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I liked the 'night of the wolf' bit and kinda wish it was expanded a little more. It is one of the few times it's actually acknowledged by primarchs that the Great Crusade wasn't that great and often left people worse off. Angron knew that him and his brothers were all monsters made to conquer, and that the imperium was a sham. As for how quickly everyone fell to chaos, I think they weren't expecting the series to run that long and they were thinking it would wrap up in like 5 or 6 books or something. nostrata fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Apr 27, 2024 |
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Apr 27, 2024 17:53
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nostrata posted:I liked the 'night of the wolf' bit and kinda wish it was expanded a little more. It is one of the few times it's actually acknowledged by primarchs that the Great Crusade wasn't that great and often left people worse off. Angron knew that him and his brothers were all monsters made to conquer, and that the imperium was a sham. A lot of the heresy stuff suffers from the expanded timestcale I think. The old vague fluff never said anything about it and gave the impression that Horus took his gathered legions from Istvaan straight to Terra as a shocked imperium tries to scramble a defense. The early books even support that - they're all talking about how much Horus loves rapid decapitation strikes to win wars quickly. Instead (I'm guessing) between the success of the early books and the decision to expand out the heresy to support a wargame set during it so all the characters can show up the war had to be stretched out with a piles and piles of irrelevant stuff - nothing between Istvaan and Terra actually matters but there's 70 books of it.
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Apr 27, 2024 18:04
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Lostconfused posted:You could say that again. In Horus Rising they're all written to be have at least some decent personal qualities, but the 2nd book turns them all into huge assholes from the word go. There are two separate causes here: 1) they originally intended the series to be much shorter than it ended up being but they realized what a cash cow they had on their hands and squeeeeeeezed that udder; and 2) in 2006 you basically had Dan Abnett and then a HUGE dropoff in quality, and the following books were written by authors much worse than he is. Later in the series you had Chris Wraight and others pulling up the overall quality but at first it was basically Abnett and that’s it.
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Apr 27, 2024 18:12
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Lostconfused posted:Well the book does a lot of tell not show, but also makes the "astartes" act like normal people. Fair. Though, if you think the Astartes in Horus Rising spend all their time bumbling around and tripping over their egos like idiots, I can't wait to hear what you think of how they behave in False Gods.
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Apr 27, 2024 19:28
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Man I was both very surprised to see that Adrian Tchaikovsky had written a 40k book and very UNsurprised that he wrote it about the faction that has humans turning into bug mutants and bringing down the system Day of ascension sounds interesting
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Apr 27, 2024 20:25
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Is there a short list of these books you can read to get the gist of it and hit the good ones? Like 5-10 killers in the series, or would I be too lost jumping around like that?
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Apr 28, 2024 04:48
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Padical posted:Is there a short list of these books you can read to get the gist of it and hit the good ones? Like 5-10 killers in the series, or would I be too lost jumping around like that? There's various reading lists, in general I think people just follow one of the Primarchs or Legions or viewpoint characters if they're not doing the whole thing. In general you start with the first... 3-5 books and then everything diverges in a way that lets you discard a huge number of the books as dealing with things that you don't care about and don't really matter.
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Apr 28, 2024 05:29
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Finished a block of kroot I've had laying around for a while
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Apr 28, 2024 05:32
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:
I think Graham is as good as Dan if not better, and I think ADB is better than both but the early Heresy has a pretty huge swing in quality once you get past Fulgrim, Ben Counter's early books are some of the worst in the series. Chris Wraight later in the series is Graham level though ya. Speaking of Chris, I finished up Sea of Souls and it was soooo good, I completely forgot it was a Dawn of Fire book for most of it (it kinda did too until the epilogue). It would probably function as a very good first 40k book for people, almost entirely human crew POV taking place on 1 ship the entire time and you get a good feel for what void ships are like, what the warp is like, and how cracked astartes and to a lesser extent sororitas are compared to baseline humans. Now I've started the new Emperor's Children book and surprise it's also a genestealer book which rules. Nazzadan fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Apr 28, 2024 |
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Apr 28, 2024 05:34
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Nazzadan posted:I think Graham is as good as Dan if not better, and I think ADB is better than both but the early Heresy has a pretty huge swing in quality once you get past Fulgrim, Ben Counter's early books are some of the worst in the series. Chris Wraight later in the series is Graham level though ya. I agree with the ADB bit however putting Graham anywhere close to ADB and Dan is too optimistic.
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Apr 28, 2024 09:24
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I like ADB but I consider him a solid half-to-three-quarters step down from Abnett or Wraight, and nobody else is even close to those three. The idea that Graham McNeill is even remotely on the same level as Abnett is vaguely amusing.
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Apr 28, 2024 11:24
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Im surprised Robert Rath isnt considered tbhe best writer considering he wrote the single best 40k book, the infinite and the divine.
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Apr 28, 2024 11:29
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it’s a good book but I think Saturnine, Warhawk, Penitent, Know No Fear, and a few others are better
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Apr 28, 2024 11:34
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:it’s a good book but I think Saturnine, Warhawk, Penitent, Know No Fear, and a few others are better Huh ok will look into those thanks
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Apr 28, 2024 11:41
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Josh Reynolds and Peter Fehervari both also belong in any discussion of best BL authors.
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Apr 28, 2024 12:11
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Al-Saqr posted:Huh ok will look into those thanks They’re all part of long series that you sort of need to read the rest of to fully understand (although know no fear is probably just fine to read on its own)
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Apr 28, 2024 12:46
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Dani Ware is pretty good too
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Apr 28, 2024 13:44
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Fehervari is considerably better than even Wraight or Abnett, though he’s often doing a different sort of thing. Only author where I’ve ever thought he was wasted on 40k books.
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Apr 28, 2024 14:30
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Yeah. I’m also team “Fehervari is the best BL author and it isn’t even close.” I wonder if he’s currently writing another novel for them or bust with other work.
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Apr 28, 2024 14:44
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Now I'm thinking of getting some Tau miniatures and smashing them together with my guard into some kind of fictional tau/human army thing.
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Apr 28, 2024 14:56
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That would be cool. Is blue-face a universal requirement for human auxiliaries, or does it vary across the Empire?
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Apr 28, 2024 15:12
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Depends on who writes it I think. In the 1st Cain novel humans were wearing blue colored braids to show they were pro-Tau, or something like that.
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Apr 28, 2024 15:14
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I've always kinda wanted a story about a Tau spy trying to organize an uprising on an Imperial world and getting increasingly pissed off at the dozen competing insane cults they're into instead
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Apr 28, 2024 16:21
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are there even rules in the Tau Codex for Human Auxilaries? also which of Feheravi's books do you recommend? the one called 'greater evil' sounds interesting. Al-Saqr fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Apr 28, 2024 |
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Apr 28, 2024 16:24
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human auxiliaries would probably just use fire warrior rules, i think ive seen a tau army with that conversion before the depiction of the imperium/tau empire relationship in the cain books is pretty interesting. it's got a very cold war feel to it where there's more jockeying for influence and wary movement of military assets than direct fighting. and a funny theme in the cain books in general is that the more agreeable xenos races buy into cain's reputation too, and are more likely to negotiate or even work with the imperium if he's around
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Apr 28, 2024 16:31
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There used to be at least
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Apr 28, 2024 16:31
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Fehervari should take his inscrutable BS and write for Battletech IMO.
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Apr 28, 2024 16:35
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Tau and regular guard are on the same 25mm bases, so you can swap those around any way you want. The new Kroot are on the 28mm bases, so you can swap some Kasrkin in there and whatever other 28mm models you have, or vice-versa. The bigger challenge is the vehicles and the crisis suits and stuff in guard with big bases, because they're all different sizes.
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Apr 28, 2024 16:43
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Al-Saqr posted:also which of Feheravi's books do you recommend? the one called 'greater evil' sounds interesting. Greater Evil is very good, but is a (46 page in my physical copy) short story, so if you’re looking for a full novel might not do it for you. I’d recommend The Reverie. It’s about an esoteric Blood Angels successor chapter and the weird stuff that’s happening on the world they’re based off. I feel knowing much more than that blunts its impact.
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Apr 28, 2024 16:56
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I haven't looked at how to play Tau at all though, so right now I'm thinking off proxying Tau for guard so swap in a Crisis Suit for a Scout Sentinel and how many Broadsides can you cram on a Basilisk sized base? Edit: Oh some of the Tau suits are on the same base size as the heavy weapons team. Lostconfused fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Apr 28, 2024 |
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Apr 28, 2024 17:12
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I am thinking of getting some Cadians or Kaskirn for my Tau, either as a strike team or with some 3d printed gav chutes to represent Vespid. Maybe glue some jestpacks to some Primaris Infiltrators for stealth suits 
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Apr 28, 2024 17:16
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I like Fehervari, I think he’s very good, but I also think this thread overrates him a bit. I’m very glad to have someone of his talent writing for BL (and he’s head and shoulders above most of the stable) but I think his prose is fine at best. The strength of his books is in their imagination and imagery but the nuts and bolts of his writing is, to my mind, not the equal of Wraight/Abnett/ADB.
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Apr 28, 2024 17:17
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:one major failure of the 30k setting is the lack of focus given to what was going on before the emperor showed up. there’s information on that out there but you have to go digging for it. It seems like a pretty horrific situation, with much of humanity enslaved to aliens like the Nephilim or Slaugth, or in horrific chaos-dominated cultures like the Nurthene and the Davinites. Compared to that the Imperium must have seemed like a breath of fresh air, and that context explains why everyone in the 30k era talks fondly about a heavily militarized, rabidly expansionistic feudal monarchy. It's one of those hindsight things were if GW knew how popular the HH books would be it would have definitely had a longer buildup to Istvaan but it also probably would have been three times as long and half as good
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Apr 28, 2024 17:22
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Playing Imperial Guard instead of Astra Miletarum because it's T'au Empire 
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Apr 28, 2024 17:24
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Lostconfused posted:You could say that again. In Horus Rising they're all written to be have at least some decent personal qualities, but the 2nd book turns them all into huge assholes from the word go. It doesn't help that books 2 and 3 are such huge steps down from Rising
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Apr 28, 2024 17:26
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Lostconfused posted:Playing Imperial Guard instead of Astra Miletarum because it's T'au Empire Or, going by one of the more recent badcast episodes, the Astra Militaurum.
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Apr 28, 2024 17:35
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:I like ADB but I consider him a solid half-to-three-quarters step down from Abnett or Wraight, and nobody else is even close to those three. The idea that Graham McNeill is even remotely on the same level as Abnett is vaguely amusing. I'd put Fehervari on their level but his books are "weirder" than usual E: didn't read this page before replying lol Improbable Lobster fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Apr 28, 2024 |
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Apr 28, 2024 17:38
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I don't know where people rate Josh Reynolds because I read Soul Wars and it was dreck. Granted he was working with the blank slate of the Stormcast instead of the 40+ years of space marines or whatever, but it was just intermenable poo poo happening for way too long and then it ended very suddenly in the middle of the big final battle.
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Apr 28, 2024 17:56
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Spear of Shadows, by him as well, was a pretty good introduction to 2nd edition AoS and I'm still sad that BL editors mistreated him to the point he stopped working with them. I think people enjoyed his Fabius Bile books too for that part.
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Apr 28, 2024 18:06
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His Bile series is a lot of fun, yeah.
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Apr 28, 2024 18:07
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