tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1831276194138109948.post871498130554169025..comments2024-03-28T10:14:58.693+00:00Comments on The Good the Bad and the Insulting: Warzone: Damnos Part 1 - The Lore (A Warhammer 40,000 Apocalypse Supplement Review)Bellariushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02652722543111095280noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1831276194138109948.post-13276422778000909652014-10-05T21:00:53.250+01:002014-10-05T21:00:53.250+01:00That no warp presence thing is true, I didn't ...That no warp presence thing is true, I didn't think about that, and considering that Celexus assassins can permanently kill Daemons thanks to them also having no warp presence (which happens in the Assassin Dataslate), throwing a C'tan in there is like letting off a nuke that moves around and never stops detonating, at least when Draigo kills things they reform eventually.<br /><br />Yeah the C'tan being able to be beaten by whoever bugs me, but it's one of those things I expected, just like it's inevitable that whatever great hero/villain they come up with will kill an Avatar of Khaine, I'd just like them to handle it better, rather than have Sicarius equip a vortex grenade (and those things are not small) forget about something the size of his fist while fighting in a duel with it on (losing most of the way through) and only remember he had it when the C'tan broke free.grdaathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00722216755745063033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1831276194138109948.post-24223493333367180212014-10-05T19:18:07.448+01:002014-10-05T19:18:07.448+01:00No i'm completely in agreement with you, and t...No i'm completely in agreement with you, and to be honest the victory here wouldn't have been so bad if the Ultramarines had at least earned it. Instead, as you rightfully pointed out and is seen far too many times in the book, it's made easy so the chapter can effectively run in and win the fight with surprisingly little difficulty.<br /><br />Well, the problems with throwing a C'Tan Shard into the Warp like that don't just stop there. These are beings who have no presence in the Warp, nothing for the Immaterium to grasp onto or even begin to truly harm it. Assuming that this writing is going to continue with the ongoing problem of treating the Warp as a landscape and a more traditional realm, can you imagine the damage it might do in there? It's effectively a daemon's worst nightmare, something they cannot hope to properly harm which has been let in through their front door, will never tire, never truly wear down and exploits their major vulnerability. If people thought Draigo was bad, this thing is going to go on a rampage which would utterly eclipse his own efforts against Chaos. The Chaos gods would probably find a way to contain it sooner or later (assuming they are just toying with Draigo) but it would still scythe through their numbers. Even ignoring the possible damage it could cause to daemons, there's then the psychic shockwaves it could cause killing who knows how many psykers or problems it could cause for anyone in the material realm. The book treats this as a victory, tries to chalk it up as how awesome Sicarius is, but the Second Captain just gave it a gateway to cause more damage than it could ever achieve within the materium.<br /><br />To be honest though, just as you have your own reasons for liking the C'Tan Shards like this, and I can see exactly why, there's also plenty of reasons why their existence causes problems. In past books we only saw them directly acting a handful of times in the lore and they were figures kept to the background. The few times they did show up using full power, entire systems risked destruction, they seemed to ignore the basic laws of reality and could outgun/out-gambit all but the greatest warriors. Hell, Uriel Ventris' "victory" against the Nightbringer only worked because it was half starved, and even then it was used to show why traditional morality tends to horribly backfire on the heroes of the Imperium. There were only a small handful of them left, so they needed to be used sparingly with careful consideration on when and how they were introduced. Now they’re shards, with several thousand of them in existence, authors can excuse having them punched out by anyone they want to make heroic in a book, flattened or defeated when they need to make someone look important.<br /><br />Yes, that is definitely another issue I didn’t get into at all. The book really just ends with them declaring victory and leaving, with no real efforts made beyond Damnos to secure the system or make sure there aren’t any more necrons about. While it does mention that new armies were being trained on the planet, and that the Ultrmarines had learnt from fighting this threat, there seemed to be no real caution used or even efforts to silence knowledge of the necrons from Imperial populations.<br /><br />Well, in all honesty, I do wonder if Kelly was actually interested in the necrons at all. We certainly get a few details here and there about them, but almost everything is focused on the space marines and most details could be picked up by a few minutes on google. If he was given this with no knowledge, interest or even basic understanding of the race as a whole since Ward re-wrote them, it might be a case similar to Rob Cruddance’s treatment of the tyranids. It would certainly explain a few things once we get into the rules as well.Bellariushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02652722543111095280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1831276194138109948.post-1266717350530668352014-10-05T18:55:54.818+01:002014-10-05T18:55:54.818+01:00Not as hard as it has been with other books. At le...Not as hard as it has been with other books. At least this time it didn't involve an army undergoing total character assassination or being mauled by an author who clearly didn't understand or even like them. Thank you none the less though.Bellariushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02652722543111095280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1831276194138109948.post-33204608947338609722014-10-03T09:58:53.502+01:002014-10-03T09:58:53.502+01:00Gosh, why would anyone read that. Accept my condol...Gosh, why would anyone read that. Accept my condolences, that must've been hard.Corpsewavehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13033703755763327569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1831276194138109948.post-80421736034584232932014-10-03T03:17:13.319+01:002014-10-03T03:17:13.319+01:00Oh good Lord, I remember seeing this when it was r...Oh good Lord, I remember seeing this when it was released and being VERY happy my store had a policy where they allowed you to read the book before buying it.<br /><br />Now I like the new Necrons, but I don't want them to win every fight, I like the parts in which they lose because one of them was way too overconfident, or they were beaten by a smarter/more skilled opponent, my favourite being when Imotekh gets his flagship destroyed because he underestimated somebody he beat before and wasn't expecting them to try what they did. The humanizing element doesn't bother me too much though I like it better when it makes it clear that they're still very alien to us.<br /><br />This said I knew going into the book that the Necrons were going to lose, and I wasn't bothered by that, what bothered me is just how they lost (which I think you already covered really well), and the aftermath, first and foremost, what Sicarius did is possibly the single dumbest thing anybody could have done short of giving the Tyranids a free pass to Terra. Sicarius threw a TRANSCENDANT C'TAN SHARD into the warp. The C'tan are gods, and Transcendant C'tan are more fully awakened shards who've become aware of what has happened to them and most dangerously, they know how to restore themselves AND how to fully utilize the powers they have. Being thrown into the warp isn't going to destroy it (and even if it did it would screw over the universe in some way like the Flayed One C'tan screwed over the Necrons), so eventually it's going to pop out, furious, and it's going to either leave to absorb more of its shards to fully restore itself (probably by ripping open Tomb Worlds that haven't been awakened yet), and/or target the Imperium for putting it in the warp in the first place. The Transcendant C'tan I also like a lot because they are the kind of cosmic horror that the C'tan used to be, the kind that can turn a small titan (like a knight) to ash just by thinking about it, having one get taken out by one Vortex Grenade really cheapens their effect.<br /><br />That's one threat where it's better to let the Necrons handle it, they've got a few things that can cage it until they can find a way to rebind it (usually by throwing it into another dimension temporarily, then bringing it back out in another Tesseract Vault, or they can presumably break it once more), but what's the Imperium going to do, throw it into the warp again? I suppose they could get the Grey Knights to use their Tesseract Labyrinths on it, but I don't think they know that was their original purpose, and considering how valuable those are in dealing with Daemons I don't think they'd ever go for it.<br /><br />The second part of this that really bothered me, is a Dynasty isn't just one planet, it's many, one of the other Necron Lords is going to fill the power vacuum, and come back to get Damnos (if the Phaeron's conciousness wasn't transferred out), and they're not likely to make the same mistakes twice. This one I wouldn't mind if it looked like they fortified everything against the anticipated Necron counter-attacks, but I don't think they did, it looks like they just returned everything to how it was before the Tomb World activated and left.<br /><br />The third thing that bugged me is Kelly completely forgot about the Canoptek... Anything. At least 80% of the Necron force uses converted construction equipment (which gauss, scarabs, spyders, and wraiths all are, some of the wraith weapons are also just future garbage disposal), the Canoptek's in particular were all made to keep the Tomb Worlds operational, yet none of them seem to ever be present, even one scarab could screw that world over because it would just go into Tyranid "eat and reproduce" mode (the Necrons are kind of sore losers like that).grdaathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00722216755745063033noreply@blogger.com