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Bandai Imperial Space Marine!


GMK

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It definitely looks great, a bit of a shame it's a Primaris Space Marine, though. It also seems a bit unclear if this is an action figure (that comes complete/pre-assembled) or something more like the Bandai Star Wars figure kits where you put it together yourself.

 

Normally i really, really dislike Chibi-stylized figures too, but I think all of those except the Space Marine are pretty good!

 

Games Workshop expanding into other forms of merchandise other than just their own products has been great over the past few years.

Edited by TheVoidDragon
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10 hours ago, TheVoidDragon said:

shame it's a Primaris Space Marine

Not knowing the finer points of such things, could you expound upon the above?

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Space Marines come in various armour marks, the Primaris are the newest variant.

 

For years* some of us nerdy type Warhammer 40,000 players have commented on the size of the Space Marine figures that Games Workshop produced. They always came up a little short compared to some of the other available alien and humanoid races. Next to a normal human figure these genetically altered 8ft tall ‘Super Soldiers’ didn’t look quite right.

The newer Primaris are taller than the ‘classic’ Marines, and not all of us were too happy with Games Workshops design choice (it’s petty, I know, but the older designs are something that I’ve lived with for a long time. it’s a bit like when the new designs for the Mini or the Beetle cars came out). From a sales perspective, Games Workshop introducing a new range of Marine figures was a stroke of genius.

 

The background story for their introduction into the 40K universe also rankled a few of us geeky old timers.

The new Primaris figure range is still fairly new, give it a few years to flesh out a bit and it’ll probably grow on me. I do have some, and will paint them up eventually, but I’ll still be looking down my nose at them;).

 

As for the Bandai figure, I’m deeply impressed. The thought of Games Workshop working with Bandai is not something I ever thought I’d see. I’ll definitely be buying some of those! (even if it’s a Primaris:lol: )

 

Mart

 

*since the late ‘80s in my case.:blush:

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19 hours ago, GMK said:

Not knowing the finer points of such things, could you expound upon the above?

I'm not sure how much you know about W40K overall or the current events so i'll try and explain things broadly.

 

Space Marines have existed in W40K for many, many years in the sense of being a relatively small number (I think it was around 100,000 total) of imperfect superhuman warriors, compared to the legions of thousands in the 31st millenium. W40K being a dark, hopeless setting meant that Space Marines themselves, despite being some of the best soldiers the Imperium had, had quite a few flaws and varied greatly. A lot of Space Marine chapters had some of their implanted organs just not work properly or be outright missing for example. Alongside that was the scarcity of equipment and technological innovation - very, very little innovation was done due to the general negative attitude towards technological progress - with the latest Space Marine armour variant being called Mark 8 "Errant Armour", which was the culmination of thousands of years of subtle improvements, and was being deployed in very limited numbers. Basically, Space Marines had been broadly unchanged since their creation (By the Emperor himself) in the 31st Millenium due to the Imperium having so many problems. A 41st Millenium Space Marine was still pretty much on-par with the Space Marines 10,000 years before - outside of the small advancements in technology, the much fewer numbers and current even worse lack of equipment.

 

And then, suddenly, at the end of the 41st Millenium the Primarch Roboute Guilliman gets miraculously revived. The problem is, the reasons for them desperately reviving him (in a very risky way they wouldn't really have considered typically) is that things have got far worse than usual all of a sudden - the Eldar decided that the Imperium needed someone who can act as some form of leader for them and so teamed up with a techpriest named Bellisarius Cawl, who had been asked by Guilliman 10,000 ago before he was put into statis to do two things. The first was pretty much figure out how to cure him of the almost-lethal injury that meant he had to go into Stasis. The second....was pretty much "Make me Space Marines". He suddenly reveals that he's been stockpiling thousands and thousands of Space Marines unbenknownst to everyone for the past 10,000 years and waiting for Guilliman to return (because without him, the Imperium definitely would not accept what Cawl had done). Not only are there now thousands more Space Marines....they're all far better than just Space Marines. These are "Primaris Space Marines" with new high-tech everything, because he also made them all new stuff that's also all just better and all those flaws of the Space Marines like missing organs and such were fixed. Everything from armour, to weapons, to vehicles, to their physiology is just better now all of a sudden...

 

So Games Workshop suddenly decided to shove something into the lore to as good as replace "Space Marines" with "Better Space Marines, suddenly!" in a way that isn't even the slightest bit subtle in both the lore and out of it. The lack of technological progress, the flaws, the lack of numbers etc. aren't really factors with them anymore and it was done very heavy-handedly. Obviously quite a lot of people aren't too happy about that. Those classic, iconic non-Primaris Marines still exist in the setting....but almost everything that's new is Primaris Marines now.

 

Basically the Space Marine designs that have been in the setting for decades are being replaced with more slightly more sci-fi high-techy stuff.

 

This was the typical look of a Space Marine before:

 

Mk7powerarmor.JPG

 

This is a basic Primaris Marine now:

Mk.XArmor.jpg

 

 

They're great looking models in terms of quality, for the most part, just in terms of lore and what they're doing to the classic Iconic design i don't think it's a good thing. Still interested in this though!

 

6 hours ago, LotusArenco said:

Space Marines come in various armour marks, the Primaris are the newest variant.

 

For years* some of us nerdy type Warhammer 40,000 players have commented on the size of the Space Marine figures that Games Workshop produced. They always came up a little short compared to some of the other available alien and humanoid races. Next to a normal human figure these genetically altered 8ft tall ‘Super Soldiers’ didn’t look quite right.

The newer Primaris are taller than the ‘classic’ Marines, and not all of us were too happy with Games Workshops design choice (it’s petty, I know, but the older designs are something that I’ve lived with for a long time. it’s a bit like when the new designs for the Mini or the Beetle cars came out). From a sales perspective, Games Workshop introducing a new range of Marine figures was a stroke of genius.

 

The background story for their introduction into the 40K universe also rankled a few of us geeky old timers.

The new Primaris figure range is still fairly new, give it a few years to flesh out a bit and it’ll probably grow on me. I do have some, and will paint them up eventually, but I’ll still be looking down my nose at them;).

 

As for the Bandai figure, I’m deeply impressed. The thought of Games Workshop working with Bandai is not something I ever thought I’d see. I’ll definitely be buying some of those! (even if it’s a Primaris:lol: )

 

Mart

 

*since the late ‘80s in my case.:blush:

 

I don't think the part about the bigger size/scale of them being due to the previous wrong Scale is quite true, though.  Primaris Marines aren't meant to be "true scale" Space Marines from what i can see, they can't be as Primaris Marines in the lore are taller than normal Space Marines. So if they're meant to be True-scale Space Marines then they're the wrong scale for Primaris Marines, still! There's also that the new Chaos Marines have had a size increase yet are smaller than Primaris Marines. If the lore reason wasn't there then they'd be the right size for true-scale Space Marines, but as it is they're just meant to actually be bigger Space Marines...so the scale is still the same problem as before!

Edited by TheVoidDragon
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@TheVoidDragon @LotusArenco thanks for the detailed backstory: I appreciate you both taking the time to summarise (albeit thoroughly!) the Primaris origins. 

 

I’ve always liked the aesthetics of the 40K Space Marines, but have never been too crazy about gaming. The Bandai hookup is an interesting one, perhaps the range will eventually include more classic armour designs. 

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1 hour ago, GMK said:

@TheVoidDragon @LotusArenco thanks for the detailed backstory: I appreciate you both taking the time to summarise (albeit thoroughly!) the Primaris origins. 

 

I’ve always liked the aesthetics of the 40K Space Marines, but have never been too crazy about gaming. The Bandai hookup is an interesting one, perhaps the range will eventually include more classic armour designs. 

Something I missed is that they're also making classic characters into Primaris Marines too. There was originally some lore hints about how some Chapters won't accept them (like Space Wolves) but that amounted to nothing and they're using them anyway. There have also been even more widespread things like the Blood Angels being almost entirely wiped out, only for Guilliman to arrive and save them at the last minute and re-build the chapter with lots of Primaris Marines. Chapters even have successors that are entirely Primaris Marines, too...there are just so many that it let them reinforce old chapters to make up for the lack of Space Marines in general and rebuild old ones and found entirely new ones. New equipment is also being designed by Cawl (it's not clear if ANY of his designs are something he made himself or found STC plans for though) still, so...obviously they get an excuse to make new awesome models (mostly...) but the lore and implications of what'll happen to classic space marines (and their models) hasn't been very good.

 

I really hope they make a classic Space Marine figure (and other races like Tau and Eldar would be awesome, rather than just Space Marines!) but unfortunately i don't have much hope of it.  Primaris Marines pretty much are the Space Marines now, I think the only classic Space Marine stuff they've made since releasing them has been the "Space Marine Heroes" Blind-box series, a few brief cameos in art of Primaris Marines, and I think an event exclusive mini.

Edited by TheVoidDragon
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11 hours ago, whiskey said:

Knowing how GW is, that thing will probably be around $100-150. Looks cool though.

It isn't a GW product as such so I'd expect it to be around the same sort of price as typical Bandai figures, the recent W40K POP! Figures aren't any more expensive than usual either.

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