These are so few, one of them is the events of Storm of Iron and that's only in there to excuse yet more crusades! Even the few moments of them actually launching urban engagements read less like experts in that environment and more like generic marines. The few points where they do show actual skill at demolishing/defending buildings are quickly skimmed over or are jammed into the timeline and barely covered. Even in the one opportunity where the 3rd company can, they completely avoid doing so in favour of launching an all out attack on their foe. Their targets range from factories to a crashed Space Hulk, and they are never called in to defend a location. The main story follows crusade after assault after crusade, with the Imperial Fists frequently avoiding any area they are good at. Unfortunately these are also very few and far between. There are points in the book where the Imperial Fists here do actually act like Fists. This? there is no excuse here! These are very seperate chapters with multiple novels, codicies and tales separating them! How the shitting hell did he manage to confuse the two of them! Or is this just Ward's attitude towards supplement codices now? Is he just going to transplant the personality and themes of any army he can't handle with other military forces? This is truly embarrassing! At least with Codex: Iyanden you had the (admittedly extremely poor) reasoning that the Eldar Craftworlds are underdeveloped and overlooked, so Ward was latching into a more popular one to flesh them out. There is also a surprisingly large number of named Chaplains which make up the book's numbers, and Lysander himself is presented as extremely zealous in his efforts to drive forwards a crusade.ĭid no one bother to tell the writers the Imperial Fists and Black Templars are NOT the same chapter? Did no one editing this supplement think it strange how the pragmatic, urban fighting siege specialists with an addiction to pain sounded a lot like the Knights Templar? Did no one bother to edit this!? Later sections emphasise how, while they have a single hold in the form of the Phalanx, they are scattered about the galaxy on various different minor crusades. The Imperial Fists have been written as crusaders permanently fighting to retake the worlds lost to the Imperium. So let's just make this crystal clear to all present:
Separated by Warp storms or xenos expansion." Sons of Dorn blaze a trail of reconquest through the galaxy, bringing back into the fold worlds It gets worse:įorces of the Imperium fight and die in order to preserve Mankind’s dwindling holdings, the "For the Imperial Fists, the Great Crusade never ended, it merely changed form." This is immediately followed by the following information: They are specified to be those who held the line during the final hours of the Horus Heresy and consider that moment with pride. Take for example the very introductory page of Codex: Sentinels of Terra, which establishes that the Imperial Fists are Terra's guardians. It veers between things actually seeming for a moment like they might come together as things are explained, only for the next major reveal to drop down to the level of "I've seen Transformers slashfiction better written than this." There's some actual effort in here to make certain superficial and minor elements work, but huge swathes of the fluff are bastardised jokes. The same really goes with the fluff, as while the lore is still horrible it occasionally makes some vague sense. This actually explains a lot, as while the rules did seem uninspired ( Cruddance isn't a bad author when he's working on what he knows, just give him more tank armies already!) they lacked the gaping flaws of Codex: Black Legion.