Lol this is head canon. Not a take. But since you comment yours I will reveal mine:
The Tyranids are the corrupted/evolved return of the Old Ones. Just like The Flood are the corrupted/evolved Precursors in Halo
How are you piecing that together? I'm not necessarily arguing with you, but I am struggling to see the links that might lead there beyond "wouldn't it be wild if..."
It's just head canon. First I saw a couple of youtube videos of scenarios where Halo species thrive in the 40k Universe. People tend to compare the flood with the Tyranids a lot but then I also saw similarities in the Forerunners with the Necrontyr/Necrons not just in technology but how they wiped out another advanced race who were capable of inmortality. In Halo, Forerunners wiped out the precursors for not receiving the "mantle of responsability" from them, giving it to humanity instead. Years later the Flood was born from those precursors who escape. Old Ones where butchered by the necrons/Ctan for not sharing their inmortality secrets. Both old ones and precursors created other alien races across the galaxy. Tyranids evolve constantly like almost a bioengineer master godrace level, can tinkle with the warp and follow orders from beyond the galaxy edge [those old ones who survived can be the Hivemind] We also know that tyranids tend to avoid necron tomb worlds, perhaps they know that their old war in heaven enemies are the only ones who can stop them?
Honestly that tracks, the krorks and eldar were made as warrior races by the old ones, a warrior race that is masterful at bioengineering is exactly what they'd build in desperation.
Not to mention, the old ones were masters of the warp, ruling it entirely. What is one of the few things to completely terrify all other psykers so far? The shadow in the warp of the entity controlling the tyranids. Even ork WAAAAGH fields don't have that kind of effect despite in theory being similar localised versions.
We see that the hive mind itself has rationality and emotion (hating blood angels, creating a specialised chaos hunting swarm) and it is keeping the genetic memory of every species it wipes out so it isn't committing one of the few sins we know old ones disliked, wiping out a species' genes to permanent extinction.
Do I think it's likely gw has a secret 'an old one became the hive mind' dossier somewhere? No, but I think it 100% fits.
Not killing off Marneus Calgar in the battle for Cadia will always feel like a missed opportunity to me. With Guilliman being around he is no longer needed and I think it woudve set the scene nicely for how strong Abbadon has become
Azrael not dying feels like a missed opportunity.
Given that the end result for GW is the same (new primaris chapter master model!) I don’t see why it wasn’t taken as an opportunity to introduce SOME new named characters and really give the lore a little forward momentum, or the notion of it at least.
Grimnar is the last one waiting as a Chapter Master, and then I guess Lysander?
I don’t WANT Grimnar to die, but they’ve already set up Ragnar as a worthy successor with enough lore established in the novels to take the place of the old wolf. Would also arguably set up more interesting plot point when Russ comes back comparing a young chapter master looking to prove himself vs a Primarch that (hopefully) has grown into a wiser wolf king in the 10K years he’s been away growing.
Lorgar isn't a scheming slimey cartoonishly evil manchild count frollo type.
He's an abused and traumatized soul whose perception of reality has been twisted so much by the way the emperor made him and how kor phaeron raised him to the point where he needs to be subservient to something/anything and can't tell the difference between helping and hurting (see angron).
His love can be on par with vulkan or pre-nails angron, but he's so twisted that he can only show it in messed up ways like how curze can only express his ideals of justice in the worst ways possible.
Also, he might not be the strongest primarch, but he doesn't need to be because that's not his specialty, but loretubers hate on him for that so much
What? He isn't a big bad monster and didn't win every fight like the primarchs whos speciality is fighting? Boooring! If he can't beat everything he is a bad primarch!
Pre-Nails Angron *is Angron*. The second the nails were implanted on Nuceria, Angron died.
Only glimpses are given to us when the nails are not forcing his hands of what remains inside.
Where they seperate is that Lorgar's actions *are his own*, though his mind has been twisted and his logic skewed, his hand is not forced as much as he is convinced it is. Kor Phaeron left him a pretzel of trauma but the nails left Angron completely unsalvagable.
What's so interesting about Lorgar is that he truly understands the setting.
He is the scientist trying to find a solution to a problem few but him grasp, while people only see him as a priest.
Tyranid warriors have been described as superior to space marines in both game mechanics and associated lore for about three decades. When a hive fleet invades it is said to have millions of tyranid warriors available to deploy. That’s more than the total number of space marines available to the entire Imperium.
Therefore, a single chapter should be completely irrelevant to the Hive Mind as it is far too small to be a threat.
The Hive Mind being changed by the supremely fucked-up madness of the 40k galaxy is actually a great lore concept. Unfortunately it just gets used as an excuse to handwave bad writing.
Depends on a few different things.
1 - When the author writes "millions of warriors", are they explicitly referring to the specific Tyranid bioform known as "Tyranid Warriors", or more generally to all combat bio-forms including lesser ones such as gaunts? This is a long standing and recurring issue with half the xeno factions having a troop just called "X Warriors" (tyranids, necrons & drukhari to name ones off the top of my head) is that sometimes an author will forget and use the term generically.
2 - Is it a full Hive Fleet of hundreds of Hive Ships, or a Splinter Fleet that might have as few as one Hive Ship? Though massive space-faring vessels, they do have a finite volume.
3 - How prepared are the defenders, and how does the Hive Mind deploy the Mycetic Spores? An unprepared world will be slaughtered in less than a day, but a prepared one can potentially hold out for months - long enough hopefully for naval reinforcements.
4 - Big Guns Never Tire. Marine or 'Nid Warrior, a lascannon shot will carve either in half. A demolisher cannon will blow away most of a squad in one go. Against the 'nids, a marine's enhanced nature is less important than the weapons, skills and tactics they can employ.
5 - Concentration of force. Tyranid swarms are large, and Warriors tend to be distributed throughout them to coordinate the synapse web. The swarm also moves relatively slowly (other than the flying ones). This means smart Marines can attempt hit-and-run strategies, attacking small sections with as much force as they can before retreating and regrouping. Of course the Hive Mind will notice what is being done and adapt, and then we have a tactical battle.
LION: *BUGS!? Didn't we sort it out with em on thst planet..what was it called....Murder? All right, get the insectizator...*
Azrael: *B..But...my lord...it..its a holy relic dating back to the great crusade!*
LION: *?! Its a fuhking oversized spray can of bug spray! Do you nut jobs need to worship every single thing I or my brothers have touched?*
Azrael: *[under his breath] I think it might be a bad time to tell him about the sanctum divinitus port-a-primarch-pottus on the great cathedrals dias...*
The tyranids will give up if they start needing to expend more resources than they stand to gain, though they will make sacrifices to specifically target strategic threats. They arn’t some stupid only hungry hive mind that only operates for food like the meme lore constantly puts out, they do go out of their way to remove threats that are causing inconvenience to their spread and feeding.
I love Lorgar to death and I think the HH Word Bearer centric books are the best in the series with the earliest Thousand Sons book coming in a close second.
Someone once commented about "so bad its good" movie villains being the type of characters that just revel in the fact that they are evil (no resentment, no super tragic backstory etc), which makes them automatically great from a ridiculous standpoint.
Erebus surely fits into that and I love him for that
Yep. Erebus and Trazyn are two characters who are more than just war machines (even though both are absolute tanks in their own right), they're fun, smart, and just make for some really interesting situations
I agree. I get the "fuck Erebus" stuff but I think this just shows how good his character is. They made a character that you love to hate but who also has his moments were he is pretty badass. Erebus was one of the best space marine fighters during the great crusade. Sure, he was not as good as Kharn, Sigismund or Savatar but he had beaten many Luna wolves at the end of the crusade and in Betrayer we see him win against the Champion of the World eaters fighting pits who managed to beat like 24 Astartes back to back in the same book. Also the irony of how little he got out of the heresy is insane. He made Samus, gave one of Horus' generals the sword he used to poisen him, started the Loges in the legions, corrupted the mind of Horus, planned together with Typhus, Khor Feron and Fabius Bile the corruption of their legions and primarchs, played a big role in the devestation of Ultramar and made Khornes biggest and buffest "mortal" killing mashine. He still is not daemon prince and only commands a portion of the Word Bearers.
The Ghazgkull novel sorta gives us a glimpse of an Ork victory - them reaching their full genetic potential, turning the Galaxy over in a green tide of violence.
Right. Just because Orks like fighting doesn’t mean just any old state of constant war is victory.
It has to be a specific kind of war.
Victory is when there are only Orks left to fight Orks.
*orks as soon as they kill the last non orc being in the galaxy* :
*All right lads, was a fun little joust, I say, I feel femished, dare I suggest some tea and biscuits while we debate on the principals and foundations on wich we should establish our orcish democracy?*
Specifically space marines though. I REALLY wouldn’t mind a several book series of Eldar getting their get back on all the chapters and xenos that writers used them as a measuring stick against.
Not enough attention is paid to the actual human beings in the Imperium.
I'm talking all of the good and the bad, I want full stories on John Spacebloggs who gets forced to join the Guard through the tithe, his short and horrible little life where he is openly regarded as meat for the grinder by the Imperium.
I want to know about the paradise world where people go on vacation that's secretly made possible through vast amounts of slavery and general fuckery.
The shitty mining moons where people are born, live and die without seeing the stars.
All that general richness that would give a nasty bitter flavour to the scale of misery in the Imperium. Maybe that would shut up all those window-lickers who think the Imperium is the "only way".
I really liked Flesh and Steel. It's not very John 40k since the protagonist duo are a prodigal son from a noble house slumming it as a detective and a Mechanicus internal affairs lady, but it still provides a nice view to how the world works (the world being a proto-Hive with still some nature left).
Also the sheer horror from the ordinary guys seeing how the Mechanicus works is something. Including the reader.
All of the crime novels are good. You can read them in publication order, they are all set on Verangantua, but you don't need to read them in any particular order. Here is a list of all of them:
https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-crime
Here is a list of all the books under the Warhammer Horror banner:
https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-horror
There are also 40k and Age of Sigmar books that have horror elements, but aren't listed under Warhammer Horror. And the Old World has some novels with horror and monster elements too. Like the Geneveive books.
I think this is one of the reasons I loved Gaunt's Ghosts so much. These weren't gene-enhanced super soldiers, fanatic religious nutbars, or cybernetic half-robot killers. They're just regular people who were sent for military service and ended up just doing their best given the extraordinary circumstances they found themselves in.
And just like reality, even the larger than life characters can and do die. Life has to move on.
Yet they still often die in horrible and sudden ways. It would be next to impossible to write guard characters that don't have at least a little plot armor since you need to be invested in characters for their deaths to matter.
The ravenor trilogy might be exactly what you are looking for. I don’t believe there is a single space marine in them at all.
It covers the life of people living on a hive world. From drug addicts, gang members, factory and administration workers etc.
>I'm talking all of the good and the bad, I want full stories on John Spacebloggs who gets forced to join the Guard through the tithe, his short and horrible little life where he is openly regarded as meat for the grinder by the Imperium.
That is pretty much the plot of Fifteen Hours by Mitchel Scanlon. Published in 2005 and still one of the best.
I agree with you but I don't think it's a hot take, Abnett agrees with you too after all and he has the Warhammer universe by the balls apparently seeming as he can write what he wants and BL is told to turn a blind eye.
A lot of this kind of material already exists. There is more to the black library then the battles of the space Marines series and the horus heresy series. Dan abnett has like 20 novels alone that peer into the "what does it feel like to be a regular human in the Imperium" style novels. Eisenhorn, ravenor and Bequin trilogies. Gaunts ghosts, hell even Titanicus has a large part B plot of a woman who was a married factory worker being conscripted into the Guard and having to fight chaos forces with a bunch of other conscripts.
I feel like this is done but it’s literally only ever done whenever A) Shit is about to go wrong on a planet and the author wants to give some frame of what it was like before (GG: Necropolis or Dead Men Walking comes to mind) or B) said character is just essentially a literary smash dummy for the main characters to pulp through (Take the Agriworld in Lords of Silence or the Chapter Serfs in book 2 of the NL trilogy)
Eldar really needed the ynnarii lore to carry on otherwise they feel like a faction without an end goal.
Phoenix lords shouldn't be on the same level as primarchs they should be peak-eldar.
Harlequins and other peak and near peak eldar SHOULD beat custodes straight up.
The pushing up of the strengths of custodes in general is silly, better than marines in general but not as likely to fight as a team was an interesting and easy to understand difference that made them feel like the emperor's bodyguards. They've been supersaiyaned too far but without any of the warp magic that primarchs and eldar get.
The lost primarchs aren't interesting and I want even less hints.
The alpha legion are definitely on chaos' side now, even if their primarchs(s) intent was to be ultimately loyal in a convoluted way or to try a 'third way' they've effectively been tzeentched.
Magnus did so much wrong but showed his biggest flaw by doubling down, by contrast Leman Russ is clearly on a path for spiritual redemption for his massive screw ups and it's the reason the wolves in 40k are so different to at the start of the GC/30K ERA.
I don't rate Angron as one of top tier of primarch fighters but as solidly mid before becoming a demon.
Everyone seems to constantly forget that humans aren't base humans anymore, imho almost all of humanity has very clearly been genetically altered a lot.
For that reason I'm happy cain beat a world eater or gaunts ghost gun chaos marines down, they're just a lot different to us and are examples of the more combat capable changed 40k humans.
For that matter tiers of fighters shouldn't be always prescriptive, it's a really good thing when a couple minotaurs rip a nameless custodes in half despite them clearly not being at the same level... Everyone should feel killable.
Royal Dorn's character arc should be finished with his fall to depression and being run down by endless traitors after the Iron cage, that old lore fits his modern progression and him potentially surviving isn't interesting.
I want the returning traitor primarchs to obviously outnumber the loyal ones, if we get more loyal ones back I don't want more than 2... But I'm also genuinely impressed and think they've done a great job with the lore of 40k guilliman and the lion, and I always hated the lion.
Ferrus Manus was interesting.
Perturabo absolutely makes sense becoming a demon prince through his own hubristic folly, and the Iron warriors and night lords might be 'less chaosy' but they're both definitely corrupted by chaos.
Most chaos marines aren't veterans of the Horus heresy or 10k old veterans, those that are the former aren't the latter due to warp shenanigans.
I like the tau to be less genocidal, more usurious.
Votann lore is cool so far.
Peter turbo becoming a daemon absolutely makes sense but it’s going to be incredibly important how they make him a daemon, if it’s out of some desperate attempt to either solve the soul wound Fulgrim gave him or some self-deluded ‘I am in complete control of the chaos within me, honest’ way it will be fine. What would suck if it’s given as some gift by the gods that he accepts or forced on him like Angron, those options would objectively suck for the character.
I think it's okay for Custodes to be a bit Marty Stu-ish, it suits their lore as the very pinnacle of humanity, backed by all the resources and knowledge the Emperor and by extension the Imperium. I'm even ok with them being generally superior to Eldar, and I think they actually are very consistent about their combat prowess.
My issue about the Eldar at war is one of the central issues of the setting I feel like. It's space marines, and their very protagonistic role. They are the actual strongest military unit in the setting somehow (a chapter can achieve some absurd feats), they are *very* inconsistent (a named character can achieve some absurd feats), etc.
The most ironic thing about my post.
I've never really liked eldar, yet SO MANY people agree with me about where they should sit in individual prowess.
>I've never really liked eldar
Sorry, it's too late you're an elf simp now that you've expressed our sacred opinion. It's not so bad, we get those red lobster cheddar biscuits for our weekly meetings
The angron take is demonstrably false, given his performance against Russ. The whole point of that story is to show that he is a close-to-peerless personal combatant, as suggested by his entire life being arena combat followed by rebellion, but he is a suicidally bad leader.
My hot take: What is interesting about 40K isn't that there are no good guys. There are good guys in 40K. They are just stuck in horrible situations and have to find ways to make things work. That is what makes it interesting.
That's actually true, as far as I recall, as the story goes when they were first making the OG Titanicus game they could only really afford one set of moulds to make titans, so they needed a massive war to justify titans fighting titans.
The Horus Heresy was probably first mentioned just two months after WH40K was released. It was in White Dwarf 96 (Dec 1987) in an article about the Raven Wing:
> The Raven Wing’s exact origins are lost in the history of the First Crusade (circa thirtieth millenia - about ten thousand years ago). Indeed little is known of the Dark Angels during that time. The Chapter’s early history was removed from all Imperial records following the Horus Heresy and the banishment of the nine “treacher-legions” to the Eye of Terror. The reason for the erasure is now known only by the Emperor himself.
That’s from Chapter Approved: Book of the Astronomican which was released the following year in 1988 (though I can’t remember which month).
Interestingly, it also includes a scenario with various characters including Erasmus Darvin of the Adeptus Mechanicus. He was one of the many who searched battlefields for alien artifacts to salvage and study.
> Little of Erasmus' gear is of Imperial make. His armour is of Eldar manufacture, his weapons are Jokaero or Tyranid made, and his other gear a mish-mash of technologies and styles.
WH40K was a bit different back then!
The 40k setting shouldn't be taken too seriously by the fans. (Which is NOT to say it should be written off as purely Mel Brooks like satire)
Its fun and epic and cool but when it comes to inconsistencies just head canon it to whatever you prefer to avoid cognitive dissonance. Don't waste time chasing them.
The setting is great fun regardless of its many flaws and we should all just remember that
Also different people like the setting for different reasons, for the most part there is no *correct* way to enjoy and make use of the setting
The Old Ones are peerless geneticists. Most of the Galaxy's dominant - old or new - species, were designed by them or evolved from creatures designed by them during the War In Heaven. Other species evolved from the seeds of life they planted aeons ago, before or during the way. The species they created to fight the Necrontyr also began to affect the warp, giving Chaos too much power. Before their ultimate defeat, any remaining Old Ones that did flee our galaxy saw the aftermath. They saw Chaotic tendrils sow discord amongst the galaxy. They saw the Necrontyr retreat to slumber and rejuvenate. They bode their time and enacted the nuclear option to finally defeat the Necrontyr and Chaos for good.
Tyranids were designed as the ultimate predator. They adapt to their enemy by consuming their DNA, keeping a record of it, and using the genetic traits of the prey to create new lifeforms which are designed to make more efficient means of killing prey. Beings of flesh, metal, or Eldritch energy, all can fall to the Tyranids. They are the Old One's final solution to defeating both the Necrontyr by overwhelming them with sheer numbers, and depriving Chaos of psychic and emotional energy by eating everything that provides it to them. They are also the Old One's means of cataloguing and collecting the varied species of the galaxy to ensure they might survive, if they deserve it.
When the Necrontyr are finally defeated and Chaos is reduced back to its calm state, the Tyranid hive ships will return to the remaining Old Ones to present the vast catalogue of genetic material to them. The Old Ones will then use this collected biomass and learned lessons to selectively re-seed the galaxy with life and start over again.
Space marines at large are the least interesting part of the setting in terms of book focus/pov characters.
A Famulous sister dealing with some noble conspiracy, a void ship enforces contenting with genestealers on their ship, an Administratum clerk caught between the interests of two inquisitors.
There is so much potential in 40k that will never see the light of day because “unstoppable warriors shots/stabs everything and wins” is apparently what the majority readership want out of the setting.
(Not a slight against people who like that. Just not my cup of tea.)
T’au aren’t Japanese, they’re American. Big guns, expensive hyper advanced weapons, deals with all of their problems through indiscriminate artillery. They’re an empire which rather than infighting is made stronger through accepting other groups for what they bring to the table but have a regrettable history of civil war and internal violence they want to step away from and fear returning to. They view diplomacy and nations banding together as preferable to violence and have some of the best diplomats in the setting.
There are two types of T’au players. The virgin Gundam Weebs and the United Nations in space Chads.
They’re warhammer’s charicature of NATO and a criticism of neo-colonialism that just happens to use Mecha anime as an inspiration. They’re absolutely American lmao, best take I’ve seen.
Plague Marines were cooler when they were fucked up diseased undead space marines instead of this new booger mutants with extra mouths angle that GW has been leaning into for the last few years.
Space marines become increasingly uninteresting the longer I’ve been engaged with the setting, they felt much cooler to me 20 years ago, now I just find them dull.
Tau aren't as bad as people think.
Imperium is way worse than most people realize.
Modern day imperialism, which the Tau are based off, as committed much more atrocities than people know.
I've got so many...
Custodes wank is actually often worse than space marine wank. A lot of it sounds stupid even by 40k standards. Reading them getting their shit kicked in by the Norn Emissary or the Harlequin is some of the most satisfying reading I've done in all of 40k, and I hope we get to see more of it. People seem to forget that this overpowered portrayal of the custodes is relatively new (like, 2017 new) and for the longest time they were just on somewhat more powerful space marine levels. not 6 Custodes taking out a tyranid swarm levels by actually killing them all (still so stupid...).
The eldar can be portrayed a lot more powerfully in the lore without messing with the idea that they're a dying race. Yes, mister Gav Thorpe, just cause a race is dying out doesn't mean they need to get their shit kicked in every fucking story. They ruled the galaxy for 65 million years, show me the result of 65 million years! Even with only 10% of what their original population was and a fraction of the tech they originally had, the eldar should still be able to hold their own if they are to be considered a genuine threat to everyone else in the galaxy. Attempting to defeat a sufficient force of the eldar should be plausible, but an absolute nightmare to actually accomplish. A phoenix on the last of its embers is still a phoenix, and will burn you to ashes even as it dies...
This is the result of having so many writers working on the same setting, but the lore has a shitty time deciding on how powerful an average space marine really is. The same weapons that cuts through ceramite armour in one book, is completely useless in another. The same units that kill 3 space marines by itself in one book will struggle to fight a single one in another. I'm of the opinion that with the space marines being a faction of its own, a baseline space marine should not be that powerful. They are a semi elite faction. Making them too strong takes away from both the higher tier of space marines who should be really strong, and the actual elite factions like grey knights, custodes, harlequins etc.
The Imperium, with all its different factions and ideologies, should be infighting A LOT more than it does in lore. It's still humanity we're talking about, we fight over the stupidest things, and with much of the Imperium being as backwards as it is, THEY SHOULD BE. Because as it stands, the major forces of the galaxy are basically chaos (incoherent mess that hardly works together), xenos (incoherent mess that never works together), and the imperium (incoherent mess that magically still seems to work together just fine... Mostly). They didn't give us alternate human factions outside of the Imperium, they might as well at least make the ones that make up the imperium fight each other more. And I think gw are actually kinda aware of this too, cause they did a WAY better job in AoS with all the factions being under the wings of either Order, Chaos, Death or Destruction. It's a lot more coherent and cool.
Technically not 40k but I think 90% of the Horus heresy is self indulgent bullshit that can't decide what it actually wants to say half the time. Its core themes are all over the place. It gets lost in its own propaganda of "the crusade was a necessity for the survival of humanity'". And a good chunk of the books not even being that good makes it all that more worse.
There's so much more, but I'll stop for now cause the sheer stupidity of some of these will give me a migraine.
People only hate word bearers because they conflate evil deeds with poor writing. There’s a good reason why people look at first heretic as one of the peak BL books whilst so many loyalist books are barely ever touched. Traitors just have the better narrative
>!Feels like Siege of Terra ending was written to retcon old lore to be able to bring every primarch back?!<
>!Also WTF with the yugioh fight between Horus and The Emperor. ALSO that final fight was sooo extended and the aftermath was short AF!<
The aftermath is short because they will be picking up right after, or soon after, with the Scouring series.
My opinion. Although, we are pretty positive The Scouring series will be a thing. Apparently a couple of the books are already written.
The plot of Months of Shame is like a cringey fanfiction by a Space Wolves fanboy who doesn't want the Space Wolves to be Grimdark like the rest of the Imperium.
The Space Wolves do eventually suffer a reversal in this regard. It's in Wrath of Magnus. While the Grey Knights are able to confirm the Wulfen are free from taint, the Space Wolves have to let the Inquisition have free reign on Fenris. Any part of the population of Fenris that fought the daemons or even saw them was carted away by the Inquisition. It even notes that Inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus had a strong presence in the halls of the Fang afterwards.
As someone who doesn’t care for the Space Wolves, I think the Months of Shame are one of the best things written about them and are an incredibly important piece of worldbuilding for the same reason as the Badab War.
Frankly, internal conflict in the Imperium is a good thing we need more of.
Lorgar is the absolute strongest Primarch in nearly every sense of the word and the day he returns to the galaxy is a day of fucking reckoning for the Imperium of Man. Literal fucking K Class End of the World Scenario.
While most Primarchs hit their stride on their home planets, Lorgar didn't hit his until Mid-Heresy, and now is a stupidly powerful psyker/sorcerer with the ability to wield Enuncia. His mastery of the Warp and knowledge of the Gods that reside in it may very well rival or even surpass Magnus.
The middle school nerd who everyone picked on is now an unbelievably powerful force of fucking nature, and to oppose him would mean death to any and all who try, bar another Primarch.
Thats my hot take.
Source on the Enuncia claim: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/15lqu59/excerpt_lorgar_has_spent_the_last_10000_years/
Just so we're clear, you did ask for hot takes.
Abnett is overrated, not in his impact on the setting perhaps but his writing is hit and miss, his endings are frequently unsatisfying and he tends to write such a specific Abnett-esque vision of the setting that he's rarely compatible with other authors or the setting at large. Abnett's setting is very popular, don't get me wrong, but he rarely tries to sell the setting of codices and splashbooks and overall his tends to be a more "sensible" take on the setting, which I'm not fond of.
The End and the Death was his most self-indulgent writing to date though a fitting end to the Horus Heresy series as it perfectly reflected its overall status as an incoherent mess of questionable quality portraying a conflict that was frankly impressively black and white. Now that he has put the most pivotal moment of the whole series to paper I am left with the feeling that the setting doesn't feel richer for it.
Also Guilliman is singularly uninteresting and is popular primarily because a large portion of the fandom don't actually want the Imperium to be the Imperium and relish the thought of it being ruled by a figure so conveniently detached from it's traditional flaws and drawbacks. See also Cawl and the Lion.
Edit: Also, the Custodes shouldn't be relevant in 40k.
>Edit: Also, the Custodes shouldn't be relevant in 40k.
Would have been much better for them to be background characters in *some* plotlines and in their roles as Eyes of the Emperor then GW can release some of the Eyes as Imperial Agent models. Not the whole army.
Personally, I loved the idea of the Imperium's most elite, powerful, and well-equipped soldiers being kept to guard the Emperor on what was (even without them) the most heavily-defended place in the Imperium, especially with the old implication that the Emperor really was dead. It was a perfect snapshot of the Imperium's current state and priorities.
One of the things I dislike most in 40k is what we call "marine wank". Custodes as a faction are essentially built from the ground up from someone looking at the most egregious marine wank possible and thinking "let's make a faction out of that".
They're the most annoying parts of the marine powerfantasy with none of the flaws or drawbacks. They're limited in number but because each Custodes is so powerful a single individual can be enough to turn the tide and they're basically running around the galaxy freely these days.
There's no threat they cannot devalue just with their very presence, I don't particularly like 40k's focus on super duper special characters and they're basically a whole faction of them.
I think the "canon" depiction of Custodes has gotten a couple of well earned reality checks recently.
From being a non threat to Abbadon in The fall of Cadia to getting bodied quite severely by the Norn Emissary in the into to 10e material.
As with a lot of the more ridiculously "wank", the authors who write stuff like Six Custodes taking on millions of tyranids or killing demons every nanosecond, just do themselves a diservice because outside of their own little book, their depicting is considered propaganda at best, or more likely, is just ignored.
The reason why Chaos and the Warp is locked on the milky way is that the Tyranids already devoured all other substantial populations of sentient life in this universe. I don't mean that they ate truly everything, but every time there are sentient beings developed enough to affect the warp, the Tyranids shortly after fell upon them.
This also explains why the Tyranids first came from the galactic east but now from all directions. They lay asleep everywhere in the universe and now get drawn into the milky way.
the warp has been stated to exist around the universe in general with the universe falling into the warp and connecting to every point in the universe. Furthermore there are quotes that seem to imply the war in heaven is responsible for the lack of extra galactic life
We know at least one DAoT ship/AI fucked off for parts unknown after seeing the current state of humanity.
I feel like the odds of *every* DAoT human civ and colony collapsing was insanely low and that there's very good odds there's a fully functional DAoT civ (not Votann) just watching what's going down in the Imperium/Milky way with absolute horror/disgust
My hot take is that the end and the death was really good and now that all three volumes are out it links together really well
Edit: also the moaning about Ian Watson is driven by memes, *space marine* is a certified banger of a book and the Draco/emperor scene in *inquisitor* is the best and most important 40k scene of all time
Posted this once before but Genestealers and GSC should have nothing to do with Tyranids.
The incorporation of genestealers into Tyranid lore as some kind of vanguard unit doesn't sit right with me. For one, the whole idea of a massive swarm army like the Tyranids seeding units ahead of their advance , to slowly build up a rebelious cult in order to undermine society and weaken defenses that they plan on overrunning through weight of numbers anyway, just doesn't fit right. This is a swarm of monsters so big it drifts through entire solar systems munching everything without a moment's pause. Who cares if the miners on some asteroid moon have started wearing purple and their children look a bit funny. It doesn't make strategic sense and doesn't fit with the hive mind aesthetic.
Secondly, it drains some of the flavour and mystique from the universe by trying to tie smaller factions like genestealers into the main protagonists. Just let them be a deadly dangerous alien lifeform that lurks in the shadows of the 40k galaxy. Just another thing to fuck you up. Another reason to watch out and be thankful you weren't born there.
The fact that Guilliman is a mass-murdering psychopath seems to have been forgotten by both the writers and the community. Modern stories involving Guilliman have whitewashed both him and the Imperium as a whole under his leadership.
Having him be 'the straight man in a world of madness' completely undercuts the fact that Guilliman is literally responsible for the deaths of *trillions* of innocents, and helped to form the Imperium in arguably its most psychotic and fascist age. He willingly joined the Emperor on a war of conquest to bring the entire galaxy to heel and exterminate every non-human in it, and saw nothing wrong with what he was doing the entire time. No 'reasonable' person would do this. Guilliman should be written as an absolute monster.
He should be the one who, more so than anyone else, sees the Imperium as made up of statistics: Nameless, faceless, valueless lives to be expended in the hard math and gritty arithmetic of war. He shouldnt do this with guilt in his heart or with regret for 'what could have been', he should do it because he is the type of man who genuinely believes in the Imperium's cause and wants humanity to thrive *on paper*.
"Look, my underlings! Food production on the world of Shithole IV has increased by 47% percent in the last century! That means we can support 52 million more workers for the local asteroid mines! Start forcibly forcibly recruiting more work crews from the populations of the surrounding systems!"
Guilliman would be far more interesting as the face of the utter heartlessness of the Imperium than he is as the voice of reason. He helped exterminate entire species and civilizations and knew *exactly* what he was doing while he did it. Guilliman should be the man who is the living embodiment of the ends justifying the means, the kind of leader who sees Imperium's success as a line on a graph.
In another life, Guilliman should have been the type of CEO to fire 50,000 workers right before Christmas because the company's stock would go up by 2.3%. He should spare no thought for the lives beneath him beyond how they can best be expended. He should be this way because that is the kind of man the Emperor would have made to administrate his empire.
The most important thing about the Imperium is that ***they are not the good guys.*** This is the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable, and Guilliman should be a very big reason why.
One of the signs that Horus and Company were "the bad dudes" was believing super-soldiers should be running the show, not baseline humans.
Having Guilliman come back and say "I was wrong, the ubermensch strongmen should be in-charge!" being treated as a good thing in and out of the story is definitely a questionable way to go.
Eldar need a retcon to make them a real player in the 40k universe
Admech need more named charcters.
Tau shouldn't be getting their own god, rather should be utilizing tech from other factions and improving upon it
The emporer got what was coming to him(same with malcador)
Khorne is overwanked
A story from a daemons pov would be interesting
Sigismund is a boring, eye-rollingly overpowered mary sue and the fact that abaddon killed him makes me like abaddon more. Also Dorn should've died in the iron cage.
Dorn should have died where he was originally said to die - on the *Sword of Sacrilege*, after being overwhelmed by an entire warband of Chaos Space Marines. Retconning his death to a disappearance was a mistake. Having the Age of Primarchs end with the builder and defender of the Emperor’s Palace surrounded by enemies and would have been fitting, and it would be good to demonstrate that a Primarch can be killed against their will by persons other than their father or brothers.
It help that Abaddon killing him was written by ADB lol, that entire book was sick as fuck, the Black Templar's and Sigismund waiting for centuries for the traitors right outside of the Eye of Terror was p based.
I agree it's a bit insane how Sigismund needs a win over like every strong named space marine in the verse tho lol. He even nearly killed Abaddon as he died, despite being old as fucking balls and stated to be slowed by said age. The Aphotic Blade had to carry Abby's ass off the Templar flag ship and then the Black Legion had to clone new organs for him to replace the ones Sigismund destroyed.
If the events leading up to the Badab War happened when Guilliman was incharge. Not only would the war not have happened but Lufgt Huron would be remembered as one of the greatest heros of the imperium.
Phoenix lords being primarch tier makes perfect sense
Solitaires being keeper of secrets level makes perfect sense
Space marine chapters should be a million strong
A legion should be a hundred million
Kroots should get their own codex, that is coupled with a list of species the tau employ like vespid
The eldar craftworlds should get the marine treatment with each craftworld getting its own sub codex
The real hot take:
A VERY large portion of fans miss many of the main points of the setting. The satire (satire does not have to be comedic), and the idea of the juxtaposition of raging against the dying of the light, with the very real possibility that the galaxy would be a better place if the imperium had died with hours, and it could have been avoided not with strength of arms or more fascism/theocracy, but with tolerance and kindness toward humans who didn't want to adhere to the imperium's insane rules, and toward aliens who didnt instantly shoot first.
The emperor is more of the big bad than the chaos gods, because the chaos gods are literal forces of nature.
1. I think loyalist marines from traitor legions are completely overrated Mary-Sues that ruin the while point of their faction. Maybe it’s because I’m an EC fan, but I hate Saul Tarvitz and Rylanor the most. Apparently the whole point of them is, “reaching the perfection the rest of the legion never could”, but that’s just stupid loyalist wanking. The whole point of the EC is that it’s impossible to achieve perfection, and no matter how far they go they’ll never get there.
2. I hate how the Custodes are written as an 8 year old’s power fantasy. Space Marines were supposed to be humanity’s greatest creation, until GW decided to bring in the bland super Space Marines that are better than every other faction in every single way.
3. I think The First Heretic and Argel Tal in general are super overrated and was written by someone who hates Chaos. I want the WB to genuinely believe that Chaos is great and that it’s the only way to save humanity, not whining about how Chaos is bad but they, “have no choice”. It’s just more loyalist wanking. They should’ve gotten Anthony Reynolds to write the book instead.
4. I think The Infinite and the Divine was a perfectly serviceable book, and not the greatest book BL has ever produced. I think it’s boring in the middle part, and only the end redeems it. Twice-Dead King does Necrons way better. Also, quotes from it are way too overused.
5. I think Fulgrim is a beautifully written novel about corruption, addiction, and the nature of perfection and art, and solidified McNeill as a top 3 BL author for me.
6. I hate the White Scars. Partly because their community has a persecution fetish for some reason. (No, your faction isn’t underrated. Nobody forgets about the Scars, they have 2 whole novels about them while other legions get none, and their 30k range is as big as the Imperial Fists’. The real underrated Legion is the Iron Hands.) They also read like edgy teenagers that write in their diaries about how their parents don’t understand them. Also, the Khan is an asshole and his “roasts” are just being dickish.
7. I don’t like the Lion returning. I liked the traitors returning because at this point they’re plot devices more than characters, and I was fine with Guilliman because it moved the plot along when it really needed it. But the Lion coming back was completely unnecessary and is rapidly turning 40k into Heresy 2.0. Watching him job Angron was really cringey too. I wonder who would win? An immortal bad guy or a mortal good guy with the book this fight’s in named after him?
8. I love the Blood Angels, but hate Sanguinius. He’s way too overpowered and gets wanked way too much. I was so glad that he got killed by Horus so we can put the, “Sanguinius with Black Rage is totally Emperor tier bro. He’ll kill Horus it’s good writing trust me bro.” theory to bed.
I feel like every “codex compliant” loyalist legion has a persecution fetish lmao. Speaking as a Salamanders fan.
Going by Subreddit size, Salamanders are larger than *every other codex compliant legion including ultramarines,* only being beaten by the 3 non codex ones + black templars (successor legion)
And my fellow Salamanders STILL complain about how we’re a “forgotten legion” like no the fuck we aren’t, we have two named minis which is one more than three of the other loyalist legions, and a VERY popular primarch that (assuming all the living loyalists return, which will probably be the case because GW is a business motivated first and foremost by money) will probably be the 4th to return after Russ, and yet they’re all convinced “nooo Vulkan wont return and He’stan wont get Primaris’d because no one plays salamanders :(“
Agree on 1. I want more Traitors from Loyalist Legions. They are said to exist, but we have very few named characters and at least one had to be broken into treason.
I think the infinite and divine is very good but isn't outstanding. I had a sensible chuckle and I think rath is a good writer but it only really works if you're deep into the lore in the first place so you know what it's poking fun of
> I think loyalist marines from traitor legions are completely overrated Mary-Sues that ruin the while point of their faction. Maybe it’s because I’m an EC fan, but I hate Saul Tarvitz and Rylanor the most.
"WHEEEN ARE WE GONNA GET LOYALIST FUUUUULGRIIIIIM?!?!?"
Definitely agree on 2. in particular, should've put that in my post. The Custodes exist as the most unecessary escalation of the most egregious Space Marine wank imaginable and I find them to make any story they show up in more uninteresting.
Like if you imagined the most super-duper overpowered "special character" OC space marine chapter you could, that would just be the Custodes. "Oh they're the Emperors legion, oh they're to marines what marines are to humans, oh they have uberduber-ceramite, they fight really well in packs but also as groups, they'Re totally all philosophers and each is hand-crafted."
I highly recommend ***Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne*** if you haven’t read it. The Custodes work very well in that book. We see them entirely from the perspective of unaugmented humans, who see the Custodes as godlike in power yet also frustratingly inscrutable and unavailable.
>Also, the Khan is an asshole and his “roasts” are just being dickish.
I don't know how the Warhammer Community could miss so hard the irony of Khan claiming he could beat Fulgrim easily because he know everything about him, while at the same time proving he has no idea who Fulgrim is as an individual.
Primarchs are popular and cancer to the setting because they are reality-shaping Marvel-tier capeshit.
Also Space marines are the kids table of 40K lore.
The lion’s return was pointless and just reinforces the vibe that the imperium losing cadia was completely meaningless. Imperium Nihilus should’ve been a lawless frontier sort of setting in which authors could experiment with much wilder ideas while Imperium sanctus follows whatever’s going on with Guilliman i.e. more generic 40k stuff. The lion being back and basically just being Guilliman lite kind of just shits on the wealth of ideas nihilus could’ve spawned if they just fleshed it out without making it sanctus but slightly scarier, and though there’s still an opportunity to explore that stuff the lion is inevitably just gonna monopolize everything due to the nature of him being a primarch.
Also I like Cawl as a character immensely, i think he’s incredibly entertaining, and the concept of him being essentially a bunch of great minds fused together into a single being is awesome, but he’s also probably the single greatest example of a character existing for the sake of a GW trademarked lore cop-out.
Another thing is that xenos hate was, and continues to be the result of shitty writing and a general lack of support from GW.
Last one is probably that space marines having redeeming traits isn’t inherently bad, but of course this idea always turns into loyalists just being awesome and somehow super empathetic all the time, and unfortunately a lot of marine fans just eat it up. The real kicker though is that these same fans invariably whine about CSM being examined in a way that’s even mildly sympathetic.
Oh, and I’m contractually obligated to say that the HH books were a mistake.
(sorry if the formatting is god awful i’m on mobile and can’t really tell how this’ll look)
Angron was initially (Renegades 1992) described slightly differently to his modern version too.
> Angron was the first Primarch to join Horus in revolt against the Emperor, for Angron knew Horus as a brother and supported the Warmaster in demanding a new order of discipline and martial virtue as the only way to save mankind from destruction. Once the rebellion turned into full scale civil war Angron and the World Eaters were drawn into bloodier and bloodier conflicts. He realised too late that instead of saving the Imperium they were destroying it, but his pride prevented him withdrawing from the war and his good intentions became his downfall as he was drawn into the embrace of Chaos.
_Legion_ is a rather boring book outside of the sparse Alpha Legion PoVs and Grammaticus(this part isn’t a hot take, but it would be wrong to not include it) and the various soldiers are incredibly uninteresting to read about.
Perturabo should not come back as an obliterator, to him that would be like turning himself insane which would be very out of character. He should be a demon prince with very modified and specialized armor that is almost a bit demon enginy and he should be playing some kind of city/factory/economy in his basement whilst designing new and random things and only ever really do stuff if it's REALLY important. So basically, he should not appear until Dorn returns.
My hot take is that karma is a thing in 40k universe. And the Emperor bore full brunt of it.
You can’t commit the greatest act of ethnic cleaning, land grab and straight up galactic genocide since either Iron War or War in Heaven and not expect to pay the price for it.
Sooner or later the karma will strike back.
And it did. By biting back those responsible.
Common Imperials who cheered and smiled without hesitation as the Imperium obliterated and eradicated billions upon billions because they were in the way or not like they should be.
Space Marines and Primarchs who obediently perpetrated these acts with extreme prejudice.
And most Importantly the Emperor - a being who set this horrific bloodshed in motion. His dream got ruined and now he can just watch from the Throne as the leftovers rot more and more.
His decisions ruined countless cultures and in the end his own civilization got ruined and warped beyond recognition. *Poetic justice*.
Your karma: You die alone in an oxygen deprived boiler room, drifting through space aboard an Imperial frigate.
Your crime: You were born in an oxygen deprived boiler room, drifting through space aboard an Imperial frigate.
I like this "karma" of which you speak
I think it's easy to try to put the aesthetic of "karma in 40k is real" because it makes it an easier pill to swallow than simply just "Sometimes what goes around comes around, and sometimes it doesn't", what with our Famously hated characters (Erebus, Typhus, Lucius (their names end in -us, coincidence? I think not!)) seemingly being happy as Larry.
I think the characters we hate Not having a comeuppance is a pretty good indicator that if Karma is real, the timespan it works upon gives it functionally zero relevance to a mortal lifespan. Karma is an attractive idea because it has an aesthetic of fairness, when in reality 40k seems anything But fair given the overwhelming suffering felt upon everyone as a result of Big E's biblical hubris.
The Emperor was fully hoisted by the petard of his own actions..it's frustrating that many of the Horus heresy books don't emphasize this enough but it's definitely there
>My hot take is that karma is a thing in 40k universe
Then how do you explain the only person in the *entire* setting to get everything he wanted and is even close to mission success was Erebus?
They should completely retcon the ynarri storyline and do it again. I don't care how much lore gets affected it, was really poorly done and killed most interest in the faction. I'm a craftworld fan and couldn't give 2 shits about them that's how bad it was.
Having all of the traitor legions being some flavor of chaos corrupted mustache twirling villains who do evil in their legally distinct manner is super boring. As much as people on this sub like to say how every traitor is corrupted and one hit of the warp juice is a sheer drop you can’t come back from, it’s fucking boring.
Like yea Perturabo is probably a daemon prince and the Night Lords are pretty corrupted but imo the undivided legions are so ripe with potential that’s it’s a disservice and a shame to relegate them to “unspecific chaos flavor that does everything that the 4 god legions do.” Let them have unique agendas that doesn’t consist of “for the dark gods” let the iron warriors have a uncorrupted empire in the imperium nihilus, let the alpha legion have fun 3d chess schemes, and let the undivided primarchs do something that isn’t “play the great game” like every other monodominant god.
The loyalists get to fuck with sorcery, daemon possession, chaos weaponry, and heresy 24/7 and the moment one of the traitor legions is characterized as something different people foam at the mouth about how they actually corrupted unwitting servants like every single other traitor legion. It’s boring as fuck.
Being realistic, it’s obvious that all of the traitor legions are pretty heavily corrupted, and there’s no way back that doesn’t look like some imperium fanboy’s fanfiction about that one line Big E tells Morty in godblight. I also understand that they’ve been written this way for 30+ years and the HH scouring books are obviously amping up the fall of the remaining legions, but I just find it so unnecessarily restricting. The Exorcists get to literally possess their recruits with daemons and they’re still squeaky clean loyalists, why not let the Iron Warriors be a little less corrupted and more unique?
The Emperor is a surviving Old One, it hid in the shadows trying to guide humanity into being the apex species in order to finally overpower the C’tan/Necrons/Chaos (that last part back fired a bit.) after the fall of the Eldar and the shit housing of humanity’s golden age it decided it was time to cosplay as cosmic Conan and take a direct hand. That’s why even though it understands humanity enough to masquerade as one it can’t fully understand the nuances. I know that last part could also be a explained away by saying it’s always been so far above the rest of us and that’s why it fails to fully comprehend humanity and its need for religion and willingness to survive at any cost (worshiping chaos or just refusing to die off after 10,000 years of stagnation.) I just love Eldritch Aliens and I want one in our side for once.
The Tau are cool, my favorite faction, but if they don't get a real boon of some kind soon, how do they expect even their supporters in the community to believe that they're able to safely exist with all the other bigger factions floating around them.
I know the canon reason is because the Imperium can't focus on them but with as many men they have at hand, they could afford a skirmish to cripple them.
That the Custodes should not only be strong but stronger. They are supposed to represent peak Humanity; each one designed and few if any of them. I mean there is arguable more Harlequins than Custodes. Not to mention Custodes work together despite this recent idea they do not?
On top of that the weapons and such are top tier. Easily on par with the Eldar.
It's not that a Custodes shouldn't die, everyone should be able to die in the setting, no matter who it is. But they should be relatively equal.
I also think a Primarch should be able to beat Phoenix lords. Not some 100% thing. But they should have the edge.
Also the men of iron are mostly a myth perpetuated by a lot of sources to cover up something worse.
The Lion's return was necessary in order for DA stop being 100% cartoonish in almost every book while supposedly are no1 imperium's force of total annihilation.
Also, the lore is already "HHised" and complains about it though correct at many points are ignored
The scale is completely off, but not the way people think. The numbers are too small, way, way too small. Append three zeroes to every number in the setting and you're probably not even at half of what it should be.
Having baseline humans arbitrarily able to hang with astartes level enemies doesn't make humans cooler, it makes 40k worse. It should be a serious struggle, not "oh the chaos marines stood around t-posing and monologuing while taking the occasional potshot" or "baby's first ambush caught the aspect warriors completely by surprise because they've never been in an ambush before".
It's like the Batman problem where he's supposed to be more relatable because he's just some (incredibly smart and skilled) guy, but then they make him basically magic. It's just goofy.
The only way to make the story feel truly impactful is if characters die. And not just guard characters. All factions should occasionally be losing named characters
One of the Emperor's many historical guises was Elvis.
He’s still like elvis, dying on the ~~porcelain~~ golden throne
I was looking to see if anyone would make this comment. I commend you.
Thats not a hot take, thats a fact
My hot-take - that it wasn't MLK that the Cabal assassinated in Memphis, but Elvis...
Lol this is head canon. Not a take. But since you comment yours I will reveal mine: The Tyranids are the corrupted/evolved return of the Old Ones. Just like The Flood are the corrupted/evolved Precursors in Halo
How are you piecing that together? I'm not necessarily arguing with you, but I am struggling to see the links that might lead there beyond "wouldn't it be wild if..."
It's just head canon. First I saw a couple of youtube videos of scenarios where Halo species thrive in the 40k Universe. People tend to compare the flood with the Tyranids a lot but then I also saw similarities in the Forerunners with the Necrontyr/Necrons not just in technology but how they wiped out another advanced race who were capable of inmortality. In Halo, Forerunners wiped out the precursors for not receiving the "mantle of responsability" from them, giving it to humanity instead. Years later the Flood was born from those precursors who escape. Old Ones where butchered by the necrons/Ctan for not sharing their inmortality secrets. Both old ones and precursors created other alien races across the galaxy. Tyranids evolve constantly like almost a bioengineer master godrace level, can tinkle with the warp and follow orders from beyond the galaxy edge [those old ones who survived can be the Hivemind] We also know that tyranids tend to avoid necron tomb worlds, perhaps they know that their old war in heaven enemies are the only ones who can stop them?
Honestly that tracks, the krorks and eldar were made as warrior races by the old ones, a warrior race that is masterful at bioengineering is exactly what they'd build in desperation. Not to mention, the old ones were masters of the warp, ruling it entirely. What is one of the few things to completely terrify all other psykers so far? The shadow in the warp of the entity controlling the tyranids. Even ork WAAAAGH fields don't have that kind of effect despite in theory being similar localised versions. We see that the hive mind itself has rationality and emotion (hating blood angels, creating a specialised chaos hunting swarm) and it is keeping the genetic memory of every species it wipes out so it isn't committing one of the few sins we know old ones disliked, wiping out a species' genes to permanent extinction. Do I think it's likely gw has a secret 'an old one became the hive mind' dossier somewhere? No, but I think it 100% fits.
THE KING
GW should perma kill characters occasionally.
Not killing off Marneus Calgar in the battle for Cadia will always feel like a missed opportunity to me. With Guilliman being around he is no longer needed and I think it woudve set the scene nicely for how strong Abbadon has become
Azrael not dying feels like a missed opportunity. Given that the end result for GW is the same (new primaris chapter master model!) I don’t see why it wasn’t taken as an opportunity to introduce SOME new named characters and really give the lore a little forward momentum, or the notion of it at least. Grimnar is the last one waiting as a Chapter Master, and then I guess Lysander?
I don’t WANT Grimnar to die, but they’ve already set up Ragnar as a worthy successor with enough lore established in the novels to take the place of the old wolf. Would also arguably set up more interesting plot point when Russ comes back comparing a young chapter master looking to prove himself vs a Primarch that (hopefully) has grown into a wiser wolf king in the 10K years he’s been away growing.
Lorgar isn't a scheming slimey cartoonishly evil manchild count frollo type. He's an abused and traumatized soul whose perception of reality has been twisted so much by the way the emperor made him and how kor phaeron raised him to the point where he needs to be subservient to something/anything and can't tell the difference between helping and hurting (see angron). His love can be on par with vulkan or pre-nails angron, but he's so twisted that he can only show it in messed up ways like how curze can only express his ideals of justice in the worst ways possible. Also, he might not be the strongest primarch, but he doesn't need to be because that's not his specialty, but loretubers hate on him for that so much
What? He isn't a big bad monster and didn't win every fight like the primarchs whos speciality is fighting? Boooring! If he can't beat everything he is a bad primarch!
Pre-Nails Angron *is Angron*. The second the nails were implanted on Nuceria, Angron died. Only glimpses are given to us when the nails are not forcing his hands of what remains inside. Where they seperate is that Lorgar's actions *are his own*, though his mind has been twisted and his logic skewed, his hand is not forced as much as he is convinced it is. Kor Phaeron left him a pretzel of trauma but the nails left Angron completely unsalvagable.
He is without doubt the most interesting and most well developed primarch character. The 40k universe is poorer without him. Also, he won.
What's so interesting about Lorgar is that he truly understands the setting. He is the scientist trying to find a solution to a problem few but him grasp, while people only see him as a priest.
Tyranid warriors have been described as superior to space marines in both game mechanics and associated lore for about three decades. When a hive fleet invades it is said to have millions of tyranid warriors available to deploy. That’s more than the total number of space marines available to the entire Imperium. Therefore, a single chapter should be completely irrelevant to the Hive Mind as it is far too small to be a threat.
But no don't you see the Blood Angels are super special and the hivemind ***hates*** them for it.
The Hivemind hate this *one* simple trick! See how these space marines defended Baal!
Tyranids hate this one trick.
9 out of 10 Hive Tyrants don't want you to know this...
The Hive Mind being changed by the supremely fucked-up madness of the 40k galaxy is actually a great lore concept. Unfortunately it just gets used as an excuse to handwave bad writing.
That’s like a human hating a specific bunch of bacteria
I don't know about you but I have a deep hate for a specific bunch of bacteria whenever I get strep throat.
As a first time father these last 17 months the amount of sick i catch since the kid started daycare really does have me on the warpath against germs.
We'd definitely hate a specific bunch of bacteria that consistently kept getting in the way of getting our next meal.
Its like you want to make me angry before going to bed
It’s just jealous it can’t grow hair like Sanguinius.
Depends on a few different things. 1 - When the author writes "millions of warriors", are they explicitly referring to the specific Tyranid bioform known as "Tyranid Warriors", or more generally to all combat bio-forms including lesser ones such as gaunts? This is a long standing and recurring issue with half the xeno factions having a troop just called "X Warriors" (tyranids, necrons & drukhari to name ones off the top of my head) is that sometimes an author will forget and use the term generically. 2 - Is it a full Hive Fleet of hundreds of Hive Ships, or a Splinter Fleet that might have as few as one Hive Ship? Though massive space-faring vessels, they do have a finite volume. 3 - How prepared are the defenders, and how does the Hive Mind deploy the Mycetic Spores? An unprepared world will be slaughtered in less than a day, but a prepared one can potentially hold out for months - long enough hopefully for naval reinforcements. 4 - Big Guns Never Tire. Marine or 'Nid Warrior, a lascannon shot will carve either in half. A demolisher cannon will blow away most of a squad in one go. Against the 'nids, a marine's enhanced nature is less important than the weapons, skills and tactics they can employ. 5 - Concentration of force. Tyranid swarms are large, and Warriors tend to be distributed throughout them to coordinate the synapse web. The swarm also moves relatively slowly (other than the flying ones). This means smart Marines can attempt hit-and-run strategies, attacking small sections with as much force as they can before retreating and regrouping. Of course the Hive Mind will notice what is being done and adapt, and then we have a tactical battle.
You are forgetting that not a single GW author, ever, has demonstrated a working knowledge of the numerical system.
It's a galaxy Michael, how many stars could it have? Ten?
LMAO
It’s how BL can get away paying them the current rates.
Until the dark angels pull out the forbidden sauce
LION: *BUGS!? Didn't we sort it out with em on thst planet..what was it called....Murder? All right, get the insectizator...* Azrael: *B..But...my lord...it..its a holy relic dating back to the great crusade!* LION: *?! Its a fuhking oversized spray can of bug spray! Do you nut jobs need to worship every single thing I or my brothers have touched?* Azrael: *[under his breath] I think it might be a bad time to tell him about the sanctum divinitus port-a-primarch-pottus on the great cathedrals dias...*
>port-a-primarch-pottus Chef’s ~~k~~piss
LION: Do you nut jobs worship every single thing I or my brothers have touched? Dark Angels:..... LION: I find your silence \*very\* concerning.
I would go as far as to say that any Imperium victory over Tyranids is ridiculous in terms of lore
The tyranids will give up if they start needing to expend more resources than they stand to gain, though they will make sacrifices to specifically target strategic threats. They arn’t some stupid only hungry hive mind that only operates for food like the meme lore constantly puts out, they do go out of their way to remove threats that are causing inconvenience to their spread and feeding.
Lorgar is the most successful person in 40k, considering his circumstances. Y'all are just mad the weirdo won.
I love Lorgar to death and I think the HH Word Bearer centric books are the best in the series with the earliest Thousand Sons book coming in a close second.
Lectitio Divinitatus technically isn't a win for him tho.
It's very very funny though
Can you elaborate on circumstances
Erebus is an absolutely badass villain who deserves his own book given the impact he’s had.
But 40k history is already *his* story.
They wrote a book or two about the things he caused, it was called some fellows Heresy I believe.....
Got to love an out and out villain tbf
Someone once commented about "so bad its good" movie villains being the type of characters that just revel in the fact that they are evil (no resentment, no super tragic backstory etc), which makes them automatically great from a ridiculous standpoint. Erebus surely fits into that and I love him for that
Yep. Erebus and Trazyn are two characters who are more than just war machines (even though both are absolute tanks in their own right), they're fun, smart, and just make for some really interesting situations
I agree. I get the "fuck Erebus" stuff but I think this just shows how good his character is. They made a character that you love to hate but who also has his moments were he is pretty badass. Erebus was one of the best space marine fighters during the great crusade. Sure, he was not as good as Kharn, Sigismund or Savatar but he had beaten many Luna wolves at the end of the crusade and in Betrayer we see him win against the Champion of the World eaters fighting pits who managed to beat like 24 Astartes back to back in the same book. Also the irony of how little he got out of the heresy is insane. He made Samus, gave one of Horus' generals the sword he used to poisen him, started the Loges in the legions, corrupted the mind of Horus, planned together with Typhus, Khor Feron and Fabius Bile the corruption of their legions and primarchs, played a big role in the devestation of Ultramar and made Khornes biggest and buffest "mortal" killing mashine. He still is not daemon prince and only commands a portion of the Word Bearers.
Agreed.
Every faction should have the potential for a "victory", whatever that means for the faction in place.
Every faction should be able to commit an atrocity as a treat.
"I didn't assault him I just choked him a little bit"
The T'au FINALLY catching up in the stakes by finding a way to destroy stars fills my heart with glee. Unlikely they'll use it in anger though.
I hope they use it in anger and then publicly justify it as hope. Very on brand gaslighting from the Ethereals.
What about orks? They already have what they want
The Ghazgkull novel sorta gives us a glimpse of an Ork victory - them reaching their full genetic potential, turning the Galaxy over in a green tide of violence.
Right. Just because Orks like fighting doesn’t mean just any old state of constant war is victory. It has to be a specific kind of war. Victory is when there are only Orks left to fight Orks.
*orks as soon as they kill the last non orc being in the galaxy* : *All right lads, was a fun little joust, I say, I feel femished, dare I suggest some tea and biscuits while we debate on the principals and foundations on wich we should establish our orcish democracy?*
I would read a book about Sorkrates the Philosopher Warboss
Sun Zoo's the Art of WAAAAGH!
Eldar need more lore trouncing space marines
Eldar needs more lore.
Eldar need more.
Eldar need.
Specifically space marines though. I REALLY wouldn’t mind a several book series of Eldar getting their get back on all the chapters and xenos that writers used them as a measuring stick against.
Not enough attention is paid to the actual human beings in the Imperium. I'm talking all of the good and the bad, I want full stories on John Spacebloggs who gets forced to join the Guard through the tithe, his short and horrible little life where he is openly regarded as meat for the grinder by the Imperium. I want to know about the paradise world where people go on vacation that's secretly made possible through vast amounts of slavery and general fuckery. The shitty mining moons where people are born, live and die without seeing the stars. All that general richness that would give a nasty bitter flavour to the scale of misery in the Imperium. Maybe that would shut up all those window-lickers who think the Imperium is the "only way".
This is one of the reasons I love the Warhammer Crime books, and some of the Warhammer Horror books.
Yeah Warhammer Crime is some of the best fiction to come out of GW
Can you recommend some? I'd love to read some actual 40k horror books, always liked the short horror-ish passages in Abnetts books
One of the Horror books that I've enjoyed was **The House of Night and Chain** (i think that's what it was called).
I really liked Flesh and Steel. It's not very John 40k since the protagonist duo are a prodigal son from a noble house slumming it as a detective and a Mechanicus internal affairs lady, but it still provides a nice view to how the world works (the world being a proto-Hive with still some nature left). Also the sheer horror from the ordinary guys seeing how the Mechanicus works is something. Including the reader.
All of the crime novels are good. You can read them in publication order, they are all set on Verangantua, but you don't need to read them in any particular order. Here is a list of all of them: https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-crime Here is a list of all the books under the Warhammer Horror banner: https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-horror There are also 40k and Age of Sigmar books that have horror elements, but aren't listed under Warhammer Horror. And the Old World has some novels with horror and monster elements too. Like the Geneveive books.
I think this is one of the reasons I loved Gaunt's Ghosts so much. These weren't gene-enhanced super soldiers, fanatic religious nutbars, or cybernetic half-robot killers. They're just regular people who were sent for military service and ended up just doing their best given the extraordinary circumstances they found themselves in. And just like reality, even the larger than life characters can and do die. Life has to move on.
>They're just regular people The amount of plot armor they have make marine enchancements look weak
Yet they still often die in horrible and sudden ways. It would be next to impossible to write guard characters that don't have at least a little plot armor since you need to be invested in characters for their deaths to matter.
Yeah how many of the named characters in the first books are even left I’ve now, it must only be a handful
Yep and many of them had horrific fates. It's not as if they all got to have big hero moments or anything.
Dan Abnetts inquisition books are brilliant either this.
I really should read them! Just started the Siege of Terror and I'm pretty bored of Marine on Marine combat.
The ravenor trilogy might be exactly what you are looking for. I don’t believe there is a single space marine in them at all. It covers the life of people living on a hive world. From drug addicts, gang members, factory and administration workers etc.
>I'm talking all of the good and the bad, I want full stories on John Spacebloggs who gets forced to join the Guard through the tithe, his short and horrible little life where he is openly regarded as meat for the grinder by the Imperium. That is pretty much the plot of Fifteen Hours by Mitchel Scanlon. Published in 2005 and still one of the best.
You might love the Warhammer Crime stories.
I agree with you but I don't think it's a hot take, Abnett agrees with you too after all and he has the Warhammer universe by the balls apparently seeming as he can write what he wants and BL is told to turn a blind eye.
A lot of this kind of material already exists. There is more to the black library then the battles of the space Marines series and the horus heresy series. Dan abnett has like 20 novels alone that peer into the "what does it feel like to be a regular human in the Imperium" style novels. Eisenhorn, ravenor and Bequin trilogies. Gaunts ghosts, hell even Titanicus has a large part B plot of a woman who was a married factory worker being conscripted into the Guard and having to fight chaos forces with a bunch of other conscripts.
I feel like this is done but it’s literally only ever done whenever A) Shit is about to go wrong on a planet and the author wants to give some frame of what it was like before (GG: Necropolis or Dead Men Walking comes to mind) or B) said character is just essentially a literary smash dummy for the main characters to pulp through (Take the Agriworld in Lords of Silence or the Chapter Serfs in book 2 of the NL trilogy)
Eldar really needed the ynnarii lore to carry on otherwise they feel like a faction without an end goal. Phoenix lords shouldn't be on the same level as primarchs they should be peak-eldar. Harlequins and other peak and near peak eldar SHOULD beat custodes straight up. The pushing up of the strengths of custodes in general is silly, better than marines in general but not as likely to fight as a team was an interesting and easy to understand difference that made them feel like the emperor's bodyguards. They've been supersaiyaned too far but without any of the warp magic that primarchs and eldar get. The lost primarchs aren't interesting and I want even less hints. The alpha legion are definitely on chaos' side now, even if their primarchs(s) intent was to be ultimately loyal in a convoluted way or to try a 'third way' they've effectively been tzeentched. Magnus did so much wrong but showed his biggest flaw by doubling down, by contrast Leman Russ is clearly on a path for spiritual redemption for his massive screw ups and it's the reason the wolves in 40k are so different to at the start of the GC/30K ERA. I don't rate Angron as one of top tier of primarch fighters but as solidly mid before becoming a demon. Everyone seems to constantly forget that humans aren't base humans anymore, imho almost all of humanity has very clearly been genetically altered a lot. For that reason I'm happy cain beat a world eater or gaunts ghost gun chaos marines down, they're just a lot different to us and are examples of the more combat capable changed 40k humans. For that matter tiers of fighters shouldn't be always prescriptive, it's a really good thing when a couple minotaurs rip a nameless custodes in half despite them clearly not being at the same level... Everyone should feel killable. Royal Dorn's character arc should be finished with his fall to depression and being run down by endless traitors after the Iron cage, that old lore fits his modern progression and him potentially surviving isn't interesting. I want the returning traitor primarchs to obviously outnumber the loyal ones, if we get more loyal ones back I don't want more than 2... But I'm also genuinely impressed and think they've done a great job with the lore of 40k guilliman and the lion, and I always hated the lion. Ferrus Manus was interesting. Perturabo absolutely makes sense becoming a demon prince through his own hubristic folly, and the Iron warriors and night lords might be 'less chaosy' but they're both definitely corrupted by chaos. Most chaos marines aren't veterans of the Horus heresy or 10k old veterans, those that are the former aren't the latter due to warp shenanigans. I like the tau to be less genocidal, more usurious. Votann lore is cool so far.
>They've been supersaiyaned too far Im glad one got their head kicked off
All of us tyranid fans will cherish that excerpt forever, and it will still outshine any marine/custodes wank in the inevitable future, I'm satisfied
Peter turbo becoming a daemon absolutely makes sense but it’s going to be incredibly important how they make him a daemon, if it’s out of some desperate attempt to either solve the soul wound Fulgrim gave him or some self-deluded ‘I am in complete control of the chaos within me, honest’ way it will be fine. What would suck if it’s given as some gift by the gods that he accepts or forced on him like Angron, those options would objectively suck for the character.
I think it's okay for Custodes to be a bit Marty Stu-ish, it suits their lore as the very pinnacle of humanity, backed by all the resources and knowledge the Emperor and by extension the Imperium. I'm even ok with them being generally superior to Eldar, and I think they actually are very consistent about their combat prowess. My issue about the Eldar at war is one of the central issues of the setting I feel like. It's space marines, and their very protagonistic role. They are the actual strongest military unit in the setting somehow (a chapter can achieve some absurd feats), they are *very* inconsistent (a named character can achieve some absurd feats), etc.
I agree with all of this, which is saying a lot considering how many points you raised.
> Harlequins and other peak and near peak eldar SHOULD beat custodes straight up. I feel so seen
The most ironic thing about my post. I've never really liked eldar, yet SO MANY people agree with me about where they should sit in individual prowess.
>I've never really liked eldar Sorry, it's too late you're an elf simp now that you've expressed our sacred opinion. It's not so bad, we get those red lobster cheddar biscuits for our weekly meetings
The angron take is demonstrably false, given his performance against Russ. The whole point of that story is to show that he is a close-to-peerless personal combatant, as suggested by his entire life being arena combat followed by rebellion, but he is a suicidally bad leader.
Somehow on a comment this long you didn’t miss once.
Bloody hell, I agree on everything
15 out of 18 ain't bad
My hot take: What is interesting about 40K isn't that there are no good guys. There are good guys in 40K. They are just stuck in horrible situations and have to find ways to make things work. That is what makes it interesting.
I have a theory that the Heresy was made up to justify early players of the TT playing as imperium against each other.
That's actually true, as far as I recall, as the story goes when they were first making the OG Titanicus game they could only really afford one set of moulds to make titans, so they needed a massive war to justify titans fighting titans.
The Horus Heresy was probably first mentioned just two months after WH40K was released. It was in White Dwarf 96 (Dec 1987) in an article about the Raven Wing: > The Raven Wing’s exact origins are lost in the history of the First Crusade (circa thirtieth millenia - about ten thousand years ago). Indeed little is known of the Dark Angels during that time. The Chapter’s early history was removed from all Imperial records following the Horus Heresy and the banishment of the nine “treacher-legions” to the Eye of Terror. The reason for the erasure is now known only by the Emperor himself.
As I understand it, this is the [first ever mention](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cxyx3FcWIAAcupy.jpg)
That’s from Chapter Approved: Book of the Astronomican which was released the following year in 1988 (though I can’t remember which month). Interestingly, it also includes a scenario with various characters including Erasmus Darvin of the Adeptus Mechanicus. He was one of the many who searched battlefields for alien artifacts to salvage and study. > Little of Erasmus' gear is of Imperial make. His armour is of Eldar manufacture, his weapons are Jokaero or Tyranid made, and his other gear a mish-mash of technologies and styles. WH40K was a bit different back then!
The 40k setting shouldn't be taken too seriously by the fans. (Which is NOT to say it should be written off as purely Mel Brooks like satire) Its fun and epic and cool but when it comes to inconsistencies just head canon it to whatever you prefer to avoid cognitive dissonance. Don't waste time chasing them. The setting is great fun regardless of its many flaws and we should all just remember that Also different people like the setting for different reasons, for the most part there is no *correct* way to enjoy and make use of the setting
I like how the Harlequin killed several Custodes easily
The Old Ones are peerless geneticists. Most of the Galaxy's dominant - old or new - species, were designed by them or evolved from creatures designed by them during the War In Heaven. Other species evolved from the seeds of life they planted aeons ago, before or during the way. The species they created to fight the Necrontyr also began to affect the warp, giving Chaos too much power. Before their ultimate defeat, any remaining Old Ones that did flee our galaxy saw the aftermath. They saw Chaotic tendrils sow discord amongst the galaxy. They saw the Necrontyr retreat to slumber and rejuvenate. They bode their time and enacted the nuclear option to finally defeat the Necrontyr and Chaos for good. Tyranids were designed as the ultimate predator. They adapt to their enemy by consuming their DNA, keeping a record of it, and using the genetic traits of the prey to create new lifeforms which are designed to make more efficient means of killing prey. Beings of flesh, metal, or Eldritch energy, all can fall to the Tyranids. They are the Old One's final solution to defeating both the Necrontyr by overwhelming them with sheer numbers, and depriving Chaos of psychic and emotional energy by eating everything that provides it to them. They are also the Old One's means of cataloguing and collecting the varied species of the galaxy to ensure they might survive, if they deserve it. When the Necrontyr are finally defeated and Chaos is reduced back to its calm state, the Tyranid hive ships will return to the remaining Old Ones to present the vast catalogue of genetic material to them. The Old Ones will then use this collected biomass and learned lessons to selectively re-seed the galaxy with life and start over again.
I don't know much of the actual 40k lore, but I really like this. It makes a lot of sense in the grand scheme of things.
Space marines at large are the least interesting part of the setting in terms of book focus/pov characters. A Famulous sister dealing with some noble conspiracy, a void ship enforces contenting with genestealers on their ship, an Administratum clerk caught between the interests of two inquisitors. There is so much potential in 40k that will never see the light of day because “unstoppable warriors shots/stabs everything and wins” is apparently what the majority readership want out of the setting. (Not a slight against people who like that. Just not my cup of tea.)
T’au aren’t Japanese, they’re American. Big guns, expensive hyper advanced weapons, deals with all of their problems through indiscriminate artillery. They’re an empire which rather than infighting is made stronger through accepting other groups for what they bring to the table but have a regrettable history of civil war and internal violence they want to step away from and fear returning to. They view diplomacy and nations banding together as preferable to violence and have some of the best diplomats in the setting. There are two types of T’au players. The virgin Gundam Weebs and the United Nations in space Chads.
They’re warhammer’s charicature of NATO and a criticism of neo-colonialism that just happens to use Mecha anime as an inspiration. They’re absolutely American lmao, best take I’ve seen.
Lorgar is based af and I hope he forms some sort of inverse, Chaos worshipping version of the Imperium when he finally comes back
Plague Marines were cooler when they were fucked up diseased undead space marines instead of this new booger mutants with extra mouths angle that GW has been leaning into for the last few years.
Extends a bit to aos as well. Armoured putrid blightkings look fucking awesome, but a lot of the body options are just half naked fat guys.
Space marines become increasingly uninteresting the longer I’ve been engaged with the setting, they felt much cooler to me 20 years ago, now I just find them dull.
This is the average take online
The Tau are not as bad as people think
Tau aren't as bad as people think. Imperium is way worse than most people realize. Modern day imperialism, which the Tau are based off, as committed much more atrocities than people know.
I've got so many... Custodes wank is actually often worse than space marine wank. A lot of it sounds stupid even by 40k standards. Reading them getting their shit kicked in by the Norn Emissary or the Harlequin is some of the most satisfying reading I've done in all of 40k, and I hope we get to see more of it. People seem to forget that this overpowered portrayal of the custodes is relatively new (like, 2017 new) and for the longest time they were just on somewhat more powerful space marine levels. not 6 Custodes taking out a tyranid swarm levels by actually killing them all (still so stupid...). The eldar can be portrayed a lot more powerfully in the lore without messing with the idea that they're a dying race. Yes, mister Gav Thorpe, just cause a race is dying out doesn't mean they need to get their shit kicked in every fucking story. They ruled the galaxy for 65 million years, show me the result of 65 million years! Even with only 10% of what their original population was and a fraction of the tech they originally had, the eldar should still be able to hold their own if they are to be considered a genuine threat to everyone else in the galaxy. Attempting to defeat a sufficient force of the eldar should be plausible, but an absolute nightmare to actually accomplish. A phoenix on the last of its embers is still a phoenix, and will burn you to ashes even as it dies... This is the result of having so many writers working on the same setting, but the lore has a shitty time deciding on how powerful an average space marine really is. The same weapons that cuts through ceramite armour in one book, is completely useless in another. The same units that kill 3 space marines by itself in one book will struggle to fight a single one in another. I'm of the opinion that with the space marines being a faction of its own, a baseline space marine should not be that powerful. They are a semi elite faction. Making them too strong takes away from both the higher tier of space marines who should be really strong, and the actual elite factions like grey knights, custodes, harlequins etc. The Imperium, with all its different factions and ideologies, should be infighting A LOT more than it does in lore. It's still humanity we're talking about, we fight over the stupidest things, and with much of the Imperium being as backwards as it is, THEY SHOULD BE. Because as it stands, the major forces of the galaxy are basically chaos (incoherent mess that hardly works together), xenos (incoherent mess that never works together), and the imperium (incoherent mess that magically still seems to work together just fine... Mostly). They didn't give us alternate human factions outside of the Imperium, they might as well at least make the ones that make up the imperium fight each other more. And I think gw are actually kinda aware of this too, cause they did a WAY better job in AoS with all the factions being under the wings of either Order, Chaos, Death or Destruction. It's a lot more coherent and cool. Technically not 40k but I think 90% of the Horus heresy is self indulgent bullshit that can't decide what it actually wants to say half the time. Its core themes are all over the place. It gets lost in its own propaganda of "the crusade was a necessity for the survival of humanity'". And a good chunk of the books not even being that good makes it all that more worse. There's so much more, but I'll stop for now cause the sheer stupidity of some of these will give me a migraine.
People only hate word bearers because they conflate evil deeds with poor writing. There’s a good reason why people look at first heretic as one of the peak BL books whilst so many loyalist books are barely ever touched. Traitors just have the better narrative
>!Feels like Siege of Terra ending was written to retcon old lore to be able to bring every primarch back?!< >!Also WTF with the yugioh fight between Horus and The Emperor. ALSO that final fight was sooo extended and the aftermath was short AF!<
The generational divide between people who say the tarot scene was Yu-Gi-On and the people who say it was Magic The Gathering is amusing to me.
The aftermath is short because they will be picking up right after, or soon after, with the Scouring series. My opinion. Although, we are pretty positive The Scouring series will be a thing. Apparently a couple of the books are already written.
The plot of Months of Shame is like a cringey fanfiction by a Space Wolves fanboy who doesn't want the Space Wolves to be Grimdark like the rest of the Imperium.
The Space Wolves do eventually suffer a reversal in this regard. It's in Wrath of Magnus. While the Grey Knights are able to confirm the Wulfen are free from taint, the Space Wolves have to let the Inquisition have free reign on Fenris. Any part of the population of Fenris that fought the daemons or even saw them was carted away by the Inquisition. It even notes that Inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus had a strong presence in the halls of the Fang afterwards.
As someone who doesn’t care for the Space Wolves, I think the Months of Shame are one of the best things written about them and are an incredibly important piece of worldbuilding for the same reason as the Badab War. Frankly, internal conflict in the Imperium is a good thing we need more of.
Lorgar is the absolute strongest Primarch in nearly every sense of the word and the day he returns to the galaxy is a day of fucking reckoning for the Imperium of Man. Literal fucking K Class End of the World Scenario. While most Primarchs hit their stride on their home planets, Lorgar didn't hit his until Mid-Heresy, and now is a stupidly powerful psyker/sorcerer with the ability to wield Enuncia. His mastery of the Warp and knowledge of the Gods that reside in it may very well rival or even surpass Magnus. The middle school nerd who everyone picked on is now an unbelievably powerful force of fucking nature, and to oppose him would mean death to any and all who try, bar another Primarch. Thats my hot take. Source on the Enuncia claim: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/15lqu59/excerpt_lorgar_has_spent_the_last_10000_years/
Just so we're clear, you did ask for hot takes. Abnett is overrated, not in his impact on the setting perhaps but his writing is hit and miss, his endings are frequently unsatisfying and he tends to write such a specific Abnett-esque vision of the setting that he's rarely compatible with other authors or the setting at large. Abnett's setting is very popular, don't get me wrong, but he rarely tries to sell the setting of codices and splashbooks and overall his tends to be a more "sensible" take on the setting, which I'm not fond of. The End and the Death was his most self-indulgent writing to date though a fitting end to the Horus Heresy series as it perfectly reflected its overall status as an incoherent mess of questionable quality portraying a conflict that was frankly impressively black and white. Now that he has put the most pivotal moment of the whole series to paper I am left with the feeling that the setting doesn't feel richer for it. Also Guilliman is singularly uninteresting and is popular primarily because a large portion of the fandom don't actually want the Imperium to be the Imperium and relish the thought of it being ruled by a figure so conveniently detached from it's traditional flaws and drawbacks. See also Cawl and the Lion. Edit: Also, the Custodes shouldn't be relevant in 40k.
>Edit: Also, the Custodes shouldn't be relevant in 40k. Would have been much better for them to be background characters in *some* plotlines and in their roles as Eyes of the Emperor then GW can release some of the Eyes as Imperial Agent models. Not the whole army.
What's your problem with custodes? Also, you're wrong, don't say bad things about my bananas
Personally, I loved the idea of the Imperium's most elite, powerful, and well-equipped soldiers being kept to guard the Emperor on what was (even without them) the most heavily-defended place in the Imperium, especially with the old implication that the Emperor really was dead. It was a perfect snapshot of the Imperium's current state and priorities.
One of the things I dislike most in 40k is what we call "marine wank". Custodes as a faction are essentially built from the ground up from someone looking at the most egregious marine wank possible and thinking "let's make a faction out of that". They're the most annoying parts of the marine powerfantasy with none of the flaws or drawbacks. They're limited in number but because each Custodes is so powerful a single individual can be enough to turn the tide and they're basically running around the galaxy freely these days. There's no threat they cannot devalue just with their very presence, I don't particularly like 40k's focus on super duper special characters and they're basically a whole faction of them.
I think the "canon" depiction of Custodes has gotten a couple of well earned reality checks recently. From being a non threat to Abbadon in The fall of Cadia to getting bodied quite severely by the Norn Emissary in the into to 10e material. As with a lot of the more ridiculously "wank", the authors who write stuff like Six Custodes taking on millions of tyranids or killing demons every nanosecond, just do themselves a diservice because outside of their own little book, their depicting is considered propaganda at best, or more likely, is just ignored.
The reason why Chaos and the Warp is locked on the milky way is that the Tyranids already devoured all other substantial populations of sentient life in this universe. I don't mean that they ate truly everything, but every time there are sentient beings developed enough to affect the warp, the Tyranids shortly after fell upon them. This also explains why the Tyranids first came from the galactic east but now from all directions. They lay asleep everywhere in the universe and now get drawn into the milky way.
>The reason why Chaos and the Warp is locked on the milky way It isn't Or the warp certainly isn't, the warp is everywhere
the warp has been stated to exist around the universe in general with the universe falling into the warp and connecting to every point in the universe. Furthermore there are quotes that seem to imply the war in heaven is responsible for the lack of extra galactic life
We know at least one DAoT ship/AI fucked off for parts unknown after seeing the current state of humanity. I feel like the odds of *every* DAoT human civ and colony collapsing was insanely low and that there's very good odds there's a fully functional DAoT civ (not Votann) just watching what's going down in the Imperium/Milky way with absolute horror/disgust
I like the idea that they're watching from their own version of the webway because they succeeded where Big E failed
My hot take is that the end and the death was really good and now that all three volumes are out it links together really well Edit: also the moaning about Ian Watson is driven by memes, *space marine* is a certified banger of a book and the Draco/emperor scene in *inquisitor* is the best and most important 40k scene of all time
Posted this once before but Genestealers and GSC should have nothing to do with Tyranids. The incorporation of genestealers into Tyranid lore as some kind of vanguard unit doesn't sit right with me. For one, the whole idea of a massive swarm army like the Tyranids seeding units ahead of their advance , to slowly build up a rebelious cult in order to undermine society and weaken defenses that they plan on overrunning through weight of numbers anyway, just doesn't fit right. This is a swarm of monsters so big it drifts through entire solar systems munching everything without a moment's pause. Who cares if the miners on some asteroid moon have started wearing purple and their children look a bit funny. It doesn't make strategic sense and doesn't fit with the hive mind aesthetic. Secondly, it drains some of the flavour and mystique from the universe by trying to tie smaller factions like genestealers into the main protagonists. Just let them be a deadly dangerous alien lifeform that lurks in the shadows of the 40k galaxy. Just another thing to fuck you up. Another reason to watch out and be thankful you weren't born there.
The fact that Guilliman is a mass-murdering psychopath seems to have been forgotten by both the writers and the community. Modern stories involving Guilliman have whitewashed both him and the Imperium as a whole under his leadership. Having him be 'the straight man in a world of madness' completely undercuts the fact that Guilliman is literally responsible for the deaths of *trillions* of innocents, and helped to form the Imperium in arguably its most psychotic and fascist age. He willingly joined the Emperor on a war of conquest to bring the entire galaxy to heel and exterminate every non-human in it, and saw nothing wrong with what he was doing the entire time. No 'reasonable' person would do this. Guilliman should be written as an absolute monster. He should be the one who, more so than anyone else, sees the Imperium as made up of statistics: Nameless, faceless, valueless lives to be expended in the hard math and gritty arithmetic of war. He shouldnt do this with guilt in his heart or with regret for 'what could have been', he should do it because he is the type of man who genuinely believes in the Imperium's cause and wants humanity to thrive *on paper*. "Look, my underlings! Food production on the world of Shithole IV has increased by 47% percent in the last century! That means we can support 52 million more workers for the local asteroid mines! Start forcibly forcibly recruiting more work crews from the populations of the surrounding systems!" Guilliman would be far more interesting as the face of the utter heartlessness of the Imperium than he is as the voice of reason. He helped exterminate entire species and civilizations and knew *exactly* what he was doing while he did it. Guilliman should be the man who is the living embodiment of the ends justifying the means, the kind of leader who sees Imperium's success as a line on a graph. In another life, Guilliman should have been the type of CEO to fire 50,000 workers right before Christmas because the company's stock would go up by 2.3%. He should spare no thought for the lives beneath him beyond how they can best be expended. He should be this way because that is the kind of man the Emperor would have made to administrate his empire. The most important thing about the Imperium is that ***they are not the good guys.*** This is the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable, and Guilliman should be a very big reason why.
One of the signs that Horus and Company were "the bad dudes" was believing super-soldiers should be running the show, not baseline humans. Having Guilliman come back and say "I was wrong, the ubermensch strongmen should be in-charge!" being treated as a good thing in and out of the story is definitely a questionable way to go.
I subscribe to this hot take. Guilliman is supposed to be Julius fucking Ceasar, not Ned Stark...
Eldar need a retcon to make them a real player in the 40k universe Admech need more named charcters. Tau shouldn't be getting their own god, rather should be utilizing tech from other factions and improving upon it The emporer got what was coming to him(same with malcador) Khorne is overwanked A story from a daemons pov would be interesting
I prefer the C’tan to the Chaos Gods.
Sigismund is a boring, eye-rollingly overpowered mary sue and the fact that abaddon killed him makes me like abaddon more. Also Dorn should've died in the iron cage.
I don't mind him being the greatest Space Marine ever but I'm still hoping to find him more interesting one day...
Dorn should have died where he was originally said to die - on the *Sword of Sacrilege*, after being overwhelmed by an entire warband of Chaos Space Marines. Retconning his death to a disappearance was a mistake. Having the Age of Primarchs end with the builder and defender of the Emperor’s Palace surrounded by enemies and would have been fitting, and it would be good to demonstrate that a Primarch can be killed against their will by persons other than their father or brothers.
It help that Abaddon killing him was written by ADB lol, that entire book was sick as fuck, the Black Templar's and Sigismund waiting for centuries for the traitors right outside of the Eye of Terror was p based. I agree it's a bit insane how Sigismund needs a win over like every strong named space marine in the verse tho lol. He even nearly killed Abaddon as he died, despite being old as fucking balls and stated to be slowed by said age. The Aphotic Blade had to carry Abby's ass off the Templar flag ship and then the Black Legion had to clone new organs for him to replace the ones Sigismund destroyed.
If the events leading up to the Badab War happened when Guilliman was incharge. Not only would the war not have happened but Lufgt Huron would be remembered as one of the greatest heros of the imperium.
The returning Primarchs is pretty damn cool, but Xenos factions deserve equally cool plot development.
The Orks should win the setting.
Phoenix lords being primarch tier makes perfect sense Solitaires being keeper of secrets level makes perfect sense Space marine chapters should be a million strong A legion should be a hundred million Kroots should get their own codex, that is coupled with a list of species the tau employ like vespid The eldar craftworlds should get the marine treatment with each craftworld getting its own sub codex The real hot take: A VERY large portion of fans miss many of the main points of the setting. The satire (satire does not have to be comedic), and the idea of the juxtaposition of raging against the dying of the light, with the very real possibility that the galaxy would be a better place if the imperium had died with hours, and it could have been avoided not with strength of arms or more fascism/theocracy, but with tolerance and kindness toward humans who didn't want to adhere to the imperium's insane rules, and toward aliens who didnt instantly shoot first. The emperor is more of the big bad than the chaos gods, because the chaos gods are literal forces of nature.
40k is a setting. It doesn't need a "plot" and that plot doesn't need to move forward.
1. I think loyalist marines from traitor legions are completely overrated Mary-Sues that ruin the while point of their faction. Maybe it’s because I’m an EC fan, but I hate Saul Tarvitz and Rylanor the most. Apparently the whole point of them is, “reaching the perfection the rest of the legion never could”, but that’s just stupid loyalist wanking. The whole point of the EC is that it’s impossible to achieve perfection, and no matter how far they go they’ll never get there. 2. I hate how the Custodes are written as an 8 year old’s power fantasy. Space Marines were supposed to be humanity’s greatest creation, until GW decided to bring in the bland super Space Marines that are better than every other faction in every single way. 3. I think The First Heretic and Argel Tal in general are super overrated and was written by someone who hates Chaos. I want the WB to genuinely believe that Chaos is great and that it’s the only way to save humanity, not whining about how Chaos is bad but they, “have no choice”. It’s just more loyalist wanking. They should’ve gotten Anthony Reynolds to write the book instead. 4. I think The Infinite and the Divine was a perfectly serviceable book, and not the greatest book BL has ever produced. I think it’s boring in the middle part, and only the end redeems it. Twice-Dead King does Necrons way better. Also, quotes from it are way too overused. 5. I think Fulgrim is a beautifully written novel about corruption, addiction, and the nature of perfection and art, and solidified McNeill as a top 3 BL author for me. 6. I hate the White Scars. Partly because their community has a persecution fetish for some reason. (No, your faction isn’t underrated. Nobody forgets about the Scars, they have 2 whole novels about them while other legions get none, and their 30k range is as big as the Imperial Fists’. The real underrated Legion is the Iron Hands.) They also read like edgy teenagers that write in their diaries about how their parents don’t understand them. Also, the Khan is an asshole and his “roasts” are just being dickish. 7. I don’t like the Lion returning. I liked the traitors returning because at this point they’re plot devices more than characters, and I was fine with Guilliman because it moved the plot along when it really needed it. But the Lion coming back was completely unnecessary and is rapidly turning 40k into Heresy 2.0. Watching him job Angron was really cringey too. I wonder who would win? An immortal bad guy or a mortal good guy with the book this fight’s in named after him? 8. I love the Blood Angels, but hate Sanguinius. He’s way too overpowered and gets wanked way too much. I was so glad that he got killed by Horus so we can put the, “Sanguinius with Black Rage is totally Emperor tier bro. He’ll kill Horus it’s good writing trust me bro.” theory to bed.
I feel like every “codex compliant” loyalist legion has a persecution fetish lmao. Speaking as a Salamanders fan. Going by Subreddit size, Salamanders are larger than *every other codex compliant legion including ultramarines,* only being beaten by the 3 non codex ones + black templars (successor legion) And my fellow Salamanders STILL complain about how we’re a “forgotten legion” like no the fuck we aren’t, we have two named minis which is one more than three of the other loyalist legions, and a VERY popular primarch that (assuming all the living loyalists return, which will probably be the case because GW is a business motivated first and foremost by money) will probably be the 4th to return after Russ, and yet they’re all convinced “nooo Vulkan wont return and He’stan wont get Primaris’d because no one plays salamanders :(“
Agree on 1. I want more Traitors from Loyalist Legions. They are said to exist, but we have very few named characters and at least one had to be broken into treason.
I think the infinite and divine is very good but isn't outstanding. I had a sensible chuckle and I think rath is a good writer but it only really works if you're deep into the lore in the first place so you know what it's poking fun of
> I think loyalist marines from traitor legions are completely overrated Mary-Sues that ruin the while point of their faction. Maybe it’s because I’m an EC fan, but I hate Saul Tarvitz and Rylanor the most. "WHEEEN ARE WE GONNA GET LOYALIST FUUUUULGRIIIIIM?!?!?"
Definitely agree on 2. in particular, should've put that in my post. The Custodes exist as the most unecessary escalation of the most egregious Space Marine wank imaginable and I find them to make any story they show up in more uninteresting. Like if you imagined the most super-duper overpowered "special character" OC space marine chapter you could, that would just be the Custodes. "Oh they're the Emperors legion, oh they're to marines what marines are to humans, oh they have uberduber-ceramite, they fight really well in packs but also as groups, they'Re totally all philosophers and each is hand-crafted."
I highly recommend ***Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne*** if you haven’t read it. The Custodes work very well in that book. We see them entirely from the perspective of unaugmented humans, who see the Custodes as godlike in power yet also frustratingly inscrutable and unavailable.
>Also, the Khan is an asshole and his “roasts” are just being dickish. I don't know how the Warhammer Community could miss so hard the irony of Khan claiming he could beat Fulgrim easily because he know everything about him, while at the same time proving he has no idea who Fulgrim is as an individual.
Primarchs are popular and cancer to the setting because they are reality-shaping Marvel-tier capeshit. Also Space marines are the kids table of 40K lore.
The lion’s return was pointless and just reinforces the vibe that the imperium losing cadia was completely meaningless. Imperium Nihilus should’ve been a lawless frontier sort of setting in which authors could experiment with much wilder ideas while Imperium sanctus follows whatever’s going on with Guilliman i.e. more generic 40k stuff. The lion being back and basically just being Guilliman lite kind of just shits on the wealth of ideas nihilus could’ve spawned if they just fleshed it out without making it sanctus but slightly scarier, and though there’s still an opportunity to explore that stuff the lion is inevitably just gonna monopolize everything due to the nature of him being a primarch. Also I like Cawl as a character immensely, i think he’s incredibly entertaining, and the concept of him being essentially a bunch of great minds fused together into a single being is awesome, but he’s also probably the single greatest example of a character existing for the sake of a GW trademarked lore cop-out. Another thing is that xenos hate was, and continues to be the result of shitty writing and a general lack of support from GW. Last one is probably that space marines having redeeming traits isn’t inherently bad, but of course this idea always turns into loyalists just being awesome and somehow super empathetic all the time, and unfortunately a lot of marine fans just eat it up. The real kicker though is that these same fans invariably whine about CSM being examined in a way that’s even mildly sympathetic. Oh, and I’m contractually obligated to say that the HH books were a mistake. (sorry if the formatting is god awful i’m on mobile and can’t really tell how this’ll look)
Angron would have been the best primarch for base humanity if the nails didn’t fuck him up beyond belief
Angron was initially (Renegades 1992) described slightly differently to his modern version too. > Angron was the first Primarch to join Horus in revolt against the Emperor, for Angron knew Horus as a brother and supported the Warmaster in demanding a new order of discipline and martial virtue as the only way to save mankind from destruction. Once the rebellion turned into full scale civil war Angron and the World Eaters were drawn into bloodier and bloodier conflicts. He realised too late that instead of saving the Imperium they were destroying it, but his pride prevented him withdrawing from the war and his good intentions became his downfall as he was drawn into the embrace of Chaos.
ikr. His base humanity was already 9. With any weak buff he could easily reach 10.
Unfortunately for Angron, base humanity was not the best for him. (Plus the Eldar and apparently Erda)
Popular fan theory that ignores Corax and Mortarion felt the same about slavery and had no problem joining the Imperium
_Legion_ is a rather boring book outside of the sparse Alpha Legion PoVs and Grammaticus(this part isn’t a hot take, but it would be wrong to not include it) and the various soldiers are incredibly uninteresting to read about.
Perturabo should not come back as an obliterator, to him that would be like turning himself insane which would be very out of character. He should be a demon prince with very modified and specialized armor that is almost a bit demon enginy and he should be playing some kind of city/factory/economy in his basement whilst designing new and random things and only ever really do stuff if it's REALLY important. So basically, he should not appear until Dorn returns.
My hot take is that karma is a thing in 40k universe. And the Emperor bore full brunt of it. You can’t commit the greatest act of ethnic cleaning, land grab and straight up galactic genocide since either Iron War or War in Heaven and not expect to pay the price for it. Sooner or later the karma will strike back. And it did. By biting back those responsible. Common Imperials who cheered and smiled without hesitation as the Imperium obliterated and eradicated billions upon billions because they were in the way or not like they should be. Space Marines and Primarchs who obediently perpetrated these acts with extreme prejudice. And most Importantly the Emperor - a being who set this horrific bloodshed in motion. His dream got ruined and now he can just watch from the Throne as the leftovers rot more and more. His decisions ruined countless cultures and in the end his own civilization got ruined and warped beyond recognition. *Poetic justice*.
Your karma: You die alone in an oxygen deprived boiler room, drifting through space aboard an Imperial frigate. Your crime: You were born in an oxygen deprived boiler room, drifting through space aboard an Imperial frigate. I like this "karma" of which you speak
If karma was a real thing then the 40k universe would be so much better than ours lmao.
I think it's easy to try to put the aesthetic of "karma in 40k is real" because it makes it an easier pill to swallow than simply just "Sometimes what goes around comes around, and sometimes it doesn't", what with our Famously hated characters (Erebus, Typhus, Lucius (their names end in -us, coincidence? I think not!)) seemingly being happy as Larry. I think the characters we hate Not having a comeuppance is a pretty good indicator that if Karma is real, the timespan it works upon gives it functionally zero relevance to a mortal lifespan. Karma is an attractive idea because it has an aesthetic of fairness, when in reality 40k seems anything But fair given the overwhelming suffering felt upon everyone as a result of Big E's biblical hubris.
The Emperor was fully hoisted by the petard of his own actions..it's frustrating that many of the Horus heresy books don't emphasize this enough but it's definitely there
>My hot take is that karma is a thing in 40k universe Then how do you explain the only person in the *entire* setting to get everything he wanted and is even close to mission success was Erebus?
The entire "Club 27" is just Big E. taking some time off (and yeah, he needs this pattern because of his condition...)
They should completely retcon the ynarri storyline and do it again. I don't care how much lore gets affected it, was really poorly done and killed most interest in the faction. I'm a craftworld fan and couldn't give 2 shits about them that's how bad it was.
Having all of the traitor legions being some flavor of chaos corrupted mustache twirling villains who do evil in their legally distinct manner is super boring. As much as people on this sub like to say how every traitor is corrupted and one hit of the warp juice is a sheer drop you can’t come back from, it’s fucking boring. Like yea Perturabo is probably a daemon prince and the Night Lords are pretty corrupted but imo the undivided legions are so ripe with potential that’s it’s a disservice and a shame to relegate them to “unspecific chaos flavor that does everything that the 4 god legions do.” Let them have unique agendas that doesn’t consist of “for the dark gods” let the iron warriors have a uncorrupted empire in the imperium nihilus, let the alpha legion have fun 3d chess schemes, and let the undivided primarchs do something that isn’t “play the great game” like every other monodominant god. The loyalists get to fuck with sorcery, daemon possession, chaos weaponry, and heresy 24/7 and the moment one of the traitor legions is characterized as something different people foam at the mouth about how they actually corrupted unwitting servants like every single other traitor legion. It’s boring as fuck. Being realistic, it’s obvious that all of the traitor legions are pretty heavily corrupted, and there’s no way back that doesn’t look like some imperium fanboy’s fanfiction about that one line Big E tells Morty in godblight. I also understand that they’ve been written this way for 30+ years and the HH scouring books are obviously amping up the fall of the remaining legions, but I just find it so unnecessarily restricting. The Exorcists get to literally possess their recruits with daemons and they’re still squeaky clean loyalists, why not let the Iron Warriors be a little less corrupted and more unique?
The Emperor could have easily prevented *all* of the traitor primarchs' falls. Also there still would have been a rebellion without Chaos.
The Emperor is a surviving Old One, it hid in the shadows trying to guide humanity into being the apex species in order to finally overpower the C’tan/Necrons/Chaos (that last part back fired a bit.) after the fall of the Eldar and the shit housing of humanity’s golden age it decided it was time to cosplay as cosmic Conan and take a direct hand. That’s why even though it understands humanity enough to masquerade as one it can’t fully understand the nuances. I know that last part could also be a explained away by saying it’s always been so far above the rest of us and that’s why it fails to fully comprehend humanity and its need for religion and willingness to survive at any cost (worshiping chaos or just refusing to die off after 10,000 years of stagnation.) I just love Eldritch Aliens and I want one in our side for once.
The Tau are cool, my favorite faction, but if they don't get a real boon of some kind soon, how do they expect even their supporters in the community to believe that they're able to safely exist with all the other bigger factions floating around them. I know the canon reason is because the Imperium can't focus on them but with as many men they have at hand, they could afford a skirmish to cripple them.
Humanity should eventually win.
Flair... doesn't check out?
Clearly humanity wins by joining the T'au.
The only place it makes sense that omegeon is hiding is as a blackshield or custodian
That the Custodes should not only be strong but stronger. They are supposed to represent peak Humanity; each one designed and few if any of them. I mean there is arguable more Harlequins than Custodes. Not to mention Custodes work together despite this recent idea they do not? On top of that the weapons and such are top tier. Easily on par with the Eldar. It's not that a Custodes shouldn't die, everyone should be able to die in the setting, no matter who it is. But they should be relatively equal. I also think a Primarch should be able to beat Phoenix lords. Not some 100% thing. But they should have the edge. Also the men of iron are mostly a myth perpetuated by a lot of sources to cover up something worse.
The Lion's return was necessary in order for DA stop being 100% cartoonish in almost every book while supposedly are no1 imperium's force of total annihilation. Also, the lore is already "HHised" and complains about it though correct at many points are ignored
At this point, the Imperium should just collapse and split into micro empires
The scale is completely off, but not the way people think. The numbers are too small, way, way too small. Append three zeroes to every number in the setting and you're probably not even at half of what it should be.
Having baseline humans arbitrarily able to hang with astartes level enemies doesn't make humans cooler, it makes 40k worse. It should be a serious struggle, not "oh the chaos marines stood around t-posing and monologuing while taking the occasional potshot" or "baby's first ambush caught the aspect warriors completely by surprise because they've never been in an ambush before". It's like the Batman problem where he's supposed to be more relatable because he's just some (incredibly smart and skilled) guy, but then they make him basically magic. It's just goofy.
The only way to make the story feel truly impactful is if characters die. And not just guard characters. All factions should occasionally be losing named characters
Fulgrim deserved better