Warhammer 40k Tabletop Thread XLIV - "Take a Shot of Paint Water"

[Cheesegear]

I believe the specific combo that's the reason they're taking a hit is that Eliminators near an impulsor can Shoot, move (embarking the impulsor) and shoot again. Frankly it seems silly to solve this with points but I guess the next big patch is happening in summer so they can use that to do an errata or FAQ that says "no you can't do that".

I...Guess?
I can count the times I've seen this done on one hand, and I don't do it myself - mostly because I'm not a fan of Impulsors. Frankly, in the current meta I don't know why anyone would find that an issue. Just shoot the Impulsor. "Angron OP; Nerf Impulsors."

But it's what you said. If that is indeed the problem, you can't fix it by increasing the points cost - unless you do it by a lot. Because as always there are players out there - including me - who are not doing that, and getting shafted anyway.

Because competitive players are abusing the rules, everyone gets punished, even if they're not even doing the thing. Just, like...Change the rules.
- The people who are abusing the rules, stop.
- The people who weren't abusing the rules don't even notice.
There is no loss to the meta by changing a rule that doesn't work as intended. There is a loss to the meta by just making blanket nerfs and buffs.

I hate blanket nerfs. Always have.

Razorbacks need to be nerfed because Guilliman is good.
That's fair. Nerf Guilliman, then.
But Guilliman will still exist, therefore Razorbacks still have the potential to be good.
What if I don't use Guilliman?
...I don't understand the question.

[Renegade Paladin]

The good news is that maybe the Grognards with 18 Leman Russes might actually start using them again. But Rogal Dorns didn't get touched. I haven't done the maths but I'm pretty sure RDs are still better. LRs are just...Less bad, but still not good.

They still can't function on a Leviathan GT table with zero sight lines. The only ones that are any good are the Demolisher and tank commander (hence no price reduction), and I'm fond of accompanying a Demolisher with a Punisher with 3x heavy flamers as the Overwatch machine and to keep infantry off of the big gun. Battle tanks (which are what grognards have) just don't work; you can't stay back to shoot and if you roll up you get tagged (and are wasting the range) at which point you just wish it was a Demolisher instead.

[bluntpencil]

Less than two days later...



...I literally ****ing called it!
(Although to be fair, if you follow the meta at all, it's a fairly easy call to make.)

The good news is that maybe the Grognards with 18 Leman Russes might actually start using them again. But Rogal Dorns didn't get touched. I haven't done the maths but I'm pretty sure RDs are still better. LRs are just...Less bad, but still not good.

This is me! I'm excited to roll out ten tanks plus mechanised support!

Once I redo my turrets, next week I'll be rolling out:

Spoiler

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• Tank Commander with Grand Strategist
• 3 Eradicators
• 3 Exterminators
• 3 Vanquishers
• 3 Squads of Catachans in Chimeras

None of the Russes, except the Exterminators are great, but they do the job. I think the Eradicator is slept on, because firing in melee with all its guns is phenomenally good, especially when it's 50 points cheaper than a Demolisher. Vanquishers aren't great, but they are cheap, and if you've got three, they're semi-reliable.

I'm just happy that I can squeeze in 13 armoured vehicles, and still have enough points for guys to jump onto objectives.

[bluntpencil]

I believe the specific combo that's the rrason they're taking a hit is that Eliminators near an impulsor can Shoot, move (embarking the impulsor) and shoot again. Frankly it seems silly to solve this with points but I guess the next big patch is happening in summer so they can use that to do an errata or FAQ that says "no you can't do that".

Sly Marbo can also pull this stunt.

[9mm]

. I think the Eradicator is slept on.

I've run two daka boxes (triple heavy bolter Eradicators) and they've done decently, but most things that will actually charge them will be able to kill a russ quickly.

[Cheesegear]

I've run two daka boxes (triple heavy bolter Eradicators) and they've done decently...

Two? Is that all?

but most things that will actually charge them will be able to kill a russ quickly.

The problem with cheap(er) things is that to make them actually good, you need more of them.

One Leman Russ is terrible.
Two Leman Russes is barely playable.

5-8 Leman Russes, though? If you add some broth and a potato? Baby, you've got a stew going.

Something that is cheap, only becomes efficient and/or effective when you have a lot of it. Otherwise you just have something that's cheap (and therefore usually bad).

[LeSwordfish]

Inspired by some of the fiction and Crusade Rules in the T'au book, I'm going to do a little modelling project that's been on my mind for a while - a water caste Diplomatic Corps. I think that's a super interesting aspect of the Tau, their non-combat relationships with the other races, and I don't yet have any modelled objective markers, so I'd like to put together some objective markers to represent imperial/tau/other race's dignitaries that need to be rescued/controlled/captured. (There's also a specific crusade objective asking for these).

I've got a line on some third party Water Caste models, and also want to see if I can fit these two chaps on to one 40mm base, representing a diplomat and his unimpressed space marine bodyguard.

I've also got a kitbashed Prophagandist tau with a camera (like the very old short story), so that's three bases worth of stuff (assuming the Water Caste go on one base together). Anyone got any suggestions for any other models that would work? I think generally i'm looking for calm poses without drawn weapons (Amulius is getting an arm swap), specifically looking for Imperial, Votann, Kroot, etc. (I can't really picture Necron diplomats). Maybe the Blackstone Fortress navigator?

Third party interesting aliens of the right scale and vibe are also very welcome. If anyone knows where I can buy models or STLs for Earth Caste or Nicassar, too, let me know.

I think what I'm looking at now is:

• Two Water Caste envoys.
• A joakero and a third-party alien in a nice dress.
• Amullius and the Griem attache.
• One of the fancy sisters from the Triumph Of St Catherine as an Order Diagolus translator, and an old Inquisition Scribe.
• The Tau Propagandist I kitbashed and his pet drones.

The House Griem man is sold out now it seems so that particular part is on hold, but all the other bits are in hand or on order.

[JNAProductions]

I think what I'm looking at now is:

• Two Water Caste envoys.
• A joakero and a third-party alien in a nice dress.
• Amullius and the Griem attache.
• One of the fancy sisters from the Triumph Of St Catherine as an Order Diagolus translator, and an old Inquisition Scribe.
• The Tau Propagandist I kitbashed and his pet drones.

The House Griem man is sold out now it seems so that particular part is on hold, but all the other bits are in hand or on order.

Keep us updated on the project! It sounds dope as heck. :)

[Cheesegear]

Project Log: Creating a scheme

So, for many reasons, I'm not a fan of the grimdark aesthetic when it comes to painting models. I like being able to see what I'm looking at. Throwing a Black Wash on something and calling it a day, isn't...Good. But, as we know, how we perceive colour is basically genetic, and maybe the rods and cones in my eyeballs don't register light well? Who knows.

The "official" way of painting Imperial Fists leads us down the road of ambers and golds. Very muted.

Well **** that!

I bought the Phobos Captain back in 8th Ed., when they were good. However, in 10th Ed., which the way that Characters are essentially unit upgrades; Phobos Captains are basically unusable. Even in the Vanguard Spearhead, where Phobos units are supposed to go, you still wouldn't take him. Phobos Librarians and Lieutenants, all day. So, so far in my Captains Project, we have a spend of $0. So far, so good.
(The best way to start 40K is to start at least five years ago.)

So I stripped him. 8th Ed. was when the Contrast Paints came out and I changed my style for a hot minute. It was faster, sure. But it didn't look how I wanted.

Conversion work; Basically none. In 10th Ed., the servo-skull the model has does nothing, and it's grafted to his knee of all places. So I cut that off because it only gets in way - and does nothing. As longtime readers of mine will know, ever since I played the Inquisitor RPG, I have detested Space Marine models that don't wear helmets. The only way Captain Artemis (yes, that one) could ever even come close to getting seriously injured (not even dead), is if the player took off his helmet. Which...Why would you do that if you know that getting head-shotted is the only way you can die? You're almost better off going Let Me Solo Her, and being naked except for wearing a helmet - and that conversion is on the list, one day. Anyway, one of things I dislike about CAD models is that you can basically integrate parts into the model. The Phobos Captain has a helmet on his belt that is locked into the cape and to the knife at his belt. It's basically impossible to remove without serious work.
Since, as above, a Phobos Captain is essentially useless at this point, gouging out a helmet from his belt is too much work for a model I'll likely never use.

Spoiler: Step 0-1

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Basecoat with Corax White, and Flash Gitz Yellow; Let's basically start as bright as we can. And we start as we mean to go on. There are some artifacts left over from the stripping process. Luckily, it's winter in Australia, so about now is the only time you can use a white spray in a rattlecan. Humidity's down and temperature is in the low-20s (Celsius, that is). Great.

Then, as I said, a Phobos Captain is bad, so it's going to be our test model.

Spoiler: Step 2-3

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[IMG][/IMG]

Throw down a coat of Astrogranite (the non-chunky version, I believe Astrogranite Debris is the chunky version), and go do leg day. I advise that you do painting on a leg day, so that your arms aren't ****ed afterwards. If you must paint on an arm day, I suggest making sure to have Powerade* (No Sugar) and a banana. Otherwise your hands are going to lock up or start shaking and that's not helpful when you're trying to hold a 5/0 or 10/0 brush. But leg day? Well you're not going to be walking for the rest of the day, so you might as well paint.

*Gatorade tastes better (especially the no sugar versions), but Powerade is better, I think**. Last time I checked. Don't quote me.
**Blue is best for both brands. Red is...Well, I guess we have all have our preferences. If you like Yellow-ade...You're wrong.

Once you finish the gym your texture should be dry. Hit it with a few drybrushes. It's okay to get it some on the feet. You wont be highlighting that part of the feet anyway, and it looks a little better IMO to have some debris on the feet anyway. Finish up the lower half of the model. The lower half is good for this because on Space Marines, there's less crap. When doing the upper parts of the model you start getting chest eagles, weapons and other stuff. Interference, we call it. We don't want to worry about that now. We can't worry about that now.

So we do a 5/0 of Phalanx Yellow, and a 10/0 of Dorn Yellow. Then we finish up the base with white. Remember, Cheesegear likes his models to be bright as ****, and snow bases (e.g; White) is the brightest we can go without being silly. I'm infamously terrible at drybrushing, but we can fix any mistakes on the base much, much later.

We have our primary colour. Nice. We have our base colour. Nice. This is basically how we're going to paint our models. Then we go to the RYB colour wheel that's used for painting - 'cause that's what we're doing. Yes, there's the RGB colour wheel for light and photography, and there's the CMYK colour wheel for computers. But for us painting nerds; We use the RYB colour wheel. We all know what that looks like.

But, since I'm Cheesegear and I obviously hate hobby, and I'm a filthy power gamer who only gets minimum paint score, so that's where I'm gonna stop. Just kidding. I love this ****.

So we know how the RYB colour wheel works. Imperial Fists are yellow, and so they have red chest eagles. Which red? Imperial Fists have blue plasma. Which blue? Green eye lenses? Which green?

Spoiler: Colour palette

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Right off the bat we look for bright yellow. Bright Spring, Bright Winter. Cool. And we know with this particular shade of yellow, when we get around to painting Plasma, we going with a muted blue, or a ****-off bright, teal. Guess which one I'm gonna use?

Now, as I said, how we perceive colour is more or less subjective. And "seasonal palettes" are wild. My significant other has tried to explain how it works. But then I find a different chart, and it's different. So if there's a logic or science behind it...I have no idea. Look. I just want a chart that tells me what colours to use. So because using one chart, we are more or less between two palettes. But, we are playing 40K. Which means eventually we're gonna have black weapon casings and gunmetal. Let's find another chart.

Spoiler: Colour Palette Second Opinion

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Oooh. I can see black and silvers (grey). Looks like our palette is going to be Bright Winter.

Tune in next time when I fix the base.

Next models and entries should go a lot quicker. This post is only as long as it is because it's basically still planning, and explaining my process. Almost everything would just link back to this post.

[Wraith]

I bought the Phobos Captain back in 8th Ed., when they were good.
.....
So, so far in my Captains Project, we have a spend of $0. So far, so good.

For those who were wondering, 3 years is the official cut-off. Anything you bought more than 3 years ago counts as 'free'.

And "seasonal palettes" are wild. My significant other has tried to explain how it works. But then I find a different chart, and it's different.

[Colour Palette Second Opinion]

Whoever thought of Summer as being entirely pastels must live in a city and never, ever takes off their sunglasses. If you live in a real place, with flowers and animals and stuff, summer should look like Pop art.

Then again, I'm biased because I *like* Pop art. My minis would look like Borderlands characters, if I could be arsed with that many edges.

[Cheesegear]

Whoever thought of Summer as being entirely pastels...

If you look at the differences between the four, you'll see that it has more to do with hue and saturation, and nothing at all to do with the actual seasons...
That's all I know. My spouse has explained it to me. I don't understand it. I just look at the chart and find the colour I want and paint around it using what I know about the (RYB) colour wheel and complimentary/contrasting colours.

...This is how a Tech-Priest must feel. I don't need to know how it works. I just know that it does.

[LeSwordfish]

For those who were wondering, 3 years is the official cut-off. Anything you bought more than 3 years ago counts as 'free'.

Similarly, if you sell a model that has gathered dust on sprue for more than three years, any money you get for it is not "partially recouping a wasteful spend before". It is new money, that's come from nowhere, and so you're free to immediately waste it again.

[Cheesegear]

I got into a discussion with a friend about whether 40K is or isn't "stupid", and after countering a bunch of 3rd Ed. fluff (mostly concerning Orks because it always does because Orks were in actuality stupid before 4th Ed.), we got to something that I can't defend:

It's possible to enter the Warp, and exit from before when you left. I can't recall an instance of this ever actually happening (look, I'm very aware of John Grammaticus...Just...Ergh...I can't right now), at least not in a way that matters. Like; I guess it might have happened at some point.

But like...A Company or three of Ultramarines Warp-travels to the past by accident on Battle Barge. They are kitted out in full Primaris gear so it's obvious they're from the future. They know about the Fall of Cadia, and how to prevent the Great Rift, and they know about the resurrections of Guilliman and Lion, and they tell everyone how it's going to go down. Save Yvraine. Save the Galaxy. Then just like...Tell people where the Will of Eternity's shield generator is so the Space Wolves don't waste time looking for it. Warn Garadon that Shon'tu and Be'lakor are going to infiltrate Phalanx, in order for Phalanx to not arrive at the Fall too late.

Setting over. 8th Ed. and beyond just...Don't happen.

Instead it's like; A Company of Space Marines no-one cares about arrived on planet no-one cares about and then they all died. The end. We can't actually talk about time travel because it would literally ruin everything. But we have to get over how unpredictable the Warp can be and this is the most random thing we could think of, even though it has the potential to literally break everything.

Time travel to the past is setting-breakingly stupid...As I said, John Grammaticus...I just can't.

Something, something, Ordo Chronos? But as I said, you wouldn't be able to "Ordo Chronus" away three Companies of Space Marines with one or more named Characters, especially if they come bearing Primaris parts.

[Wraith]

On the one hand, Lexicanum references Rogue Trader as being the original source of backwards-in-time warp jumps, and from what I remember it's the same vague sort of sentence that has been repeated in newer editions but I don't know if it's still present. Unless it's in the 10th edition rulebook right now, I tend to dismiss it as being something cool that ultimately never happened on a notable scale like Enslavers, or Hrud, or Aeronautica Imperialis.

Maybe don't go so far as to ret-con it entirely, but to me, time-travel happens in the same way that Marneus Calgar eats breakfast. He probably does it quite often, but unless he one day consumes an entire Vauxhall with a spoon, it's not big enough news to register. When someone wants to write about 3 companies of Primaris Ultramarines turning up at Istvaan, then it'll be worth reading about - until then, it's isolated incidents about people who don't matter, or don't have enough influence to do anything about it.

On the other hand, time-travel breaks just about ANY setting where logic gets applied to it. Some of the more clever ways of dealing with it are fixed points in time (from Dr Who - some events converge in all timelines and just can't be changed) to branching timelines a la Back To The Future. Maybe time travel DOES happen constantly, but we, the viewer, only see the most grimdark version of events, such is the nature of 40k.

-----

For another reference, Ollanius Person goes back in time through what is essentially a continent-spanning warp rift, leaving himself clues as to how to get around the Imperial Palace and meet up with the Dark King in End & The Death Part II.
This version implies a closed-loop to avoid paradox; Persson travels back in time in order to inform himself of how and why to travel back in time, kind of thing. Maybe there WERE 3 Companies of Primaris Ultramarines at Istvaan - sucks to be them, as historically all of the Loyalists got virus bombed. ALL of them. Who'd notice 300 more bodies in a pile of tens of thousands?

Argul Tal's visit to the Imperial Laboratory suggests a similar sort of thing, also involving a warp rift (which, when all is said and done, the Eye of Terror is). He wouldn't have gotten there without Lorgar, and there wouldn't be a Lorgar without Argul Tal.

That kind of seems to be 40k's take on time travel? No one truly has free will, everyone is tied to inescapable destinies and even skilled prognosticators like Eldrad Ulthuan can only change the future with logical cause-and-effect. There isn't a future where Sanguinious doesn't die at Horus' hand, he can only choose when and where it happens - if you time travel in 40k, it's because you have already done it and your own actions to change it are precisely what brought it about.

[dancrilis]

Time travel to the past is setting-breakingly stupid

How the warp works is effectively at best for the people in it 'as narrative demands' and perhaps more accurately 'as the dark gods demand'.

Traveling backwards in time via the warp will likely never cause either the narrative or the dark gods any serious issues.

Perhaps more of an issue is the necrons have non-warp backwards time travel - but then they are the necrons many of whom are insane and their technology while fairly dependable does have downsides which might back backwards time travel simply not worth it.

Something, something, Ordo Chronos? But as I said, you wouldn't be able to "Ordo Chronus" away three Companies of Space Marines with one or more named Characters, especially if they come bearing Primaris parts.

The general public (and many fairly senior people) don't seem to know that daemons exist despite them occassionally exploding psykers and tearing through planets/system so covering stuff up seems perfectly reasonable to me, and the Ordo Chronos might actually have some fairly fancy stuff (possibly necron stuff) to deal with temporal anomalies - they might even have access to the future themselves making cover ups even easier as they know where a breach will happen before it happens.

[Wraith]

Spoiler: Time to test my Courage

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Imgur Link = https://i.imgur.com/vY7KIOi.jpeg

Three colours; Black undercoat and weapon casing, Leadbelcher armour, Bronze halberd hafts/sword hilts. Total painting time: About 45 minutes.

Spoiler: I am the dumbest man alive

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Imgur = https://i.imgur.com/jEb4WH0.jpeg

Painting time: +15 minutes

Spoiler: wait a minute

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Imgur = https://i.imgur.com/qCAyfam.jpeg

Painting time: +15 minutes

Spoiler: WAIT A MINUTE

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Imgur = https://i.imgur.com/h7VhoTM.jpeg

Painting time = +25 minutes

Spoiler: I AM THE HAMMER

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Imgur = https://i.imgur.com/jh4DObY.jpeg

Painting time: +40 minutes

Spoiler: 10 man squad imminently doable in under 2 hours

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Imgur = https://i.imgur.com/3121Qd2.gif

[LeSwordfish]

That's come out as a really striking scheme! I definitely think it's worth doing a little something to the bases though, even just Astrogranite and a drybrush or something. It will make them look a lot more finished, and ground them in the world a lot better. At the moment I think the darkness of the bases runs the risk of, like, washing out the rest of the model? With a big blob of black making you miss some of the subtleties in the white-blue-grey.

---

I got into a discussion with a friend about whether 40K is or isn't "stupid", and after countering a bunch of 3rd Ed. fluff (mostly concerning Orks because it always does because Orks were in actuality stupid before 4th Ed.), we got to something that I can't defend:

It's possible to enter the Warp, and exit from before when you left. I can't recall an instance of this ever actually happening (look, I'm very aware of John Grammaticus...Just...Ergh...I can't right now), at least not in a way that matters. Like; I guess it might have happened at some point.

Related to time travel, I think the closest thing to the "warp storms sending you back in time" thing is where Gaunt's Ghosts are jumped forward ten years or so. Ultimately I think it's the sort of thing that works better when it's nailed down as little as possible. I'm happy for it to stay in the background as noodle incidents and implications (and ideas for you to hang your own narrative on. Remember my heresy-era Death Guard who had to deal with Typhus and his daemon pals?

Clearly Ordo Chronos meddling is how nobody knows where the female custodians came from.

---

On an unrelated note, i've been reading The Infinite and The Divine. It's an incredible book, definitely up there with my favourite 40k books, maybe the best of the decade so far. (Up there with Saturnine and Echoes Of Eternity for me). Trazyn the Infinite and Orikan the Diviner bickering and sabotaging each other for milennia and bringing multiple civilisations to ruin as they do so.

[Wraith]

Yeah, I've come around to the same conclusion. Black was intended to look clean and neutral so as not to sit too close to the dark tones of the mini - I did that for my Alpha Legion, it looks fine on a teal/silver/red-eyed guys, but here I think the bases are too big and they instead just look empty.

Rather than Astrogranite (Grey) I'm leaning more towards Mordant Earth (Black) as I definitely want a darker coloured base, though I'm not sure what colour to go with underneath. I'm very tempted to go bright green - like Tesseract Glow - to match the eyes, or perhaps more Kantor/Glacier blue to tie it to the main theme. Will have to have a play and see which I like best. Thank you!

[DataNinja]

Argul Tal's visit to the Imperial Laboratory suggests a similar sort of thing, also involving a warp rift (which, when all is said and done, the Eye of Terror is). He wouldn't have gotten there without Lorgar, and there wouldn't be a Lorgar without Argul Tal.

That kind of seems to be 40k's take on time travel? No one truly has free will, everyone is tied to inescapable destinies and even skilled prognosticators like Eldrad Ulthuan can only change the future with logical cause-and-effect. There isn't a future where Sanguinious doesn't die at Horus' hand, he can only choose when and where it happens - if you time travel in 40k, it's because you have already done it and your own actions to change it are precisely what brought it about.

Yeah, it usually seems to be presented as an inevitability - by the time you realize that you've caused your future, it's too late to change it.

I remember the Ahriman novels having survivors from a Chapter that was declared traitor for no apparent reason... except that their fleeing to the Eye and turning to warp powers to survive ended up causing their Chapter's destruction in the first place, when they run into the Inquisition earlier in the timeline.

[Cheesegear]

Unless it's in the 10th edition rulebook right now, I tend to dismiss it as being something cool that ultimately never happened on a notable scale like Enslavers, or Hrud, or Aeronautica Imperialis.

Well, the rules are currently free so I had no reason to buy the rulebook - haven't read it. Don't know.

That kind of seems to be 40k's take on time travel? No one truly has free will

Can you travel to the past?
Yes.
Do you have free will?
No.

That's...Worse. Particularly when applied to Space Marines.

In most time-travel related media, we more or less get told that changing the past has the potential to vaporise yourself. Since we, the viewer, are typically following the protagonist along, we don't want the protagonist to vaporise, because that's bad. Self-preservation is a thing.

However, whilst Space Marines fear many things, they don't fear death. Space Marines don't have self-preservation instincts, as least, not in the way that we would comprehend. We're in the Darkest Timeline. Abaddon planetcracked Cadia, and the Great Rift is doing a thing because of that. The Imperium is losing.

Three Companies of Space Marines travel back to the Battle of Cadia:
You can't change anything, you might vaporise yourself!
...So?

Those three Companies can prevent the Darkest Timeline. Prevent the Dark Imperium. Why wouldn't they try to at the cost of their own lives?

if you time travel in 40k, it's because you have already done it and your own actions to change it are precisely what brought it about.

If anybody can time travel, but can't change the past; It means nobody has free will.

That's...Upsetting.

You might call it setting-breakingly stupid.

[The painting system works!]

Looks really nice. Were the Force Weapons just going to stay that colour?

On an unrelated note, i've been reading The Infinite and The Divine. It's an incredible book

Strong agree.

Yeah, it usually seems to be presented as an inevitability - by the time you realize that you've caused your future, it's too late to change it.

It seems most people fall into the "No Free Will Allowed" justification for time travel. Which is...Terrible.

Hey Chaplain...Do I have free will?
Good question! Do you have a Boltgun?
Yes.
Do you have a Chainsword?
Yes.
So what do you need free will for?
You're right. Second question; If I Fall to Chaos, does that mean I was always going to Fall?
WHY THE **** WOULD YOU FALL!? DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING YOU NEED TO TELL ME!? I WILL BASH YOUR BRAINS OUT RIGHT THIS SECOND.
No, Chaplain. You're right. Death to the Traitor, and I'm not dead. Therefore I'm not a Traitor. If I was a Traitor you would kill me, and you haven't killed me, which means I'm not a Traitor.
That is the only correct answer.

Of course, from this satirical conversation, you could, perhaps, imply that "Only Heretics have Free Will", and that takes the satire of the conversation up to 11.

[DataNinja]

If anybody can time travel, but can't change the past; It means nobody has free will.

That's...Upsetting.

You might call it setting-breakingly stupid.

That's assuming that you're able to control it at all. If you have no ability to choose to use it, then it's certainly not setting breaking.

After all, there's no guarantee that the right number of people with the right information and the right equipment would get to the right time and the right place to make enough choices to noticeably affect a timeline.

[Destro_Yersul]

I did a time-travel plot in my Rogue Trader game, recently. It started as 'it would be funny for the PCs to encounter two versions of Ahriman fighting each other' and spun off from there.

As a result, I had to do a lot of thinking about how I wanted the time travel to work, and what would change if they actually succeeded. I ended up going with divergent timelines. Their efforts to change the past spun off a new version of the universe where they had already changed the past, and one of the knock-on effects broke the time machine they used to do it so they couldn't change things again.

That's for an RPG though, where I want the decisions the players make to actually matter. If I was just writing, I think I'd stick with stable time loops. You can't meaningfully change things that already happened, because they already happened and you were already there. You might end up recontextualising some events for yourself, but ultimately you've already done whatever it is you're going to do.

[LCP]

I like the idea that you'd look at something that gets really into the weeds of like, the Great Man theory of history, and whether at a big enough scale the actions of individuals can meaningfully change the future, and decide that that's what makes Warhammer 40K stupid. Not the Tolkien fantasy races in spaaaace, not the galaxy-spanning empire whose main use for its kilometre-long FTL ships is to ferry people to the surface of planets so they can reenact WW1 or have chainsaw sword fights, not the literal wizards. Like if you don't enjoy genre fiction playing fast and loose with wacky ideas like that, why would you touch any of this stuff? There is real 'hard' sci-fi out there you can read.

Particularly in this particular subgenre of galaxy-spanning military fiction, it's funny, because FTL travel already massively messes with causality without any need for Doctor Who style time-travel. You want to make sure everything checks out 'logically' in a setting that has FTL travel, you need a whole new theory of relativity to still live in a universe where cause comes before effect. Explanations like star trek FTL drives or 40k warp travel don't do that, they just give you an painted exterior behind which you can imagine that a complete explanation (that would require a doctorate to understand) lies. It's exactly the same depth of technobabble that justifies time travel in other fiction, it just takes a bit more maths to see how big a hole it's papering over.

As a physicist myself I don't see any problem with this. This is one of the interesting and entertaining things science fiction can do with respect to real science, to ask 'what if things were different'. Obviously 40K isn't doing anything particularly deep with its particular mish-mash of 'what ifs', but why would you let that spoil your enjoyment of it all the same?

[Grim Portent]

All instances of backwards time travel I can think of in 40k take the form of closed time loops, where going in back in time enables the events that caused you to go back in time, inconsequential backwards jumps where the people involved achieve bugger all and dies, or explicit paradoxes in which the time traveller disintegrates after performing some history altering event as the universe tries to correct the damage.

None particularly break the setting, unless you assume that someone has control over time travel and could use it to achieve some greater goal than they already have. Time travel is not exactly common or controlled, except by the Necrons, who are mostly insane and have weird goals, and the Chaos Gods, who are overtly insane and have weird goals while also existing outside of causality. The former barely seem to use their time travel, and the latter seem to use it to ensure this particular timeline happens, presumably because it amuses them.

[Mx.Silver]

I like the idea that you'd look at something that gets really into the weeds of like, the Great Man theory of history, and whether at a big enough scale the actions of individuals can meaningfully change the future, and decide that that's what makes Warhammer 40K stupid. Not the Tolkien fantasy races in spaaaace, not the galaxy-spanning empire whose main use for its kilometre-long FTL ships is to ferry people to the surface of planets so they can reenact WW1 or have chainsaw sword fights, not the literal wizards. Like if you don't enjoy genre fiction playing fast and loose with wacky ideas like that, why would you touch any of this stuff? There is real 'hard' sci-fi out there you can read.

Right? 40k FTL functions by having ships go through The Daemon Dimension as a shortcut, but the part we should think is stupid is that it can potentially allow for time travel back into the past?

Honestly, resisting the idea that 40k as a setting is kind of stupid is also a bit of an odd one, considering that the stupid stuff comprisies a non-zero of what people seem to actually like about it.
I know this is annecdotal, but every time I've seen someone bring-up the Orks stuff it's not been as a dismissal it's, been because they think it's a fun idea.