/hhg/ aka Horus Heresy General XXX???

Psychic automata when? Not brilliant for Reductor, but Mechanicum is nicely strong so I can afford to throw in a couple toys.

(Was the Zhao-Arkkad stuff actually going to get rules? Was never that hyped for Inferno so I haven't kept that much track.)

Apparently thousand sons will get psi-bots.

Tell me about the Zhao Arkkad. I only know about them what I read from the TS preview.
And I think I saw a green & orange Asian looking bot

By having it never happen. There's a bit in there about how the IWs have had their Primarch for the last 4 years, and zero mention of any decimation.

There's a whole song and dance done about how the IWs first saw their Primarch on the steps of Dammenkos' palace, and how Peturabo breaks a Warp Sextant Magnus asked him to build with a 'Peturabo has a hidden cruel streak to him', but nothing on the Decimation or the fall of the Black Judges. Indeed, there's no mention that the IWs have even actually fought an actual war under Peturabo yet.

There's also a major bromance between Ahriman and Forrix.

Reminder that in Gen 1 Pokemon Alpahrius' moveset would be Confuse Ray, Toxic, Leech Seed, and Fire Spin.

Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

Aww, I was hoping we'd get to dabble a little in psychic stuff, just because I like having a psyker or two in my armies normally.
Maybe we'll get an option or two, that was all I wanted, maybe a ML1 psyker Magos Prime type or piece of wargear.

We really don't know much about it, they basically just grabbed a random Forge World to use AFAIK. So far all we know is they've got the Praetor Armoured Assault Launcher STC, have zany Cybernetica (pic related) and were "recently re-consecrated" although that refers to 40k, so maybe it'll get fucked up a bit. It's a one-sentence kind of place, so far.

Any of my DG lads here have a painted Mortarion they care to share? All of the paint jobs I see online just seems so muddied, like the brass on top of grey on top of corrosion just blends together and hides all of the nice detail on the model.

Is there a move set for coming up with a complex and terrifying plan designed to show how superior you are to a guy that hates you and get him to talk with you, and when you open your mouth the guy that hates you just fucking kills you dead?

>loses access
>two weeks to release

tzeentch must have had something to do with this

So whats my first purchase from FW /hhg/?

Assume no particular legion and enough troops to run 20man squads.

A leviathan? Scorpius? Vindicator? What will get me the most bang for my buck, whatt will I get the most use out of?

rhinos.

or dreadnought drop pod

Grav rapiers.

Important stuff. Weapons sets, decals, shoulder pads, anything necessary to making the basic army.

Guy that's been re-reading old BL books here, Graham's nerd boner for the IW is really extreme, I'm surprised he's not been called out on it all that much. He comes stupidly close to making them more poor widdle snowflakes than any portrayal of the Thousand Sons. In fact, thinking about it, I think he might actually have done that.

>There's also a major bromance between Ahriman and Forrix.
Christ. And yet poor Yesugei never got to meet his husbando again.

There's foreshadowing when Ahriman sees an Evil Forrix leading an army against a fortress. Ooh, guess what he saw?

In Gen 1?

Take the moveset I gave you, replace Firespin with Wrap, and make Dorn one of the Gen 1 Ghosts.

Mcneil seems to love black templars and iron warriors, theres always a templar or iron warrior in his books.

The best book McNeil ever wrote?

Which McNeil is constantly going back to and referencing in everything Heresy he writes.

Storm of Iron, the ...Of Mars trilogy or the Black Templar codex.

Mcneil comes off as pretty salty when something he likes is changed. There was an interview somewhere where he admitted hating the new direction of the Necrons, and I bet he fucking hates the Templars being turned into a regular chapter of 1000. I would so so far as to say he fucking hates everything French has written about the IWs and is trying to retcon it whenever he can.

>Hmmm well everyone else's book about Legionaries who aren't like their legions sold well so what should I do
>Hmmm a fist who has already written the codex Astartes, likes ship instead of siege war, and always doubts himself rather than zealousness
>Oh shit he sold like hotcakes, I bet I could convince Laurie a nohomo relationship would get us that LGBTQRSTUVWYXZ market share

I have a Yen for the HH audio books. Dose any one have a good link to where i can download the books? like Legacies of Betrayal and or Deathfire forwards. (I lissom to them when I paint)

Whatever you like and fits best with the army as they're mid tier
If TS don't get it in this book it'll be their next unit and get a model before their main units, so IW are even closer to TS

>likes ship instead of siege war
In fairness, the HH black book (3?) describing the fists says they excel at space stuff, hell it almost made it seem like their siege skillz were a byproduct of being good at boarding actions rather than their focus. So it's not necessarily a new idea.

Mars trilogy is pretty good and then kind of falls apart in the last one, Storm of Iron is still his best.
His writing is usually of a good quality, but to go with his good habits, he, (like all the authors) has serious ow points that have emerged over time
>his ego leeches into his work
>his reliance on napoleonic tactics for battles and his 'homages' to Gemmell-style characters that just end up awkward and faintly racist
>His characters are super special to suit the plot, and he ties everything and everyone together too much

Added to that, his Iron Warriors (in HH at least) are usually always the honourable hard-done-to types who aren't actually bad dudes, and his Emperor's Children are almost always refugees from Clive Barker novels with no tactical acumen whatsoever

Inferno once you scan it for us
Forrix is the one who becomes 'The Warsmith' and once a daemon prince just gives Honshu the reigns

Well, there needs to be something to show that the Fists aren't just yellow Iron Warriors (Or that the Warriors are not just gunmental Imperial Fists)

What would you say the ow points of the other authors are?

And mon frére, which book was written first?
>Gemmel style
Explain
>racist
Racism is not always bad, SEAs not turning you on makes you racist but is it really going to change how you treat them

Nah, that's Barban Falk.
There's this super-cringe bit in Angel Exterminatus where Forrix is like "Yo Falk, what's up my dude?" and Falk is just like "That's not my name now. Call me...the Warsmith."

AE is also responsible for setting up Forrix, Kroeger and Honsou in the roles they have in Storm of Iron, 10,000 years later.

Gav Thorpe is
>ass the plot demands it figures
Kyme is
>thought he bought a thesaurus when it was a dictionary
Whoever wrote ultramarines
>tyranids are awed by the speaking patterns and so wait to hear the full message
ADB
>pyramidal societies are bad

wheres abnett in this?

Abnett, Swallow, Wraight, Annandale, Sanders?

Yeah Honsou's geneseed is from the guy Fabius raped for like two chapters right 'the honourable ...'
And I liked AE in how it showed these really were veterans of the long war
I didn't find 'I am the warsmith' that cringe as I saw it as possession by something

Well to try and keep it simple, coz I could go into this like a motherfucker
>ADB
Extreme waifuism, daddy issues
>Abnett
Abrupt endings, everyone is a bit too human (some people really dig that, fair enough)
>Thorpe
Doesn't understand correct use of punctuation, poor characterisation
>Kyme
One-note grasp of use of metaphor and similies to a meme-tastic degree

Adb is also
>the only way to emphasise and humanise these muscly men is to show how they treat women
>Anadale, Sanders
Literally who
>Swallow
Only read the BA book so can't comment on his style

I'd like you to go into this like a motherfucker to be honest. I like seeing proper criticism of these books beyond the lore and the fluff.

Abnett
>The universe is vast and plenty of really weird and often unlikely/contradictory stuff happens
>Really bad at writing Astartes and Dark Eldar

Let's go for the mother load.

William King, Ian Watson.

>William King
I've only ever read Gotrek and Felix by him, but he has an obsession with Skaven "Squirting the musk of fear"
>Ian Watson
Girlname Goulding has Hatred (Ian Watson)

>Annandale's main issue is that he read too much Stephen King and thinks all books should be both structured like that (looooong set up full of characters talking and thinking and not getting what's going on) and have horror elements.
Heavy character work isn't bad, in fact it's great, but he can't seem to make it gripping, which is King's greatest strength.

The others don't have immediate call-outs I can think of off the top of my head, they're very workmanlike. Swallow is probably the most skilled out of them, Sanders the most boring, Wraight the most reliable. Abnett, as discussed, has a tendency to try and make everyone relatable without going into the depth of how other factors to them would make them react, which is a strength of ADB.
Like, people in Abnett react like how a general person would, instead of say, a demi-god or a corrupted by Actual Daemonic Evil guy would.

ADB has always struck me as wanting to be the fan favourite. He really does seem to legitimately want to please the fans as much as possible. He spends ages on websites like Bolter and Chainsword listening to the fans there gripe and trying to explain himself. It's just that he can't keep his own issues out of his writing.

Yeah, in another cringe moment (YMMV), the Honorable Soulaka's gene-seed capsule gets damaged by fire, and when Lucius tries to read the name all he can read is
"Hon...*squints*...Sou"
And Fabius is all like, that gene-seed will make an excellent Astartes with some significant future hint hint.
I agree it was good to see the IW chars be proper vets, it's just a shame the book ends with literally all the main characters of Storm set up. All Falk, Forrix and Kroeger have left for them to do in 10K years is get variously more Chaos-y, which they start doing at the end of the book.

If you read his Sigmar novel, it was a love-letter to Gemmell. Which is all good.
Two chars in HH I would call out for this though, are Nagasena aka Captain Japan. He's every occidental trope in one character.
>honnolabu samulai
>carries around a mundane katana with a name and prays to it
>wears laquered samurai armour instead of literally anything else
>mediates by painting on silk with watercolours
>is also a shogun
>who considers going ronin
>has a japanese style house
McNeil actually calls all this out by saying Nagasena just has a deep interest in all this ancient stuff, but that makes him worse coz it turns him into this weird weeb guy despite him actually seeming to be of japanese ethnicity.

Then there's his ching chong me yellow man no speeke so good portrayal of Yesugei that was so bad Chris Wraight had to come up with a (fantastic) explanation for to avoid the White Scars having a serious taste problem.

Oh good another episode of "Internet People Psychoanalyze Someone They've Never Met."

So.

What is the best thing to take against a Fellblade?

My friend just got his order in and is going to field it pretty much every game we play, I bet.

Does anyone know what types of beepboops were in the First Heretic I want to ally in some fighting robos in my list at a future date

>judge someone based on their public words, deeds, acts
>psychoanalyzing someone
What is up with Veeky Forums, today? The idiots are out in force.

Wait McNeil wrote the samurai guy? Fuck me, then again it's clearly a reference to Americans with 1/6000000th Norse blood in them going 'MUH ancestors, for Thor'
And wasn't Yesuegi suppoused to be the khans adoptive father so he should be yellow face?
I don't remember any

> that was so bad Chris Wraight had to come up with a (fantastic) explanation for to avoid the White Scars having a serious taste problem.

wraight's explanation was sublime. i remember reading yesugei's original speech and facepalming.

Originally, Yesuegi was your stereotypical 'Asian who can't into English White Scar Libararian.'

Wraight made him into one of the most interesting characters in the entire series, and even inserted a few sly references to how McNeil portrayed him.

>

‘I spoke,’ said Yesugei sadly, remembering. ‘Awkward. It was in Gothic, and so I did not do well. Some oppression settled on me from somewhere.

SO what was the speech, I've only got Scars

“I am White Scar, Stormseer of Jaghatai Khan,” he said, “and I speak with truth as my guide. This I swear on honour of my clan, may my brothers cut out my heart if I lie. I listen to words said by honourable men, but I not see as they see. They look with eyes blind to world around them. They understand with minds not willing to see truth of this galaxy.

“The warrior chosen by Stormseers is not evil, and nor is power he wields. He is weapon, like Land Raider and bolt gun. What fool casts aside weapon before battle? Like all weapons, it is dangerous without much training, and all here know danger of rogue psyker; Lord Mortarion tell us of it. But what is more danger, a trained warrior who understand his powers or a warrior with power who knows nothing of its use? Like all things, power must be yoked to its true purpose before it can be unleashed. The psyker must be moulded by men of great skill as a sword is crafted by forger of steel. He must be taught way of the Stormseer and must prove his worth many times before he may bear the skull staff of the warrior-seer.”

Yesugei lifted his staff and aimed it towards the green-robed Choirmaster of Astropaths and black-suited Master of Navigators, sweeping it across the width of the dais. The gesture was subtle, for it also included the Emperor.

“To damn psykers as one evil is to forget how Imperium depend on them. Without mind-singers each world is adrift and alone, without star-seekers there is no travel between them. Men who speak against Primarch Magnus speak with the blurred vision of ancients. They do not see consequences of what they seek. What they ask for will doom us all. My truth, I pledge on this oath-sworn staff. If any doubt me, I stand ready to cross blades with them.”

Cataphract, I think.
The older HH books used the old Legio robots all the time because the FW models weren't planned out or released yet. If they had, all the beeps in TFH and ATS would be Castellax, guaranteed.

Do you mean Carthage Cohort? Two crusader battle robots, a cataphract-class battle robot, and a conqueror battle robot. None of which we have rules for, unfortunately.

>Some oppression settled on me from somewhere
Ouch.

Crusader is Vorax, Conqueror is Domitar.

Sicaran Venator or deep pod leviathan. Or knight with a D sword/Super heavy with D

>What's the best thing to do about x
Two x
Yesugei was just some kid who Khan found when he was unifying who was also a psyker, he went on to be a general off Khan's and then a Marine. His adopted Father died which is why he set out to unify Chogoris in the first place.

It's still a good speech, ching chong mannerisms aside.

If only Magnus didn't go full retard when he testified.

To go back to this as we got sidetracked by lore a bit, the easiest ones to call out are mechanical faults.
Kyme doesn't need going into, everyone can see that he thinks writing goes no further than
"Subject verb simile adjective simile. It was a metaphor."
Thorpe only uses full stops/periods and commas. He sprinkles commas everywhere, in really unusual places. Did you get taught at school that the basic use of commas is to creates 'breaths' in dialogue? Like, where a person would take a micro-pause? I think that or similar stuck in his head, and as he writes he puts in commas where he himself stopped to think as he was writing, often in the middle of sentences.
So you get huuuuuuge run-on sentences stapled together by three commas all the time, and he breaks up dialogue and even narration into stilted clauses in the same way. Try and read some Thorpe out loud in your 'internal voice' cadence, don't act it. It's disjointed as fuck.

And not to harp on McNeil but I would love to find out what went on with the Severian plot in Outcast Dead. Severian goes "I'll go look outside" or something similar happens that means he leaves the scene, and then he's never heard about again! He just vanishes out of the book with no hook or mystery called out, everyone forgets about him bar (maaaybe) one line, and I'm not even sure about that. It was like the editor came in and just cut out the end of his arc.

I would be curious to know if there was one and it got cut deliberately to make the audio, or if it was a fuck up of huge scale and got missed, and the audio was a patch to that (and the Magnus thing).
Outcast Dead also at no point actually explains what the Crusader Host are or makes an attempt to rationalise the Magnus thing.
All three of those are critical logic errors in the structure of the novel as set up.

What's the best way to get a Vox into a good spot? Scouts? I want to have a nice beacon for some Teleporting termies and a couple drop pods.

I would also say abnet has a tendancy to make things a bit to fancy. At least in the heresy novels I have read so far.
Particularly Prospero burns had so much weird language and point of views I had trouble following it.
I.E. The constant use of choler and sanguine stuff springs to mind.
ADB just loves chaos a bit to much and has a very strange idea of what the emperor is supposed to be. As long as he doesn't write about abbadon or the emps I don't see him doing much wrong.

Also pretty much all the HH writers have a massive hardon for waifus. Book 9 about the void dragon was super anoying because of that.

I haven't really found anything wrong with william king so far. I loved The macharius novels,

What about Anthony Reynolds?

Damocles rhino for starters. Otherwise scouts are the only infiltrators

>ADB just loves chaos a bit to much and has a very strange idea of what the emperor is supposed to be. As long as he doesn't write about abbadon or the emps I don't see him doing much wrong.

He's doing both.

Kyme's narration often just straight-up doesn't make sense. Sometimes two characters will be fighting, I'll think one is one top, then the start of the next paragraph the other will be the one laying the smackdown with no reversal described. It's really confusing. He also doesn't describe scenes very well, like in a bolter firefight it's often not clear at all where the shooters & terrain are relative to each other. Oh, and someone needs to tell him you can't get from one system to another in a thunderhawk.

One other problem Thorpe has is he sometimes hurries too much. I remember in his byword for Path Of The Eldar he talked about how each eldar speeds along their path (the striking scorpion becomes an exarch after like two battles) but he didn't feel it would add much to the story to pad things out with extra battles for the scorpion. But he does this a lot, and it can lead to some silly-seeming coincidences. For example, in one book Corax enters a city and stumbles across the imperial-friendly rebels on the first night of his reconnaissance. It may not add much to have it take longer for Corax to find these dudes, but the story seems unrealistic as is.

I also have a tendency to comma-splice, and I apologise if I've done it in this post.

He's giving Abaddon killing blow rights on Siggy Diggy.

It's good. I'm really enjoying your thoughts.

Makes me cringe about my own writing though.

Bashing out a forum post in two minutes is a whole lot different from spending months writing fiction, no-one needs to apologise for their punctuation or spelling here.
I had to look up what Reynolds had written to be honest, and make sure he wasn't Josh Reynolds. I can't think of anything mechanically bad. The last of his Word Bearers trilogy devolved into tedious bolter porn, I remember that. The rest seems to fit into the workmanlike category?

>Severian
Can actually answer that one, the short story "Wolf Hunt" (in the Silent War anthology) kind of links things together.

Fuck me. Duh. I forgot those awesome things existed. Do people put anything inside of it or just let it be? I'm playing NL if it matters.

I think Thorpe can have good ideas but can't pull them off due to his honestly not great ability to chacterise.
The scene in the last DA book where they all have dinner and then two different coups break out was a fucking mess in terms of understandable and believable motivation. And he had multiple novels and shorts to establish it.

That's an example of something being mechanically sound but the craft level of the author can't meet the demands of the structure.
Yeah, but my interest is in how it wasn't in The Outcast Dead. Severian vanishes so bluntly it was like the editor went into the text and cut out the end of his arc with a rusty shovel.
I'm curious to ever find out if that was deliberate or McNeil messed up hugely (he just forgot and no-one caught it) or minorly (he was trying to set up mystery and did it really badly).
As I said earlier, you have to intuit what the Crusader Host were yourself, which is retarded, and he doesn't explain the huge lore-hole he created with Magnus' timing, everyone in the book treats it as perfectly logical, he doesn't put in any nods to the readers who will be WTF-ing at it.
I found it interesting that Wolf Hunt wraps up Severian and gives an explanation for Magnus. The cynic in me thinks at least the second of those was done to shut people up who were bitching (McNeil and BL were taking pelters for that from the fanbase until then).

I actually liked the bolter porn.

Reposted from other thread:

Should I start custodes or get another knight cerastus?

Custodes are $32 a pop right now and I could get plenty in time for inferno.

I may never actually play more than one knight in my entire lifetime but fuck they're cool

Hey, that's fine. I only called it tedious because I recall it going on for so long and stretching out plot resolution. But considering half the book was designed to be a protracted city-fight, what else are you gonna do, you know? It was written well enough.

It was indeed.

>tfw Erebus was pretty cool in Reynolds books

Small squad of seekers or vets maybe. Just remember no fire points at all

I think McNeil's problem is that he writes too much. Vengeful Spirit had the same issue that it has to many plot lines, so they get thinned and weakened. I feel that the Severian Plot Line was supposed to be in Outcast Dead, but the Novel was too long so they cut it out.

To give him credit (we're harping on the bad an awful lot), I think the 2nd of those books was genuinely really good. That whole bit where they go into the underwater hulk was superb, and his characterisation was great, not just of the main three, but the minor chars as well.

>That bit where one of the WB gets cut off
>His sarge wants to go back for him and is pissed as fuck they can't
>The missing guy turns up at the evac and his sarge is then pleased as fuck
>Turns out the WB has been genestealer'd and has to commit seppuku
>They all treat it seriously and with respect and mourn the loss of a dedicated comrade

Great scene for chaos fags.

>no fire points

Yea. I wouldn't think anything fancy would go in there. Just some sort of deterrence. Sniper vets would be an interesting choice. I was also thinking maybe a small terror squad.

>genestealered
Made a thrall?

Remeber our buddy, and his gruesome fate in Torment.

Genestealer ovipositors are in their mouths. And act like a syringe.

He got implanted. If I'm remembering right, Marduk treats it like a religious desecration. It's quite a bro-tastic little sequence that works to the Word Bearers themes and plays entirely off character.

Basically a back field unit to score or counter enemy deep strikers would be good definitely

>over many a quaint and curious tome
Oh gee so subtle

It was his blood brother who wanted to go back, not his sarge, iirc.

Man that word bearers trilogy was a rather enjoyable read. It has made me almost start a WB army several times, but sadly the funding just isn't there