Poll: Favorite Warhammer 40k faction?
- Thread starter Samtemdo8_v1legacy
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They want people to see the Imperium as THE heroes. Because their Humans, and we're supposed to like the Humans more, even if their close minded, fascistic and genocidal morons.erttheking said:
(um, wary to ask, but what have they done to the Tau? last codex I bought was their 2nd one, and they still seemed pretty nice)
That's not bad for a retcon, though makes it reminiscent of the Deathwing short story (REALLY hated when they retconned that to be 'one sqaud')Frankster said:
Yeah... more often than not in 2nd and 3rd the Eldar just allied with the Guard and manipulate them into fights when they met a mutual enemy in a sector. The whole butchers of worlds for no reason is kind of retarded. The Eldar saw the monkeigh as useful sledgehammers... not merely worthless. The Monkeigh are useful pawns that didn't need heedless antagonism for no reason.Windknight said:Eldar used to come off as kinda the world weary guardians of order. Seriously, a lot of the 2nd ed fluff can be read as:Hawki said:Eldar are gits - they're no better than the Imperium, they just lack the means to be as destructive. And the Dark Eldar are a race of sadists.
The Tau Empire have the whole 'holier than thou' thing going on, and are like the Imperium as well, only less blatant in their expansionistic tendencies. Oh, and the necrons also want to rule the galaxy...or something...I prefer old necron lore.
Eldar: Stupid humans, Don't do that! If you stick your dick in the obviously evil altar it will kill you and unleash HELL ON THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE!
Human: Make me, you pointy eared bastard. (cocks lasgun while trying to hump obviously evil altar)
Eldar: (sighs and cocks shuriken catapult)
Until they realised this made eldar more popular than the imperium and retconned into 'yeah, let's alter the course of events so the entire population of a human planet gets slaughtered to avoid us being slightly inconvenienced.'
And Tau may want an empire, but they at least want other races to be part of that empire, instead of wanting to kill everyone not them.
It's strongly implied that the Ethereals are mind controlling the rest of the Tau with pheremones.Windknight said:
Also, they chemically castrate non-Tau races that join them and treat them like crap. Think "child in a scottish textile mill" bad.
Going to have to vote for the home team. Specifically IG and mechanicus. That said, I still consider the orks the most likeable.
Elder are dicks, but I do like the design work on them. They've been consistently good since the 2nd gen Rogue Trader models. I think there's still a couple of warlocks on sale now.
Fuck Tau... Although I do prefer the earlier more benevolent and altruist version.
Necrons I would have preferred to be far more mysterious, rather than another all destroying mega threat that will annihilate all...YAWN...get in line with the rest of them.
Tyranids I like design wise. They really have got good over the years.
Squats. I do like. I have a few rare bearded ratlings in my IG army. I can sort of see why they went early on. They mainly ended up as tiny guardsmen and their MK2a Epic models that tried to make them look a bit different suffered from the mid 90's design and paint schemes. Also justifying their tech stagnation alongside the imperium's for 10,000 years adds another layer of mental gymnastics to the 40k universe setting.
Elder are dicks, but I do like the design work on them. They've been consistently good since the 2nd gen Rogue Trader models. I think there's still a couple of warlocks on sale now.
Fuck Tau... Although I do prefer the earlier more benevolent and altruist version.
Necrons I would have preferred to be far more mysterious, rather than another all destroying mega threat that will annihilate all...YAWN...get in line with the rest of them.
Tyranids I like design wise. They really have got good over the years.
Squats. I do like. I have a few rare bearded ratlings in my IG army. I can sort of see why they went early on. They mainly ended up as tiny guardsmen and their MK2a Epic models that tried to make them look a bit different suffered from the mid 90's design and paint schemes. Also justifying their tech stagnation alongside the imperium's for 10,000 years adds another layer of mental gymnastics to the 40k universe setting.
They gave them the 1984 treatment. They went from peacefully assimilating races to pulling them in by force, they started putting up reeducation camps, the Ethereals keep the general populace in the dark about the true nature of Chaos (Not even having the flimsy excuse the Emperor had about not wanting to feed Chaos, the existance of Chaos just happens to directly contradict the secular nature of the Tau Empire, so the Ethereals keep them under wraps for purely selfish reasons) they put a brain chip in one of their top commanders to make an A.I. copy of his brain and caused mental degeneration to him in the process, the Ethereals are implied to control the other Tau with pheromones, and there's been some hints that they sterilize some of the humans who join the Empire.Windknight said:
The weird thing is that they still come off as good guys compared to the crap the higher ups in the Imperium.
The one upside is that Commander Farsight has done a total 180. Before the Tau got the grimdark treatment, he was supposed to be the one who showed they weren't all goody goods. He hated how naive the Tau were and looked on aliens with scorn. Now, he despises the Ethereals because of A. He realized the true nature of Chaos B. they let a good chunk of his men die by holding back reinforcements and C. the aforementioned brain chipped commander was a friend of his. So he defected and took quite a few Tau planets with him, forming the Farsight Enclaves, and generally doing awesome stuff. Like using a giant sword called the Dawn Blade with his riptide suit to jump into melee against Daemons and coming out on top. And due to the nature of the blade, he gains the unlived years of everything he kills with it. And since he's killed a lot of Orks (Who are functionally immortal) and Daemons (who ARE immortal) he's essentially never going to die of natural causes. And the implication is that he would be horrified if he ever learned the truth about his sword.
In short, Games Workshop decided that if the Tau were taking the anime approach, they would need a Char Aznable. The guy fought a freaking Swarmlord to a standstill.
Agh! Sorry. This is my pet peeve. (I am in intellectual property law.)Hawki said:
Games Workshop never tried to copyright the word "Space Marine." They tried to trademark it. These are two related but very different things. It's kind of like...I dunno...hammers and screwdrivers. I'll put it in spoiler tags so I don't ruin anyone else's afternoon.
Copyright is an intellectual property right that automatically arises when someone creates an artistic work. It is essentially the idea that an artist deserves to control the distribution of art that they have produced - the "right to copy."
Trademarks, on the other hand, are brand names. Like Coca-Cola, or Sears. They come from the old practice of putting a mark of trade on your products so that consumers know its provenance and can guess as to its quality.
The big difference between copyrights and trademarks is a) trademarks are usually registered with a government authority, with the registration granting the rights, whereas copyright registration is an acknowledgement of the artist's rights that already exist, and b) you can lose the rights to a trademark for lack of use, whereas the only way you can lose copyright (other than through licensing or selling it) is through dying and having the work enter the public domain.
The other big thing that everyone misses is that trademarks are registered for specific types of goods and services. You can have two completely identical trademarks owned by two different people, and both are valid so long as they trade in different industries. That isn't the case with copyright.
So when Games Workshop comes out and says they want to trademark the term "Space Marine," what they mean is that they want exclusive use of the term Space Marine in respect of a certain defined category of goods and services, the same way Coca-Cola has exclusive use of the term Coca-Cola in respect of beverages. That doesn't stop other people from writing about marines in space, and doesn't assert ownership of the term "Space Marine." It only asserts control of that term when used to sell miniatures.
For comparison, it's kind of like if J.K. Rowling said she was trademarking the name "Harry Potter" for the purposes of literature and film, and everyone reacted as if she was trying to make it illegal to have the name "Harry Potter" or to write it down anywhere.
/rant
Trademarks, on the other hand, are brand names. Like Coca-Cola, or Sears. They come from the old practice of putting a mark of trade on your products so that consumers know its provenance and can guess as to its quality.
The big difference between copyrights and trademarks is a) trademarks are usually registered with a government authority, with the registration granting the rights, whereas copyright registration is an acknowledgement of the artist's rights that already exist, and b) you can lose the rights to a trademark for lack of use, whereas the only way you can lose copyright (other than through licensing or selling it) is through dying and having the work enter the public domain.
The other big thing that everyone misses is that trademarks are registered for specific types of goods and services. You can have two completely identical trademarks owned by two different people, and both are valid so long as they trade in different industries. That isn't the case with copyright.
So when Games Workshop comes out and says they want to trademark the term "Space Marine," what they mean is that they want exclusive use of the term Space Marine in respect of a certain defined category of goods and services, the same way Coca-Cola has exclusive use of the term Coca-Cola in respect of beverages. That doesn't stop other people from writing about marines in space, and doesn't assert ownership of the term "Space Marine." It only asserts control of that term when used to sell miniatures.
For comparison, it's kind of like if J.K. Rowling said she was trademarking the name "Harry Potter" for the purposes of literature and film, and everyone reacted as if she was trying to make it illegal to have the name "Harry Potter" or to write it down anywhere.
/rant
Anyway, about what you actually said:
Warhammer is derivative, but it's derivative in the "let's grab whatever the fuck we like from anywhere we like it and throw it in a blender" sense. The fact that you can quote like half-a-dozen inspirations for Warhammer is proof that it's something of a mongrel, conceptually speaking.
Starcraft, on the other hand, is Warhammer 40,000 with a few stylistic differences (replacing the human factions with rambunctious rednecks as opposed to dogmatic Catholic Space Nazis, a change I wholly approve of). It didn't start its life as a licensed game like Warcraft did; it just happened to be the next RTS that Blizzard worked on after finishing Warcraft II, and they clearly went straight back to the well, so to speak.
Next thing you know, we've got buff-ass space marines wearing impractical shoulderpads squabbling with a mystical elder race while an unstoppable all-devouring legion of hyper-evolving alien bug-dinosaurs looms ominously above them. I mean, Warcraft eventually developed into its own distinct thing, and I am all on board with that, but Starcraft kind of just went, "hey, let's lift 80-90% of this setting, and not add much besides a few Southern accents and Sarah Kerrigan."
Matt Ward, whose attitude towards writing the fluff for new codices was to up-sell them so hard that you'd think Grey Knights could cure cancer with their tears.Samtemdo8 said:
And a few other [https://1d4chan.org/images/4/47/Bloodcrons.jpg] things [https://1d4chan.org/images/thumb/b/bb/1304057080538.png/600px-1304057080538.png].
Windknight said:
I just wanted to add a bit to this, and to the tau retcon topic in general, whilst humans are indeed an easily relatable protagonist race, i'd say the heroes thing is a bit too far and to some degree the tau ain't unique in having been originally been presented as "too perfect" only to have had shades of grey and dark to flesh them out as time went by, which results in them feeling more like a realistic race with flaws rather then a perfect race who intuitively just knows the best solution/way for everything that has somehow eluded the rest of the galaxy.
Thing is if they really wanted to portray the imperium as the heroes, then why do they go into such detail about the imperium's failures and fuckups? Why do we get the depth we got from finding out that the unification of Terra wasn't this noble conquest, that not all human nations on Terra were techno barbarian states (that has been retconned as propaganda, some were actually quite decent societies)? That the Emperor wasn't this infaillible being that always knew better and made tons of mistakes on the way? That the great crusade didn't just liberate oppressed humans from the grip of tyrannical xenos overlords, but in fact squashed some perfectly fine xenos/human confederations and human empires which were simply horrified by the new imperium's xenophobic outlook? Why do books love to go into such detail on the Imperiums incompetence if we are meant to identify and love them as the heroes?
I don't see this so much as retconning, but as adding depth to the lore and making it more "realistic".
When 40k originally came out the Emperor and the humans were presented under the most noble light possible all things considered. The grimdark came from the humans fighting a losing battle and their slow grind against the forces of entropy and various things like the inquisition were presented as 100% justified and never wrong (ha!).
Like the tau later on, this all changed as their lore developped and their background got reinforced with a heavy dose of realpolitik, the flaws of the human side became super obvious and the discrepancies between their idealized portrayal and how their society actually functions became clearer.
It's the same for Eldar too, they got presented as more flawed as their lore developed, with farseers from different craftworlds having conflicting visions of the future (thus implying eldar ain't always right and in fact often misinterpret their readings) and different craftworlds having different philosophies with some like Alaitoc being the most rascist and a staunch defender of their exodite worlds+most active in wiping out human colonists before they can establish themselves whilst on the other side of the spectrum you have a random craftworld allowed to travel through the space near Terra for..reasons unknown but clearly that particular craftworld is very human friendly.
The tau when they were first introduced were very much a mary sue race. It's not just that they were "too nice" for the 40k setting, it's that they were super enlightened (more so then eldar), had the fastest tech progress all by themselves in just a short amount of time (cuz they so smart and advanced!), were mysteriously immune to all the bs that hardened all the other races, etc.
To give another example of how the Tau lore got retconned/changed for the better, take their ion and rail gun technology. That has now been retconned as them having acquired this from the Demiurg which has since formed the basis of a lot of their tech. So they went from being a super genius race that discovered all this fancy tech all by themselves in record time cos they are just that damned good, to their high tech being more the result of their trade dealings and treaties with other races, reinforcing the theme of how the Tau benefited from their open ended approach rather then they just being a race of enlightened geniuses who just knows better then anyone else.
Yet their open approach ain't perfect and started to have logical consequences, so they tried to make friends with the tyranids and got eaten. They trusted the Dark eldar and had a bunch of their people transformed into monsters+an entire worlds tau population kidnapped forever, omg the tau approach isn't super perfect after all!
Them chemically castrating human populations and treating others as cannon fodder also makes sense in context, besides that the Tau empire has a number of xenos races who utterly despise humans (and thus would influence policy a bit in this regard), the tau have fought a number of bitter wars with humans, and worlds with human populations tend to cause them trouble and be the most rebellious. So whilst the Tau propaganda on one side portrays the humans as content and happy with their place, privately the Tau work to supress humans and keep them under control however they can and limit their growth and influence.
Their previous lore could not work otherwise, how would the Tau as they were originally presented would deal with rebellious and riotous humans? Just convinced them of their superior ways after a little heart to heart talk?
It might look nice on paper but when you think about how hardcore fanatic humans are in this setting, it can only explain so much. How would the benevolent Tau deal with newly acquired planets whose population are full of fanatical humans? Just charm them all? No it just didn't make sense, something had to give.
So the 1984 stuff always had the potential to be there if you looked between the cracks of the original lore and starting imagining situations where their perfect portrayal would be challenged.
Eugh this rant wasn't well written or structured so apologies for that but hope the gist of what I'm trying to say is understandable enough. Basically whilst the Tau are often presented as the poster boy of how a faction got grimdarked unnecessarily, i'd argue that their original portrayal made no sense in context and was too idealized to be anything more then propaganda, just like how the original portrayals of the Imperium and the Eldar were. And I never see anyone bemoaning how Imperium and Eldar lore got fleshed out to be a lot darker then it used to be, but then that's probably because those changes happened in a subtle manner over a long period of time whereas for the Tau the changes in their portrayal was more sudden.
Ironically i'd argue it's the Commander Farsight retcons that are unneccesary and I much preferred him when he was the face of how the tau really were once you stripped away all the veneer rather then now being the one sane man in an insane world. He's become a bit of a Sue as a result, what are his flaws? That he has a super sword that gives him immortality (conveniently side stepping one of his races flaws) but oh if he was to find out about it, he would get really really sad?
Just my 2 cents to offer a different perspective here.
The Imperium, mostly because of the Imperial Guard.
You have an army of ordinary humans, wearing armor that does nothing to stop Eldar shurikens or Tyranid claws, and using a weapon that is basically a glorified flashlight. And yet...they hold their own. Ordinary humans facing down otherworldly horrors, terrifying bio-titans, and aliens with technology far beyond theirs...and they keep coming back for more.
That, and Ciaphas Cain is a badass, no matter what he might say about it.
You have an army of ordinary humans, wearing armor that does nothing to stop Eldar shurikens or Tyranid claws, and using a weapon that is basically a glorified flashlight. And yet...they hold their own. Ordinary humans facing down otherworldly horrors, terrifying bio-titans, and aliens with technology far beyond theirs...and they keep coming back for more.
That, and Ciaphas Cain is a badass, no matter what he might say about it.
As the good meme says, "The Emperor's Imperial Guard all come equipped with a t-shirt, a flashlight, and a wheelbarrow for their massive balls."SlumlordThanatos said:
I mean, facing down an ork's pretty darn easy when you're a post-human genetically engineered one-man army - it's quite another when you're just a dude, armed with the setting equivalent of a peashooter.
I'm still voting Orks, though, mostly because they have the best writing in 40K tied to them.
"Cyrene? 'ow am I s'posed ta work on dat burny chunck of soot? It ain't like I can hides in da lava! Mork knows, I ain't tryin' DAT trick again." [https://youtu.be/u0vDQWMJNbE?t=22s]
Tau but the farsight enclave. That shit is basically the magnificent 7(8 really) with commander farsight being the most badass tau in existence.
Few things:bastardofmelbourne said:
-StarCraft's influences come from 40K, Aliens/Predator, Starship Troopers, Star Wars, Bloodlines, Shattered Nations, and as of SC2, Firefly. Those are the major ones I can name off the top of my head - a cursory glance at the StarCraft setting in any capacity would tell you that 40K is an influence, not a template, besides tropes that 40K "lifted" just as liberally.
-So, by your examples, you mention "replacing the human factions with rednecks." Um...you do know that none of the five (or six if you're being technical) human governments of the setting have rednecks as a de facto culture right, that the rednecks angle is more based on the Fringe Worlds which the Confederacy and Dominion occupied? Really, the only similarity you can give the terrans with the Imperium is that they have power armor (which goes back as far as Starship Troopers, not to mention the aesthetics bear more resemblance to Aliens), that the Dominion is ruled by an emperor, that the UED/UPL has a 'pro-human' thing and that humans are nausent psychics and...that's it. 40K doesn't have a monopoly over any of those concepts.
-It's easier to draw analogoues between the zerg/tyranids and eldar/protoss, but even if tyranids came first, they're still lifting liberally from the likes of Alien/Starship Troopers, and the eldar are literally space elves (which Star Trek beat 40K to with the vulcans and romulans), right down to their physiology. Heck, the name "eldar" in of itself originates from Lord of the Rings in regards to the elves. Now, you can point out similarities between the two, but just as many differences, and that would be enough to fill a thread on its own.
-Also, the idea of Warcraft "did something" with its concepts...as opposed to...when it didn't? Now, Warcraft was going to be a Fantasy game at some point, that's historical fact. However, even if we go back to WC1, what actual concepts does it share with Fantasy Battle bar the presence of generic species? It has green orcs and green goblins, and even then the use of green colouration isn't owned by Fantasy Battle. Even in WC1, Azeroth (the kingdom) isn't based on any WFB kingdom in of itself. The orcs are from another world rather than the Dark Lands. Um...anything else? I suppose demons, but again, demons aren't owned by Games Workshop, the Chaos gods concept and the Burning Legion dynamic is very different from Chaos in terms of scope, goal, origin, and 'essence.' Now, I'd argue that Warcraft really emerged into its own by Warcraft III, but even in Warcraft II, you're really beyond any similarities with Fantasy Battle outside the presence of shared fantasy races, green orcs and goblins, and...seriously, that's about it.
But maybe I'm wrong. After all, a group of demons originating outside the world, who were defeated by the elves in ages past, return to the world to wreck havoc, forcing mortal races to unite, and the battle is only one at the last minute at great cost. Am I describing the Great War Against Chaos? Or Warcraft III?
And the answer is...neither. I'm describing Shannara.
-So, yes, I can't help but roll my eyes at the idea of these examples being "copies" of each other or "ripping" them off, especially when the similarities are more based on tropes/concepts than anything else.
To be fair, they don't get much choice in the matter, thanks to that guy in the spiffy black outfit and bolt pistol aimed at their heads if they retreat.SlumlordThanatos said:
Yikes, I hope they haven't made Sadowsun into Quess...erttheking said:
To be fair the pheromone thing has been around or hinted at since the very first codex how revered the Ethereals are, and the 2nd codex kinda implies there maybe some mind control going on with the vespid, but the tau were portrayed as respectful (though trying to wean the Kroot off thier 'bad habits').
Have they done anything more with the backstory hints that maybe the Ethereals were created by a third party as a way to 'Uplift' the tau?
I love me some Orks.
Purely because they're the most humorous faction, although a lot of the zanier stuff has disappeared over the years. I mean, they're basically an entire race of cockney football hooligans who can slap junk into the rough shape of a vehicle and make it run with the power of 'clap your hands if you believe'[footnote]Which also makes them a lot of fun to convert, since you can slap pretty much any crap on any other crap, and handwave any questions with 'because Orks'.[/footnote].
Then again, Slaaneshi Chaos Marines do also have their appeal...
Purely because they're the most humorous faction, although a lot of the zanier stuff has disappeared over the years. I mean, they're basically an entire race of cockney football hooligans who can slap junk into the rough shape of a vehicle and make it run with the power of 'clap your hands if you believe'[footnote]Which also makes them a lot of fun to convert, since you can slap pretty much any crap on any other crap, and handwave any questions with 'because Orks'.[/footnote].
Then again, Slaaneshi Chaos Marines do also have their appeal...
It's cocaine!
Eldar are fun... as are Sisters of Battle. Adding on to your other comment, I would say the Imperial Guard (mass infantry) were most fun to self-destroy ... (haven't played tabletop since 4th) So many times I tank/missile/mortar-nuked my own units by trying to tie up enemy units to deny them moving and controlling map quadrants...Halyah said:
You feel like giving a evil laugh when friendly fire and suicide by charging space marines becomes a winning strategy in trying to hold an objective and tying down enemy forces in the open. Las pistols and knives. Roll enough dice and have 3-to-1 advantage in numbers...
All my decent troops used to be various Necromunda models just so they'd stand out.
You have to *earn* that lasgun. Special weapons also. You must earn them. Survive mass slaughter and my self-inflicting barrages and I'll think about it. Apart from tanks, my most expensive unit choices were assassins