apologist

It's the Crux Terminatus, isn't it? The symbol of veterancy in a Space Marine Chapter. That's certainly what I always thought these were. I think it's noted somewhere that the exact form varies. Either way, I absolutely agree that it's one of these amulets clutched in a hand – and the furry bit suggests it's been taken as a trophy by a Renegade Chaos Marine.

The Rogue Trader/early second edition Rough Riders (pictured below), owed their name to Teddy Roosevelt's 'Rough Riders' (the 1st United States volunteer calvary), who were partialyl drawn from cowboys – as you can see from the guardsman on the lower left of this picture, this inspiration was nodded to by the cattleman's hat on one of the two basic Guardsman sculpts. I think Imperial Guard cavalry would be a great place to start for this theme, perhaps using third party heads like these from Anvil Industry or these from PuppetsWar. Victoria Miniatures Van Diemen's world models are modelled after Australian and New Zealand forces, but they'd be a great place to start, too. In particular I think the horses Victoria sells would be absolutely ideal, as they're beautifully sculpted and more fitting in their equipment than the Attillan or Death Korps equivalents from GW. The appeal of Guard – for me at least – is that they're so wonderfully open to different themes. Cavalry-specialist regiments make a lot of sense for worlds that have limited fuel or manufacturing capability, or whose terrain is better suited to horses. +++ If Guard don't appeal, then I'd agree that Genestealer Cults have a lot of 'Wild West movie' touches that might lend themselves to an 'evil cowboy'/ 'rustler gang' feel – and if you want to play the goodies, then the rules would still be quite well-suited to some conversions. You could use dirtcycles rules for mounted troops, and then you've got shotgun-armed neophytes for the broader posse, kelermorphs as gunslinging heroes etc.

Absolutely – I’ve always felt that the Horus Heresy made a lot more sense (and had a heck of a lot more potential) when there was more character-driven conflict and less Chaos God magic machinations. The Primarchs are great (if melodramatic!) character archetypes – showing the conflicts and exploring genuine philosophical differences through their disagreements makes for compelling stories. The best HH novels are the ones where you find yourself rooting for both sides because they’ve got strong, principled arguments, rather than ‘well, they’re Demons.’

I keep coming back to this topic and drafting a post, then discarding it. I find myself agreeing with lots of posts here... and yet, I really like the fact that there's different things that appeal to different people. 40k is a broad church (fittingly, given the modern architectural style!). @Rogue and @Rain probably hit the changes to underlying themes that I like least – respectively the (loss of) sense of mystery and exploration, and characters that are archetypes rather than personalities. On the former, I don't fundamentally mind the resolution to fun mysteries like the 'quiescent perils of the C'tan' or the fates of the Primarchs, or whatever the Grey Knights thing was – except for two things: the answers to these juicy bits of mystery rarely live up to the hype there are fewer such seeds appearing in mainline books. Ultimately, I think the thing I'd change is a shift from digging into 40k, into exploring outwards. I bought one of the new Kill Team books – the one with Kroot and Naval Breachers – expecting to gloss over the same ol' background slightly rewritten, but was really impressed. The description of the space hulk included a load of beautiful, gleaming, tempting, tantalising snippets – of pre-Imperial space; of aliens I'd never heard mentioned; of places we'd never seen – that sent my imagination spinning. More of that, please! +++ Anyone who's bored or fool enough to look at my threads will know I love extrapolating from the existing lore (the War of the False Primarch, the 2nd Armageddon war, the Nova Terra Interregnum, the Halo Stars to name just a few), precisely because it's not been over-explained. So I think the second change I'd make is to change the perspective of the setting and zoom out. Remove the word of god, re-establish the yawning lacunae between spots of civilisation on the maps, and look at factions rather than individuals. Make a virtue of that 'absent truth', and present mysteries for hobbyists to decide upon and explore for themselves, through the stories, games, armies or simply imagination. I don't think that necessarily precludes what's currently going on, either – the ongoing story of M42 can rumble on, but without the sense that it's central to the universe; just another 'hotspot' or 'flashpoint' GW can expand upon. A mobile 'now' would add to the sense of chaos (with a small c), chronological disruption and misunderstanding; as though we're future historians sifting through the ashes.

Interesting back and forth – and I find myself commenting because I agree with certain parts of Evil Eye's suggestion and disagree with others; but have an overall sense that it's a 'good post'... so in the end I responded with an 'agree' reaction. Is it technically feasible to allow multiple reactions to be given? I've quite often found myself in the position that Evil Eye outlines – in that I disagree with the detail of a post but value other parts of it. In those cases I'd love to be able to put (say) a 'support' reaction alongside the 'disagree'. Likewise there are posts that I find funny and agree with – or I want to express thanks and laugh. Perhaps the most common is that I like the way a post is written and argued, even if I disagree with it. Being able to combine reactions like that opens up a lot more nuance, and goes some way to soften and rehabilitate the 'respectfully disagree' reaction from a sense of being purely negative. +++ Musing out loud, is it possible to customise the images of the reactions? Having themed reactions would be fun, particularly in combination – and replacing the universal 'minus of disapproval' with (say) a black purity seal for respectfully disagree – makes things more coded, and potentially less abrasive. +++ ... and a final note – is there coding that would disable reactions on a post that you're quoting? If I disagree with something, I can add a respectfully disagree reaction or reply. I don't need to do both; that seems overkill.

The old trick for visible slottabase gaps was a little bit of masking tape. It covers the gap, and when you add basing material the PVA or other glue makes it permanent. Should work a treat here; cut a little patch and add a dab of superglue to harden it up.

Like this?

... half a day late, half a toof short (sorry, missed the topic), but worked these up and thought one of these might fit, even if they are a bit late:

Hey, you were there on The First Expedition! You remember the discussions! :P

The upgrade sprue's... fine? I think it's a missed opportunity for far more interesting and thematic bits, though. I would have liked to see some Roman/Classical-themed touches like cingulum (the dangly Roman 'loincloth armour') and some more unusual bits and bobs that mine the huge amount of background and artwork for the Ultramarines: a two-part cape to be the Tarentian cloak or Mantle of Ultramar; an eagle shoulder pad; a Tyranid hunter torso plate; an officer helm based on a relic Praetorian armour helm; an Axe of Ultramar; the Sceptre of Glaxian... Heck, why not include some details that players of Space Marine 2 would recognise, like the old Sternguard kit did? With that said, it's the same critique I have for all the Space Marine upgrade sprues (bar the Black Templar one, which was excellent). There's so much opportunity for exploring theme and interest, but the result is just so... predictable. Apart from anything else, I'm always bemused that they included so many sculpted shoulder pads, which are then parcelled with transfers. On the positive side, these are all nice extras to have, and good options. It's just a step back from the Black Templar one, which had so many thematic touches and clever ideas – like visual representations of the relics you could gather from Crusade games. Beyond Space Marines, the Cadian upgrade sprue was another great example of how to do it right – new poses, new equipment variants, fun thematic additions...

Bit of a deep dive. Codex Armageddon details ‘Orkimedes’; a name given by the Imperials to a talented Mekboy, to whom is attributed things like the tellyporta, drop roks and similar. Those technologies also appear during Piscina, when Ghazghkull was working alongside Nazdreg ud Urdgrub… who pointedly doesn’t appear during the Third War for Armageddon. Entirely possible it’s coincidental, of course, but I always wondered why ‘Orkimedes’ identity remained hidden. Does he exist? Is there a connection to Nazdreg?

The first typo would seem to be the Typhon having morale 2+, where all the other marine vehicles are 3+. I feel like that's a pretty obvious typo. I'd be interested in seeing whether the cards have the same value, but agree that this is likely intended to be 2+. They finally fixed thunderhawk's bolters giving them light AT, but seemingly forgot to update the other marine flyers accordingly. That would again fall into a fairly likely mistake as a light weapon with skyfire is by definition pointless as it can't harm flyers, which are vehicles so likely to see them extend this fix/update in faq. As @BrotherKingElessar notes, we may see non-vehicle flyers appear – flying daemons are a possibility, for example – though this does seem unlikely. Given the Marauder's heavy bolters are also Light AT, I suspect that this is an oversight and Marine flyer heavy bolter weapons (Quad heavy bolters, Thunderhawk heavy bolters etc.) are intended to have been updated to be consistently Light AT. At the moment, the only edge case I can think of where they can be used involves this clause in the Skyfire special rule: In addition, when a model fires a weapon with the Skyfire trait as part of an Overwatch, subtract 1 from the result of the Hit rolls rather than 2. ... and even that's arguable, as it can be argued that it relies on the earlier sentence. They forgot to fix the 3 newer solar aux super heavy's lascannon sponsons which all still still missing a dice for the lascannon sponsons. Yes, this is almost certainly a typo – same weapon name used on all, and listed as 2 shots in the reference at the back. There was speculation they'd fix the thanatars plasma mortar to finally have barrage but unfortunately that did not occur. I feel like this may or may not occur but its a bit absurd the a weapon called a mortar that is physically pointing upwards on the model so perhaps worth hoping for the best. This one seems more speculative to me. I'd agree that the name might suggest things, but this is precisely the sort of edge case that abstraction throws up. There's a bit of confusion with the cerberus and typhon, they call them super heavies and class them as such (scale 3) but they don't have 3 wounds like the other super heavies. The confusion I guess is why not classify them as heavy armour at scale 2 if they're not getting a third wound. It's confusing as well because one would think they'd change the spartan to be at least similar to the other two given its the same chassis but that did not occur. I think that some granularity is nice. There's other examples of Superheavies with 2W (the Serperos); and even infantry with 2W, so I don't think the Unit Type and Wounds need to tally. To me, making the smaller marine superheavies slightly less tanky than the Solar Auxilia ones seems quite fitting, and helps with characterisation of the factions. As a similar example, SA tanks tend to have heavier armour and LA tanks tend to be slightly faster. They didn't change armigers or moirax's scale, which is still somehow scale 4. This has ramifications for combat, as obviously they can still hold much larger targets in combat, which is odd and given their aggressive point cost reduction is going to continue to be absurd. I'm not convinced that this change would necessarily help so much as create a different set of problems. Making them Scale 3 only stops them locking Scale 4 units in combat, but that's only other Knights... and it seems fitting that they'd be able to do so. Making them Scale 2 opens up potential scoring, terrain/movement issues, and probably some other bits I've missed (like being able to fit in transports or something odd). I think one solution here might be to build them two to a base. Thanks for compiling!

Oh, absolutely. Quite apart from anything else, the relevant text is literally called out as questionable, theoretical and potentially untrustworthy; both within the text by the author (Anzion) and in the commentary by the abridger, Tethlisian. It's a really fun and clever in-universe way of packing in lots of info about the orks and their society, and it's such a shame to see the tongue-in-cheek humour – intentionally open-ended – taken so literally. Not only that, but there's loads of other cool stuff in there that is ignored – like the emphasis that orks aren't just 'mushroom men'; nor are they unintelligent:

@Karhedron and @Dr. Clock neatly summarise the general consensus, which is that biologically it doesn't make much sense for different alien species to produce hybrids, but that as this is high-sci-fi fantasy, some magic and 'warp did it' is a good way to make the jump if you want to. Genestealers provide a great way to bypass real-world science by creating adaptations that muddy the waters – Genestealer cults could easily be made up of different species, with the hybrids 'filing off the serial numbers' and allowing you to have (say) the offspring of ork hybrids and eldar hybrids; though it's a pretty convoluted chain! Likewise lunatic Mechanicus Biologis/Fabius-Bile-alikes/Drukhari fleshcrafters can do pretty much anything within the setting. I'm going to assume, however, that given your cosmopolitan society aim, you're looking to create something a bit less unpleasant and creepy; and more utopian? If so, then Star Trek's Federation might be a good model, where different species work alongside one another, and occasional offspring are born between two different species. If that's the take on 40k you want, I think looking back to Rogue Trader's the best route. That had examples of individuals with human–eldar parentage, and at least the (frustrated) desire of a squat and a navigator for a baseline human (an assassin with some rather extreme modifications, admittedly, but still genetically human). Away from the mechanics of reproduction, we've certainly got some examples of BL fiction that has aliens and humans interacting – usually in frontier zones, isolated space stations and the like. Culturally, groups like the Interex are probably what you're looking for; with humans and kinebrach working successfully together. Modern 40k has leaned more into the hostility and (literal) xenophobia of the different factions (let alone species), so there's less grey area for this to happen, but that's not to say it doesn't exist at all. More recent background has hinted that humanity as we know it is – at least potentially – very different to contemporary humanity, with the times preceding the Dark Age of Technology being a golden age of science and understanding. That made the biological aspect at least open. +++ Abhumans Regarding abhumans, Rogue Trader told us that the various then-present ones (squats, beastmen, ratlings and ogryns 'are creatures evolved from human stock, but changed or mutated to a greater or lesser degree. They differ from ordinary mutants in that they conform to a recognisable physical standard, breed true, and are no more prone than normal humans to further mutation. There are many millions of these creatures living within the lmperium. and they are tolerated or exploited by tile authorities very much like the rest of the population.' For that take, I'd agree that you're most likely to get a mix of characteristics in any resultant offspring, but given that we're not given a huge amount of info on how abhumans arose beyond fairly open-ended notes on e.g. 'penal colonies' and 'high grav worlds', there's some wiggle room there. Things are complicated here by awareness and technology. More recent material has played up the mysteries of the Dark Age of Technology a lot more, and muddied the waters – reflecting the different real-world scientific understanding of things from the early 90s. For example, the background of the Kin of the Leagues of Votann (i.e. the modern take on squats) plays up heavily the idea that they were consciously designed and created, rather than developing naturally, and that their culture tends to work to curb the influence of natural selection pressures in favour of the existing design. With that in mind, there's nothing explicitly saying Kin couldn't produce offspring with a human or abhuman, but equally there's a good argument to be made that it would be impossible; or that the offspring would have characteristics of only one parent – we just don't have the info. +++ T'au The Caste groups are mostly artificial and cultural, rather than implicit. We're told there was a degree of speciation present during the 'Mon'Tau': the plains-dwelling Tau were mostly burlier and more aggressive; there were groups with membranous 'wings' between their limbs etc. – but it was the Ethereals' arrival that saw the groups make explicit and distinct. Prior to that, we might justifiably assume that there were some plains-dwelling Tau who were very capable at building or diplomacy, for example; and likewise those that would become the Earth or Water Castes had to defend themselves (or attack their neighbours). Since the arrival of the Ethereals, reproduction seems to have been rigidly controlled. To what end, we don't know, but this would presumably act in exactly the opposite direction to the Kin's conservative 'no change' approach detailed above. Effectively, from an original group of mutually fertile populations, the Ethereals have placed rigid artificial selection pressures on the entire Tau populace, creating five groups that are culturally prevented from intermingling. The fact that the Ethereal caste explicitly forbid inter-breeding is a pretty good indication that different castes remain able to breed together in-universe. What their offspring would be like is unclear. If things follow as we currently understand them, you'd end up with a mixture of the parents – the offspring of Fire and Air castes, for example, might be heavier-set than their Air caste parent, but relatively slight compared with the Fire caste parent. What you wouldn't end up with is a 'Steam caste' Tau, as the caste system is a cultural thing rather than biological. The offspring of an Earth caste and Water caste Tau would therefore be labelled as one or the other, as best fit their make-up in the Sept society – or perhaps more likely, hushed up and all involved re-educated/euthanised by the Ethereal council. Such individuals or families might exist, perhaps on frontier worlds or as refugees. Quite a cool concept for an Inquisitorial henchman or such – a Tau with a grudge against the Greater Good.

While I'm fine with how Imperial Fists now stand, part of me wishes that 3rd edition had grasped the nettle and had the Black Templars as a particular detachment/faction/modus operandi of the Imperial Fists (much as the Deathwing were an alternative scheme for Dark Angels). Likewise, I'd retcon the Alpha Legion to be slightly less insufferable and spool back to their 'superiority over all' schtick rather than 'sneaky sneaky ah-ha!' villains. Don't get me wrong; I like the 'hidden knife' idea; but think it rather fights with the idea of a Legion fighting battle-scale operations. By all means have the top brass and special forces in a tangled web of intrigue and misdirection, but it'd be nice to make their warbands (rather than individuals) have a bit more character. +++ Beyond Space Marines, I'd like regular ork boys to have a bit more 'dark mirror of humanity' about them. They feel better when they're more comparable to a Guardsman than a Space Marine – tougher and more of a threat up-close, sure; but fundamentally an equivalent to a human, not a superhuman. I'd like more to be made of their settlements, kultur and personal/tribal rivalries; that strikes me as more narratively interesting than just the hulking mindless monsters. Like the baddies from old films, they should be a proper scary threat, but not as alien in their aims and desires as, say, Tyranids. Orks should love a proper scrap and not have existential fear of death – but that doesn't mean they're idiots or can't get scared. Let's see some taktiks and straturgee from them; give them the credit for outwitting Imperial and other forces every once in a while, even if they generally prefer to out-muscle them to prove how 'ard they are! +++ Also, I'd like the psychic part of Eldar to be made more of – superhuman reflexes married to a psychic communications grid should make them the masters of battlefield understanding. They're the elves of the setting, so I'd like to see Guardians get a bit more respect. Militia they may be, but they've still often hundreds or thousands of years of life experience – and in a galaxy of war, you bet they've seen their share of conflicts. Many have walked the path of the Warrior themselves, and their physical conditioning is – well, elf-like – so they're no slouches. While I'd expect them to get pasted one-on-one with a Space Marine, a five-man group of Guardians should be a respectable opponent that's a genuine threat: operating with great equipment, a close understanding of their role and comrades, and with a psychic 'spider sense' helping them identify, neutralise or eliminate threats.