Warhammer 40K Lore Discussion

Eacaraxe

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Eh, I didn't mind them in 2nd ed, where they were just weird unknown raiders. The 3rd ed fluff, apart from totally rewriting the entire setting and making every other faction irrelevant wouldn't have been bad if it wasn't suddenly crowbarred in as something lots of people always knew about, but just didn't mention until now.
They just did the same as the 'nids, in that. Genestealers were something that just showed up in hulks, and cults were a weird oddity. Then all the sudden tomb worlds started waking up en masse, same as the hive fleets invading, and there was a huge galactic emergency. It really held the faction back to do it that way, especially as the stealers and stealer cults were heavily foreshadowed as more than they were whereas the necrons weren't.

The "niche" issue was far bigger, in my opinion. But, I concede that's subjective being I loved the "slow and implacable" niche, and subsequently Iyanden, Thousand Sons, and Death Guard were my favorite sub-armies. I really didn't like that, instead of fixing the glaring balance issues with those armies, they just introduced a new faction that filled the same niche, but were horrendously power crept to sell models. Giving them the equivalent to a 2+ BS, with S6, AP2, Assault 2, weapons with 24" range was laughable -- hell, Space Marines were only 3+ BS, and boltguns were only S4, AP3, RF2 (IIRC).

Ah, ok, I see what you mean. Though I'm seeing more nepotism and incompetence than anything else, I guess cause those are generic and easy, not having a go at any institution in particular.
I see it through the lens the British military remained aristocratic well into the 20th Century, being it was one of the last (if not the last) major Western power to abolish purchased and inherited commissions. The 40k Guard and Navy reflect that, and it's all but outright stated that's the root cause of most problems those militaries face.

Erm, it's not in the Imperial Guard codex for 2nded under commissars, they are just immune to psychology (p 20).

And the Codex Catachans (which said it could be used for other jungle-ish deathworlds) just had commissars having a 1 in 6 chance of not turning up to the battle. As an aside, Gav Thorpe's Annihilation Squad novel also mention Armageddon Ork Hunters (who are also jungle fighters) doing the same.
Commissars being immune to psychology was just for them. Not that it helped, any psychology effect that meant anything superseded immunity to psychology.

Check later in the book, in the army list proper; it should be a sidebar, since that was where GW used to put the variant and army-specific rules. The rule back then was if the unit failed a Fear or cohesion test, the player could sacrifice the Guard model closest to the Commissar to treat the Leadership test as if it had succeeded. It was either that, or the player could bypass the Fear or cohesion test by sacrificing the Guard model closest to the Commissar.

I remember that specifically, because it was problematic to use in-game. You either had to put the squad in jeopardy of an immediate second test because the sacrificed model would throw the unit out of cohesion, or put the whole squad at risk to template weapons and assault for the sake of preserving cohesion.

With the Catachans, I think you're probably right. The rule where the player could sacrifice the Commissar instead, I think, came out of 3rd.
 
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Thaluikhain

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They just did the same as the 'nids, in that. Genestealers were something that just showed up in hulks, and cults were a weird oddity. Then all the sudden tomb worlds started waking up en masse, same as the hive fleets invading, and there was a huge galactic emergency. It really held the faction back to do it that way, especially as the stealers and stealer cults were heavily foreshadowed as more than they were whereas the necrons weren't.
Ah, but the nids suddenly appeared without warning from beyond known space. The story of Hive Fleet Behemoth is about humanity finding out about something nobody had known about (though sorta retconned later).

The necrons had been sitting around for long before humanity had evolved, their tombs are everywhere, including on Mars. The eldar have been afraid of them for 60 million years. And nobody really mentioned them or did anything about them.

The "niche" issue was far bigger, in my opinion. But, I concede that's subjective being I loved the "slow and implacable" niche, and subsequently Iyanden, Thousand Sons, and Death Guard were my favorite sub-armies. I really didn't like that, instead of fixing the glaring balance issues with those armies, they just introduced a new faction that filled the same niche, but were horrendously power crept to sell models. Giving them the equivalent to a 2+ BS, with S6, AP2, Assault 2, weapons with 24" range was laughable -- hell, Space Marines were only 3+ BS, and boltguns were only S4, AP3, RF2 (IIRC).
There's that (the first Codex Necrons even said C'tan were intentionally scary but slow). And then there's the monolith. Didn't really care for Necrons in 3rd so I didn't pay much attention to them. OTOH, when the Necrons were first introduced in WD (with free metal necron model) for 2nd, with their entire 4 different types, two of them were fast and mobile (scarabs and destroyers).

Not to mention that both Iyanden and Death Guard are pretty undead already, and Thousand Sons specifically Egyptian themed undead.


I see it through the lens the British military remained aristocratic well into the 20th Century, being it was one of the last (if not the last) major Western power to abolish purchased and inherited commissions. The 40k Guard and Navy reflect that, and it's all but outright stated that's the root cause of most problems those militaries face.
Could be, but then the people from the right classes getting important jobs they aren't qualified for isn't restricted to that, I thought it was more general "jobs for the boys" stuff. As a random note, nowdays if you are a British Army officer and just qualified from Sandhurst you basically have a job interview where you try to get into the regiment you want. Some regiments will automatically accept you if your dad was an officer in it.

Check later in the book, in the army list proper; it should be a sidebar, since that was where GW used to put the variant and army-specific rules. The rule back then was if the unit failed a Fear or cohesion test, the player could sacrifice the Guard model closest to the Commissar to treat the Leadership test as if it had succeeded. It was either that, or the player could bypass the Fear or cohesion test by sacrificing the Guard model closest to the Commissar.

I remember that specifically, because it was problematic to use in-game. You either had to put the squad in jeopardy of an immediate second test because the sacrificed model would throw the unit out of cohesion, or put the whole squad at risk to template weapons and assault for the sake of preserving cohesion.
Checked the army lists and still can't find it, and I also seem to remember in WD saying that for 3rd ed that they made a point of putting it back in after leaving it out for 2nd. Though, minor point.
 

Ag3ma

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I see it through the lens the British military remained aristocratic well into the 20th Century, being it was one of the last (if not the last) major Western power to abolish purchased and inherited commissions.
Mm, not entirely. Commissions were ended around 1870, so even by the time of WWI the vast majority of officers from commission days were basically retired and gone. The Boer war is probably the last gasp of those guys.

Obviously, the legacy remained, though - the British military remained somewhat aristocratic in large part just because of sheer snobbery. The first man to rise from the ranks to field marshal was William Robertson, who even after proving his competence as CIGS (the head of the army) faced constant undermining from people who didn't think a man of his lowly background should have that a position that high. The lower classes were mostly kept out of high rank because the officer training colleges were hard to get into without the right (i.e. expensive) educations. The middle could make it - and by the time of WW2, there's a much higher prominence of the middle classes than aristocrats in the military leadership.

I would argue that Germany had a much higher aristocratic leaning, because the Prussians had a very strong warrior ethos in its nobility - hence all the "vons" in the names of their generals even to WW2.
 

Eacaraxe

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Ah, but the nids suddenly appeared without warning from beyond known space. The story of Hive Fleet Behemoth is about humanity finding out about something nobody had known about (though sorta retconned later).

The necrons had been sitting around for long before humanity had evolved, their tombs are everywhere, including on Mars. The eldar have been afraid of them for 60 million years. And nobody really mentioned them or did anything about them.
I'm looking at the metagame and in-universe sense together. On the metagame level, GW had their whole "maybe the genestealer cults are harbingers of worse to come, tee hee hee!" bullshit on with the 'nids. So in-universe characters were "holy shit what the fuck we're all screwed", but we as players had been primed for it.

The in-universe reason for the 'crons going unnoticed is honestly pretty solid. The only race that would have known about them were the eldar -- and the eldar had way bigger problems on their plate than necrons. To the best of my knowledge, the eldar by and large believed the necrons destroyed themselves when they rebelled against the C'tan, and the eldar were able to defeat what remained -- that the necrons were merely hibernating wasn't something the elder realized until way later. In the meantime, they had a god to murderfuck into existence.

Didn't really care for Necrons in 3rd so I didn't pay much attention to them. OTOH, when the Necrons were first introduced in WD (with free metal necron model) for 2nd, with their entire 4 different types, two of them were fast and mobile (scarabs and destroyers).
I didn't either, to be honest. To me they were just a new faction designed to sell models, instead of fix the armies that already existed.

Scarabs were just a screening force, so they needed to be speedy to engage and tie up opponents until the bulk of the army was in position. Destroyers, if I remember right, had 6MV but couldn't double or assault move. Their mobility as compared to infantry was a wash, but given their intended role they were still far slower, but harder to hit and more resilient, than vehicles.

Checked the army lists and still can't find it, and I also seem to remember in WD saying that for 3rd ed that they made a point of putting it back in after leaving it out for 2nd. Though, minor point.
Might've been added in Dark Millennium, then. I just very distinctly remember it being there, because I saw squads inadvertently wiped in tabletop because of it.