SpecialIssue

The role of SM ships is first and only to enable the independent deployment of Marines, as deigned by Guilliman's Second Founding, and the political impetus to limit the power of the Adeptus Astartes in the eyes of the other institutions of the Imperium, as said before. The Battle Barge is the large-scale platform enabling deployment of Marines en masse and as a logistics/command hub. It accomplishes this mission of transporting and safely deploying Astartes through its significant mass and durability. This is seen in the original BFG tabletop with its large number of HP, best armour possible in the game all-round, and large, high quality ordnance capability. Strike Cruisers have the HP of light cruisers reflecting their smaller mass, and high quality but limited ordnance (1 squadron which is nonetheless rare for something their size in the game). But most strikingly, they combine the best armour possible in the game on all facings like BBs, with the fast movement speed and great manoeuvrability (90 degree turns!) of light cruisers. They seem perfectly adapted to safely deploy Astartes of company or less through both speed, manoeuvrability and significant durability for their size. These 2 classes (along with smaller escort boats) fulfil the primary mission of independently deploying Astartes well, through most conceivable scenarios from full-scale invasion to blockade-running. Within the confluence of other factors such as the number of marines needed / available in Chapter operations, the manpower requirements of larger ships, and the political lens of avoiding void-to-void fleet power, is there any justification / efficiency in mandating a ship size between these? Looking at the design of BFG, I think there was a clear design philosophy put into the design of the SM fleet, with the line designed not just according to commercial reasons but according to thematic and lore rationale. BFG came and went before the commercial team started to have a say in the design team's focus (6th edition). For further thoughts on Astartes naval warfare, there's an old analysis I made linked in my signature that may be of interest.

The agony and the ecstasy of 40k. 40k is named 40k for a reason - it should have stayed in 40k. Commercially this all makes sense so I was not surprised when it started and the path that has been carved since. Every few years I come back and say this it seems, but 40k's strength and its differentiator amongst the scifi pantheon was always that it was a titanic, incomprehensibly vast setting; not a massive, convoluted, calcified story. You and everyone else, from a 15 year old with badly painted custom chapter to Dan Abnett and the Imperial Armours, first and foremost are meant engage with the setting by carving out your own area within, using your own creativity and imagination. Not consume a serialised story that is imposed on everyone regardless of its quality or their taste. If you want to read Cato Sicarius, Marneus Calgar etc books, you can. But you don't have to in order to understand the deliberately and understandably very broad foundational movements or story trends. Continue down the path of focussing on story to drive the setting, and not the other way round, and the homework to keep up with the plot becomes unbearable, or the plot becomes so inconsequential that why even bother. And realistically, how much can one character in this debased age of the Imperium across 10,000 light years of distance and time truly affect the galaxy? (psst its also part of the grim dark). This focus on stories being driven by the setting and not the other way around means the IP is never beholden to the quality of writing or missteps in storytelling, and is firmly to the taste of each fan - who can flexibly shift without consequence to focus on different things within the setting. Evergreen. Remember the C.S. Goto books, with backflipping Terminators? Everyone does, but if you didn't like it it wasn't necessary to engage with. To those who say that the universe was boring without the story we have been foisted with - can you seriously not think of any gaps or opportunities in the lore to tell interesting new stories, introduce new units, or even focus on galactic-wide issues? I also truly believe that creativity needs restraint with its details, otherwise it becomes convoluted chaos, before ending in bland dross or reactionary incoherence as every single creative well is tapped dry. See every. single. ip for this process. The Custodes, Primarchs, Heresy, Emperor, etc. only gained their aura when they were held outside the reach of the norm, in the lore and the tabletop. I would have gate-kept those concepts to the end of the IP, as by holding them above the tabletop they contribute to the size of the universe. The universe is bigger than the tabletop. 10,000 years should not feel like a few decades in story-time. But I grow old and am shaking my fist at the sky and into the void; look to the original intro blurb for this universe (that has since been itself scrubbed...) "But the universe is a big place, and whatever happens, you will not be missed..." The galaxy turns, and all our high-ideals become corpse starch in the end.

Is Guilliman not the good guy already? Redeeming the Imperium through his clear-sighted, modern mind? Are the Adeptus Custodes not already the good guys? The secular, rational, perfectly loyal soldiers who remember the true intent of the ruler in absentia and have now learnt the error of their ways and are stepping out to help? Are the Ultramarines not already the good guys? When people like the rational Titus who as the super-special OC main character are able to come into such close contact with Chaos artefacts etc and challenge orthodoxy have moral authority over the super-cautious Leandros; who as a damn Chaplain is exactly how hard the culture of the Imperium would and should come down on this sort of threat of corruption through thousands of years of lessons learnt. What about the slide into humanising Space Marines - these are supposed to be heavily brainwashed fanatics (and Guilliman was originally the one to introduce the heavy-handed practise in the wake of the Heresy btw) that wouldn't even be able to grasp the idea that the Emperor and thus the Imperium could be wrong - who are mostly now portrayed as pretty good guys. Look through the old codexes - you have a narrative focus on catechisms of hate, burning the heretic, abhorring the alien, purging the unclean - even the Ultramarines used to match this heavily gothic, fanatical aesthetic, on top of which their greco-roman cultural garnishes instead of opposes. Even the nature of their space marine organs betray a more savage, weird and gothic narrative than the standard scifi super soldiers they are turning into - one of their original capabilities is that they eat human brains to gain memories for goodness sake - how does that fit into the modern idea of what a Space Marine is? What an Ultramarine is? I can see the UMs in the picture above and the culture they come from eating the brains of dying PDF to gain battlefield intel in the year 40,000. I can't Imagine Titus and his United States of Rome in Space soldiers doing that. I believe that 40k has already abdicated the claim that there are no good guys in the setting - there is very clearly a scale of good guys, seen through modern eyes and the modern fanbase. I liked this idea - the idea that the audience / fans are forced to confront the idea that humans are monsters from an out of context perspective. 40k in its original form is unrelentingly pessimistic about humanity - we are never supposed to be good guys in this setting.

The classic units and imperious helms warm my heart - such a long time since I’ve been so hyped for anything Space Marine. The Primarchs are distant myths - in the 41st millennium, there are only the Angels of Death to fight on into the darkening night - armed only with the ruthless human technologies of exploding bolt, mechanised blade, grinding treads and roaring turbines.

IMO None have matched the original artwork. From the original Visions of Heresy. The Customs should look tall, regal, statuesquely proportioned, as the Emperor's perfect hand-crafted confidants and bodyguards, in comparison to the often ugly giganticism of the Astartes. Modern art and models don't quite communicate it to the same degree. I think in particular the weapons on the models are far too big, losing the elegance they are supposed to evoke. The Aquilon terminators from Forgeworld I think do the best job of matching the art and nailing the mix of elegance and armour that is the Custodes.

Oh I don't know - I think the meta has always evolved to an equally competitive level in whatever edition it's in. 4th was the edition of mechanisation and rhino rushes because it was effective given the points scaling and options available. Bolters weren't amazing even back then, but everything was in general less lethal, (or the super lethal weapons were much rarer) which was why 20 Bolter shots in 12" was a viable and competitive thing. Heck, the super norm-core pick of 4x devastators with missile launchers was considered the most optimal loadout when balancing cost, utility and effectiveness of the weapons available. There were lots of exploitations and unbalance as any other - the Tau fish of fury, dual daemon prince lash whip bull:cuss:, monstrous creatures being absolute can-openers, outflank and outflank-denying shenanigans - bikers ruled as well, with every single HQ option mounted on bikes to maximise toughness, mobility and firepower with almost no downside. I like that edition. It had jank, but in the end it did provide a game that was streamlined in the way it played out while allowing and enabling a lot of verisimilitude in the way units acted (vehicle pen chart, melee being pretty decisive with running down fleeing opponents in sweeping advance, transports being important, rareness of powerful weapons, etc).

Hm. You suppose that the galaxy-wide Imperium is not significantly worse, on a larger and longer timescale than any regime or period of time that has gone before, thus meaning there is no incentive for the gods to seek to bring it about. That is the crux of your point. On that fundamental level, I believe the opposite. I believe that the Imperium is the worst possible regime imaginable, that both maximises and sustains the emotion seen in humanity and the galaxy, through its quadrillions of minds conditioned to live under and propagate oppression, inequality, religious frenzy and irrational hate. What other period in history has humanity been as powerful, but collectively as unfree and miserable for so long? That is the thematic basis of the Imperium - the industrial production of power and misery. This is seen through the 30+ years of W40k and the very blurb that has introduced readers to the entire ethos and focus of this universe since the beginning. "To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable." As for the sidenote about the shaman - who knows who planned what from when? It could have all been foreseen when they reincarnated by either, both, or none of the parties. We have no idea so it is useless to speculate. Is 40k a deterministic universe, given the Warp is timeless? The shamans made their decisions, the gods made theirs, and the sum total is W40k, that is all I need to know. And from that sum, I think Chaos came out on top from 30k onwards.

I think that the ruinous powers wanted everything to happen the way it did. Why is it the immediate assumption that Chaos isn't winning, when it has been winning for 10,000 years? The gods don't grow strong from territory or even worship (that merely attracts their attention) - they grow strong from emotion, no matter where it flows from (imagine the despair that Gulliman felt upon awakening in the 41st millennium - Nurgle has a very special place in his garden for that morsel). W40k has always quietly said, piecing together the implications of the lore, that the Imperium is the ideal vessel to cultivate these emotions, and thus Chaos. They want emotion, not Terra. They've ensured that their chosen vessel of humanity will be mired in a half-life of decay and frothing fanaticism that won't be burnt out in a generation, but continue to propagate and dominate for an almost geological amount of time, across an entire galaxy. "Finishing the job" meant that without the Astronomicon, the Imperium fragments / implodes, and its loathsome ideas and culture aren't able to propagate and consolidate to imprison the entirety of their chosen species of mankind and perpetuate the cycle of suffering. The Emperor tried to play them, but He got played. It was either ascension to the Dark King at the expense of humanity (actually fulfilling everything Horus initially feared for!), or His suffering of an eternity for the stagnation of humanity to feed their thirst. I mean it does say... "Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods." Sounds like a pretty good time for the gods to me - don't think they could have come up with a better galaxy thanks to their tools, Horus and The Emperor.

From a wonderful series of art and flavourful text that @Karak Norn Clansman has been posting on his own page on the B&C, that wallows in the disgusting nature of humanity and the Imperium in the 41st millennium. I think this problem of the Emperor and his plan is a wider one that GW is confused about - are the Emperor's and Imperium's excesses and violence needed? Is humanity the protagonist in this universe, worth even rooting for? I'd argue that the healthy answer is no. But we are humans, we like to see ourselves as right, or at least powerful. GW wants to make money as well, with a palatable product, and those two things align to make the narrative shy away from the straight answer that no; humanity in the 41st millennium and even the 31st (with the way they fleshed out the nascent Imperium) was just another monster that courted its own destruction. The actions the Imperium undertake are genocidal and unnecessary - yet are brushed aside as 'necessary' by the narrative with little to no reflection on how horrible those actions were. This is something else that makes 40k different from all other scifi - it's pessimistic and loathsome view of humanity, that focuses on us at our worst, for our best has already past. Humanity as the powerful, elder, corrupt and decrepit big bad that deserves to be destroyed - because that is exactly what 40k points so clearly towards thematically, it's just that no one wants to commit to the bit. "No, we needed to ensure the human race was united... we needed to wipe out every xenos race we came into contact with... we needed to violently and quickly enforce compliance across the entire galaxy to one warlord on Terra." Why? The warp was calm after the millennia of the Age of Strife. Wouldn't all this violence and turmoil in such a short time just bring the attention of the gods onto us? What about all the alternate springs of a human resurgence that could have happened but were stamped out with no remorse, or instances with xenos and us cooperating? Why didn't we just leave worlds that didn't want to join alone (with appropriate safeguards)? The Emperor is said to have been embodiment of everything great and substantive about our species - and that includes our capacity for hubris. Perhaps the tragedy is that we got what we deserved. But no-one wants to hear that.

After all these years - was it worth it? To have this universe's foundational myth and legend so thoroughly calcified into a canon that will never please everyone, that is forever beholden to the inevitable imperfections with quality and writing and characters introduced by its various authors. To now have exhausted an IP and story that was only built up in its importance and gravitas through the lack of information about it over 20 years. Restraint on what is not shown is as important as the creativity guiding the IP. They are bankrupt without one another. It has turned the setting into a story, one which will become bloated and/or diluted in the coming years as all IPs that are run this way are; drilling down to every level of mystery and intrigue (Dark Age of Technology mini-series anyone?) to various levels of quality till every single well is dry... and then is inevitably rebooted. I have watched near-every single IP I enjoyed go down this pipeline, and I now force the same happening to 40k. It might take decades - but inevitably, the well will run dry. The setting but not a story method was one of the greatest things about this universe that has ensured it's longevity and artistic integrity, and is one of the things that set it apart from all other scifi universes. I have waiting to say this for many years, and this is perhaps the most relevant time to say it - but I believed from the beginning that the HH series was a mistake, told the way it was. Angels of Darkness. Lord of the Night. The Night Lords series. Those are how the Heresy should have been viewed, as a lost time long ago remembered like shattered glass through different, unreliable viewpoints. When the lore revelations of AoD and LotN first came out, they provided fodder for discussion for years, as they provided a story window to that lost era, without losing any of the endless potential and mythic grandeur of the Heresy. They allowed you story and lore without taking away the agency of the readers of the setting. They threw more potential into the sandbox and threw up more lore questions rather than answering them. Horus v the Emperor is now a step-by-step fight that you can read about - but what if that portrayal didn't live up to my expectations? I no longer have the latitude and authority to engage with others on equal footing, all contributing our own ideas to what 40k is in a very real, creative and central way. My and everyone else's views or imagination and extrapolation on this foundational lore tidbit have been overruled by Dan Abnett, codified as lore law on wikis that spoil the entire story in solid paragraph dumps, held as immutable by gatekeepers unwilling to engage with anything past the rules as written. This was all started as a hobby to collaboratively engage in with "your own army guys", not a fandom where we merely consume content shovelled out the door. It feels like W40k was a sandbox that they have been filling with superglue. And the HH series was a major part of that.

I think as this series' demi-gods, the Primarchs and perhaps even the Emperor should be seen as and were written as expressions of humanity's various attributes and follies, in the Greek gods style. Hubris, jealousy, honour, anger etc. Both for obvious thematic reasons, and as a logical extrapolation of the (newish) lore regarding their nature as partly-warp beings - raw emotion and psychic themes have gone into their making / being / who they are. In the Greek god style, that means they are going to make stupid, childish, selfish, bizarre, (self-)harmful decisions that screw things up, whether their intentions are for good or ill. The execution and consistency of this is extremely rocky throughout the series, with multiple major characters seeming to backtrack their emotional arcs / not engaging with previous developments; this is the problem, not the idea that they are beings of emotion. I didn't mind the idea of Horus in actuality not being able to execute the final blow - it's the road and many backtracks that didn't actually lead us here that are the problem. The more severe brainwashing of space marines, only happened in the 2nd founding and the codex reforms by Guilliman (are they going to touch on this fact in any coming books, tarnishing the protagonist of the setting?), precisely to reduce these human traits and ensure loyalty; so chaos marines are more in touch with their humanity than the loyalists in the 41st millennium, a vicious irony which is also pointed at directly by Khan's realisation of what Sigismund represents, and adding another layer to the perverse tragedy of the universe. For the next 10,000 years, when a chaos legionnaire yells taunts and criticisms of the Emperor, he might for a moment pity the glazed, glassy eyes of his loyalist counterpart, forever locked in a sense of dutiful fervour, whose mind is unable to even comprehend or engage with concepts such as that the Emperor may have been flawed.

The Imperium and the culture it promotes is corrupt, oppressive, moribund, xenophobic, militaristic and schismatic on a galactic scale. It perpetuates the emotions that chaos thrives on by also perpetuating the dominance of the human race through its heavy-handed and extreme methods to extract military and industrial power, and its efforts to control it's population's mindset. The Imperium's success expands and ensures the reproduction of the trillions of untrained and unprotected emotional minds in some of the worst conditions and aggressive cultures imaginable. Imagine the despair and depression in the hives. Imagine the anger at your corrupt lords, or the warrior cults allowed to thrive on martial worlds for better soldiers, or the blind hatred for any aliens, or the ambitious power grabs and schisms and all the endless wars these provoke. That is suffering on a scale only the gods could dream of, over a timescale only they can grasp. The heart of 40k is not a struggle with an external foe or outer incarnation of evil independent of us - but mankind's eternal battle with the very things that make us human.

Obsessive madness is a great phrase to describe it. The almost-overwhelming level of intricate detailing in a lot of the works is very gothic, and conversely the detailed minutiae I think contributes to making the universe seem even larger and more horrifying - imagine all that horrifying gothic detail, not just on one or two subjects in a picture, but across an entire room surrounding you, or across an entire battlefield or city. His style (and Kopinski's as well in particular) straddles a blurry line between interpretive / artistic, and representative / 'realistic', all while evoking a feeling and sense of setting unlike any other scifi out there that is immediately identifiable. The idea of a dark far future 40,000 years away in time and space is inextricably linked to their art for me.

None of these pics are supposed to be 100% accurate representations of what these two looked like at their final encounter - the inclusion of the other soldiers in the background / around them I think is pretty indicative of that. Rather they are supposed to be impressionist, seen as almost in-universe artwork of the encounter in my eye. John Blanche's work stands as the pinnacle of this, evoking the scribbled, messy mania of a psychic vision of an astropath across lightyears of space and time. W40k is not a clean, small, or bright scifi universe, and its artwork needs to reflect this character. And those themes need to bleed into this scene, and its weight in this universe. Does the art evoke the gothic grandeur of the final encounter between these two gods? I don't think I am looking for action, or movement, or even clarity in the picture, or what their faces even look like. That all brings it down to mortal level, not myth and legend. What I am looking for is the air of gothic grandeur, and Adrian Smith's (like all his pieces) hits these notes the hardest for me. The Emperor and Horus look almost inhuman, unknowable, exaggerated. The darker, rich colours evokes a feelings similar to viewing old paintings done in the styles of baroque or romanticism. Baroque and gothic, are both characterized with lots of intricate detail, and Smith always include almost overwhelming detail on the characters and focus of his images that is picked out starkly and with max contrast, while the backgrounds are relatively simple or flat. It fits the vision, themes and culture of 40k. I think the newer images have too much movement, the wrong colouring and detail to evoke that air of gravitas I would like in an image of Horus and the Emperor. Like all 40k images, I think they would do much better in perhaps greyscale, but their lines and action-orientation still does not lend itself well to gothic grandeur.