karden00

No one giving any love for Nemesis? I know it isn't widely popular, but I enjoyed it, and it has some Rogue Trader elements.

The audio isn’t out till March 28 and that makes me a very sad panda.

Any mention of Arik Taranis or Ghota? Or efforts among the thunder warriors to stabilize themselves? While I don’t love that Primarchs in this case are big standards, I don’t mind at all that their organization foreshadows the legions so much. It’s old, established fluff that the legions were based on the thunder warrior model. Iirc, the very use of the term legion/chapter was a direct throwback.

Great to see this stuff still powering onward!

2nd ed chaos space marine mighty hero in terminator armour and (I think it was called a power field?) a wargear card that gave you a 2+unmodifiable save against anything, iirc. Oh I forgot. You could also upgrade him to a level 4 mastery psycher. Again, iirc. I never once killed the fugger.

Oh man, another rule of cool: I’m honestly not even sure how I feel about this one. It came about as I was pondering a topic from a while back about someone wanting 20k, and another frater said “that exists, it’s called Dune.” It reminded me of the great expanse of time between us and 30/40k, and how, especially in the HH, we get little references here and there to literature that predates our real world, modern era. Like the Ultramarines quoting Clausewitz, or Perturabo knowing about Da Vinci, or I don’t remember who talking about Shakespeare. Or a religion called Catheric. While I never quite hate mentions like this, I’m never entirely comfortable with them either. Given the great son of time, even though there is technology, I usually think that there should be no way that we modern readers should have any familiarity whatsoever with the setting, even if all we are getting are throwaway mentions.

Guilliman in space was 100% win. Iirc, it wasn’t that the ship was in high atmosphere at all, but that the ship had its own pocket of very light atmosphere around it. Guilliman said “Primarch biology helped, but...” Other rule of cool moments? Angron holding up a warhounds foot for a little bit( and damn-near dying in the process) or Lorgar pulling Thunderhawks out of the sky.

And we thought they would never make a mode for Beast Krule. Well done!

It’s all in the title. Since 5th, I’ve had amazing success with these units. I have 7 of them, and would run tornado and typhoons as basically highly mobile gunboats. They could move modestly and still onload, say, two crack missiles and a multi melts shot, or if I was feeling particularly nasty, two multi melta shots. They generally enjoyed a high survivability rate, which always struck me as odd, seeing as they far more often than not really brought the pain. I don’t really play anymore, may never play a game of 8th, at this rate. Does anyone still use these bad boys?

...I guess you could say that the three of them...got fisted...

Ultramarines.

I think the Pharos device was still in action when these happened. Errr. Yo dude, I don’t think that the Pharos was ever stated to have been in play during those three events. Those stories take place well before the Heresy, and it was in the Heresy that the Pharos came into the picture. Before Magnus made a giant hole in the webway, The Emperor was powerful enough to guide the Astronomicon from a distance, though it was taxing for him. After "Magnus did nothing wrong", The Emperor has to remain on the throne to keep the broken webway portal from ripping Terra apart and filling it with daemons, and also because it might be the only thing keeping him pseudo alive after Horus crippled him. So during the early Great Crusade, Emperor could leave Terra if he wanted, even for extended periods, no problem. Also, it's warp magic, it doesn't have to make sense in realspace. It just has to make sense in the warp. So in realspace, it might be twirling around like an unbalanced top, but in the warp, its an unmoving light. Hmmm that seems fairly plausible, and I’d be willing to buy it. Can you cite your sources for this one?

Alllllllso..... What happens when the emperor leaves Terra? Wolf of Ash and Fire, First Heretic, Nikaea..... You can love these stories, as I do, but you can still object to the lack of consistency, and you’d never be wrong to do so.

I dont imagine those worlds produced quite that many legionaries at any certain point in the Crusade. Remember, lots of the original legionaries came from Terra, not those death worlds. Then again, 90,000+ people isn't a shockingly large number, when you think in planetary terms. Sure, it takes a lot more than 90,000 aspirants to get to 90,000 legionaries, but even if youre looking at a 4-1 ratio, 370,000 young males across an entire planet shouldnt be that hard to come by. We would have to go pretty far back in our own pre-history to have trouble with that. Buuuut you also have to consider that that could mean 370,000 young men not making babies, as Battlestar Galactica would say..... Is it possible this wasn't the most thought out setting of all time....?

What about the lost Legions (II & XI)? They were destroyed... Yes, it would almost certainly take more than a single Legion to destroy another Legion, but it could be done. The Salamanders and the Raven Guard were nearly destroyed at Isstvan V. If Corax hand't been rescued it was almost certain that Angron would have killed him and his remaining warriors. Just because Legions aren't destroyed in the fluff (except for the II & XI), doesn't mean that they couldn't be. I recon most of the Legions could be destroyed in a fairly conventional manner. If the Emperor had decided to sanction/destroy the Night Lords or World Eaters I recon they would have been destroyed. There'd inevitably be some survivors, but those survivors wouldn't be specifically trained to operate outside of the regular Legion chain of command in the same way as the Alpha Legion is. Surviving Night Lords or World Eaters would become pirates and Blackshields, where as surviving Alpha Legion would still be able to operate effectively. The Alpha Legions' whole 'thing' is that they're able to continue to operate even if their chain of command has been disrupted or destroyed. It's a bit of a cliche but the whole "cut off one head and another grows in its place" was the Alpha Legions' greatest quality even before they became the MI6/CIA Legion when they were introduced to the series in Legion. The Alpha Legion doesn't need the same numbers or resources as other Legions to remain an effective force. Yes, they were capable of conquering worlds in the standard Legion manner, but they weren't exclusively reliant on standard Imperial tactics in the same sense as the Ultramarines, Sons of Horus, Imperial Fists, Iron Warriors etc. The were perfectly capable of operating as individuals or smaller squads/cells to achieve their conquests. Exodus conquered twelve worlds with a single shot. This is an extreme example, but it demonstrates that the Alpha Legion are able to do more with less. When it comes to sanctioning/destroying a Legion, only Legions with significant asymmetric capabilities would stand a chance of surviving as an effective force. In my opinion only the Thousand Sons and the Alpha Legion would be capable of surviving an Imperial sanction. Edit: also, how do you bring the Alpha Legion to battle? If another Legion was given Imperial authority to sanction/destroy the Alpha Legion it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that the Alpha Legion would find out and simple go to ground, dispersing their forces all across the galaxy. Even if the 'execution' Legion managed to catch the Alpha Legion by surprise I can't imagine that the Alpha Legion sails around as a unified Legion that could easily be cornered and destroyed. The highlighted sections are what matter. First and foremost, the idea of legions being too vulnerable to other legions entirely kills the motivation to collect said legions. Every example of one legion gaining dominance over another legion is almost always qualified by several factors, be it surprise betrayal, where the unsuspecting forces had, on paper, enough to put down the ambushers, had they not been traitors, (Isstvan, Calth) or there were significant force multipliers at work, (Prospero, Thramas [Tchulchulchultchulchululua]). When such multipliers are at work, it is repeatedly demonstrated in fluff that legions can certainly be brought down low.