Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Fact of the matter remains, MKVII is as iconic as an armour mark as the rest of em, and it will be resculpted eventually. And given how 40K has progressed to lore where firstborn are being phased out completely in favour of MKX battleplate, HH, or warhammer 30,000 will be the most likely range for the resculpt to get a release in.

But I'm not seeing the resculpt happening anytime soon.. they haven't even left GW's range completely yet

chaos0xomega wrote:
The absence of special and heavy weapons in Intercessor units prevents them from being a suitable replacement for Tactical marine squads. I had imagined that Sternguard Intercessors would end up having the special/heavy weapon options needed to be a more 1:1 replacement for Tactical Squads, but that does not appear to be the case.

But isn't that more down to the game system rewarding/mandating fully specialised squads? Even HH has gone that way... You can't have a special or heavy weapon in a tactical squad there, either.

HH was like that before Intercessors were a thing. The Primaris were a hark back to the Legions of old specifically because they didn't have mixed weapon loadouts.
The Legions fielded units without the modern Tactical loadout because it wasn't necessary. They had thousands of Astartes to draw on and tactical flexibility came at the company level rather than the squad.

What Gert said - Intercessors not having access to weapon options is them modeling the units after the standards of the Heresy era space marine legions, it started out that way in HH, they didn't "go that way".

That being said, you can have special and heavy weapons in *veteran* tactical squads in HH, hence why I thought they would let Primaris Sternguard do so.

"Gone that way" was a poor choice of words on my part. But my point still stands, why have an intercessor squad and an intercessor 'tactical' squad? Unless you're saying GW are eventually going to remove the plain intercessor squad? Either they need the squad flexibility in modern 40k or they don't.

But this is still all going off topic and not what I intended... I'm much more interested in the Mk7 suit going out of production and potentially the various settings.

To me a tactical squad would be a distinctly separate unit from an intercessor squad. the way things are going i would expect intercessors to remain battleline, and tacticals to be the equivalent of an elites choice/limited to 3 units total.

 CancelledApocalypse wrote:
"Gone that way" was a poor choice of words on my part. But my point still stands, why have an intercessor squad and an intercessor 'tactical' squad? Unless you're saying GW are eventually going to remove the plain intercessor squad? Either they need the squad flexibility in modern 40k or they don't.

From a rules perspective, Tacticals have the ability to retreat and fire their weapons while Intercessors have sticky objectives. One is exceptionally more useful than the other.
And honestly, yes I do believe that when Firstborn are fully removed from Space Marines in 40k the Intercessor Squad as it currently stands will go the way of the Dodo.

But this is still all going off topic and not what I intended... I'm much more interested in the Mk7 suit going out of production and potentially the various settings.

Mk7 is sticking around for a good few years chief but when it does go, don't expect to see it in the Heresy lineup.

 Gert wrote:

 CancelledApocalypse wrote:
"Gone that way" was a poor choice of words on my part. But my point still stands, why have an intercessor squad and an intercessor 'tactical' squad? Unless you're saying GW are eventually going to remove the plain intercessor squad? Either they need the squad flexibility in modern 40k or they don't.

From a rules perspective, Tacticals have the ability to retreat and fire their weapons while Intercessors have sticky objectives. One is exceptionally more useful than the other.
And honestly, yes I do believe that when Firstborn are fully removed from Space Marines in 40k the Intercessor Squad as it currently stands will go the way of the Dodo.

Lore wise, while I know the primaris have their own doctrines I don't think they would be foolish enough to abandon a doctrine which has worked well for over 9,000 years, even if it's an emergency setup for sub-1-5,000 man chapters.

playing devil's advocate if they wanted to Primarisize the tactical squad the obvious replacement kit for it would be a "vetern intercessor squad" kit

Agreed with both those points. Fluffwise I imagine that the old training pipeline (scout -> devastator -> assault -> tactical -> terminator) will probably be replaced/hybridized with the Primaris pipeline in some way. I see the future of tactical marines as being a veteran squad of some sort (maybe not "veteran intercessors" per se, pretty sure that was already a unit - just not in the codex), or a step between "intercessor" level units and "veteran" level units.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Agreed with both those points. Fluffwise I imagine that the old training pipeline (scout -> devastator -> assault -> tactical -> terminator) will probably be replaced/hybridized with the Primaris pipeline in some way. I see the future of tactical marines as being a veteran squad of some sort (maybe not "veteran intercessors" per se, pretty sure that was already a unit - just not in the codex), or a step between "intercessor" level units and "veteran" level units.

the scout - devestator - assault -tactical pipline has already been altered, Now it's Scout -> Vanguard -> heavy Support -> Close Support -> Battleline

Basically the same thing. Plus the 10th Company isn't all just kids now, it has actual Space Marines with the sneaky lads.

Poor Gaius Pollandus. You lived, fought and died to show how the Primaris progress through a chapter, and no remembers you at all...

 Gert wrote:
Mk7 is sticking around for a good few years chief but when it does go, don't expect to see it in the Heresy lineup.

Fair enough, seems a shame, though.

You better believe I'm coming back to this thread the minute the tactical squad goes out of shops, though!

I cannot realistically see MKVII returning to 40K though, so where else will it go? Does anyone seriously think GW will eventually create an "Oldhammer" version of 40K once things have progressed too far for the classic models to make a reappearance in? And you know GW cannot help themselves when it comes to recycling their own past

 tauist wrote:
I cannot realistically see MKVII returning to 40K though, so where else will it go? Does anyone seriously think GW will eventually create an "Oldhammer" version of 40K once things have progressed too far for the classic models to make a reappearance in? And you know GW cannot help themselves when it comes to recycling their own past

It is a weird one. The way the Primaris release has been handled, GW are slowly making it so that no new player can (buying new) create a Space Marine army set in the 10,000 years of rich lore set between the Horus Heresy and the Great Rift, which they have built over 30 years. This includes some really huge events that are the setting for huge swathes of GW and BL publications, as well as important in the backstory of some now Primaris'd characters. Really like that cool Badab war lore you read about on the Warhammer Vault? Sweet out of luck if you want to set a game there. How about the three wars for Armageddon? Only the lattermost part of the Third War could include Primaris. Any of the 13 Black Crusades up to the Fall of Cadia? Not if you want Space Marines. War of the Beast? The Beheading? The Age of Apostasy? The 1st and 2nd Tyrannic Wars? I can see a market for releasing MkVII stuff to some degree in the future.

Also, MkVII is iconic and the face of the setting. It is odd that they are dropping that branding and I am sure it will reappear at some point in the future. MkVII is the main armour Mk in most of the 40k videogames that feature Marines. I know the statue outside Warhammer world got relegated to inside the building somewhere, but that was very public for years.

Honestly whenever we reach the point where Firstborn are gone from 40k I'd expect the Intercessor kit to get a redo with Mk7 style helms in the same way the current Mk7 has Mk7 and Mk8 parts.

Again, though, Primaris with a Mk7 head isn't the same as a Mk7 marine. Not to mention the fact that you only get two or three Mk6 heads in a Mk7 kit, so assuming GW do the same with a Mk7 head in a Primaris kit, you'd have to go scouting on ebay or bits stores in order to have a full squad of Mk7 headed Primaris...

I agree with Haighus, it's a strange decision from GW to essentially cut out 99% of space marine lore from the tabletop setting. I'm also inclined to agree with tauist that it's unlikely we'll see Mk7 in GW stores again (in 40k anyway) - at least not without some major upheaval, or some major retconning. If this really was all just a way to sell marines in a new scale, GW have gone about it really badly.

I'm not going to lie chief, 90% of Tacticus armour looks the same on the tabletop to Aquila.
The helmet is the biggest difference that people see front on.
People were converting Primaris into truescale Marines with minimal effort day one of their release because they still look extremely similar.

Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
Poor Gaius Pollandus. You lived, fought and died to show how the Primaris progress through a chapter, and no remembers you at all...

Who?

Looked him up. Interesting, it seems the Primaris marines perhaps follow a less linear path than the Firstborn, but one which still roughly adheres to the concept of the Scout -> Vanguard/Assault -> Heavy Support/Devastator -> Whatever pipeline.

 tauist wrote:
I cannot realistically see MKVII returning to 40K though, so where else will it go? Does anyone seriously think GW will eventually create an "Oldhammer" version of 40K once things have progressed too far for the classic models to make a reappearance in? And you know GW cannot help themselves when it comes to recycling their own past

If Sternguard are anything to go by, GW is not above "hybridizing" the Primaris minis - some of them have Mk 7 helmets for example. Mk7 might still find a home among Primaris marines yet. Again, I'm betting on the eventual release of "Primaris Tactical Veterans" that fills the loadout of a tactical squad and features dudes in MK7 and Mk8 armor, possibly representative of Firstborn who crossed the Rubicon Primaris but held on to their old kit?

 Haighus wrote:

 tauist wrote:
I cannot realistically see MKVII returning to 40K though, so where else will it go? Does anyone seriously think GW will eventually create an "Oldhammer" version of 40K once things have progressed too far for the classic models to make a reappearance in? And you know GW cannot help themselves when it comes to recycling their own past

It is a weird one. The way the Primaris release has been handled, GW are slowly making it so that no new player can (buying new) create a Space Marine army set in the 10,000 years of rich lore set between the Horus Heresy and the Great Rift, which they have built over 30 years. This includes some really huge events that are the setting for huge swathes of GW and BL publications, as well as important in the backstory of some now Primaris'd characters. Really like that cool Badab war lore you read about on the Warhammer Vault? Sweet out of luck if you want to set a game there. How about the three wars for Armageddon? Only the lattermost part of the Third War could include Primaris. Any of the 13 Black Crusades up to the Fall of Cadia? Not if you want Space Marines. War of the Beast? The Beheading? The Age of Apostasy? The 1st and 2nd Tyrannic Wars? I can see a market for releasing MkVII stuff to some degree in the future.

Also, MkVII is iconic and the face of the setting. It is odd that they are dropping that branding and I am sure it will reappear at some point in the future. MkVII is the main armour Mk in most of the 40k videogames that feature Marines. I know the statue outside Warhammer world got relegated to inside the building somewhere, but that was very public for years.

For you and me, you are right, it's problematic (fortunately I still own all my firstborn marines). But most of the players of 40k don't really care about that, the "historical" aspect of the hobby, and we can even start seeing it in 30k. People will gladly play the Badab War with primaris nowadays...

Have you got a shred of evidence to back that up?

 Gert wrote:
Have you got a shred of evidence to back that up?

Hard data? Of course not, nobody collects that data. But anecdotally the overwhelming majority of games I've seen are straight matched play games using the current mission pack and whatever standard 2000 point armies each player has, and the majority of the ones that do have any kind of narrative are little more than "the marines are fighting the orks for control of MyPlanet IV and need to assassinate the warboss". The kind of dedicated historical games where precise details matter are rare at best and TBH I can't remember seeing that kind of thing ever happen. And I don't think my experiences are unique based on what other people say. People clearly do play rivet-counting historical games where every detail matters but they can't be all that common or we'd be seeing them more often.

Which is why the question of this thread is a moot point. MkVII is already a 30k kit. Primaris marines are already 30k kits. 30k is just another set of rules to be used with whatever models people feel like using, whether it's non-canon GW kits or third-party 3d printed models or just legs on bases as crude proxies. Even expecting people to fully assemble and paint their models seems to be an unrealistic standard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CancelledApocalypse wrote:
I agree with Haighus, it's a strange decision from GW to essentially cut out 99% of space marine lore from the tabletop setting.

It's not strange at all when you remember that GW cares about sales, not lore. GW doesn't expect most of their customers to read the lore beyond the very superficial bits in the codex and core rulebook and primaris marines have plenty of lore for that. People who even know that the different marine armor types have specific names and patterns are a minority of GW's customers.

I mean did Godarc have hard data that people were going to do Badab with Primaris because that's an outlandish claim.

But to your general point of event-based gaming, I'd argue nothing has changed.
In the more dedicated wargaming clubs or groups, you'd maybe see something like Armageddon, Badab, or the 13th Black Crusade but the most common game has always been pick-ups or
arranged between friends.

 Gert wrote:
I mean did Godarc have hard data that people were going to do Badab with Primaris because that's an outlandish claim.

Why is it an outlandish claim? It seems pretty obvious to me that if GW releases a Badab War mission pack again few people will make armies specifically to play it, most of them will use their existing marine armies with a couple of specialist or character kits at most.

Has it happened? No, ergo it's an outlandish claim with no evidence to back it up.
Glad we had this chat.

 Gert wrote:
Has it happened? No, ergo it's an outlandish claim with no evidence to back it up.
Glad we had this chat.

Given that the expansion in question doesn't exist and hasn't even been announced by GW I'm not sure why you think "there's no evidence of it happening" is a compelling argument.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 Gert wrote:
I mean did Godarc have hard data that people were going to do Badab with Primaris because that's an outlandish claim.

Why is it an outlandish claim? It seems pretty obvious to me that if GW releases a Badab War mission pack again few people will make armies specifically to play it, most of them will use their existing marine armies with a couple of specialist or character kits at most.

GW already did that, the two Imperial Armor books were exactly that, and myself and many others wither participated in or know people who participated in Badab themed campaigns where they built armies specifically to play it. Locally there were 10 people that participated in my stores Badab campaign, and with one exception (a guy who already had a Red Scorpions army) they all bought and built new lore accurate armies to play in it.

That you think this doesn't happen (considering you've now made similar arguments in 2 different threads) is honestly mind boggling.

chaos0xomega wrote:
That you think this doesn't happen (considering you've now made similar arguments in 2 different threads) is honestly mind boggling.

I never said it doesn't happen. I said it's less common than the people who play with their existing armies, maybe adding a unit or two at most. And I don't see how it's so controversial to suggest that if GW releases a new mission pack there are more people who will spend $50-100 and play with their existing armies than people who will spend $1000+ and many hours of painting time making a whole new army specifically to use with that mission pack.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 Gert wrote:
I mean did Godarc have hard data that people were going to do Badab with Primaris because that's an outlandish claim.

Why is it an outlandish claim? It seems pretty obvious to me that if GW releases a Badab War mission pack again few people will make armies specifically to play it, most of them will use their existing marine armies with a couple of specialist or character kits at most.

GW already did that, the two Imperial Armor books were exactly that, and myself and many others wither participated in or know people who participated in Badab themed campaigns where they built armies specifically to play it. Locally there were 10 people that participated in my stores Badab campaign, and with one exception (a guy who already had a Red Scorpions army) they all bought and built new lore accurate armies to play in it.

That you think this doesn't happen (considering you've now made similar arguments in 2 different threads) is honestly mind boggling.

yeah but that was in the old days when forge world tended to do "historical campaign books" these days forge world is focused more on specialist games as opposed to "support material for 40k" so it's really a non issue, future campaign books for 40k will be stuff like the arc of omens, etc.

a sad affair but it is what it is