SCE: Space Marines? Human? Order=Good? Answers!

[Sleboda]

Hi all,

Dunno if you've watched yet, but the new Stormcast Podcast (ep5) touches on a number of debates we happy forum-goers have had lately, and I, for one, found it quite interesting.

If you have not yet seen the episode, I recommend giving it a try.

[Melcavuk]

One thing that surprised me was the admission that the aim is to have the Stormhosts to each have the distinctive following and seperate personality of dark angels, blood angels etc but on a far accelerated timeframe compared to how that was delivered in 40K. It was one of those moments where it does hint that further down the line we may see divergent models for them as they very much want that distinctive difference between the various stormhosts.

As for the Order = Good part, I think anyone who read the fluff already agreed that Order does not mean good so much as wanting to keep their respective civilisations intact against the tides of chaos, death and destruction but was nice to have it touched on.

[Overread]

Order has Aelves that worship the god of murder; Aelves that harvest souls from the living and the recently dead; heck the Sylvanath generally hate everyone that isn't a creature of their forests. Order is very much not the "good guys"

 

That said it saddens me to hear about GW's plan to have Stormcast hosts like Space Marines because its such a 1 dimensional way to build the game. I won't deny that marketing REALLY works well for 40K; but it should be noted they never started marines with that intention; it evolved itself through time and snowballed its own effect. Forcing it through stormcast I can see turning people away from AoS because they'll get the (and rightly too) impression that Stormcast wil get all the BIG releases and lots of new models and new toys all the time; whilst other armies will get ignored. Even with GW in their current rate of production they've still only so many production slots to fit things in.

 

For me its about management balance of attention. If they evenly split it between all factions and alliances then it makes the greatest number of players happy. If they weight it toward one faction more so than others then they run the risk of creating a situation where they've got one core of gamers who are getting happier whilst another group are getting ignored and progressively less happy. It splits the gaming community. 

Plus SC players want more alternative armies to be popular; they want opponents that are not just mirrors of their own army. 

 

I don't hate stormcast and I think they've got some outstanding models and deserve to be a strong selling army. I just don't want to see GW throw away all the other game factions. 

[shinros]

9 minutes ago, Overread said:

Order has Aelves that worship the god of murder; Aelves that harvest souls from the living and the recently dead; heck the Sylvanath generally hate everyone that isn't a creature of their forests. Order is very much not the "good guys"

 

That said it saddens me to hear about GW's plan to have Stormcast hosts like Space Marines because its such a 1 dimensional way to build the game. I won't deny that marketing REALLY works well for 40K; but it should be noted they never started marines with that intention; it evolved itself through time and snowballed its own effect. Forcing it through stormcast I can see turning people away from AoS because they'll get the (and rightly too) impression that Stormcast wil get all the BIG releases and lots of new models and new toys all the time; whilst other armies will get ignored. Even with GW in their current rate of production they've still only so many production slots to fit things in.

 

For me its about management balance of attention. If they evenly split it between all factions and alliances then it makes the greatest number of players happy. If they weight it toward one faction more so than others then they run the risk of creating a situation where they've got one core of gamers who are getting happier whilst another group are getting ignored and progressively less happy. It splits the gaming community. 

Plus SC players want more alternative armies to be popular; they want opponents that are not just mirrors of their own army. 

 

I don't hate stormcast and I think they've got some outstanding models and deserve to be a strong selling army. I just don't want to see GW throw away all the other game factions. 

I agree,  this is disappointing but as long as they don't start releasing battletomes for each stormhost I think I can live with this. I don't want to AOS to fall into the same pit as 40k where imperium is made up of tons of power armour factions. 

[Overread]

Aye I don't mind it in the Lore - by all means have a thousand Sigmar hosts in the lore

And you can put them in the book too with different paint schemes just like the other factions have their own subgroups. The issue is when GW starts to make multiple warriors and heroes for the subgroups. Because you know they can't support them through all the range, so it would mean SC getting more releases for their own niche groups at the cost of other armies. 

[PlasticCraic]

Thanks for flagging up the show, I'll take a look.  I really enjoyed the one with the game designer giving their insights (Episode 2 of the new run I think?).

I'll be particularly interested to hear their thoughts on what Order actually means to them.  

For example, I've always seen "Order aren't just Good Guys, therefore Deepkin do belong in Order" as a dodgy argument. 

I agree with the first part.  GW has described Order as Empire Builders and Colonists, which to me certainly does not sound unambiguously good, especially if you're the group whose land is being colonised. 

However the second part is a non sequitor.  There are lots of things that aren't "Good Guys" (arguably everything in the game in some way?), but they do not all belong in Order.  Therefore not being unambiguously good cannot on its own automatically qualify you for Order.  There are different qualities than just "good" or "bad" that distinguish the GAs; Order is more than just "not good".

My issue is more that Deepkin are not in the mould of what GA has previously described as Order.  They are not trying to conquer land to give their race Lebensraum.  Rather, they are a parasitic society who enslave great beasts, and use them pray on other civlisations and cities in raiding parties. 

That's why I believe they are a bad fit for Order, or for what Order is supposed to be - not because they are "bad", but because the nature of their society and their goals do not align with Order.  Free Peoples are bad too, if you are a Troggoth and they drained your swamp to create farmland, but I would say they fit perfectly in Order despite that, because their society's structures and goals align with what Order is.  Idoneth does not.

Let's be honest, it looks an awful lot like they went into Order because they are Elves, and way back in 2015 all Elves were put into Order.  It struck me as unimaginitive and constricted by WHFB thinking:  I would hope that we could have moved on from a one-to-one mapping of WHFB races to AOS GAs by now.

[Overread]

Idoneth Deepkin do build. They fled to the seas and deep oceans to hide away and found their own people, it was only later that they found they needed to harvest souls to survive. I liken them to Vikings. 

They build a civilization of their own, establishing territories and a settlement and a foundation of civilization as sedentary peoples would understand it. However they also have raiding as part of their culture. They have to raid and range from their settlements. 

 

This is different to destruction factions which, whilst also being mostly GorkaMorka worshippers, are also more raiders without the building side. They loot and pillage not just for land or power but for the fun of it. Many of them will be semi or fully nomadic and whilst they might well found and build big settlements they are not going to be of the same kind as those Order forms. 

 

Politics also comes into it; whilst the Deepkin are not all that nice if they steal your souls, they are allied against Chaos and have no fondness for Death nor Destruction. Order is the catch-all for them.

 

 

I can see ORder perhaps one day fragmenting (heck Dark Aelves could do that easily right now as the only alliance that binds them to order is Stormcast); right now its an alliance of many nations against Chaos. If the story advances to a point where Chaos is no longer dominant and the forces of Order are more established I can see it fragmenting into its own petty squabbles faster and faster to the point where a group could break away. 

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

I've been playing 40k for about 3 years now but was following the hobby through other means for much longer. Personally I'm a tau player but have started an emperors children army on the side because i could reuse my daemons and there where a lot of chaos models floating around for cheap. As a tau player I haven't gotten new stuff in a long time (not counting things like the kroot model that came with blackstone). While i feel my armies lineup is solid (if not in need for a few tweaks here and there) I do feel left out seeing space marines and chaos get new stuff every few months (to clarify on the chaos bit 2 of the 4 god aligned armies, namely the ones for khorne and slaanesh, have yet to get rule books or dedicated models outside of ones from older editions) But I can't remember the last time tau got a substantial kit or new major character. Stormcasts already have a large range and while it is a neat idea to have a unique model here or there for each stormhost they should at least avoid having each one become it's own sub army. There's already enough ways for stormcasts to join other armies through battalions, how much longer till stormcasts create an 'order soup' meta like 40k's 'imperial soup'? I don't mind sub allegiances getting dedicated characters or single units, hell I'd love for some minor unit variants for LoN's legions like a TK themed skeleton unit with altered stats for sacrament or rules or legion of night being able to take the dopplegangers of Manny boys arch enemies as heroes, but to take each one and make it it's own full army is too far. It even makes more sense with the current lore for each legion to be it's own army before the stormhosts do but hey, why stop printing money with stormcasts when you can make 50% of the game stormcasts and sell even more? 

As for the "order are good guys" mentality, well the lore begs to differ. The alliances are all together based on shared ideologies, alliances and other ties. All of death is connected to Nagash either directly through the mortarchs or indirectly through curses like the soulblight that creates vampires and ghoul kings (feel free to fact check me on that one because I'm not sure if ghoul kings are still vampires/soulblighted) order is connected by a desire to survive chaos and preserve civilization regardless of morals. Chaos is united by devotion to the dark pantheon and the ruination of reality. Destruction also wants wanton ruination, but rather than as a means to an end their flavour of mayhem is the end itself in a cruel and primal form of survival of the fittest and devotion to combat.

[Deepkin]

Idoneth are Order mainly because they desperately hate Chaos, definitely hate Death (who hates them back cuz souls) and are still too elfy to ever look at Destruction with anything less than disdain. So while the Idoneth might also look at the order factions as their main source of souls, they are also the only other factions the Idoneth would ever consider allying with against the others (if indeed they ally with them at all). The Ionrach and some of the more "noblebright" enclaves are more firmly on the Order continuum, whereas the Dhom-hain, Fuethan and their ilk are more akin to hostis humani generis: enemies of all, loyal only to their own.

I like it. But then again, I would :p

[Thiagoma]

Also disapointed. If i wanted to play Space Marine i would have bought 40k.

[Thiagoma]

1 minute ago, xking said:

Ok, Don't play Space Marines. 

To go deeper on the issue.

AoS doesnt need poster boys. All i see in the future is stagnation if most resources are pooled into a single faction. 40k locked itself on a corner and left xenos players eating dust with 20 year old models, while releasing marines every month.

 

Now in AoS we dont need to go far, just look at the support received by most factions. Some do not have Bts, some have a really small pool of models, a lot of finecast still rolling....

 

Even the new factions receive little support, lorewise and on models count. Gw released some really cool factions like Idoneth and KO, and once the release is over, those factions disapear in the background and everytime that new alternate Knightsomethingnator Wharever sculpt is released, it is 1 model that could have replaced a finecast or added variety to an army.

Take Fyreslayers, KO or FeC. Very little variety, very low model counts. A new unit for those armies would mean a lot more than a new Stormcast to overlap the purpose of another unit.

 

I am a HUGE fan of the new boxes (W&R  and FeCxSkaven). New models for those guys! New rules! Imagine how many new players will start those armies and feel supported!

Plus if you think about market, gw doesnt need to focus on the Stormcasts as well! We got Space Dinossaurs, Talking Rats, Zeppelin Dwarfs, Underwater Elves... Propaganda with those guys would attract a lot of players!  They are probably the reason many of us got to the hobby, and that is why i am disapointed.

 

Gw has slowed down on Stormcasts and i really enjoyed it. Bring BTs, Bring  Slaneesh, Darkoath, Ogors, the sky is the limit. We dont need more golden boi! The faction already got more models than some GAs. Give it a rest or soon people will feel alienated.

 

 

 

 

[Yoshiya]

I really really hope stormhosts never progress last sub armies in the book. Maybe a few special characters to reinforce their fighting style and that's it.

I never felt that space marines felt different enough in the first place to justify all the armies. I understand for example Blood Angels and Ultramarines favour different tactics but you can make a melee focused army using the space marine book anyway and just tag on the blood angels faction rules. They don't need to be different factions and that's only emphasised by the fact most of the range is the same but painted red instead of blue on the box.

Stormcast will have this issue even worse in my opinion as at its core AoS is combat focused, with shooting and magic generally being a support element than a core of the army. I mean look at sacrosanct, it's the magic focused chamber and yet it's still very much a combat chamber with the magic showing in rules like lightening after hitting in melee.

 

As for Idoneth in Order, I feel like most people that argue this either haven't read the battletome or just want them to have different lore to what they have.

The book goes into detail in the dual nature of them wanting to avoid conflict but being forced to. They make sure to leave buildings behind and it makes reference to them only going after adults and leaving children behind. They want civilization to thrive but their very nature goes against that and I think that makes them perfect for order.

[123lac]

Rather not see multiple SCE battle tomes. That is, multiple ones at the same time, the way 40k currently has DA/BA/SW/SM.

I also have a hard time believing they are popular enough to warrant it. I'm sure they're popular...but doubt they are on the same level as Space Marines. I mean come on, the golden shiny boi armor and weird helmets aren't exactly as cool as what the Adeptus Astartes have going on.

[Seraphage]

Age of Sigmar really doesn't need Space Marines. It is a 40k thing and it's great but it has really no place at this game

I consider it a horrible possibility to be honest, and really hope it won't happen ! And it is not due to releases of one faction, that I don't mind.

It is just that it will copy another game and lose its own personality !

[michu]

I think you're overreacting a bit. As @xking said, they were talking about giving more personality to the different Stormhosts and that doesn't mean separate  battletomes for them - it could be just releases similar to Gavriel Sureheart, but this time for Tempest Lords (I wish) or Knights Excelsior. Be honest, who wouldn't want to see Lord Celestant  of the Hallowed Knights Gardus Steelsoul in miniature form?

[Overread]

The thing is they only fleshed out the other marine chapters so that they could release models for them. The big risk is that Stormcast are very much based on the Marine model of design, not just visually but also in their general performance and style an the way they are thrust forward front and centre in the lore. Basically if GW follows the same pattern then it stands to reason we could see many more models for them. Thing is they already have a big army; an army as big and diverse as most were at the end of the Old World; yet everything SC has is fully modern plastic. 

I think the worry is real and we can hope that GW won't follow through fully. I think Space Marines cause trouble for 40K in so much as it doubles the army count on its own which means half the game is weighted toward one faction, one alliance and one group of customers at the cost of Xenos and other armies support. Heck even within the Imperial forces there are losers - Sisters of Battle were almost Squatted or at least left hung out to dry and wither away. 

 

 

[Gorthor21]

 I would love to see Gardus Steelsoul in miniature form.  He is my single favorite character in Age of Sigmar and I dare say in any Warhammer novel I have read.  

I think if they do expand on Stormhosts it will most likely be upgrade sprues like they did with the first wave of multipart sets they made.  We still have a few chambers that have yet to be revealed so I think those would be any major expansions that we would get.  

The comparison to space marines is just a way to explain how they are looking at making different character for each stormhost instead of a straight copy and paste of space marine chapters to AoS.  What makes the space marine chapters all so different are the different units and unit functions that they each have.  Stormcasts don’t have that kind of differentiation in their units as all the stormhosts have the same units that have the same functionality in each stormhost regardless of if they are Hammers of Sigmar, Anvils of the Heldenhammer, or Astral Templars.

[Overread]

If they go the path of upgrade sprues and the odd hero that would be fine - though I'd hope they'd give a thought toward the use of such for other factions too! 

The odd upgrade sprue isn't a huge impact; its more if they go the full path and start making whole armies worth of alternate models. That's the real risk if they start chasing the multiple armies pathway. Accepting that upgrade sprues can be what leads to that! 

[AaronWilson]

Would love to see the stormhosts get expanded upon and grow, seeing more stylised stormcast models for each stormhost could look SO good!

[MitGas]

Well, it was obvious to me that SCE would go the SM route - but I really hope they don't create equivalents to all the SM subfactions like SW, BA, DA, etc in miniature form.

After new berzerkers (which followers of Khorne in 40k really deserve) and Angron, I don't wanna see another Khorne release for like the next 5 years (seriously, Khorne and Nurgle get something all the time, it's just as bad as Space Marines). I've got a similar view on SC. Give them lots of exposition in the background, that's cool, but if some of their subfactions get miniatures outside of maybe a special character, we know AoS got worse for it.

Personally all I want a good armored Chaos warrior kit (or Chosen/Varanguard on foot, whatever) but when I think of the game as a whole, I want to see new kits for Skaven, Lizardmen, Beastmen, Aelves and - most of all - Freepeople. Aelves (and Freepeople) don't interest me at all but they would be great because then all major factions are established (Slaanesh falls in there as well). So yeah, more variety would be cool before we get another bunch of clones in the form of slightly different SCEs.

[Overread]

The odd thing is that we are seeing GW pulling back on having a bazillion factions in the game by recombining old armies. They can certainly make small armies work (if not a little too well); so seeing them putting Goblins, Skaven and Beasts back into single larger combined armies just makes one quesiton why they'd then reverse this policy for Stormcast. Clearly GW realises that they can only support a limited number of factions meaningfully in the long term. So it seems very odd that they'd pull back on all the others but then push forward with Stormcast. 

 

[Dr Ben]

Seems to me that lots of people are more attached to their chapter than space marines in general. Also the conflict between chapters is fundamental to the Horus heresy which is the biggest (and most commercially successful) single bit of 40k lore as well as lots of the smaller plot lines, so it only seems natural for AOS to adapt ideas from SM chapters. That said, Aos already has more Order factions than 40k imperial ones so there are already more ways to have civil wars and defections to chaos etc. 

I think the success of Nighthaunt and LON with the whole malign portents storyline does show GW that there is room for more than Stormcast on the front page/poster. Hopefully they will build on that success. 

For me I would love to see a chaos civilisation fleshed out a bit more. Cities based around science and industry worshipping tzeentch and khorne. Maybe they've been flooded with refugees from Sigmars conquests of chaos held territory, that kind of thing. 

[JPjr]

some incredible work here taking one throwaway line in a podcast and then getting all riled up about it, when actually it's quite a fascinating chat that illuminates and justifies (post-hoc maybe) a lot of their early decisions and how they went about, and indeed are still going about, world building AoS, a lot of it makes a lot of sense.

But anyway of course they want to give each Stormhost more character, for a start introducing variety means that people with imagination don't just have to field armies of all gold and can experiment with different colour schemes and personalities for their own armies without the fun-police sneering at them that their colour scheme is wrong or whatever.

But on a more official footing having different storm hosts with different personalities gives you different play styles to adopt within different armies, they literally talk about how it is just to give people an excuse (because weirdly people seem to need that) to do their own thing.

And yes at some point they may well get their own books, but if they do that's probably a good few years away, instead we'll get options within the BT to personalise them and things like Tome Celestial in WD, expanding on different hosts, whilst they get the other factions on a more even keel.

Like it or lump it, chaos vs stormcast is essentially the core of this game so those two will always get the lion's share of the attention. 

 

 

 

[Deepkin]

11 hours ago, Yoshiya said:

 

 

As for Idoneth in Order, I feel like most people that argue this either haven't read the battletome or just want them to have different lore to what they have.

The book goes into detail in the dual nature of them wanting to avoid conflict but being forced to. They make sure to leave buildings behind and it makes reference to them only going after adults and leaving children behind. They want civilization to thrive but their very nature goes against that and I think that makes them perfect for order.

Well thats not exactly true. The Ionrach and some of their offshoots/other enclaves that aspire to be like the Cythai (or their idealized version of the cythai at least) will specifically leave children alive, try to aid the Stormcast, etc. But other enclaves, such as the Dhom-haim and Fuethan, specifically target other elves (such as the Khainites) for their raids as they believe elf souls are superior to others and so make for finer infusions for their namarti children. They only leave buildings standing, IIRC, because they rely on stealth and speed for their raids and care little for material goods, and so have little incentive to pillage or burn. 

Not saying they are evil, but I thought the armybook made it pretty clear that while some of them aspire to a certain sort of nobility, others care less than nothing for other races and indeed prefer preying on other Order factions. I like it, it gives the faction some, how you say... depth?

[Overread]

Idoneth are the nightmare of the seas born of dark tales of Lighthouses found abandoned; the meals still on the table. Of small island communities found empty; not a soul left standing and only the beasts roaming wild. They are the nightmare of any age where communication is slower; where there's no warning, no hint as to what happened.