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Fried Chicken posted:I'll stop for now. I have family coming in tomorrow and a job interview Tuesday, but I'll try to have that Let's Read for this up after that. I don't have PMs, but I'll be idling in IRC ( synirc.net, #acolyte since that is the goon 40k room) if anyone wants to pop in with suggested titles and themes to pursue Most of his work can be separated from personal philosophy, but some bits can't, in my opinion - it's too glaring. But that's just me. Could you link the thread when you start it? Its something I would be interested in. Picked up the Vampire Wars collection from a second hand bookshop the other day - is it any good? I know we don't discuss the fantasy books here much, but I've heard fairly mixed reviews and at that length (even if it's as easy to read as the other BL stuff), I don't want to waste time on it if it's really lovely.
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Jul 25, 2013 13:22
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EyeRChris posted:I'm yet to read a Tau book that favors the Tau as a less crazy Imperium so far. Like Greater Good. They need to find Cain because of an incoming 'Nid threat. So what do they do to find him? Rail gun blitzkrieg motha fuckas! The whole scene is written as "are you Cain?" Boom! "How about you...Are you Cain?" The latest Tau codex had like zero fluff compared to the previous editions, and gave basically no new info or viewpoints at all. It was honestly kind of bad in that sense.
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Jul 25, 2013 13:28
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Mowglis Haircut posted:I still don't understand why they've relegated the continuation of the Loken storyline to the lovely audiobooks. I know they probably think it'll make them more money but is it really? I imagine there'll be a compilation book out sometime, but it'll be immensely frustrating if we get to the Siege of Terra and he just shows up or something. I agree, I don't like audiobooks and a lot of people don't. Unfortunately "the scripts" only cover a small amount of black library's audiobooks which is a shame, and honestly I cant see it been financially beneficial to the company I for one would of purchased Death wolf, Ascension of Balthasar, The Sigillite and Bucher's nails if they had not been audio books.
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Jul 25, 2013 13:32
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hopterque posted:Yeah I'm not sure why anyone still thinks the Tau are particularly good. Xenology explicitly spells out that the Ethereals were created by the Eldar to control the Tau through pheromone-based mind control organs derived from an insectoid alien species. Exactly why is left unclear, of course. One of the factors that does let the Tau behave as a nicer, kinder, more enlightened group than the Imperium is the fact that they don't have to worry about Chaos. They can afford to be nicer because they pay no price for not doing so. The Inquisition and the Black Ships are horrible and brutal, but if they aren't around, rogue psykers run wild and then you've got demons rampaging through your population. Since the Tau essentially don't have a Warp presence, don't produce psykers, and aren't targets for possession, they can ignore this whole issue.
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Jul 25, 2013 15:29
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lenoon posted:Picked up the Vampire Wars collection from a second hand bookshop the other day - is it any good? I know we don't discuss the fantasy books here much, but I've heard fairly mixed reviews and at that length (even if it's as easy to read as the other BL stuff), I don't want to waste time on it if it's really lovely. It's fine. The first book and especially the accompanying short story are the highlights Vampies vs Chaos finally!. The third wastes too much time on side plots that go nowhere, but if you're a fan of the Counts it's pretty good stuff.
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Jul 25, 2013 15:58
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Fried Chicken posted:So it shows none of the traits of fascism, therefore it must be a positive portrayal of fascism?
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Jul 25, 2013 16:13
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Mowglis Haircut posted:I still don't understand why they've relegated the continuation of the Loken storyline to the lovely audiobooks. I know they probably think it'll make them more money but is it really? I imagine there'll be a compilation book out sometime, but it'll be immensely frustrating if we get to the Siege of Terra and he just shows up or something. Are the audio books that bad? I bought the two story initial one.. The Lightning Tower and somethingsomething. It wasn't bad, wasn't particular good, either. Just okay. Then they refined the next one more based on feedback and it was freaking amazing. Oath of Moment. I've been out of the loop since. What I remember about the Flight of the Eisenstein book was that I liked it a bit, and had some very tense moments and a satisfying ending.
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Jul 25, 2013 17:36
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The audiobooks aren't terrible for the most part, but they aren't great either. I haven't listened to any in a while, but from what I understand, they have gotten better with the narration, sound effects, and just general production quality. The problem, I think, is that 1) they're pretty expensive for what is essentially a short story; and 2) if you don't want to pay the premium, you're penalized by not knowing what is going on in particular storylines. Most of the BL stories don't follow any path - they're essentially one-off adventures that could really take place at any time. With the HH though, you have character development and potential storyline impacting events that you miss if you're not listening. This is also why I dislike the special event novellas BL does - if you don't get to the event, you miss out on a story until they decide to reprint it years later.
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Jul 25, 2013 17:57
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Fried Chicken posted:To get this back on 40K stuff, here is a write up I did a while back for somewhere (here? Reddit?) where I tried to deconstruct Horus' fall and explain it Honestly i really think there is a lot more to Horus's fall than what has been written so far. There is also rather large gaps in the time period, after Davin. I am sorry but his transformation into a mustache twirling villain is stupid. He is shown visions by someone who he knows is not Sejanus, yet looks like him, and talking to powers he knows are treacherous and manipulative. Yes his pride is wounded, and he is ambitious, but he goes from someone who is extremely disappointed with what happens between him and the interex, to someone who is hellbent on killing his brothers, and his father. Part of the problem i find is that the only source of information relating to Horus's fall is really from Horus Rising/False Gods/Galaxy in Flames. But there is some huge gaps in the time frames when those books occur (i.e. travelling to the world with the STC after Davin, etc). Personally it wouldn't surprise me if Horus was in a similar situation as the exalted from the Night Lords. Before Davin, he is shown to be a strategical/political genius, and after he seems to have a moments of genius, following periods of moustache twirling villany. For example he starts the war with the Auretian Technocracy, in one of the most bloody ways and rage filled ways as possible. There is no strategical genius in meeting the leader and shooting him, his goal is to acquire the STC to gain the support of the Mechanicus, yet he just attacks with all of his fury in the most bloody way possible. What guarantee is there that they don't just destroy the STC out of spite? Also in Galaxy in Flames, all the cool strategical genius and such seems to fly out the window as he rages, and has his little temper tantrum that his genius plan to kill all the loyalists (Loken/Tarvitz and Co) marines in a single fell swoop collapses. Is there actually any indication that Horus is still actually Horus and not a Daemon after Davin? Or we could just blame Graham McNeill 
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Jul 25, 2013 19:49
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I see they have Titan available for purchase again. For $40. I bought that thing for like $10 a few years back on Amazon. It's just a manga sized book in black and white. Not even their full color hardback graphic novels that I also have ran even $20. What the hell.
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Jul 25, 2013 19:49
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Philthy posted:I see they have Titan available for purchase again.
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Jul 25, 2013 19:59
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UberJumper posted:Is there actually any indication that Horus is still actually Horus and not a Daemon after Davin? Or we could just blame Graham McNeill Blame McNeill.
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Jul 25, 2013 21:04
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False Gods should just be replaced with a single page that says in size 72 font "SOME STUFF HAPPENED, HORUS IS BAD NOW OKAY?" It would be an improvement.
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Jul 25, 2013 21:05
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Nah. The parts with Karkasy and Sindermann and the like were still good. Better than the Horus stuff anyway.
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Jul 25, 2013 21:56
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https://twitter.com/adembskibowden/status/360531894951092224 Mother of god, I am looking forward to this book.
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Jul 25, 2013 23:58
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Fried Chicken posted:https://twitter.com/adembskibowden/status/360531894951092224 Considering how inept Abaddon has been in the past with his crusades. I imagine the Tau will be able to get away completely fine.
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Jul 26, 2013 00:10
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Is that an ironic joke? Because "Abaddon is inept" gets repeated so much many people seem to genuinely believe it. Also, I'd be more interested in how the gently caress the Tau got anywhere near the Eye. Nephilm fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 00:11
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Fried Chicken posted:https://twitter.com/adembskibowden/status/360531894951092224 Pretty sure he's joking there...
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Jul 26, 2013 00:19
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Nephilm posted:Is that an ironic joke? Because "Abaddon is inept" gets repeated so much many people seem to genuinely believe it. Lets put it this way, he is considered the Warmaster of Chaos, and is blessed by all 4 gods of the warp. He has also repeatedly lead black crusade after black crusade against the imperium, that for all its power and the blessings of the warp he still has yet to take even Cadia. Even in the Horus Heresy books, he is portrayed as a great and extremely powerful warrior. But has severe rage problems, and doesn't seem to be a great tactical skills, his main method of attack is smash everything. In Night Lords, he is portrayed as a rather inept warmaster, where his crusade more or less falls apart. The reality is of it, i got the impression from night lords that if there had been a better warmaster the traitor legions could have victory.
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Jul 26, 2013 00:54
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Sure, but that's the view of the Night Lords. And you've got to remember the only planet more fortified than Cadia is Terra, and even then it's a pretty close run thing. And then, his last two crusades succeeded! 12 blew up the black stone fortresses, 13 gained a foothold on Cadia.
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Jul 26, 2013 01:37
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At one point in time weren't the Black Crusades/chaos invasions run by players and their little space mans figures? I seem to recall going into comic book stores when I was growing up and people were competing against one another as part of a wider campaign. Do things like that still happen? I think it is a great idea and helps drive the narrative and gives the participants ownership of the story.
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Jul 26, 2013 02:20
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It doesn't. Chaos was too good at it, and GW misjudged the motivations of much of the player base so the entire status-quo shifted.
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Jul 26, 2013 03:00
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Wasn't there some controversy about ork players during the event as well? I didn't play but I remember them bitching about being lumped in with chaos or something like that.
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Jul 26, 2013 03:13
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Arquinsiel posted:It doesn't. Chaos was too good at it, and GW misjudged the motivations of much of the player base so the entire status-quo shifted. Out of curiosity, what were the motivations that GW misjudged? It is really to bad that player involvement in the story fell through - I never got into warhammer outside of the books, but having one of my armies be involved in the plot lines I read about would have been enough to get me into the hobby.
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Jul 26, 2013 03:43
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They assumed that the Eldar players would be "good" and help the Imperium as opposed to just going balls-to-the-wall in the webway and actually taking back some worlds in the Eye of Terror. And also that, for some mad reason, the Dark Angels wouldn't go all-out to protect The Rock leaving the Imperium down one of the bigger chapters.
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Jul 26, 2013 04:23
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The entire eye of terror campaign was a massive mess, i closely followed it because it was at the time really impressive. So much meta gaming, and the campaign was more or less awesome. There were two main factions Order (SM, IG, Tau, and Eldar) and Disorder (Choas, Necrons, Orks, Dark Eldar, Tyranids) ontop of this Battlefleet Gothic played some major part. Disorder managed to figure the entirety of the metagame and came up with two groups (Triads and Planet Killers?) who basically acted as high command, and gave orders and people actually obeyed. Orks were originally supposed to fight the Tau and prevent the tau from expanding, but instead the orks went and wandered off and dog piled scarus, and killed a major forge world. The ork waahhh was called Da Green Kroosade  . This left the Tau for whatever reason more or less to expand freely. Order on the other hand, was a massive clusterfuck of screaming children, and it took more than half of the campaign to come up with a command hierarchy. However by this time Eldar ran off and did their own thing (slaughtering everything). Cascade Level Controversy: The campaign had a hidden mechanic known as cascade levels. Cascade levels was a mechanic that basically allowed you to negative/positively effect the amount of control surrounding worlds had. This basically allowed you to destroy a single world and negatively impact other worlds. Really really early into the campaign the forces of disorder had figured this out (first week i think?). Now the forces of order were completely oblivious to this and complained "these numbers don't make sense". Finally more than half way through GW stepped in and explained this hidden rule to order players, to prevent the entire game from being completely 1 sided. This was kind of controversial because without GW mentioning it, the results would have been so so much worse. Ork Controversy: The orks were supposed to fight the Tau and prevent the Tau expansion, but instead decided to do a great Waaagh called Da Green Kroosade against scarus sector. This pissed off a lot of imperial players, and let the Tau expand without contest. Sector Control Basically for BFG it was so one sided in the imperium favour, that the imperium more or less retained 100% sector control. On top of that there was a lot of confusion regarding rules about space lanes, which according to order players they technically won. Since chaos forces had their supply lines completely cut off, so the imperium could just zerg rush the chaos forces on the ground. In the end GW more or less just told them that Sector control in the end didn't actually matter at all. Pissing off alot of BFG players. Then following this GW more or less did nothing with the results, and more or less ignored most of the results more or less. Also abnett didn't seem to care about the results when writing ravenor/eisenhorn (orks destroyed scarus according to the campaign). *EDIT* Did the Tyranids / Necrons actually do anything in the campaign?
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Jul 26, 2013 05:26
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UberJumper posted:Lets put it this way, he is considered the Warmaster of Chaos, and is blessed by all 4 gods of the warp. He has also repeatedly lead black crusade after black crusade against the imperium, that for all its power and the blessings of the warp he still has yet to take even Cadia. Let's put it this way, he's the leader of the largest Chaos warband, which is itself more of a compilation of diverse warbands which are often opposed to each other - a group of the worst, most sadistic and selfish scum in the galaxy, all bowing to him, and this is a military power surpassing any of the still extant Daemon Primarchs. This is a warrior that doesn't worship Chaos, but who uses it, brokering deals with entities of the warp not as an equal but as a superior, who is just so loving badass that the four gods of Chaos have given him their blessings despite the fact that he's out for himself. If that wasn't enough to place him as a monster worthy of grim admiration, you then take into account that he's considered the single greatest threat against the Imperium, the largest and most powerful civilization in the galaxy, with every Black Crusade he embarks on being stopped only through untold cost in lives and materials despite having erected, JUST FOR HIM, the most fortified chokepoint in the galaxy other than Terra itself. And finally, although every Black Crusade has "failed" in achieving the final goal of taking Terra and crushing the Imperium, every single one of them has achieved most if not all of their secondary objectives, becoming net strategic victories against a foe that is finding increasingly difficult to oppose him. Also, ADB has said himself that if you read his portrayal in Soul Drinker as showing ineptitude, then you weren't paying attention. And yes, you can bet your rear end that if the chaos forces had someone better than Abaddon they could achieve victory, but that's as vacuous a claim as saying that if Sanguinius had been stronger he would have beaten Horus and the Emperor wouldn't have died, or if the Emperor was stronger he could destroy the Chaos gods himself and make a brand new webway for humanity - you're already looking at the top of the top, they got there because there is absolutely no one better than them for their role.
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Jul 26, 2013 08:22
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UberJumper posted:Is there actually any indication that Horus is still actually Horus and not a Daemon after Davin? Or we could just blame Graham McNeill Well even if he was a daemon in Horus' body, McNeill would retcon it with... lets not go down that derail again Mechafunkzilla posted:False Gods should just be replaced with a single page that says in size 72 font "SOME STUFF HAPPENED, HORUS IS BAD NOW OKAY?" It would be an improvement. "...to be expanded on later by ADB"
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Jul 26, 2013 08:27
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The No Arms Meme for Abbadon may have forever tainted any chance of him being a big bad in this lore to me. Failadon can only succeed on the most unluckiest of numbers and even that is a Pyhrric victory.
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Jul 26, 2013 10:41
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EyeRChris posted:The No Arms Meme for Abbadon may have forever tainted any chance of him being a big bad in this lore to me. Failadon can only succeed on the most unluckiest of numbers and even that is a Pyhrric victory. Yeah for the clone-son of Horus, he sure does get tricked by a ridiculous Winston Churchill joke way too often to be a credible threat.
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Jul 26, 2013 11:51
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Has anybody checked out BL's digital products line? It seems pretty bad at first glance: I vaguely recall the Eye of Terror campaign. GW had an official forum back then, where they appealed for people to avoid posting in-character (with predictable, terrible results). There were faction specific forums too where people accused each other of being enemy spies constantly, variously in and out of character. There was also the Warhammer Fantasy Storm of Chaos campaign which was even more of a clusterfuck, if anything. I don't remember all of the details, but the Chaos side got completely curbstomped in terms of stats, however it soon became apparent that the actual results were meaningless as Gav Thorpe had already written some terrible fiction to conclude the campaign. The good hero Valten was defeated in a duel against Archeon (WHFB's Abbadon) despite his side being ahead on points by a wide margin, but then an Orc warlord showed up and headbutted Archeon unconscious, for some reason, so everybody just sorta went their separate ways and nobody died somehow. And then Valten got assassinated in his sleep a day later. So bad. Even before all that, there was also the Armageddon campaign which turned out the same way. Imperials won in terms of stats but the outcome was declared a stalemate. It produced a lot of decent fluff though. I finished reading The Emperors Gift and Helsreach which I both enjoyed. The only book of Aron Dembski-Bowden's that I didn't like was Blood Reaver, which I attempted to read about a year ago but I just found it boring and stopped halfway through. I might give it another chance. Mukip fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 18:52
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UberJumper posted:Also abnett didn't seem to care about the results when writing ravenor/eisenhorn (orks destroyed scarus according to the campaign). Eisenhorn/Ravenor takes place 600 years before the Eye of Terror campaign.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:02
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I remember right around Battle of Macragge box set, they did a mini-campaign in Canada. Four weeks, with non-imps vs Imps. First week was Orks, then I think chaos, then tau(maybe?) then Nids. Imps got curbstomped. But, that's where Death Leaper came from. Originally this cheesy Space Marine Sargeant out for revenge against this one mutation. It kicked so much rear end it ended up in the nid codex.
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Jul 26, 2013 19:45
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Mukip posted:There was also the Warhammer Fantasy Storm of Chaos campaign which was even more of a clusterfuck, if anything. I don't remember all of the details, but the Chaos side got completely curbstomped in terms of stats, however it soon became apparent that the actual results were meaningless as Gav Thorpe had already written some terrible fiction to conclude the campaign. The good hero Valten was defeated in a duel against Archeon (WHFB's Abbadon) despite his side being ahead on points by a wide margin, but then an Orc warlord showed up and headbutted Archeon unconscious, for some reason, so everybody just sorta went their separate ways and nobody died somehow. And then Valten got assassinated in his sleep a day later. So bad. Oh yeah I remember hearing about those pointless after effects, one I remember which you didn't mention was the dwarven slayer king fulfilling his oath he took and was absolved of that whole mess but then oops one of his children or relatives suddenly died in the end battle and he decided to retake the slayer wow again. So utterly pointless. If anything the EoT stuff in the White Dwarf issues I have around that time was amazing. Not to mention they released a whole slew of stuff to let you play your own campaign as well. Which was kinda nice and don't think they've actually done it again. (I wonder why.  )
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Jul 26, 2013 20:04
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bunnyofdoom posted:I remember right around Battle of Macragge box set, they did a mini-campaign in Canada. Four weeks, with non-imps vs Imps. First week was Orks, then I think chaos, then tau(maybe?) then Nids. That was specifically a fight over a single planet, and was a worldwide campaign as well. It was deliberately very limited - they'd learnt the lessons of the previous campaigns (including the equally lovely 'nemesis crown' one for warhammer) so medusa V was to be destroyed by a warp storm immediately after the campaign. I remember noone even giving a poo poo about it in store, including the staff, let alone online. Really early campaigns (Battle of Antioch) got written into the fluff (and arenow written out), but that was the mighty Jervis Johnson at the helm. Te EoT campaign would have been difficult to follow up, but the storm of chaos could have been awesome, and even though Grimgor coming out of nowhere to smack Archaon up was cheesy - it's also Orcy as gently caress and was totally awesome. The whole Valten debacle was lovely though, as was manfred being turned away by wise words from the grand theogenist (who had a loving excellent story for the campaign - killed by Archaon after a battle report in white dwarf, resurrected by Belmakor, used as a battle standard, stays sane through sheer force of will....).
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Jul 26, 2013 20:11
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Just got an email from Black Library, apparently Vulkan Lives is out, and a couple of related short story things called Scorched Earth and Promethean Sun, all by Nick Kyme. e: Woops, Not out till August 3rd apparently, but still, woo, new Horus Heresy stuff!
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Jul 26, 2013 20:14
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lenoon posted:That was specifically a fight over a single planet, and was a worldwide campaign as well. It was deliberately very limited - they'd learnt the lessons of the previous campaigns (including the equally lovely 'nemesis crown' one for warhammer) so medusa V was to be destroyed by a warp storm immediately after the campaign. Actually, not Medusa V. This was actually a couple years before then. After doing some looking it was in 2004, and was called Rise of the Swarm. lovely forum link to ti I guess
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Jul 26, 2013 20:16
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bunnyofdoom posted:Actually, not Medusa V. This was actually a couple years before then. Oh cool! I remember death leaper being in medusa V though - the whole point of the tyranid campaign was getting that biomorph back to the reclamation pools?
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Jul 26, 2013 21:35
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lenoon posted:Oh cool! I think so yeah. But it debuted in our Canada Only White Dwarf! (Which was like a 5 page booklet included in white dwarf that cost us an extra buck or two).
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Jul 26, 2013 21:54
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bunnyofdoom posted:I think so yeah. But it debuted in our Canada Only White Dwarf! Cool, I didn't know the various white dwarfs were that different back in the day. Are they all identical now?
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Jul 26, 2013 23:32
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