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Warhammer 40,000 |OT| In the Grim Darkness of the Community Forum There Is Only War

L

Leunam

Member
Templar fans aren't too happy, no, but they do still get many of the same options they once did, like the Emperor's Champion, Crusader Squads, their special characters, and unique traits in the form of Chapter Traits.
 
C

Cosmic Schwung

Member
They probably didn't feel they could diversify them enough to justify a stand-alone codex. All the elements of a templars army from the first codex are there in the new one so it's not as if they're losing anything in the transition.
 
S

Showaddy

Member
Yeah I bet they're not happy :p

There's quite a few fans who believe all the SM chapters should be under one book as well including BA, DA & Wolves. They all sell well enough though and GW love the £££ so it's not happening any time soon.
 
D

Deified Data

Banned
SillyEskimo said:
I know what you mean, but it really is a bit deeper than that too. The IG are treated as cannon fodder ala WW1 trench warfare or Russians during Stalingrad. Space Marines are like super versions of modern day special forces with a large dose of warrior monk mixed in. The Eldar's highly trained citizen army is comparable to modern Israel, right down to both sexes serving. Tau are like a combination of mecha and Star Trek with Communist overtones. The Dark Eldar are all basically Cenobites from Hellraiser. The mash ups that GW do are absurd and amazing at the same time. Somehow it all works though. They can and do tweek their lore (see Squats), but so much of their stuff is borrowed or lifted from actual history and there just are not any famous battles in history containing forces that were predominately women or had female warriors.
Click to expand...
Can someone explain Squats to me and why they're so controversial?
 
L

Leunam

Member
As I understand it they were basically Space Dwarfs that GW killed off with a Tyranid invasion. Not sure why they did, maybe they thought they were too 'silly' for the grimdark galaxy they were going for.

Someone please feel free to correct me.
 
K

Karakand

Member
Leunam said:
As I understand it they were basically Space Dwarfs that GW killed off with a Tyranid invasion. Not sure why they did, maybe they thought they were too 'silly' for the grimdark galaxy they were going for.

Someone please feel free to correct me.
Click to expand...

You have it more or less down.

The Demiurg (an associate / member of the Tau Empire) is their attempt to "do Space Dwarves justice."
 
S

Sneaky Gato

Member
Deified Data said:
Can someone explain Squats to me and why they're so controversial?
Click to expand...

From the various leaks and what people have said at cons they were simply never able to nail down the feel of how they should play be it mobile, static, gunline, or assault while doing justice to the concept of dwarves in space. Well that and that at the time they were trying to distance themselves from being a straight parody of Wahammer Fantasy so they figured they would drop one of the more obvious points and it was the problem race. The running joke about the fact that you can't talk about Squats is that while they still existed in canon they really don't want to talk about them. At first they wanted to just straight up delete them from the entire universe to the point where they went back and edited any material that mentioned them, like the Ian Watson series, and banned any and all questions about them at cons. They had never existed in canon. These days they are abit more lenient and the occasional reference sneaks through but any discussion is still banned. The Demiurge seem to be their new attempt at the concept though.
 
D

Dram

Member
The Squats are mentioned in the sixth edition rulebook, as a abhuman race recognized by the Imperium. So we'll probably just get small mentions of them from now on.
 
A

Azih

Member
I think the comedy with the squats comes from how heavyhandedly GW tried to delete them from existence.
 
S

SillyEskimo

Member
Squats were great IMO. The problem was they were just short Imperial Guard with a couple of unique units. They even shared a common weapon with the lasgun, but a few had bolters too. I don't really see how that was a great crime because Space Marine Chapters are similar but have different force organization and tactics and that seems just fine! They had Trike riders that were ripped off from motorcycle gangs, and exo armored dudes that were like little round Terminators. They were supposed to be the masters of tunnel fighting and close quarter warfare. They had some great vehicles in the epic version of 40k with the Land Train and other equally powerful machines. The lore was very LotR, with them disliking Eldar for abandoning them in a time of need and an intense hatred for Orks. The Book of Grudges was alive and well in 40k as well.

I think the army has lots of potential, but some changes have to be made. First, I would make them tough. Second, I would make them slow but powerful. Third, I would bring back Termite/Mole vehicles (reverse drop pods!) and give them the termite underground grenade weapons (think reverse mortars) as a unique weapon type. CC weapons would be drills, hammers, and other futuristic mining gear modified for war. They could pop up out of the ground and get their tiny, tough asses into CC straight away. I have lots of ideas really.

Does anyone remember IG Beastmen? Yeah, that was a thing too!
 
I

ixix

Exists in a perpetual state of Quantum Crotch Uncertainty.
Lord Fruity said:
2nd edition in general was insane. Grenades with dozen different effects, artillery firing shitload of randomly scattering templates, pimped up squads deep striking off the table, weapons jamming and exploding killing more of your own men then enemies (oh reaper autocannons, how I loved thee), rules upon rules everywhere, for everything. In retrospect, although it's probably nostalgia speaking, it was my favourite edition up to date.
Click to expand...

I love the 2nd edition ruleset, but it was really kind of ill-suited for a game of the scale that 40k ultimately adopted. It's why probably my favorite game ever produced by Games Workshop is Necromunda, which took the elaborate 2nd edition ruleset and applied it to a game where each side typically consisted of 5-15 models and you could actually work through a turn in relatively short order.

Lots of fond memories of 2nd edition, even if at the time I was playing it I tended to get ornery at how long every phase of every turn tended to take.

Deified Data said:
Can someone explain Squats to me and why they're so controversial?
Click to expand...

Back in 2004 Jervis Johnson, one of Games Workshop's designers, actually directly answered the question of why the Squats got turned into 'Nid food on a message board that can now only be viewed through the miracle of archive.org.

Here's what he said if you don't want to brave the design sensibilities of early-00's message boards:

Jervis Johnson said:
I know I shouldn't get drawn on this... but... can't... resist

Seriously, a couple of points just so you can have an informed debate based on the real reasons that Squats are no longer available. Be warned, it is going to be hard reading for people that like the Squat background.

First of all, Squats were *not* dropped because they were not selling well. There were then, and are now, plenty of other figure ranges that sell in the sort of % quantaties that the Squats pulled down, especially when you look across all of the ranges produced by GW rather than just those for 40K.

No, the reason that the Squats were dropped was because the creatives in the Studio (people like me, Rick, Andy C, Gav etc) felt that we had failed to do the Dwarf 'archetype' justice in its 40K incarnation. From the name of the race (Squats - what *were* we thinking?!?!) through to the short bikers motif, we had managed to turn what was a proud and noble race in Warhammer and the other literary forms where the archetype exists, into a joke race in 40K. We only fully realised what we had done when we were working on the 2nd edition of 40K. Try as we might, we just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the Squats. The mistake we made then (deeply regreted since) was to leave them in the background and the 'get you by' army list book that appeared. With hindsight, we should have dropped the Squats back then, and saved ourselves a lot of grief later on.

Anyway, the Squats made it into 2nd edition, and since we were doing army books for each of the races, we started to try and figure out what to do with them. Unfortunately we just couldn't figure out a way to update them and get them to work that we felt was good enough. The 'art' of working on an army as a designer is to find the thing that you think is cool and exciting about an army, and work it up into a strong theme. This 'muse' didn't strike any of us, and so, rather than bring out a second-rate product simply re-hashing the old background, we kept doing other army books instead, with stuff we did feel inspired by.

Now, while this was all going on for 40K, we were actually doing some rather good stuff for the Squats in Epic. On this scale there was a natural tendancy to focus on the big 'hand-made' war machines the Squat artisans produced, and this created an army with a feel that was very different to the biker hordes in 40K. However, this tended to reinforce the problems we saw in the Squat background rather than alleviate them, underlining what we *should* have done with the Squats in 40K.

In the end (and it took years to really get to the roots of the problem) this led to a realisation that we were going to have to drop the Squats in their 'Squat' form from the 40K background. There was little point having a major race that we weren't willing to make an army book for, and their inclusion in the background meant that people kept asking us when we'd do a Squat Codex. Instead we decided that we'd write the Squats out of the background by saying that their Homworlds had been devoured by a Tyranid Hivefleet. This would give us the option in the future to return to making a race based ont he Squat archetype for 40K. This race was given the name of Demiurg, and a certain amount of preliminary work was done to get a 'feel' for what the race would be like. At present the only hint of the Demiurg in 40K is the Demiurg spaceship for BFG. However, we do have this race 'in our back pocket' as a possible new race for 40K, or an interesting character model in Inquisitor, or whatever. So far the Demiurg have lost out to other projects, and it may be that their time never actually comes, as they will have to win through on their merits, not simply because we once made some Squat models in the past. At present, I have to say that it is more lilely that they *don't* make the cut than do, as there is a certain predudice these days to simply taking races from Warhammer and cross them over to 40K like we did in the early days, so it may be that the Squats/Demiurg end up remaining a footnote in the history of the 40K galaxy. Only time will tell...

The second point I'd like to make is about 'old moulds'. In the past, Mail Order in the UK and US used to be the place that we kept all of the retired moulds for Citadel Miniatures, and we used to offer a service where you could order any Citadel Mniature ever made from MO. However, there are now so many of these 'back catalogue' miniatures that it is simply impossible to keep all of the old moulds in Mail Order and offer this service. Instead, we pick and choose which back catalogue miniatures are kept available. At present we're still struggling to produce special catalogues for these ranges (in the US there is the 'Phone Book' catalogue with everything in it, while the UK has special 'collectors guides' that are themed round a race). Once we've ironed out the kinks in the way we deal with the range of collectors models we want to keep permenantly available, the plan is to offer up other parts of the back catalogue for limited periods of time. In effect this will divide the back catalogue into three parts: a range of classic models that are permenantly available, a range of classic models we dip into and bring out for a limited release, and a range of retired models that will no longer be sold either because we've decided that they are embarrassingly bad, or because we are no longer allowed to sell them due to licencing agreement changes. So far we're still slowly working on deciding which classic models we want to keep permenantly available, and its going to take several years to work through just those. The old Squat range is most likely to end up as retired models, I have to say, though there is a good chance that the Squat war engines they could simply into the limited release classic range. Once again, only time will tell...

I'll finish off by saying that whatever we decide to do 'officially', there is nothing stopping players with Squat armies from using them, either in Epic or 40k for that matter. There is no GW 'rule' against using old Citadel Miniatures, as long as you use them with exisiting army lists and in a way that won't cause confusion for other players. I recommend taking a positive stand by saying "Have you seen these cool old models? They're called the Squats and GW used to make them back in the late eighties/early nineties. I love 'em, so I count them as Imperial Guard and use them with the current rules..." Put like this I can't imagine that anyone would stop you from using your army.

Best regards,

Jervis Johnson
Head Fanatic
Click to expand...

It's doubtful they're ever going to answer the question again, so who knows how their thinking on the matter has changed, but that's the most recent direct statement on the subject I'm aware of.
 
S

SillyEskimo

Member
I found this cosplay that is pretty cool too.

warhammer-40000-%D1%84%D1%8D%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BC%D1%8B-imperium-wh-cosplay-853711.gif
 
S

Sneaky Gato

Member
The amount of detail people will put into their cosplay astounds me at times. Like the Demonettes who showed up topless to that German Con a few years ago. No one noticed till they were gone. Don't search if you are at work.
 
I

ixix

Exists in a perpetual state of Quantum Crotch Uncertainty.
Is that Space Marine doing a boltgun-and-powerfist rendition of the Buddy Christ pose?
 
N

NuclearSpy

Member
Sneaky Gato said:
The amount of detail people will put into their cosplay astounds me at times. Like the Demonettes who showed up topless to that German Con a few years ago. No one noticed till they were gone. Don't search if you are at work.
Click to expand...

You are totally not joking. The nipples are part of the artwork.
 
G

glaurung

Member
Professor Chaos said:
Is that approximately to scale? I never realised they were that big.
Click to expand...
Considering the quality and details, I would assume the guy who built this awesome piece of kit would make it match the proposed dimensions.

The environment where he is demoing it does not do it justice, needs some regular infantry standing next to it.
 
Q

questionmark

Member
Sneaky Gato said:
The amount of detail people will put into their cosplay astounds me at times. Like the Demonettes who showed up topless to that German Con a few years ago. No one noticed till they were gone. Don't search if you are at work.
Click to expand...

Searched as hard as I could, gonna need some help with this one.
 
M

m3k

Member
i just picked up flight of the einstein and fulgrim for 5 dollars each at a cheap book store, ive only read the first three heresy books so far so hopefully these are some of the better ones!
 
E

EndcatOmega

Unconfirmed Member
m3k said:
i just picked up flight of the einstein and fulgrim for 5 dollars each at a cheap book store, ive only read the first three heresy books so far so hopefully these are some of the better ones!
Click to expand...

I loved Fulgrim, and... well, a lot of other people like Flight!
 
J

Johnlenham

Member
Started playing DoW soulstorm last night! Playing as the orkz ofcourse!
Been lurking since the thread before this, reading everything and trying to make sense of it.
My uncle used to be massivley into the fantasy side, not sure if he ever did 40k. I wonder what he did with all his stuff..

No intrest atall in the actual game but everything about the fantasy and 40k is intresing.
 
V

Vilix

Unconfirmed Member
SillyEskimo said:
I found this cosplay that is pretty cool too.

warhammer-40000-%D1%84%D1%8D%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BC%D1%8B-imperium-wh-cosplay-853711.gif
Click to expand...

warhammer-40k-full-size-costume-wired-design.jpg


"Look Quentus. Do you see what I see?"

Indeed. Lunch.

FOR THE EMPEROR!!"


And for you Ork lovers out there...

NYCC10_Warhammer_Cosplay2_500.jpg


Kit comes with free middle aged woman. Sign up while supplies last.
 
T

Tacitus_

Member
Almost done with my Daemon Prince. Just gotta finish up the wings (because a Monstrous Flying Creature Psyker that destroys everything is just hilarious) and find that blasted plate to glue him to.
 
T

Tacitus_

Member
Yeah, it's the Warp fucking them up, not me!
Anyway, here's a bunch I did when I first started painting:
2B7lduo.jpg

AMWueDM.jpg

PM9jQqz.jpg


I'm really proud of the Possessed, while the regular CSM was one of my first models so it's kind of messy -- and I maaay need to change the Sorceror Lord. I'm not sure if having a twin linked bolter with a Force weapon is possible/useful use of points.
 
D

Deified Data

Banned
Got my squad of Dark Angels in the mail yesterday. They basically exist for the sole purpose of me practicing my paint work on them. Now I just need some paint and brushes, but I don't know where to start...
 
T

Tacitus_

Member
Enosh said:
I'll never get the hate for smurfs
I mean they are not my favorite, but I don't dislike them either
Click to expand...

Titus from the game Space Marine is cool, but too much SPIRITUAL LIEGE for my tastes in the fluff.

Then again, I much prefer the KILL MAIM BURN types of space marines.
 
K

Karakand

Member
Enosh said:
I'll never get the hate for smurfs
I mean they are not my favorite, but I don't dislike them either
Click to expand...

there are so many worse legions/chapters out there, including their successor chapters (looking at you doom eagles)

plus it's kinda cool that Macragge is the only planet other than Terra that's allowed to rule other planets, but in general people who like 40K probably don't like the idea of able administrators so...

and that reboot grill-a-man was invested with a lot of power (that he claimed himself lololol) and kind of gave it up without irreparably damaging the universe*, more like choremaster am I right

*depends on your view of the codex astartes I guess
 
J

Jinaar

Member
Reading about Ultra Marines during the Horus Heresy and their usage of the terms "Theoretical" and " Practical" gives me a giant Space Marine hard on. F the haters.
 
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