Is 9th Edition heading towards Psyker Primaris Space Marine Chapters? The new Starter Set Explained!

Okay, this sounds insane but hear me out. 

Hello chaps and chapettes, I'm here in the classroom to discuss an idea I can't let go of after spending too much time thinking about Assault Intercessors. I did a bit of post-writing research to make sure what I was saying was useful an relevant, and came across a Bell of Lost Souls article, which had a bunch of pictures from the leaked 9th Edition starter set.

Regardless of whether or not this is the starter set, I was looking at the pictures, and a gnawing suspicion started. And the caffeine fuelled haze after too long creating distance learning lessons set in; I blame the drugs and lack of sleep for this tin foil hattery.

I think we might be looking at some newly made Primaris psykers units. 

Lets look at some pictures to see why:

And 

And...

And

And...

And...

And the grainy ones...

Notice anything weird?

Notice the full skeleton torso as opposed to just a skull appearing on a lot of these models?

Did you also notice the redundancy of the iron halos on the 1st Company Veterans when they are carrying Stormshields?

Did you also notice more robes than usual?

Now let's think about development history for the Space Marines. 

We start with Dark Imperium, where we have the new Primaris squaring off against the Death Guard. They have a fairly standard set up, with not much in terms of special rules. The biggest deal about them is the universal 2-wound model. This kicked off 8th Edition, and the brand new future of 40K where Primarchs became a fact of life instead of just a myth in the lore.

And then after a few years we get the Shadow Spear box revealing brand new types of Marines; the Phobos armoured Vanguard group, specialising in outflanking, and cunning deployment over heavy hitting and defence. The enemy this time is Chaos, with a big upgrade too but nothing ground breaking in terms of rules or game-wide changes. 

Let me contrast with another line of development...

The Sigmarines of the Stormcast Eternal had a starter kit which had hem facing off against a Chaos army, Khorne this time though. A massive departure from the previous iteration of Warhammer Fantasy battle is the army wide 2-wound models. This kicked off a brand new game, where demi-gods became a fact of life in game instead of just characters of myth in the lore.

A little while later a revamped box set is released, where a new faction of Stormcast are brought in who focus on outflanking, manoeuvrability and deployment over straight up strength and defence. Their enemy is a (slightly!) updated Chaos force, which ushered in some new advances for that faction.

What happened next?

Soul Wars, where magically infused and enhanced Sigmarines, fighting against a newly revitalised (hah) undead force, which suddenly became the new big bad guy after a long running series of mini-updates centred around foreshadowing of a big calamitous event. The new Stormcast have long flowing robes an shining iconography, with their "normal" troops being largely the same as the standard Stormcast only able to wield magic to basically make them better in most functional ways.

And now...

The Space Marines are going to be fighting a revitalised Necron force after a series of events foreshadowing a great calamitous event.

I'll be honest, despite me liking the idea of the Phobos Vanguard Marines, I just never got why they had any development time spent on them. Apart from Eliminators, I don't think any of the Vanguard Marins did anything that other units didn't do better. In a vacuum, Incursors and Infiltrators could have formed a vital insurgency and board control role. But Space Marine Scouts were always there, doing that better, more flexibly and cheaper. Hence why you rarely see Vanguard Marines on competitive lists. 

But if Games Workshop were modelling the new 40K development on Age of Sigmar's path, hen it makes an awful lot of sense for them to be there... it just had some teething issues because Space Marines weren't a new faction like the Stormcast were.

Wild conjecture at this point, but we may be seeing psychically enhanced Primaris Space Marines. I wondered what special rules would make the Assault Intercessors different from what we had seen before, and I think we might find our answer there.

What if these Assault Marines could summon there own shrouding, giving them cover or -1 to To Hit against ranged attacks? That would give them some great damage mitigation tools to get up the field compared to the covering fire of the Shooty Intercessor.

What if when they got there that could be turned into a +1 Damage on their Chain sword attacks? Or a - 1 AP? That could justify the loss of firepower by losing the bolt rifle.

What if those skeletons are psyker focus items?

What if that new Ancient reliquary is actually a way of reinforcing that psychic potential, opposed to the banner of the "normal" Primaris?

Those "Iron halos" could actually be an indicator of a rank or psyker specialism. 

And if you did have a group of Psyker Marines running around, wouldn't you want a Chaplain around to keep them on the straight and narrow. And more importantly, wouldn't you want someone with a Big Executioner Sword to end anyone that lost control of their abilities?

Now a couple of things really prevent all this from being true: there are already Psyker Space Marines in the Grey Knights, and if you introduced close combat Space Marines to Black Templar players and said they couldn't have them because they were psykers, you'd lose a portion of your fan base.... or make yourself the target for the next crusade.

But if we were to tin-foil this out more, those helmets on the Primaris Veterans are very similar to Grey Knight Strike Squads, and the Grey Knight Chapter Master is famous for rocking the sword and board. And there's nothing to say that the Assault Intercessors couldn't just be regular guys in the psyker fuelled army.

Anything more you need? 

You know the entire lead up to this has been Psychic Awakening right?

Yeah I know, wild conjecture.

Comment below to get discount tin foil, and tune in for a later post when I show you a step by step guide on how to make a hat out of it, plus everything you need to know about the CIA listening devices in your teeth.

Until next time!

Thanks for reading.

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