought about the end of the Age of Technology some 16,000 years before the game's present, are quite popular among fans, for a faction who have only had a few brief mentions and appearances in older publications. The inclusion of a Man of Iron character (and model), UR-025, in the 2018 Gaiden Game Blackstone Fortress generated quite a bit of excitement among fans.

The trope is meant to be about a minor character (or faction in this case I suppose) being unexpectedly popular yet it list things like the Dark Angels & Space Wolves (a.k.a. 2 of the 'Big Four' Chapters who could be argued to be the 'main character' Chapters of the game, the Swarmlord (a.k.a. the defacto leader of the Tyranids) and Tzeentch. These are hardly minor characters.

Edited by SebastianGray on Feb 28th 2019 at 4:30:53 PM

Double post for the new Chaos stuff from Shadowspear.

Those Greater Possessed look awesome.

I'd pull the Ensemble Dark Horse entry to the discussion page for reworking, there's a lot of misuse there.

I've started a Discussion. I also notice that there is an Ensemble Dark Horse clean-up thread in the Long Term Projects forum and was wondering if I should post it there but it doesn't seem to get much traffic.

Couldn't hurt, it might spur some movement.

Cool. I've done so.

Another Shadowspear preview: The Vanguard

I really need to get on top of the 40K background material. While the lack of Status Quo Is God is cool and all, my slow reading speed and multiple other hobbies and real life stuff are making it increasingly difficult to keep up at times.

One of the most ridiculous parts of the setting, from an in-universe perspective, is how most chapters relied on Scouts in carapace armor for what should be a cornerstone of Astartes combat strategy-boots on the ground for recon, target acquisition, sabotage, assassination, and harrying enemy forces. Ya know, everything else expected of elite special forces besides surgical strikes + shock and awe. Sending your least experienced soldiers to handle all of that, with inferior equipment to boot, has always been a big WTF piece of fluff.

On the one hand, a big deal in the fluff is how the current level of Imperial technology cannot not adequately integrate thermal stealth into power armor, so vanguard forces needed to use carapace armor. On the other hand, that is still no excuse for using your least skilled and experienced of them for those crucial roles-especially considering the importance of their Geneseed. Taking your youngest, the ones who are guaranteed not to yet have mature Geneseed that can be harvested, then stranding the future of the chapter deep behind enemy lines with inferior armour and minimal support seems blinkered at best.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Mar 1st 2019 at 1:42:20 PM

So, basically, they're Reasonable Marines aside from the lack of heavy use of camouflage as they instead use it like a fashion accessory.

Edited by VutherA on Mar 1st 2019 at 1:51:05 PM

Also space marines are HUGE walking tanks and part of their thing is the fear their inspared on stuff, they are tough as hell and can endure a lot of stuff, gran part of marine power is the fear they create on the enemy.

Also for what I guess, for marines the aspirent use this as sort of training before they become proper marines.

I think this just means that Cato Sicarius' replacement for the 2nd Company is now very very dead after Nemedghast.

Basically, yeah.

Shadowspear is being shown off on War Com. I'm liking the Infiltrators, and I feel like they may actually be one of the most useful Primaris unit choices yet.

Not a big fan of the bulbous jump packs on the Suppressors, though I like the look of most of the rest of them (and their concept).

Sisters of Battle Bulletin 2: Beta rules feedback

The Exorcist has had random shots for years and, while it can be a little annoying (I never seem to roll over 2) it was always a feature of the weapon so it will be interesting what they come up with to replace it.

Random shots and random damage with no autohits is way too much variance, yeah.

Quick question but do the Stormcast from Warhammer: Age of Sigmar realy Expies of Space Marines? Here is the entry from the AoS character page:

• Expy:
  • Of the Adeptus Astartes, from Games Workshop's other significant IP, Warhammer 40,000: an Elite Army of engineered super-soldiers, personally designed by a godlike ruler to be his warriors to combat unfathomably terrifying Lovecraftian horrors that normal men would simply despair at; some Stormcast have crossbows that resemble bolters and the winged ones resemble the Blood Angels. Also, lightning hammers and thunder axes - "precursors" to lightning claws and thunder hammers. Design-wise, both are well-rounded armies with low model counts and sport heavy, all-enclosing armour with huge pauldrons which are easy to paint, making them good factions for people new to tabletop wargaming to start with.
  • The Hammers of Sigmar, the first Stormhost, who wear Blue and Gold, pride themselves on being the posterboys of the game and have little distinct personality, can be seen as the Ultramarines in the Mortal Realms. The Hallowed Knights, who wear silver and blue and are zealous about fighting Chaos, are the Grey Knights; the grim, brooding, black-clad Anvils of the Heldenhammer are the Dark Angels; while the Knights of the Aurora are considered to be the fastest Stormhost and specialise in rapid assault, are the equivalent of the White Scars.
  • In another sense, as fanatical, hammer-wielding warriors of Sigmar often commanding the power of golden light, it's easy to see them as next-generation Sigmarite Warrior-Priests. Ironically, the Warrior-Priests themselves were an influence on the development of the Adeptus Astartes as Warrior Monks.
  • As essentially anti-daemons, the Stormcast Eternals resemble also the Living Saints from Warhammer 40.000, not only in function, but also backstory of being ascended heroes, who can return multiple times after being slain, and are even somewhat similar in aesthetics, especially the winged ones. As anti-daemons, they also resemble the practically forgotten Angels/Law Daemons of Alluminas from Warhammer, or Viydagg.
  • As pointed out in Sigmar's article, the Stormcast Eternals also serve as basically Sigmar's Einherjar.
  • On a darker note, the Stormcast Eternals, in their Faceless Mooks look (especially the Lord-Relictors) resemble Necrons. Also like Necrons, Stormcast Eternals are changed by their resurrection/"reforging", returning as less than they were before it. Even their background is similar, as the souls of the dead placed in artificial bodies to serve again as warriors for their gods against the forces of Chaos.
  • Just to drive the point home further, Games Workshop have replaced "Bob the Space Marine", a statue in front of their head quarters, with a Stormcast Eternal. The new statue looks almost the same.

Now the following is the checklist from the expy clean-up thread:

• "Unambiguous": There is no doubt, there is no room for arguing that they aren't.
  • If a plausible or convincing argument can be made that they aren't an expy, they aren't.
  • If the reasons for saying they are one are not convincing, they also aren't.
  • A character is not an expy only sometimes but not other times. They either are, completely, or they aren't, completely.
• "Deliberate": Done with intent.
  • The resemblance is not accidental or coincidental. (For instance, being played by the same voice actor/actress is not sufficient to make an expy. Neither is a similar art style when they're both drawn by the same artist.)
  • Word of God helps a lot with this point, but if the other points are present strongly enough, Word of God is not absolutely required.
• "Copy": A duplicate, an item made in imitation of another one.
  • The expy came after the character they're an expy of. If they both were created at about the same time, it probably isn't an expy.
  • The older character is never the expy, even if the other, later character is better known.
  • Superficial traits (like a hairstyle, choice in clothing, preferred fighting method) are not sufficient to make an expy; the copy needs to also fill the same role in the work and serve the same purpose within the story.
  • Major traits or characteristics being very different between the two characters is enough to make a character not an expy (for instance, the original is a demure Girl Next Door, the proposed Expy is a Femme Fatale — not an expy)
• "Another": One other. Note the singular. It doesn't say "several". If the proposed expy combines traits, characteristics, or features of two or more other characters, they are not an expy of any of them.

Now they do fit a few of these but not all of them, which they have to be counted as Expies.

what do people think?

Absolutely, yes. It's very blatant.

Copies and or inspired by yes but are they Expies? That is a specific term with a specific meaning, not just copy.

EDIT: Here are the reasons I don't think they are Expies but some other trope:

1. They are also said to be Expies of the Einherjar and an expy cannot be and Expy of more than one thing.

2. Stormcast have Resurrective Immortality, Marines are mortal.

3. An interview with the head background writer in the latest White Dwarf says that Stormcast don't fall to Chaos like many marines do, instead they become more and more embodiments of Order.

4. Stormcast are created from heroes at the end of their life while Marines are chosen from the young who have potential and have a massive failure rate (I am not totally up to date with the Age of Sigmar background but I cannot think of any cases where the forging of a Stormcast failed)

Edited by SebastianGray on Mar 5th 2019 at 4:22:03 PM

Double post for awesome new Abaddon◊.