Incoming Warhammer 40,000 Animated Series
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I started on Warhammer 3rd ed. in the late-80s. Dear god there are some truly horrible flaws in it. They made Warhammer Armies to constrain obvious abuses available from the base rules, except that it only fixed half the problems. The other big problem is that clearly whoever wrote WFB fucking loved Chaos and the Orcs, and transferred that preference into huge advantages for their armies. And besides, all the rank and file in WFB are basically just chaff to make the battle more colourful. It's really just a game about whose big heroes and monsters beat the other side's.Zykon TheLich said:
There was in my view a much better and more balanced system created by some ex-GW employees in the early 90s - Fantasy Warriors, I think it was called. Don't know if it's still available somewhere or anywhere.
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I honestly cannot conceive of any reason to get excited by a 40k series. Space Marines are fundamentally dull and one-dimensional, and the setting and feel of 40k tends to be distinctly... adolescent.
Yeah, Chaos warriors in 3rd were ridiculously badass. There are some differences in the way weapons and armour functioned between systems but stat wise they could kick the shit out of a space marine and were only marginally worse than a Marine captain/major hero.Agema said:
I never really found that, hero bloat wasn't too bad until 4th, although I never really went over to 4th properly.
Yeah, I've heard of that but can't quite remember the name.
I think the 3rd Ed. had larger armies - possibly the miniatures were much smaller in the 80s, so it was easy to amass about 200. I still have my old 80s WFB miniatures around somewhere - they're embarrasingly tiny nowadays. We often used to play with "house rules" of only the most basic magic items, heroes restricted to L10, and usually no magic and no large monsters.Zykon TheLich said:
Even still, Chaos and Orcs had absurd access to "super" troops: Chaos Warriors, minotaurs, Black Orcs, etc. Shit, Orcs could even handily out-artillery Dwarfs who were supposed to be the artillery specialist race.
.Agema said:
Yes, they were in general. A lot of the Empire and Brettonian ones were actually historical Wars of the Roses and 100 years war respectively, sculpted by the Perry twins. You can still buy some of them.
Then you always had some little power gaming asshole, possibly named Zykon, who'd turn up with his chaos war band from the RoC books with chaos champion that he totally rolled up fairly and didn't just pick all the best rewards and attributes that could easily win the battle on his own, let alone with the rest of the war band.
"Why does he have a multimelta?" (back in the days when it was basically a hellhound melta cannon)
"It's what I rolled"
"Fuck off..."
Suit yourself. I find the Guardsmen having to stay sane and occasionally victorious against such foes far more compelling.Silentpony said:
You mean all the things you could already do with Imperial Guardsmen without the baggage?Silentpony said:
And homicidal bio engineered warrior monks will never be more relatable than citizen soldiers trying to overcome insane odds.
I'd also watch series about Usakar Creed and his 8th Cadian Regiment and thier campaigns.Smithnikov said:
Also Necromunda, and can't believe I forgot it since it's my favorite 40k focus. Klovis The Redeemer I consider to be the most quintessential example of the good ol' 40k style. A madman who wields a combination flamethrower/chainsaw and who unflinchingly has a fire going on top of his head while his followers sing a 40k version of Battle Hymn of the Republic is more metal than a space viking could ever be.Samtemdo8 said:
Still, I don't want a Klovis animated series as it'd have to be held up to the comic book in comparison.
But you can't do any of the fun, over-the-top iconic fights in 40k with jus Guardsmen. They have a life expectancy of only a few hours and die in the hundreds of millions a day.Smithnikov said:
You can't have some great big heroic last stand or triumph over the odds because the whole point of Guardsmen is they're completely out-classed by everything, all the time, and their individual lives are meaningless. They're only there to buy time for Space Marines to arrive and get the job done.
A story about guard who be every other generic war story. Just watch Band of Brothers and pretend its set in 40k. That's what a guard story would be about - interesting on a human level, but a complete waste of the 40k IP.
The Warhammer narrative and legend bears no meaningful relationship to the game mechanics.Silentpony said:
The space marines in their chapters of... ~1000 troops. A battalion. Every Space Marine chapter is just a fucking battalion, in a whole galactic space empire. Via the game rules, it's not like one space marine is worth 100 or even 10 Orks, which means a space marine chapter is basically a whole heap of approximately fuck all. You couldn't even defend a modest sized provincial city with a force that small. You could easily wipe out an entire space marine chapter with one casually-aimed, modest-size WMD. It's like arguing in order to beat the Russian army, you just have to hold them off until the SAS or Delta Force get there and then you're sorted. If each chapter had (say) 50,000 space marines, with 1000 chapters they'd still barely be a drop in the ocean of galactic life, but at least they'd make a lot more sense.
That's a bit of an oversimplification.Silentpony said:
There's about 1 million Space Marines in the Imperium, if we're assuming that the 1000 chapters figure remains correct, and each of those chapters has 1000 Space Marines (some have more, some have less, etc.). That means there's effectively one Space Marine for every Imperium planet. That's nothing compared to the billions of humans that compose the Imperial Guard. There's the flavour quote in wikia about the Guard being "the first, last, and sometimes only line of defence." The Space Marines might be the "big boys" in their shiny armour, but it's the Guard that keeps the Imperium together most of the time.
You're right that your average guardsman is going to be outclassed, and that individual lives are meaningless, but the Guard has weight of numbers on its side - probably more than any other (playable) faction bar the tyranids.
Isn't that like saying you can't tell a Star Wars story without Jedi?
Besides, you could easily apply the Band of Brothers formula to...well, anything really, but looking at 40K, let's take the men of Easy Company and put them up against, heck, anything in 40K (orks, tyranids, Chaos, etc.). That's not really wasting the IP when you're drawing on elements unique to the IP, said IP being a setting where something like WWII would barely be a blip on the radar within the Imperium.
I think the problem is that the whole point of Guard is they're meant to die by the Regiment every day.Hawki said:
So like Easy Company vs Orks or 'Nids, in canon, would be a 30sec long fight as the Guard, and the entire 506th, are overwhelmed and killed in less than 5mins.
To be canon accurate a Guard story is at best 15 hours long, most only minutes. Yeah Guard are usually the only defenders, but they suck. Its grimdark, not brightlight. Guard consistently lose, normal humans are not enough, and only Marines are capable of fighting humanity's enemies.
The only time Guard are capable of winning are when they'r fighting other humans, like those awful Tainth 1st novels. When its just dudes with lasers fighting other dudes with lasers and it feels like every other boring IP.
I mean we're talking about an IP that has daemons that can snap their fingers and kill everyone on a dozen worlds in a heartbeat, Orks that can lift battle tanks above their heads, 'Nids that come at you in swarms in the trillions, Marines(loyalists and traitor alike) that can move faster than a human heart can beat, Primarchs so powerful and magical they'd give Superman a run for his money, and giant robots so large they can snuff out a sun.
The whole point of the grimdark 40k is that your average human is so out-classed, under-leveled and worthless that its not worth talking about them.
Which would be pretty academic since the Guard numbers in the billions.Silentpony said:
Not quite.
Okay, that's blatantly untrue. There's numerous IG victories in 40K. And even if that was true, then that would mean the Imperium couldn't even survive. Again, there's about one Space Marine for every planet in the Imperium. If you're telling me that only Space Marines are capable of winning, then the Imperium doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell.
Again, untrue.
I disagree that's the "point" (I can't say 40K really has a point - it certainly doesn't engage in any meaningful themes other than perhaps the role religion plays in human society), but it's academic. Your average human is outclassed...but when humanity numbers in the trillions, that's academic. I've already stated that even if the Imperial Guard is often going to be outclassed 1:1, the entire point of the Imperial Guard is that it often has numbers on its side. Your average guardsman is nothing. Multiply that guardsman over and over, and the Imperial Guard is thus the emperor's 'hammer,' with the Space Marines being the scalpel.
Eh, I'd disagree with that. Now, 40k fluff is everything and nothing, you can say anything and point to something published at some point to back it up, so, anything goes, but:Hawki said:
Most things don't really outclass a guardsman, it's just that we hear more about the things that can. There's a zillion different types of chaos marines, and dozens of factions of them, but the overwhelming majority of their forces are made of mutants, cultists and renegades, which is maybe one troop choice.
There's loads of types of orks, and some of them are well equipped as big as ogryns (and the IG has ogryns as big as ogryns), most are ordinary boys, not out of a guardsman's league. Nor is a termagant. Most guardsman are never going to even see an eldar or a necron.