So much of what made Warhammer 40K compelling to me was the fluff/setting. The models are cool, sure, but I got involved back in 2nd edition; The models were OK then, but not great. It was the fluff that held shit together, that made me want to act out battles between squads of stoic Dark Angels and a lithe and deadly strike-force of Eldar. There was a serious cool-factor to the idea of that universe: Humanity in a technological dark age, having lost technology they once had, superstition and mysticism prevailing, the empire crumbling under the weight of bureaucracy...
So tell me where this fits in?
Terminator armour was the end-all-be-all of the Space Marine arsenal. The technology to even make them was lost, making those they had left precious and holy. So what the fuck is this? Where did this come from? Did the Ultramarines just happen to have some of these just sitting around in some darkened corner of the armory, concealed by cobwebs? Did Marneus Calgar trip over one in an unused hallway and exclaim "Oh yeah, these things! How could I have forgotten?"
I feel disappointed, more than anything. I'd already basically walked away from GW, but I can't help but know that if I were still in, I'd be in a rage. My first army was Dark Angels, and often I felt that the DA get shafted in comparison to what inevitably came in the later 'vanilla' codices. I'm also willing to bet that any other chapter-specific codex to come out now will also include these, leaving the Dark Angels in the lurch. Some of these recent decisions at GW feel to me like they lacked thought as to how these additions/changes affect the setting as a whole; like they're forfeiting that compelling setting in favor of cool-toy-mode. It feels less like a decision made to evolve/refine the Space Marines and who they are in the setting, and more a decision to give SM a large mech because other armies had mechs. They made a cool mech for the Tau, then one for the Eldar (neither of which really made sense to me, either)... and now there's a Space Marine mech-thing. Only thing that could make it worse is if it were somehow larger than the Riptide/WraithKnight.
I feel like this is the punchline to a joke, rather than a serious product.
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| Yo Dawg, I herd u lik armor. So I put your armor in some armor, so you can wear armor while you're wearing armor |
