Dornian Heresy - Considerations

Rogal Dorn, the Arch-Betrayer

As I've said before, for now I'm sticking to the idea of collecting a Fallen force, which I plan to publish my own piece of fluff here at some point in the future (together with other ideas I had in the past, but I had put those aside when I've decided for The Fallen), but now, thanks to phobosdeimos, I'm giving some thought to the Dornian Heresy idea.

In fact, I was never a fan of alternate universes (or fandexes), as the main thing I like about Warhammer 40K is the universe as it really is, even in their revisions, and I like much of its own versions in separate, by their own merits. I know that the Dornian Heresy idea is more about adding to the hobby at modelling perspective, not rules - but since fandexes related to it are/were in discussion, I must add that I'm not into it at all, since I don't have many gripes with the current rules or codices, since I have a very laid down approach to it, since I came from a RPG background - I arrived in the hobby by escaping the urge that the RPG players have in playing "realistic" rules or situations, where every little thing that happens must be feasible or be 100% true to the setting. 40K always sounded to me as the opposite of that, having this truly rich universe just as a backdrop to create your own history, and the fluff can be easily reduced to a bunch of simple excuses to any faction fight against any faction (and among themselves). And I've already came to the game expecting (and embracing) its arbitrary rules. It was like arriving to an boardgame to me - I don't want to discuss why my pawns meeples can only move one square at time, or why I just roll that many dice, or aim for that specific number - I follow a "blind" belief that the game developer is supposed to have that trouble for me, and he tested and tried it in more ways that I can (or simply care) to conceive. So just give me my brainless fun, and I'll pay the price of the books for that.

And sadly, while the fan community usually come with awesome ideas, they usually fall short for fanboyism and power play. I prefer to play the tried and true, and use the "count-as" rule (more powerful now with the death of the WYSIWYG rule) and leave the fluff aspects only to my modelling and my mind's eye, than having every little aspect of the history translated to the poor and limited statistics of the six-sided dice. Besides that, I don't want to invest the small fortune needed to build an army here in Brazil to play only against my neighbor, or some other dude that agrees that it is as awesome as I think, and that it's not unbalanced in any way...

But let me get back to point - the Dornian Heresy. the skeptical inside me always took this kind of fan-made material with some indifference - don't take me wrong, all the power to the people that care enough to write this kind of stuff - but I usually feel disappointed with the final product. In this case, I didn't even care to read the whole thing, I just browsed through the PDF, saw the images and titles to see what it was about. I liked the general idea, but never considered that "for me".

I've completely forgot about it for the last 2 (maybe 3) years, until phobosdeimos came to me telling me how awesome it was. I said that I already knew that, that it was from the Bolter & Chainsword forum, and that it never picked my interest. He commented about some details, the new Ultramarines armour, the World Eaters having the rage chip removed and showing the scar with pride, the Space Wolves going to Khorne and the Blood Angels taking the Nurgle's way. So, I decided to give it a better read.

New Ultramarine armour

And... I liked it! I can't say that I like it without reserves (maybe that's something for another post), but I've surely liked it - I liked it enough to consider changing my idea of collecting a Fallen force to a Dornian Heresy one instead. I'm not completely decided on that, but it's growing on me - I'll save the decision to the last minute before applying the primer to the first models ;)

In fact, I was planning to use this post to discuss some modelling and army building aspects of it with you, readers, but I think it's already too big, and it's on the verge of getting boring. So I'll save it for a next post!

Don't miss the Dornian Heresy PDF hosted at the Bolter & Chainsword forum. The PDF only covers nine of the eighteen legions, namely the World Eaters, Emperor's Children, Raven Guard, Word Bearers, Ultramarines, White Scars, Space Wolves, Thousand Sons and Blood Angels. There's a second volume in the works, that will cover the remaining nine legions - but in the meantime you can read the "beta" version of the text for some of them: Iron Warriors, Iron Hands, Alpha Legion, Dark Angels and Salamanders.

UPDATE: here are the Night Lords as well ;)