Brother Tyler

I have been very negligent in my duties and am only now getting around to something that I should have done long ago - announcing the retirement of several of our moderators. The Moderati perform a crucial function here at the site. While the site exists to serve the hobby needs of the members of our community, predominantly those in the Frater Domus group, the Moderati are critical in the day-to-day functions of the site. Any community, especially one as large as ours and comprising members from across the globe, will have points of friction. The Moderati, as their name implies, perform the vital role of moderating behaviors within the community standards described in our forum rules. This work is far more challenging than you might think, and considerable activity takes place behind the scenes. Service as a moderator is strictly voluntary and the members that choose to take up the mantle give up their own free hobby time to do so, sacrificing for the benefit of the community. The amount of work performed by the moderators is far beyond what a small team might be capable of, requiring a substantial number of dedicated hobbyists to serve the community. The Moderati, like the rest of us, are human beings and, therefore, imperfect; but they collectively work to ensure that this site remains a welcoming and productive place for all members so that we can all enjoy the hobby. The site would be far worse were it not for the dedication and sacrifice of these members. We are all indebted to them for their contributions. To date, we have had close to 200 members that have served the board in various capacities. Each sacrifices their time for the community as a whole. Each serves a tour of duty whose length is determined by them - remember that they are all volunteers and Life has other demands on them. Inevitably, they retire from their duties for one reason or another, joining the ranks of the Moderati Cedos. Three such members have retired in the last few months (okay, "few" is an understatement in two cases). I should have announced these retirements much sooner, but I have been a slacker. I will subject myself to 10 minutes in the pain glove in penance. Please join me in thanking the following mods for all of their hard work and dedication (listed in order of retirement): @Chaplain Lucifer @Kelborn @Brother Lunkhead It would be impossible for me to overstate how thankful I am that each of them served as Moderati - the site and community are better for their efforts and I greatly enjoyed working alongside each of them.

This topic is being re-opened. Some of you may notice that the topic title has changed. It was originally about the possibility of females being officially included in the Adeptus Custodes. A similar topic was created in the News, Rumors, and Board Announcements forum once the evidence became clear. We don't need both topics, and this simple lore change doesn't fall under the rubric of "news" for the purpose of our site's content structure (though it is certainly news in terms of the implications for the Adeptus Custodes and fans of that faction). For some reason, too many members of the community are unable to discuss the issue of females in either the Adeptus/Legiones Custodes or the Adeptus/Legiones Astartes without creating unnecessary friction. This goes for those on both sides of the issue. It's very easy to hurl insults at those that have a different viewpoint, but it is neither necessary nor appropriate to do so. People are going to have different opinions. That's okay. Ultimately, we're here to talk about a game where we move our little toy soldiers around and imagine them fighting in a horrific make-believe setting. The people that control the official setting have decided that this is the way it is. Some of us will love it, some will hate it, and some will be indifferent to it. We shouldn't be using these differences of opinion to create discontent, however. After all, we're here to enjoy the hobby. IMPORTANT! If discussion gets out of hand again, the topic will be closed permanently and, where warranted, disciplinary action will be imposed.

Confusion on correct terminology is not a new issue, nor is it exclusive to this community. As has been pointed out, however, there is a lot of terminology that is specific to the hobby, so new hobbyists have to learn a lot and existing hobbyists have to remain current as the body of terminology grows and changes. The correct answer to the question of how to deal with incorrect usages is to be polite in correcting such incorrect usages. Nobody needs to be berated for accidentally using incorrect terminology (and this can be a very bad form of gatekeeping). If people continue using incorrect terminology after being corrected, they either don't get it or they don't care, in which case you should do yourself a favor and just ignore it (either by staying out of the discussion or simply by participating in the discussion without harping on the correct terminology). Some things that we have done here to help hobbyists in learning the terminology that is used within the hobby and this community is to create the Legio Lexicon and to incorporate a function that allows members to see what acronyms mean. For example: TDA (that should appear underlined - hover over it to see what the acronym means) The problem with both of these capabilities is that, as with everything else here at the Bolter & Chainsword, they rely on member contributions in order to remain up to date. While we built an initial structure for each and have occasionally updated each, we (the administrators and moderators) are not all-knowing and need the rest of the community to help us keep these up to date and as complete as possible. You can submit your recommendations here.

This conversation has remained primarily focused on the Age of Sigmar setting, which is decidedly off topic for this website. If anyone would like to discuss Games Workshop's practice of terminating model lines within the context of the games set in the Warhammer 40,000 setting (and without bringing non-WH40K setting games into the discussion), feel free to start a new topic.

That would create a situation where we would be implying some hierarchy where factions are better/worse than others. Moreover, understanding what that hierarchy actually is would be challenging, with people that care wondering if their rank was higher or lower than some other rank when there is no intuitive recognition. For example, would an Ork be higher or lower than a Genestealer? A system including all factions would also create more ranks than are necessary and would give us a constantly moving target as Games Workshop introduces new factions and potentially removes existing factions. Ultimately, ranks serve little purpose other than to provide a basic indicator of how active a member has been in the community. They don't confer any privileges or permissions. Just because a member with the Venerable Brother rank says something doesn't mean that their opinion is more valid than that of a Novitiate. Members desiring to proclaim their allegiance to/favoritism for some faction, and doing so in a personalized manner, have many methods for doing so. The most obvious is the personal photo/avatar. Others include the display name (chosen at time of registration, but occasionally allowed to be changed), signature, about me page, and the "Faction" information in the personal photo.

The software only allows for a single progression - there's no way to create multiple titles that the software might select based on a member's chosen faction. The mascot for the B&C is the Legio, a Space Marine Chapter [of sorts] since the site was founded to support Space Marine players, so we default to the Legio (and generic Adeptus Astartes) for things like this.

Short answer: Yes, you are good to create a second WIP topic and you can also have a topic in the T'au forum. The best practice is to have a blog in which you can cover all of your projects. You can then create separate topics in the WIP forum and the faction forum for each of your projects, using those topics as a way to raise awareness of the progress in your projects by linking to the relevant blog posts in those topics.

As always, each product should be discussed in its own topic.

I edited the publishing schedule of the post so that it published one minute later. That worked, removing the issues you identified. I'll look into the technical aspects of things.

I'm not aware of any settings in the software that adjust image saturation, but I'll look into it. Do you have links of other sites where you've posted these images for comparison?

I'm looking into the settings to see what might be possible.

If you're interested in winning a free copy of Combat Arena: Lair of the Beast (link goes to Board Game Geek entry) and have or are willing to create an account at the Board Game Geek website, there is a contest running through Sunday, February 4.