Saint Celestine is one of the Imperiums Gathering Storm heroes. She’s pretty much a psychic/angel/demi-goddess with laser beam eyes. Her two bodyguards are twin resurrected Canonesses from one of the Sisters of Battle order.
Sisters of Battle are generally fanatical and unpleasant, and unlike most nun’s would merrily burn down a hospital full of wounded on the offchance one of the wounded was a bit tainted with evil. Sins can be cleansed by fire, redemption can be provided after death. Penance for battlefield mistakes involves shaving their head, picking up a massive 2 handed chainsaw and dismembering everything in sight… for the Emperor of course.
Everything is relentlessly grimdark. Slavery is common, breeding humans to make machines/cyborgs is common. Children are hardwired into factory equipment to work for life. Babies are killed just to convert to winged cyborgs to carry around prayer flags. Entire peoples are pressganged and sent off to fight until they die. Genocide is often an opening move and entire planets have been depopulated because some of them saw something they shouldn’t had.
Oh I know! I love me some battle sisters! I really wish they’d get around to releasing some new models for them other than Celestine and this young lady what I bought recently…
… I’m not really onboard with this new narrative direction games workshop seems to be headed in. Reviving mythic heroes from mans golden age steps on a lot of the wonderful darkness and stagnation of humanities progress. I used to love the idea that the stories of the primarchs had been embellished over 10,000 years but may have been based on the deeds of “ordinary” genetically enhanced superhumans. Strip mining all of the lore in service of advancing the plot ruins a lot of the settings mythic weight.
“Games Workshop are now no longer a games company, but a collectables company.” to paraphrase Rick Priestly. The AoS and 40ks new lore and story lines are moving to this new sales model focusing on characters (and expensive models)
AoS reflects this in the worst way I think, the rich, detailed background and living world of Warhammer FB replaced by AoS, whose worlds and characters have little more detail and life than a background in a God of War like video game.
AoS killed my custom dead, whereas before I would buy WHFB books and lore I bought a few AoS novels and then gave up on the entire franchise, it was just so weak and lightweight, with shallow, two dimensional characters.
Has WH40K ever been a much of a game? Really? All the people I’ve met who played always seemed to look at it as being pretty much naught but a nice excuse to show off their lovingly painted armies.
Which, I’d love to have the talent and time for it, the dedication needed to have one of those real big armies, man, it’s something else.
I agree completely and it breaks my heart! I’d been harbouring a little hope that they might be back on track after the last year’s flurry of boxed games, but this latest news for 40k confirms for me that they don’t understand what’s compelling about their IP (to me at least!)
It has just meant I’ve been digging out my old fantasy armies and repainting them, screw games-workshop, I’ve still got all the old rulebooks anyway!
Originally it hewed more to a roleplay type of experience, and as such less competitive. The games I’ve played on the last couple of years seem to have got progressively more about taking huge handfuls of models off at the whim of the newest fanciest model.
I guess that makes sense if all you’re trying to do is sell the next big model but it’s coming at the price of what was one of my favourite game universes.
this makes me want Dawn of War 3 to be good even more than I already wanted Dawn of War 3 to be good (although I doubt there will be any story elements in the campaign tying into this, but I don’t really care). But I’m a’scairt that it will have an uninteresting campaign.
@HUMBY50 agree with you and @playingwithknives. I’ve purchased dozens and dozens of Black Library Warhammer books, including the entire original Gotrek and Felix series. I thought the original Warhammer universe was a lot of fun. I have zero interest in the new Age of Sigmar stuff.
I am curious as to how much of their income comes from the miniatures vs. the fluff books vs. licensed stuff like video games. Sounds like from what some folks have said the new AoS stuff does make for a better (or at least more fun) miniatures game. But I loved the old armies and the old lore and the new stuff just seems very dull and lacking in character.
I like that they are moving the story forward. For me that’s fun and I’m looking forward to some cool new campaign stuff coming. Of course I’m a hobbyist that enjoys reading cool fluff and books, not really a serious wargamer. For me 40K and Sigmar are right on the nose.
(Sorry, had to slip in a political joke. Carry on.)
I still have a large pile of Warhammer Fantasy stuff relegated to the shed because of their constant obsolescence tricks. I’ll dabble with the computer games from now on.
If the rules go back to the grimmest grimdark of the Rogue Trader book, where Commissars take entire brigades of Guard out of the line to try and save the machine spirit of a captured Land Raider from the Harlequin, I will be very pleased.
Having the rules changed to make the models more unique is a step in the right direction.
