The "Greater Good" religion simply sounds too good to be true.
It is too good to be true. If the Imperium is a parody of fascism, the Tau are the same for utopian socialism. On Earth in the 20th century, the sublimation of the individual to the greater good led inexorably to Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. That aspect of the Tau seems like an interesting thing to explore.
Counterpoint: Tau were added well after GW had largely stopped with the topical political references, and were strongly unironically positive in their earliest appearances. The addition of gets-hot railrifles was a notably darker element in Tau at the time and was still lighter than the IoM.
Darker elements have been added, but the faction functioned without that element in their original form which has changed far less than other factions' (due to the relative newness of the faction) so it's not core to the faction's identity.
Additionally, virtually all of the early dark elements in the Tau were either commonplace in the IoM or significant improvements over the IoM's status quo. Through your suggested lens, this would have some interesting implications.
I feel like having more aliens that aren't powered by evil is pretty important for the themes around 40k and the IoM.in particular. If all the aliens are as evil as IoM propaganda implies, it justifies their xenophobia, which is supposed to be baseless and reactionary fear mongering.
Exactly. And it's funny how much it makes unironic Imperium stans rage out; it shows that for them it's not about the righteousness of the cause, it's about identifying with the faction that's coded as conservative-Christian.
@leftbower Eh. Kbin (and tbh the rest of the fediverse) is largely unprepared for an actual reddit exodus, in the technical sense. I think we could barely even handle a modestly active community the size of /r/orks with our moderator tools right now. 62,000 Gitz??
But the fediverse follows Ork Lore: It's literally only working 'cause enough of us believe in it lmao. Doing this means I help in a tiny way, or if kbin dies then I wasted like 35 minutes of my time setting it up so it's okay lol.
If T'au are that purely good, then it help justify IoM's cruelty. T'au empire is so tiny that it can be squashed by any faction. That's why you need to be cruel to survive.
The empire also proof that IoM is needlessly cruel, which make it grimdark as well. You need a light to know how dark it's.
I mean, it depends on which version of the lore you take. Their culture is repressive, with less social mobility than the Imperium or the Eldar, thanks to the caste system. The Ethereal Caste are doing something hinky and mind-controlling to everyone else. The one General who said "hey maybe we should learn how to fight up close occasionally" was banished. There's a lot of darkness there, and the disconnect between the Tau and the Warp makes those "little" things more notable.
Imagine if the Tau get eaten by the Tyranids or a Genestealer Cult. They might not cast the Shadow in the Warp, removing the one form of warning of their presence.
Less social mobility than the people with hereditary nobility? It's not great, but the IoM are pretty poor at it. I suspect you misunderstand the T'au caste system; admittedly it probably shouldn't be called that as it doesn't really function like a real world caste system.
Eh, in my experience the people arguing for female space marines tend to be the types that think that the Imperium is emphatically the good guys, they literally want diverse oppressors because they think that when women do it, it's not oppression.
That has not been my experience at all. The key difference between FSM and "More lady drone pilots flying rainbow drones!" is that one of these.is a game that we want everyone to play. We do unironically want more ladies to feel comfortable playing the oppressors because it's a game and the space should feel inviting to people generally.
Other miniatures games (Infinity etc) have near-parity in male and female sculpts and don't have massively more female players playing them. Female warhammer players generally don't feel comfortable with the militarized aesthetic of Space Marines, regardless of whether the person inside the power armor is a woman or not. To make them more comfortable in the hobby, focus more on Tyranids, Eldar, and demons.
The majority of the FSM crowd is men uncomfortable with their maleness, however, and that needs to be addressed.
Again, not in my experience. I don't know which of our experiences is more common, but it'd be interesting to see some data. Though more focus on non-SpaceMarines can only be good for the hobby.
I can't speak for more female minis, since giant robots don't have genders generally, BUT my first interaction with Battletech wasn't about a conglomeration all-male posterboy factions that comprise fully half the game and have their own prequel game with even more All-Man Space Marines.
Glad they showed thorough examples, but it boils down to:
You can always see into a Ruin.
Only units that are wholly within a Ruin can draw sight lines out.
If your unit is partially within the Ruin, it still can't see out of the Ruin (because it's not wholly within yet). But it can still draw its normal sight lines to visible targets as usual (because normal vision), and it can still see into that ruin (because you always can lol). It just can't see out the far side until it's wholly within.
I can see the appeal but I'm not a fan. It was nice to be +/- 15 pts and be able to just add/remove a few boyz/wargear. And daemons don't come in multiples of sacred numbers anymore. :(
Same, it certainly speeds up list building on paper but there's at least one annoying case that impacts me where Custodian Wardens can be taken in squads of 3 or 6 but they come in boxes of 5...
Suddenly some Custodian Guards are going to get a loincloth upgrade.
Other than limited physical models, is there any reason you'd ever want to take less than max unit size if you still have to pay points for the max size?
I guess to fit some units into poorly optimized transports? Any other reason now?
I've definitely taken max-1 unit sizes in the past, when my list comes out to like 2,025 points lmao.
It's still a transport thing, but not a poorly optimised transport thing: You can fit 2 meganobz and an 8-man burna squad with 7 Burnas and only one Spanna in a Trukk. The extra burna and extra spanna might not matter much compared to having a second unit in the transport. (This is effected by the fact that spannas have been somehwat a downside of a mandatory upgrade - now that weapons are free I'm not sure how much a second kmb and a burna is worth vs the meganobz.)
I think often the RPGs can be better at the Satirical angle than the central wargame. Dark Heresy does encourage DMs to explore the themes — although the mechanics are a bit all over the place as far as supporting that goes.
Necromunda seems to be the one sub-property that actually tries to execute on the satire regularly and with any success, although it's not particularly focused. Don't know why, but I suspect having more Dredd\2000AD in its memetics helps.
I've seen so many conflicting leaks with regards to the direction Necrons take on the tabletop. I was pleasantly surprised with my main army, Nids, so hopefully the Necrons follow suit. I don't necessarily want them to be an S-tier army, but it's not much fun being rolled in every fight either.
Warhammer 40K
Hot