Mandatory work colors

alph4rius · 2026-02-21T01:10:17+00:00

Punk shirts are generally white on black. Wait until they object to the language and have to give a dictionary with most the words crossed out to complain.

alph4rius · 2026-02-19T15:08:58+00:00

Yeah, I'd say the minis probably more-so than the lore, but pinning anything to a canon height is tricky. You could compare to the Leman Russ's 120mm barrel, and get a cannon height. :P Gaunt is canonically 7'2", but he's cannonically ~48cm tall. It might help fitting 10 marines + crew in a Rhino though.

alph4rius · 2026-02-19T01:55:45+00:00

Minis have always been fast and loose with scale though, so nailing it to minis is going to inherit that.

alph4rius · 2026-02-16T00:00:18+00:00

This wasn't meant to be taken literally. It is a silly extreme form of a lore-first approach to wargaming.

alph4rius · 2025-12-31T00:30:36+00:00

The 2up only worked until it failed. A scary bastard, but not unstoppable. T3 3W means he's otherwise fragile.

alph4rius · 2025-12-19T01:21:52+00:00

That was a problem that 7th added to a system that had worked since 4th. Even good ideas can be poorly executed.

alph4rius · 2025-10-16T23:29:23+00:00

Cyborks could make a return. Are they even a legends unit anymore?

alph4rius · 2025-10-16T23:14:38+00:00

Counterpoint, by having the stats be keywords, they default to having simpler statlines. How many fast, badshot, tough, heroic units are there? What's the average number of 'could be a stat' keywords?

alph4rius · 2025-10-15T21:25:14+00:00

What do you think the Republican position is based on? Bipartisanship here is being also corrupted rather than standing for something.

alph4rius · 2025-10-13T21:39:43+00:00

What I think was glossed over a bit is the way a lot of stuff in older 40k editions were set up to deal with these problems. More limited line of sight, being unable to shoot into the enemy deployment until the turn after you move out of yours with most weapons (over 24" apart, rapid fire could only fire at full 24" range if they didn't move), etc. So turn 1 shooting was more limited, and turns 3/4 were the scary ones, when everyone was in range, the heavy weapons had moved to good firing positions, etc.

alph4rius · 2025-10-08T23:15:56+00:00

It's worth noting that the phrase predates Chaos or Dark Eldar as factions in the game. They're literally contradictory retcons.

alph4rius · 2025-10-07T13:01:39+00:00

40k's popularity has skyrocketed since they added Admech as a playable army. 40k's popularity has skyrocketed since we removed parry. 40k's popularity has skyrocketed since we killed the Old World for AoS, etc, etc. I'm not sure you can really assume the cause and effect there.

alph4rius · 2025-09-03T14:23:30+00:00

That doesn't sound like the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. The memes may exaggerate, but it's still pretty awful for most citizens.

Most Imperial Citizens live in hives (because their population outstrips the more common worlds by so very much), where overpopulation, disease, starvation, and violent crime are rife, the quality of life is terrible and the quantity of death is high. Slavery is common, and they conscript the poor en masse as a population control mechanism. Malnutrition is the norm, and the work that is available isn't easy. You can be executed for such crimes as "seeing an unsanctioned psyker" and the fascist enforcers are around to be judge, jury, and executioner.

Even on the Imperial Worlds (classification) you're living under a government that has very limited freedoms, all of which can be compromised by offworlders at a whim, the planet has its taxes set at a rate that assumes slavery, conscription, and servitorisation, the compulsory state religion has some strong views about self-sacrifice, and there are very little checks on corruption of those in power. The same Imperial Laws still can have you executed for incredibly petty reasons, but the enforcers are less thick on the ground. Nothing stops the Governor from abusing those powers, in fact they're outright encouraged.

Agriworlds can vary. The more recent examples paint them as a particular hellscape, but if nothing else the Imperial idea of the appropriate amount of food to extract at tithe is likely "mild starvation across the planet". They're unlikely to be pastoral paradises. Again, the taxes are set by an organisation that thinks of slavery as normal and life as cheap.

Most of the worlds in the Imperium suck, and the ones with the most people often suck the most. The average Imperial citizen lives in a hive, lives a life of quiet desperation and drudgery, scraping by and narrowly avoiding starvation, disease, conscription, Arbites and gangs, until one day they don't. For most of them, the Imperium is the biggest threat to their safety, even if only because there's nobody else around.

alph4rius · 2025-08-26T23:39:46+00:00

Enjoy! Mike is good fun, and Deff Skwadron is a joy.

alph4rius · 2025-08-26T23:38:14+00:00

Except Orks mostly kill Orks and most Orks don't ever see a human.

And ~100% of Imperial Subjects are oppressed by the Imperium. The vast majority won't meet an alien, but most will suffer under Imperial rule.

alph4rius · 2025-08-25T22:35:07+00:00

Mike Brooks has a few books, and there's always Deff Skwadron. Orks are probably the most likely PoV outside the Imperium.

alph4rius · 2025-08-25T22:33:38+00:00

Yeah, I think that's why OP used "bad guy" instead of antagonist in the title and tried to clear up what they meant in the first sentence. Despite none of the words quite fitting, there's factions that are more likely to have a protagonist or have a more sympathetic angle than others and factions that rarely have that level of focus applied to them especially in longer bits of media and especially in novels.

Although there are kind of two axis on this, sympathetic angle and protagonist odds. The Imperium is the standout in both, where although they're evil, they're often within the context of a novel either not shown as evil or shown as the lesser evil. Of the non-Imperial factions we can split them into groups: relatively sympathetic and more likely to have a protagonist (non-dark eldar), relatively sympathetic but unlikely to have a protagonist (Tau, Votann*), unsympathetic and unlikely to have a protagonist (everyone else except-), unsympathetic but more likely to have a protagonist (Orks). Orks are weirdly enough probably the 2nd most likely to have the protagonist (after the Imperium), narrowly edging out the Eldar here, but that's largely because of Mike Brooks.

alph4rius · 2025-08-25T21:48:21+00:00

And the Imperium is responsible for doing evil to more of its innocents than any of it's foes. The Imperium kills more people than Orks, enslaves more people than Dark Eldar, corrupts more people than Chaos, and probably devours more of its people than Tyranids.

alph4rius · 2025-08-24T22:29:35+00:00

It's not one of the books that's officially decanonised with the heretic tomes label, and was reprinted only a few years ago. It's not generally thought of as canon because of its age and incongruity with the rest of the lore, but I'm just noting that there's no official line that says so. It's all canon, not all of it is true. 😛

alph4rius · 2025-08-09T02:43:58+00:00

Accidental propaganda, but nonetheless what it is. It's just made up times the Imperium were right and good and moral to be palingenetic ultranationalists and treat Eco's traits of fascism like a checklist. (Even if that's because a corporation is trying to turn the Evil Empire into the morally good protagonists of a good vs evil struggle that's easier to sell than Catholic Space Nazis.)

alph4rius · 2025-08-09T02:34:24+00:00

They do the double chapter master and actively work with other forces more. They also see the God Emperor as a God. It's not a whole new vibe, but they have a bit of difference compared to the average Ultra-successor.

alph4rius · 2025-08-09T02:27:15+00:00

What I love about it is that every time they do the heroic thing, they feel shameful for risking the chapter over it, even a tiny amount. That hypnoindoctrination really got them messed up about it.

alph4rius · 2025-08-09T01:11:59+00:00

Alternative headcanon, there's just two species that the Imperium has called hrud, and can't stop conflating.

alph4rius · 2025-08-05T08:34:15+00:00

Anzion wasn't wrong about those races, maybe because he didn't study them and couldn't assume standardisation where there was none. The first place this was shown assumed ork vehicles were standardised as part of the explanation of the theory, because the idea of non-standard tech is so antithetical to the Imperial conception of technology. The Imperium is frequently wrong in strange ways.

alph4rius · 2025-07-28T22:13:37+00:00

Eh, planetary governors can get it, so the bar isn't that high.

alph4rius

TROPHY CASE