Only War: Hammer of the Emperor

By Arbitrator, in Only War

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deinol said:

Anyway, more importantly, many of us don't care at all about using the default setting. These books have rules that work for just about any time from shortly after the Horus Heresy to far past the current tabletop timeline. So people want rules for cool stuff.

Just like the Deathwatch series (particularly Honour the Chapter) has rules for tons of chapters that aren't likely to be in the Deathwatch at all, or in whatever sector they made up for DW. (I for one appreciate that it has most of the chapters required to run a Badab War campaign, for example.)

Good getting steering back towards topic there. And yes of all of the 40K rpg's OW is kind of made to be played anywhere. You just need a war to fight and as we know in the grim darkness yadda yadda. You don't need a snowflake crusade you could set it in any warzone. From the Great Crusade, Horus Heresy to the Wars for Armageddon, The Macharian Crusade and The Sabbat World Crusade.

OW contains a description of the other settings for the 40K rpg's. I take that as a carte blanc to set a campaign in the Jericho reach, a war world in the Calixis sector or in the retinue of a Rogue Trader.

You don't even really need to commit to a whole campaign, a dramatic change in regiment type gives you a whole new game really rather than just changing you 'class' and going back to the start.

So are Pretorians going to be in Hammer of the Emperor?

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I really, really hope some of those 'Advanced Specialties' will be Guardsman-esque specialties instead of more non-Guardsman specialties. As is, only 5/12 of the specialties are for Guardsmen. It's like "hey, we can play Imperial Guardsmen now! What do you guys want to play?" "A stormtrooper/tech-priest enginseer/psyker".

I'm not saying Support Specialties are bad , but I hope the book still keeps some focus on playing Imperial Guardsmen.


Atleast there's a homebrew Siege Warfare specialty and Non-Ratling Marksman specialty. I'd like to see FFG do a Not-Adept specialty though. Something focused on the non-combat duties such as signalling and paperwork.

Adding in the Imperial Navy wouldn't really detrac from the theme of Only War, so long as the focus is on Armsmen and Aerospacecraft.

Even then, drop/paratrooper regiments DO make limited use of aircraft that are their own.

AtoMaki said:

H.B.M.C. said:

AtoMaki said:

The Sabbath crusade is the product of Den Abnett and not GW's.


It 100% is GW's. They own every shred of 40K IP. Dan Abnett wrote it for Black Library. Black Library is part of GW.

BYE

Oh, I meant that he is a "real" author and not "just" a fluff/codex-writer, like, he still writes Gaunt's Ghost books, so if GW messes up the Tanith fluff, then they will mess up the whole Gaunt's Ghost line. And that's a big thing, not an oldcrons-newcrons case. And doing it just because FFG wants them in its expansion book is kinda' silly.

How can you forget the Golden 'Everything and Nothing Is Canon' rule!?

And…yeah. The FFG fluff is great, but plenty of people run game set in different sectors, subsectors etc.

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So while 5/12 may be regular guardsmen, 12/12 are part of an Imperial Guard army and from the IG Codex. The only thing we are really missing is the Rough Rider, which is definitely coming here. I'm very happy with Only War so far. I just wish I could play it more.

I am very curious to see what else comes in Hammer of the Emperor.

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Getting some of those newer Abhumans from the 6e book (Felinids, Longhshanks) or some classics (Beastman or Squats would make me so absurdly happy) would be really, really cool. I'd love to se Beastmen, especially.