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Relating to the above, I'd reformulate things so: the impact wouldn't be on the scale of a race, rather, of single engagments while you have to assess and counter any new possibilities and might be caught by an unforseen ruse or capability. But considering what mettle all races are made of to sail the stars and still be around, that won't last for long on a strategic scale. But on a tactical one at first, it might although it will be swiftly gone even it ever has got any real impact.

Pretty much!


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 Gert wrote:
But that's not Chaos being incohesive that's battle tactics.
If a commander needs time to do a specific thing (ritual, data download) then they're already on the back foot unless they've put themselves in an extremely strong position in the first place. New types of soldiers and weapons aren't going to make that commander's mission any more difficult than it realistically already was.

But on the point of Chaos being incohesive, so is the Imperium. How many commanders are out for personal glory or commit to an engagement because "The God Emperor sent me a vision"?
The same criticisms leveled at the forces of Chaos are equally applicable to almost every single other faction in the game besides maybe the T'au and Tyranids.
This again goes back to my primary point about the leader behind the Indomitus Crusade being the real "shock and awe" and not the Primaris themselves.

Chaos still lacks overall lacks what passes for cohesiveness within The Imperium. Warbands won’t necessarily share intel with others, and given the leaders are on their own path to glory, may be actively resistant to doing so.

The Imperium of course is far from perfect in that regard, and even the best communications within a regiment, battlegroup, crusade force of whatever, can wind up filed and forgotten by an Administratrum error.

Warbands don't always need to share intelligence though because that's where Daemons, sorcery, and even the Gods themselves come in.

Also, it feels like you're taking the premise of any loss to be utter annihilation which isn't accurate.
Those who survived the first engagements with the Primaris aren't going to sit back and take that, they're going to spread far and wide that the Imperium has new Astartes to challenge and more importantly the Avenging Son himself leads them.

The idea that the Imperium could also keep the Primaris a secret after they've been deployed en masse is also bizarre. The propaganda department is going to be screaming from the rooftops that Guilliman has returned and brought new Astartes warriors to fight the forces of darkness and other such nonsense.
Cult networks, sleeper agents, and good old listening to the wireless are going to keep the forces of Chaos informed enough that the appearance of Primaris on the battlefield would buy Imperial forces a moment at best and that won't last forever nor is it more relevant to combat scenarios than garden variety reinforcements or unusual tactics.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m not familiar with rifles and that from a real world perspective, so I’m afraid I can’t really answer your exact poser properly. Did one have a noticeably longer range, or was generally more accurate, had a large clip (magazine?) because those things do matter.

Nope. .308 has slightly less power and slightly less recoil but not enough to make any meaningful difference. The Garand in .308 is literally just a different barrel cut to accommodate the very slightly different case (with both of them firing the same bullet).

The Primaris Innovation is of course something quite different. But their base weapons have a longer operational range. Their armoured columns are now anti-grav, opening up avenues of attack nobody has seen from The Imperium in….ever. Even sillier stuff like jump pack auto cannon carriers are entirely new, having no Heresy equivalent I can immediately think of.

Their weapons have longer range on the tabletop, where maximum range is an instant cutoff (at an absurdly close range) instead of a gradual decrease in accuracy with distance. And, as we have found in the real world, increased small arms range isn't all that useful when most battles happen well within the range of even short-range rifles.

Anti-grav tanks are a variation on the existing anti-grav tanks the Imperium had, but in a setting where Tau, Eldar, and Necrons all have equivalent tanks is the Imperium taking more of them really going to be a devastating surprise? Same thing with the jump pack autocannon squad. The Imperium hasn't used that exact combination before but how much of an effect will it really have? It's not like "give a gun to a jump pack unit" is some kind of revolution in military tactics that nobody could possibly have anticipated and similar units already exist in multiple other factions.


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But if they run up against a squad of Hellblasters?

Then you treat it exactly like what it is: a plasma cannon devastator squad with some token aesthetic differences. Hellblasters are new and different on the tabletop because GW gave them special snowflake rules and an appealing point cost, not because they do anything particularly interesting in-universe.

I wish Primaris had been created more organically. As in, they are introduced over time and their numbers started small, localized within a few Ultramarine Chapters (because only Guiliman is available to get new Primarch genes), before expanding to the rest of the Imperium.

I'd say that the novelty impact wouldn't have been that great.

If we're talking Imperium-centric warfare, the answer is...maybe. Astartes are so blindly rare (despite them being in every bit of lore and fluff in the game because they're the faction that 40k revolves around) that many imperials in all but the most hotly contested battles have probably never seen them. They wouldn't necessarily be able to tell the difference between a firstborn or primaris, nor really care because they're all the Emperor's Angels.

For those who fight astartes frequently, the answer is still....probably not that much. Sure, Primaris have all new toys (somehow...), but you also have to remember that A) many astartes have wildly different tactics that they employ between or even within their Chapters (the whole point of the Codex is to be flexible in engagements) and B) in a galaxy, you fight all sorts of weird stuff anyway. There's enemies that have weaponized time, who graft horrible bio mechanical constructs onto themselves, etc. There's a lot of warfighting diversity in the universe.

Though it was probably a splash of cold water to the traitors who had been hiding in the Eye for thousands of years, finally managed to bring down Cadia so they thought that they'd be free to pillage and burn, only to get smacked with a primaris fist instead.

bibotot wrote:
I wish Primaris had been created more organically. As in, they are introduced over time and their numbers started small, localized within a few Ultramarine Chapters (because only Guiliman is available to get new Primarch genes), before expanding to the rest of the Imperium.

See, I'd have preferred they'd have left the biological changes out of it altogether and just introduced primaris as a new mark of armor and some updated tech. It would be a big wave of innovation that would show Guilliman's willingness to embrace change without the awkwardness of Cawl secretly beating Fabius to the punch behind the scenes.

For all the lore that goes out of its way to emphasize tweaking the astartes-making process being a bad idea (the cursed founding, the Heresy-era Raptors, etc.), the end results are really underwhelming. They let Cawl commit one of the great taboos of the setting, and the end result was that primaris are... taller. And a bit tougher/stronger. All of which could have been chalked up to better servos in a new mark of armor. If they really wanted to make primaris be a thing, I'd probably have preferred they make primaris be unnervingly different from normal marines. Give them an extra dose of primarch super powers or whatever.

But of course, that was never the goal. The point of primaris is to explain the radical size difference between the new "truescale" marines and the older models because having them side-by-side was going to look a bit weird. So the primaris fluff exists as an awkward in-universe way to explain a height difference.

bibotot wrote:
I wish Primaris had been created more organically. As in, they are introduced over time and their numbers started small, localized within a few Ultramarine Chapters (because only Guiliman is available to get new Primarch genes), before expanding to the rest of the Imperium.

Or GW could have dumped the lore and just introduced true-scale models, like how the new 30k marines are closer to true scale without any lore explanation given.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
For all the lore that goes out of its way to emphasize tweaking the astartes-making process being a bad idea (the cursed founding, the Heresy-era Raptors, etc.), the end results are really underwhelming.

Going to be a bit pedantic here.
The Cursed Founding was because the Mechanicus tampered with geneseed and the various Magi didn't actually know what they were doing, nor did they have the specific resources Cawl had, that being pure Primarch DNA with which to synthesize new geneseed. Cawl also had the benefit of not being bothered by anyone when he was doing his research, unlike the wider Mechanicus which had to deal with politicking and religiony stuff.
The Cursed Founding doesn't have an explicit cause for the mutations and all we know for sure is that the Mechanicus tried to modify it somewhat. It could be that many of the Cursed Founding Chapters weren't actually mutated all that badly but political pressure from Mars forced the Inquisitions hand into making a show of it and purging some names picked out of the proverbial hat.

And the XIXth Raptors were very specifically meddled with by the Alpha Legion. Before that the rebuilding of the Raven Guard actually went quite well, for the short while it could that is.

I do recommend the Cawl novel, as it provides some decent insight into not just who, but what he is.

Essentially, Cawl is kind of an amalgam of many great minds, including one, possibly more, of those who worked on the original projects. And he has multiple drone bodies which he can copy his consciousness into. So whilst yes he is but one Magos, he’s also a self contained team of, theoretically, as many copies as he needs.

Add in unfettered access to whatever remained of the original project’s equipment and records? We get where we are today, after 10,000 years and honestly, who knows how many dead ends and wonky experiments.

Oh, I know that they added fluff to justify Cawl pulling it off. I just mean that it's weird that they went out of their way to initially create a bunch of stories about how messing with the process is a bad idea (various mutations, etc., even if some of those are explicitly the result of enemy meddling.) Then they introduce a guy out of the blue, have him successfully create primaris marines with no major downsides (so far), and the end result is basically just... taller marines.

Successfully tweaking marine creation is a pretty big deal from a meta perspective. So you'd think if they were going to break that seal, they'd do it because they wanted to introduce something radically different. But instead, they used the broken taboo to explain why the new models are taller.

It's like if they updated the lore to say that Mars has unburied the Void Dragon shard located there, have been actively interrogating the shard, and the end result is a new pattern of galvanic rifle with an extra pip of AP and some new rangers with longer robot legs. That is to say, it seems like a pretty minor payoff for such a major change/advancement of the fluff.

Well, I for one love the Cursed founding, and on the shock and awe topic I'm quite sure they did have some impact when bursting into flames or other gak, at least as a spectacle!

This is pure fanwankery, but I like to view the whole Primaris endeavour as gilding over rust - the geneseed tweaks aren't stable in the long term, and the hardware and supply chains are reliant on a 10,000-year stockpile of sophisticated materials and fabricators that're now being chewed through far faster than they can be replenished. Cawl tried his little cyber-heart out, but the Imperium's too rotten at the core, and having realised there was no good solution, he picked the best bad one: throw Primaris out there in a short-lived hammerblow that, with luck, would stagger the enemies of the Imperium badly enough that even when it all fell apart, the firstborn Astartes and Imperial Guard and Navy would still be able to capitalise on the momentum Primaris had created, and humanity would still be better off than before. But since this is 40k, Cawl just happened to throw his all-or-nothing Hail Mary at the same time as Abaddon rediscovered competence, the 'nids got the munchies, and so on through every other existential threat every new edition of the game throws in - the hoped-for gains from Primaris are being blunted, the enemy isn't on the back foot, and in a few short years the new marines' bodies will start breaking down, the supply of armour and vehicles and ammunition will dry up, Cawl in despair will put a pistol to however many mainframes it takes for him to take the easy way out, and the Imperium as a whole will wish it'd remembered the bit in the 2nd edition rulebook about "forget the promise of progress" (or words to that effect, I don't have it in front of me).

That's a sliding 'a few short years' from whatever year we're in, of course, I know GW's never going to tank the whole Primaris line of minis just for drama's sake. Still, it's a comforting thought. After a fashion.

Tbf your scenario would almost make primaris 40k ish enough to me that I might accept them in my head canon

It is a good thought. But, I’d venture whilst inevitable through losses sustained and the Imperium being the Imperium? It won’t be as quick as a few years.

And that’s because Cawl remains, and took care to ensure the Chapters weren’t just equipped with Shiny New Toys, but had some capability to maintain them.

Unlike Landraiders, Rhinos, Landspeeders and proper Relic stuff? Tech marines have access to First Generation education on the matter. 2nd gen blueprints or what have you. And that knowledge is going to be fairly evenly spread across Chapters.

This makes the tech base somewhat more resilient than is has been, as it’s not a single Brother Tech Marine who knows how to repair that particular Dreadnought chassis, making his loss of life and knowledge more potent an impact.

Imperium will no doubt Imperium in the end, and things will overtime become lost, or known by rote, overly complicated, ritualised etc. But, as long as Cawl is still here? The Source Remains.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And that’s because Cawl remains, and took care to ensure the Chapters weren’t just equipped with Shiny New Toys, but had some capability to maintain them.

Fun fact speaking of the Shiny New Toys, the whole thing first occurred to me when I was browsing the shelves and noticed the Primaris dune buggy or whatever, and had the notion that that's the 'new' Land Speeder - because the Mechanicus's tech base had actually degraded to the point they couldn't make firstborn hardware any more, and they came up with this galactic-scale shell game and threw together a whole 'new' range of Astartes tech that's actually cruder technology tarted up to look sophisticated, because they just can't bring themselves to admit - even to themselves - how completely they've failed the Omnissiah, and the poor bastards who wind up using it are so thoroughly indoctrinated that they believe the holy proclamations that their 'new' weapons and armour are better than ever, even when they're dying in droves because it's junk.

Which doesn't stack up to all those new hover vehicles the Primaris have, and how their stats obviously aren't worse, and everything GW publishes. Not sure how you'd account for all the Primarchs crawling out of the woodwork either, for that matter - 'they're just clones dressed up in fancy armour' seems a bit too pantomime, but I don't have anything else; I just ignore 'em. But that momentary idea was what got me onto the 'it's all a gigantic lie' headcanon.

Hover Tanks are what you can produce when you have 10,000 years, storage space, and no bugger thoughtlessly smashing them up.

The Imperium, for its manifold flaws, are provenly good at repairing and maintaining. So, once that stuff and a pile of spares and schematics are dropped off? You’ve a massive leg up.

Best of all, whatever revelations Cawl may or may not have had in his researches needn’t be explained or necessarily even understood - because that’s not how The Imperium, Ad Mech or Techmarines really work. Rather they have Their Holy Instruction Book, and don’t deviate or particularly need to understand why Flange A is inserted into Sprocket B, only that that’s what the Holy Instruction Book says.

Ability without comprehension, I guess.

Even better? I can’t prove, but equally don’t think we can rule out, Cawl also designed suitable diagnostic machines and programmes to better guide maintenance and repair.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s not just Primaris being bigger and tougher though.

Eliminators, Inceptors and Suppresors in particular have no particularly direct equivalent in the history of Imperial Forces.

Eliminator analogue 1:1: Recon marines with sniper rifles, Seekers, Headhunters, scouts with sniper rifles. No, they are not unique. Inceptors and suppressors are just less sophisticated jetbikes with smaller weaponry aswell and merely highlight that the IoM has lost production capacity whilest still having somewhat ok stocks of manpower.

Hellblasters and Eradicators, in terms of being uniformly equipped with Special Weapons haven’t been seen since the Heresy era.

Technically sole specialist formations are militarily speaking an absurd oddity in infantry due to a multitude of reasons anyways since the refragmentation of large formations due to artillery, airpower and tanks. Things that even in 40k have no issue to make primaris look like toys and chew on them, not even going into the territory of unconventional means like the nids have available or daemons, or tau weaponry, or chemical and biological warfare.
And we still have good ole Havocs and Devastators which are them, but actually better due to flexibility, even though the TG doesn't actually have deep enough rules right now to make that matter.

The first three are of particular importance to here. Eliminators are heavier hitting Snipers, more about outright killing/maiming than disruption. The jump pack units aren’t HTH oriented, and pack considerable ranged punch. You might see the Inceptors in silhouette and assume a Demi-assault squad, only to be on the receiving end of high calibre bolt weapons, or worse, a deluge of plasma bolts.

The sheer newness of those amongst the Space Marines isn’t something you’d initially expect. A Veteran of the Long War, who hasn’t gone insane, will of course adapt. In time. But even if it’s only a couple of minutes, or a few seconds, of frantic vox discussion, getting a counter tactic going isn’t instantaneous, and that can cost you a battle.

But not all Chaos Marines are that experienced, let alone anything remotely approaching sane.

An "insane" enemy is actually far worse to fight against than a sane one. Especially when self preservation goes out the window, and in the actually experienced cases of insane chaos marines you find f.e. daemonkin aspirants which basically means they got no selfpreservation left at all. Whilest many others are actually pretty sane. They are merely "amoral" fwiw in the warhammer universe.

Consider that Chaos is by definition Not A Cohesive Force. You might’ve planned on the frothing maniacs over there to be let off the leash to cause havoc, havoc you can exploit. But if they run up against a squad of Hellblasters? There’s some chance that they’re just gonna get annihilated before they cause much, possibly any, mess.

so is the imperium though. And the primaris marines also easily can run into force that will just start laughing in their faces either because they have run into a force that doesn't care, is already dead (plague zombies) or if they get particulary unlucky is the dark mechanicum taking a stroll for ressources and or weapons testing..