Primaris Marines in Black Library

[Bulwyf]

I'm not seeing anyone as willfully ignorant, or wrong. Definitely not anything like that. It's like seeing your best friend you grew up with getting into stuff you don't like and going your separate ways. You hate the thing you loved because it left you behind and didn't care.

 

This was how I felt and still feel after GW buried a foot long dagger in my back for my 35 years of faithful loyalty to Warhammer Fantasy Battles and replaced the entire setting with Age of Sigmar. Warhammer fantasy is completely and utterly dead to me until GW brings back the Old World and the old setting.

 

40k hasn't gotten anywhere near that point. I also strongly dislike the concept of Super Space Marines because it inevitably sets up Super Super Space Marines somewhere down the line. Best thing about it, I suppose, is if you don't like then don't include them in your army or spend money on the books about them. I'm willing to give them a shot even if I'm not fond of it but I totally get where you are coming from. Age of Sigmar may be great but I will never know because you can only destroy my 35 year love of something once. Never again.

[Mellow]

OK, so I think I've missed something as I've no idea what Primaris marines are. I'm guessing this is something new and will actually get some form of Novel(s) to explain a few things?

 

I've got mixed feelings about someone tampering with The Emperors gene-project when He was supposed to be super intelligent but ... meh. If there's Novels and they are written by decent Authors (looking at you ADB :) ) then I don't mind.

 

I don't suppose there's any hint of release dates of Novels? Even something vague like "first quarter next year" would be ok at this point.

[mc warhammer]

I'm not seeing anyone as willfully ignorant, or wrong. Definitely not anything like that. It's like seeing your best friend you grew up with getting into stuff you don't like and going your separate ways. You hate the thing you loved because it left you behind and didn't care.

happens in every fandom i interact with; times change, properties reinvent, reboot or revitalise and some old school fans feel shafted.

 

i do sympathise, but i wonder if "hating" the thing you loved is a necessary reaction? my own reaction in those cases is, "i see, i'm no longer the target audience. best of luck"...it's never personal.

[grailkeeper]

I'll reserve judgment till I see how Black Library handles this. It is the first time in a long time that they have introduced something completely new that they can work on from the ground up. If they do  a bad job I'll probably feel like Marshal Rohr. On the other hand this is an oppertunity to have another Eisenhorn where they knocked it out of the park and breathed fresh life into the franchise.

 

I'm interested in the difference between Primaris Marines and Regular marines when they are introduced. Marines have been bred and designed to be humaities biggest and best warriors for millenia. Suddenly there are bigger and better warriors on the scene- how will this make the Marines feel? Till now Astartes haven't exactly been the type to have an existential crisis but now they're Blockbuster video and Netflix has just arrived.

 

How will Primaris Marines think? They probably are created in a different way so won't have the same hypno-indoctrinated autistic warrior monk mentality that normal marines do.Will they be more human or less human? Marines are bred for one thing only and mostly don't have human foibles like self-doubt or a sense of humour. It'd be pretty hard to have a conversation with one if you were trapped in a lift together- small talk isn't one of their strengths. Will it be the same for Primaris Astartes?

 

It's like the scene in Helsreach where Grimaldus is asked if he is a hero. The question is so alien to him his only response is to start target locking the nearby civilians. It's like asking a child what they think of post-modernism, its completely out of their sphere of thought. Would a Primaris Marine respond by saying "No YOU are the real hero?" or "You are beneath me mortal" or just *Autistitic Target locking intensifies*. 

 

 

How will they react to chapter traditions? Will new marines even care about, say, the hunt for the fallen. It happened millenia before they were created and has nothing to do with them. Imagine to the conversation:

 

"Welcome to the Blood Angels. We drink each other's blood from a cup and sometimes have flashbacks to a battle ten thousand years before you were born. We are the good guys".

 

....

 

"You do what now?"

 

I imagine that in terms of culture shock it might be comparable in some way to the experiences of black people in america compared with new African immigrants in America. In some ways they look the same, but they have completley different experiences. One has a relatively decent experience but their ancestors didnt experience segregation, Jim Crow, Slavery etc. They dont have the same traditions or experiences and have very different interactions with white people etc.

 

 

There's a lot of potential here beyond their creation. I'm excited and hope BL don't drop the ball.

 

[Kelborn]

Got no likes left but I agree with Grailkeeper.

 

 

Don't know why but I'm automatically comparing them with the Clone Troopers of the Clone Wars (Star Wars). Bred in seemingly tanks, equipped with the best wargear and thrown into a galaxis wide war.

[JH79]

Great post grailkeeper, frustratingly I could never convey anything as clearly or as well thought out lol! The Helsreach example was great and peaked my interest about what the here and now could look like for Primaris Marines...but i would still love an origin story, sutibly shrouded in mystery with lashings of grim dark a sprinkle of hope

[b1soul]

Primaris Marines, Custodes, Thunder Warriors, Grey Knights...all capable of beating up regular Astartes

[Mantras]

Personally, I think this is much more believable than when "new" units have been "rediscovered", things like the Sanguinary Guard or Deathwing Knights for example, retrospectively shoe horned in to sell models. You have to remember GW is driven by model sales - these bigger marines will absolutely sell. The Fluff that follows has to make sense, but in this case they have made a (in my eyes) smart decision and given the Imperium a new lease of life.

 

Plus, all it will take is one good BL novel to explain it and the community will love it. Take ADB's take on "Fail-baddon" or Wraight's "Scars" - both misunderstood before an author comes along and draws out the really exciting bits of the IP.

[bluntblade]

Primaris Marines, Custodes, Thunder Warriors, Grey Knights...all capable of beating up regular Astartes

I think the Custodians power level in MoM is somewhat tempered by knowing their were far outnumbered by their Mechanicum allies, and fighting in the kind of engagement where the Astartes lacked many of their typical advantages. If the SoH and Word Bearers had managed to deploy as cohesive forces, they'd probably have fared better, but it seems the most they could do was hold together at the squad level.

[helterskelter]

I wonder if they're like judge dredd style clones, so rob picked a few of his most trusted dudes to submit genetic material and 10k years worth of tinkering and boom.

Basically what I'm saying is a few shorts worth of what would amount to fluff story leading into a bigger story of crusading and integration would be grand. And also what the renegades and old legions do about it.

Imagine if you will a regular battle scene, standard ADB/Wraight/pick your author combat fare, chaos doing their thing, see/smell the signs of a drop pod or teleport, get ready lads and *smack* Primaris marines, what the funk are they, everything goes to pot and how long will it take for them to get back to going kill them harder. Assuming we're not using world eaters as the opponents because we all know what they would do. Or night lords. Same words opposite result.

[Marshal Rohr]

Why wouldn't they just just make Primaris Marines a further augmentation. Like Calgar and Azrael and normal chapters can undergo the procedure to get boosted too. Instant meshing of story and model line rescale.

[Brother Captain Arkley]

I think given he started the project after the Heresy I wonder how many of his brothers knew? That what interests me. 

[Mellow]

Maybe all the hypno-indoctrination remains during the creation of a Primaris where as it's just the gene-seed is superior therefore there are bigger gains?

 

I'm not sure how I would feel if all existing marines could be converted. It goes against the whole "take the aspirants when they are young and still growing" thing. You can't suddenly just give an adult that has stopped growing a dose of magic and they start spurting in size. It would be weird.

[Marshal Rohr]

You can't suddenly deploy hundreds of thousands of super space marines in the six days left in M41 but here we are.

[Lord Marshal]

You can't suddenly deploy hundreds of thousands of super space marines in the six days left in M41 but here we are.

 

It makes even less sense for chapters who are stuck in the (Grim)Dark Imperium, which is why I never liked the idea of EVERY Chapter getting Primarines without at least a timeskip to justify 'muh logistics'. I suppose it could be handwaved as, "well they joined up with units still on the other side of the split" but eh I'm not going to pretend they put anymore thought into this beyond "DUDE SELL MORE SPACE MARINES LMAO."

 

I'm still banking on that timeskip happening when (if?) we get hardcopies of the rulebook with lore them because that's the only way I see it working.

[Marshal Rohr]

I wouldn't be surprised if it stops being Warhammer 40000 and becomes Warhammer Dark Millinnium or Storm of Chaos or something

[HeritorA]

I couldn't be less interested in Super Space Marines, personally. Kinda kills my interest in the ongoing events.

Third time I absolutely do agree with Dark Chaplain!

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

I wouldn't be surprised if it stops being Warhammer 40000 and becomes Warhammer Dark Millinnium or Storm of Chaos or something

Warhammer: Age of Guilliman

 

"As the Avenging Son returns from lost history, the emergence of the Primaris Space Marines heralds in a new age of the Imperium.

Each squad of the Imperial *blam* Astra Ministorum gets a kitten, the Adeptus Astartes are granted nights and weekends off.

 

This is a new age, an age of Heroes, an age of Hope"

[grailkeeper]

I wonder what the Ultramarines think of the new Primaris Marines (Also what's the accepted shorthand for Primaris marines? Primies, numarines, PMS?)

 

It must be a bit of a smack in the face, For almost ten thousand years they have followed their Primarch's words like scripture. The first thing he does when he returns is to decide they are not enough for what he needs. To be judged and found wanting like that must be devastating for Astartes, some have turned traitor for less. I can't imagine the likes of Cato Sicarius taking it too well.

 

Seriously, Christians have been waiting for the return of Jesus for only a fraction of the time the Ultras have been following the codex. If Jesus came back and decided he needed better followers there'd probably be mass suicides.

[Iron Hands Fanatic]

One direction that's unlikely to be pursued because of the relatively obscure nature of the background, but one which would fascinate me nonetheless, is how the Chapters involved in the War of the False Primarch will react to Guilliman's Primaris Space Marines and their Indomitus Crusade.

 

Having been involved in a campaign of annihilation against Chapters which pledged their allegiance to a presumably "reappeared Primarch" (as far as I'm aware, all the Loyalist Primarchs were out of the picture by M33), Guilliman's sudden arrival and host of new Chapters might sound a little familiar. Combined with the fact that these Pentarchy of Blood Chapters tend towards the more extreme side... like I said, a really interesting angle, but one that'll probably never see the light of day.

 

I mean - three of those Chapters were specifically formed from elements of their Legions which categorically didn't get along with their Primarchs (probably why they were selected in the 1st place) - The Red Talons descend from the outcast elements of the X^th, the Charcharodons were effectively exiled from the Raven Guard and the Death Eagles are supposedly formed from Loyalist Emperor's Children.

[veterannoob]

I don't think I'm gonna be here in the hobby in ten more years, to be honest. I'll probably stick around to see how the Heresy wraps up. This isn't the first thing the studio has done to me, obviously. I'm getting tired of being told 'it'll be fine' and then it never is fine. The 'just around the corner' never shows up. You've got to realize that, you've been here for years too. You've got to remember me loving the universe so much I collected every reference to Black Templars, different marks of boltguns, inventing new chapters for the liber, and trying to make a guide to Armageddon 3. Spent hours and hours coming up with sources to help other posters get their hands on second and first edition lore. Once drove across the entire island of Oahu in search of a rare White Dwarf I couldn't find in four states on the mainland.

I'm not being obtuse for no reason. They systemically stripped the universe of all the things I spent money and time cultivating.

Absolutely. And we agree on most things since, like, forever. But there's a definite (and, in fandom, very clear) narrowing of perspective at times. One that mistakes familiarity and burnout with "everything" getting worse. One that likens disliked changes in a portion of the setting to the entire thing sucking. I doubt any of us have missed that in any of the fandoms we like - we've all seen it many times, I'm sure - but when it's happening to you, it's practically impossible to see past the cognitive bias. It's like depression: you're not depressed, you're not pessimistic, you see things as they really are and everyone else is naive or ignorant. That's how depression biases you. And, indeed, how it gets you to spiral.

Let me put it more personally. There are plenty of things I don't like in 40K - more and more as time goes on as authors or designers whose work I'm not really into codify the setting through their lenses; as I get overexposed to concepts that once felt way more awesome, and so on. But every time I bring that up with someone else, their answer is "I don't care about that part" or "It's never on my table, so who cares?" and "What does it really change?"

Primaris Marines may not be an idea that grabs you, personally. And I'm not going to try to convince you to hold out and hope they get redeemed in your eyes. But, as I'm fond of saying, and as has been explained to me in tones both patient and patronising, it's all a pendulum. Things go one way, then they go the other. For every new thing I can't stand in 40K, there are ten things getting new leases of life, or are new things I like. More importantly, there are many other things remaining unchanged.

I'm not going to let my vision of 40K circle entirely around the metaplot of what the reborn Guilliman is doing in his fleet. That's practically irrelevant to the galaxy. It's the Studio's storyline and that's all good, but it doesn't define or eradicate 30 years of 40K for me. It's just one story in the setting. The setting itself hasn't changed all that much. It's just difficult to see that at the dawn of a new edition when the loudest voices right now are the advertising engines and the Studio excited that it gets to have a storyline.

Besides, for every aspect of the Primaris concept that I feel is a little hinky, there are other aspects I can't wait to explore. For every aspect of the new setting changes I'm not keen on, I know there are a hundred things still the same, and I'm sure other authors will cover the things I don't like, anyway. It's not my place to redeem anything. So, like, I'm not objecting to you disliking something. It's just surreal when you're so relentlessly negative and can't see anything of value in any of this; do you then see some of us as wilfully ignorant or something? Primaris Marines aren't even 'making lemonade' for me. The moment I heard about them, I didn't care a damn about their origin lore - I immediately thought "...okay, this will make for some awesome stories and interesting tensions within Space Marine Chapters."

(Right after that, I wanted to see the models, but you know what I mean.)

^^^ truth...what he said.

[Loesh]

 

 

Besides, for every aspect of the Primaris concept that I feel is a little hinky, there are other aspects I can't wait to explore. For every aspect of the new setting changes I'm not keen on, I know there are a hundred things still the same, and I'm sure other authors will cover the things I don't like, anyway. It's not my place to redeem anything. So, like, I'm not objecting to you disliking something. It's just surreal when you're so relentlessly negative and can't see anything of value in any of this; do you then see some of us as wilfully ignorant or something? Primaris Marines aren't even 'making lemonade' for me. The moment I heard about them, I didn't care a damn about their origin lore - I immediately thought "...okay, this will make for some awesome stories and interesting tensions within Space Marine Chapters."

 

(Right after that, I wanted to see the models, but you know what I mean.)

 

 

This, this, this. I'v been gone from the Warhammer community for awhile but after hearing about this I had to come rushing back, cause the themes that Primaris Space Marines give us the option to explore are actually amazing when taken into the broader scope of Warhammer 40k. They offer so many unique and interesting interactions both within the Imperium and without it. What do the Xenos species think of this development? the Eldar pulled Roboute out of stasis under the assumption that he would be able to lead their personal buffer against Chaos, but would they change their minds if Primaris Deathwatch Squads started torching Craftworlds? How about the Tau? they are already hard pressed with so many issues, the Damocles Crusade was bad enough but now half the galaxies been split in half and a new breed of Astartes might threaten to finish them off once and for all. How about Chaos itself? So many Legionnaires left out of exactly this fear, isn't this a good time to rub it in their thinblood kins face? many probably see this as a massive new threat and are looking to re-engineer their own troops through magic and forbidden technology to keep up, what the hell happens to Primaris Geneseed when a traitor legion gets their hands on it? what happens when one of those suckers gets pulled down like a knight amidst a peasant revolt and winds up on Fabius Biles autopsy slab?

 

Inside the loyalists there must be total chaos over whats happening right now. Why would they trust the product of a ten thousand year old project that Roboutes kept hidden from them until now? i'm sure the Dark Angels must be absurdly wary about letting them anywhere near Chapter secrets, some might refuse to use them at all and others might point at more accepting chapters as possible threats, or worse point at any new Chapters that might be formed with the Primaris as their core. What about the production costs of all this junk? I can bet that not everyone in the Mechanicus was in on this deal and now they have to pay out for entire armies worth of supplies for a contract they barely knew about. What about highly defective chapters? What happens when one succumbs to the Wulfen Curse or the Black Rage? to the Blood Angels this might seem more of a curse then a blessing as they have to have three battle brothers watching them in case they start frothing at the mouth. That's just the tip of the iceberg too, and I bet more then a few chapters are starting to worry they will go the way of the Thunder Warriors now.

 

So many delightful possibilities. 

[HeritorA]

 

I wouldn't be surprised if it stops being Warhammer 40000 and becomes Warhammer Dark Millinnium or Storm of Chaos or something

Warhammer: Age of Guilliman

 

"As the Avenging Son returns from lost history, the emergence of the Primaris Space Marines heralds in a new age of the Imperium.

Each squad of the Imperial *blam* Astra Ministorum gets a kitten, the Adeptus Astartes are granted nights and weekends off.

 

This is a new age, an age of Heroes, an age of Hope"

 

sold with Age of Guilliman ;) Tzeentch as a patron

 

'I'm not going to let my vision of 40K circle entirely around the metaplot of what the reborn Guilliman is doing in his fleet. That's practically irrelevant to the galaxy. It's the Studio's storyline and that's all good, but it doesn't define or eradicate 30 years of 40K for me. It's just one story in the setting. The setting itself hasn't changed all that much. It's just difficult to see that at the dawn of a new edition when the loudest voices right now are the advertising engines and the Studio excited that it gets to have a storyline.'

-

A D-B sorry, i'm not trying to be rude, but KIND OF WHAT? How can that be irrelevant to the Galaxy?

'The setting itself hasn't changed all that much' - kind of changed and big time. Hundreds of thousands of SM and CSM has appeared out of thin air - storm bisected the galaxy?

Primarchs everywhere?

In all sincerety that's bigger changes then the scope of the First Black Crusade

[Loesh]

 

A D-B sorry, i'm not trying to be rude, but KIND OF WHAT? How can that be irrelevant to the Galaxy?

'The setting itself hasn't changed all that much' - kind of changed and big time. Hundreds of thousands of SM and CSM has appeared out of thin air - storm bisected the galaxy?

Primarchs everywhere?

In all sincerety that's bigger changes then the scope of the First Black Crusade

 

 

Because we aren't talking about that holistically, we're talking about Roboute specifically, and even with Roboute on Terra and restructuring it is largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The Imperium was going to have a shake up with the galaxy splitting half anyways, and as soon as Cadia was destroyed the other Primarchs  were always going to manifest. Hell, if Roboute never came out of hiding, who is to say Cawl wouldn't of unchained the project anyway when times were desperate enough? But Roboute himself and his little crusade to change the galaxy is, ultimately, small potatos. Same with Magnus, or Angron, or the Lion reawakening, all of them are just cogs in a bigger machine that's the 40k setting which...indeed...hasn't changed much, this is still about the dying of the light.

 

It is so stupidly, stupidly huge that even something with as much influence as a Primarch is still only impacting a relatively small part of the galaxy.

[A D-B]

I wouldn't be surprised if it stops being Warhammer 40000 and becomes Warhammer Dark Millinnium or Storm of Chaos or something

Warhammer: Age of Guilliman

"As the Avenging Son returns from lost history, the emergence of the Primaris Space Marines heralds in a new age of the Imperium.

Each squad of the Imperial *blam* Astra Ministorum gets a kitten, the Adeptus Astartes are granted nights and weekends off.

This is a new age, an age of Heroes, an age of Hope"

sold with Age of Guilliman Tzeentch as a patron

'I'm not going to let my vision of 40K circle entirely around the metaplot of what the reborn Guilliman is doing in his fleet. That's practically irrelevant to the galaxy. It's the Studio's storyline and that's all good, but it doesn't define or eradicate 30 years of 40K for me. It's just one story in the setting. The setting itself hasn't changed all that much. It's just difficult to see that at the dawn of a new edition when the loudest voices right now are the advertising engines and the Studio excited that it gets to have a storyline.'

-

A D-B sorry, i'm not trying to be rude, but KIND OF WHAT? How can that be irrelevant to the Galaxy?

'The setting itself hasn't changed all that much' - kind of changed and big time. Hundreds of thousands of SM and CSM has appeared out of thin air - storm bisected the galaxy?

Primarchs everywhere?

In all sincerety that's bigger changes then the scope of the First Black Crusade

Because the setting is still the setting. You're mistaking metaplot (a new and temporary storyline) as the setting. It's not - though it's totally easy to do. I'd argue we all do it, at times, in any IP.

In Vampire: the Masquerade, you played a vampire beholden to the Six Traditions of your undead society: the Camarilla, the aristocracy of the night. The most important was the Masquerade, called in older times The Silence of the Blood, whereby your overarching personal responsibility was to ensure that you never broke the Masquerade, and that vampires remained unseen and unknown by humanity. Violations of the Masquerade were punishable by Final Death. Vampiric society tended to focus around cities, where the human herd was at its densest. Vampiric "Princes" ruled these domains in accordance with the Six Traditions and the immense power within their blood, served in turn by lesser-ranked vampires such as a Primogen Council, a Scourge, and so on. Sacred ground, where no vampire was permitted to harm another, was named Elysium. Only there was a vampire truly safe from the endless, deathless machinations of his kind. There were several clans and lesser bloodlines of vampires, but they were each bound by the same constraints and possessed similar gifts - each of them would burn in sunlight, each of them had a supernatural fear of fire, each of them possessed fangs and required human blood to survive. And each of them also possessed several vampiric powers called Disciplines, as well as being preternaturally able to regenerate damage, move faster than their physical form should allow, hit harder, and - most of all - they never aged. The greatest struggle for every vampire, however, was The Beast Within. Inside every vampire was the lurking presence of a degenerative monstrousness, the madness that would set in if they killed without remorse and began to lose touch with their humanity.

That was the setting.

Sometimes clans and bloodlines would join or leave the Camarilla. Sometimes vampiric elders of immense power would rise up and do things. Sometimes they wouldn't. Sometimes clans would go to war with each other in one country, and do nothing of the kind in another. Several famous "named" characters ran around doing things that served as examples to players of what their characters might do in their own games.

That was the metaplot.

The events of the metaplot never changed anything fundamental in the setting. Those events never took place on many, many tables.

The metaplot is examples of events, storyline stuff for people to follow if they're interested, and stuff that changes the surface. But nothing fundamental changed. The Beast Within never went away. The game was always about the struggle to balance your own eroding humanity with the fact you survive on human blood. You still had fangs and drank blood and had Disciplines. The default society was always the Camarilla. Elysium was still maintained by the Princes of the cities. You still burned in sunlight.

The Imperium is still a place of insane gothic baroque ignorance. The Imperium still requires warp travel to get from A to B. Space Marines, the Adeptus Astartes, are still the defenders of humanity alongside the Imperial Guard. Primarchs, to 99% of the Imperium, are either a fiction or a myth. The Emperor is still worshipped as a Sun God on many worlds, and a pantheon of ancestor spirits forming one Great Soul on other worlds, and the Machine God on other worlds. Inquisitors still investigate in the labyrinthine madness under the Imperium's skin. Chaos Cults still rise and fall in the underhives. The tyranids are still coming.

I could go on, and on, and on, and on. It's not even about "ignoring what you don't like", which is the usual and totally understandable defence. It's not even necessary though: Warhammer 40,000 itself - the setting - just isn't changing. A few details are. I like some of them. I don't like others. But it doesn't change what Warhammer 40,000 is. I'm not going to run away in sadness and believe there are no more stories to tell just because some named characters I do or don't like have come back. 90% of the people I play with and talk to about the lore and hang out with don't like special characters anyway, and never use them. We don't play the Studio's wars; we never have. We play our own wars. The books I like to read (and, most often, write) don't touch on the dealings of famous people in the Dark Millennium - and when they do it's rarely from their perspectives, and presents them in new lights, through other eyes.

So, like I said. Nothing's really changed.