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Obliterators

2016-04-05T10:58:12Z

2605:E000:7ECF:7F00:954D:7FE4:D7B3:9F94:

[[File:Obliterator_Art.jpg|thumb|530px|right|The closest thing to "Enough Dakka" that could be achieved without moving to superheavy vehicle division.]]
These big motherfuckers are [[Chaos Space Marines]] who have been infected with the so-called "Obliterator Virus" (Oh so subtle GW...Oh so subtle), which basically turns them into a [[Anal Circumference|giant ass walking Daemonic Engine of Mass Rape]]. It's a large walking blob of Termie armour, daemonically enhanced killing machine, and guns ...[[Dakka|BIG guns.]]

Obliterators are rare (usually) and very sought after, due to their [[FATAL|complete ability to rape everyone and every thing within a 5 mile radius.]] <s>They don't work for any particular legion or worship any Chaos God individually, but they have their own insider cult with the pursuit of knowledge, alchemy and the fusion of flesh and [[Indrick Boreale|Stehl.]]</s> NOT TODAY, ZURG. Usually having a connection to techmarines or techpriests they get some KICKASS powers along with the virus, however it also turns them batshit insane. Any object they hold can get merged into them, allowing them to copy them AND produce ammunition for them....[[Tyranid|Tyranid Digestion Pool?!]] (Which is kind of fucking creepy if you didn't know you were infected)
The metal they get infused with turns them durable as fuck, (Wolverine anyone?) although very slow, but they have teleporters so it's all good. The Iron Warriors have a shit ton of these guys just waiting for commands due to some connection with the Obliterator cult.

==Overview==
Obliterators are probably the most used heavy support choice in the Chaos Space Marines 4th and 5th edition Codex, and with good reason. During each shooting phase, they have a choice of using a twin-linked [[Flamer]], a [[Heavy Flamer]] a twin-linked [[Plasma Gun]], a [[Plasma Cannon]], a twin-linked [[Meltagun]], a [[Multi-Melta]], an [[Assault Cannon]] or a [[Lascannon]], meaning it matters not what the enemy is, they have a means of dealing with it. They also have [[Powerfist]]s and a 2+ armor save (plus a 5+ Invul) and 2 wounds, though since they can only be fielded in groups of three at the most, it's best to keep them out of melee, since you want them free to shoot at enemies.

Their drawbacks are that aside from an extra wound, their statline is the same as a regular Chaos Marine's, meaning they can be hit with Instant Death from a number of heavy weapons. Like <s>Terminators</s> Thousand Sons, they also have Slow and Purposeful, so it can be a problem getting them where you need them. Also, all Obliterators in a unit have to fire the same weapon, no mixing and matching, so make sure you know what weapon you want to use.

The 6th edition book, while trying adjust units to avoid the problems where the 4th edition had some units that were so good it was pointless to use anything, actually gave some improvements to the Obliterators. They can now be given Marks of Chaos, and they can finally use [[Assault Cannon]]s (though rending has taken a hit). The only drawback they gained was that they can't use the same weapon two turns in a row, which isn't all that big a deal, especially since they have some overlapping weapons (Use a plasma cannon one turn, and then TL plasma guns to clean up the next). Though improvements to other units does mean that now they do actually have some competition in the shooting area.

Oblits were outrageously more dangerous in the 3.5 edition Codex due to their S/T5! However, their toughness got FAQ'd down to 4(5) (meaning at the time no immunity to instant death S8) and although they didn't have a plasma cannon or multi-melta, they had access to heavy bolters and frag missiles. Obliterators gained infamy through the notoriously broken Iron Warriors list that spammed them and used [[Basilisk Artillery Gun|Basilisk]]s to decimate anything thrown at them before it could even shoot back. It's no exaggeration that these guys were among the reasons that the 3rd edition codex was considered to be so overpowered that GW had to release 4th ed codex to balance it.

{{Template:Chaos-Official}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Chaos]][[Category:Space Marines]]

Transformers

2016-04-05T10:45:45Z

2605:E000:7ECF:7F00:954D:7FE4:D7B3:9F94: /* Beast Wars */

[[File:Generation 1 by DonFig.jpg|850px|thumbnail|right|And these are just your characters from G1!]]
'''Transformers''' is a series of Robot Toys created by [[Hasbro]] and Takara Tomy that typically turn into cars and other vehicles. Robots are cool, cars are cool and so they became popular. In 1984 they made some comics and a cartoon show. The comics show created a lot of toy sales and the toys kept the shows and comics popular. Over the years they changed things up to sell more toys and new series were made, some worked quite well (Beast Wars, Prime) others did not (Armada, Energon, Cybertron).

Why does this have no tabletop or role playing game? Only [[/co/|comics, cartoons,]] [[/a/|anime,]] [[/v/|and finally video games.]] So much potential. Seriously, it's a setting about sentient, shapeshifting robots fighting a war that spans motivations from political to racial to theological. Hasbro owns [[Magic: The Gathering]] and [[Dungeons & Dragons]] via [[Wizards of the Coast]], so it's not like they've never done tabletop stuff before. How the fuck has nobody realised the money-making potential there?

==Main Guys==
As the series come and go, a certain bevvy of characters seem to be archetypical to the Transformers. Not helped by the fact that, ever since the flop of ''Beast Machines'' and the riotous financial successes of the Bay, Hasbro seems to only ever stick with recycling Generation One, with some other characters jumping continuities. These are the Transformers who appear in some form or another in every iteration of the setting.

*'''Optimus Prime''': Leader of the Autobots, [[Lawful Good]] to the computer-core, the Big Red Hero-bot himself. There's always an Optimus leading the Autobots, and he usually turns into some kind of red truck or hauler. His name is the Latin words for "best" and "first", and he really is both. In the original show (and in the Michael Bay movies -- one of the decent things about them -- and Transformers Prime and the Cybertron games), he was voiced by Peter Cullen, whose awesome deep voice you probably hear in your head whenever you read any of his dialogue. Check it out: ''"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."'' Also has the record of dying the most times out of anyone ever, making one wonder how the hell the GM lets him get away with it each time.

*'''Megatron''': If there's an Optimus Prime, there's always a Megatron, the Evil (of some flavor, depending on the series) to his Lawful Good. Megsy remains pretty consistent throughout his appearances, usually varying only in what level of honor he has (which usually depends on his backstory; sometimes he started as a charismatic gladiator turned freedom fighter against the corrupt Cybertronian government -- [[Angron]], anyone? -- but sometimes he's just nuts) and/or how much of a cold-blooded psychopath he is. He used to turn into a gun (which could inexplicably shrink down to be small enough to be wielded by another Decepticon), with the barrel giving him a wicked arm cannon in robot mode, but nowadays he usually turns into a tank or a jet. He was first voiced by Frank Welker, whose versatile voice was also used for just about every other Decepticon except for Starscream (and probably at least one role in just about every cartoon ever made), though David Kaye also did a bang-up job in Beast Wars, ''yeeesss''.
**'''Galvatron''':Whenever there is a Megatron there is a Galvatron. He's everything you love about the M taken up to eleven. This guy is seriously bad news, he's probably insane and violent enough to give Doombreed pause and he's probably the strongest non-God transformer there is in G1 comics it takes a friggin time vortex to finally put him down. Originally voiced by Leonard Nimoy (that's right, Spock voiced this psycho) after a dying Megatron had a lovely chat with Unicron. He had a pretty new identity forced onto him. Didn't work for long though Galvy kind of went off the reservation pretty quickly.

*'''Bumblebee''': The yellow kid-friendly one, he's usually the main one to interact with the resident token humans. He usually turns into a sports car. Can be surprisingly badass in some adaptations -- his ''Beast Wars'' counterpart, Cheetor, went on to basically take Optimus Primal's place as leader of the Maximals in ''Beast Machines''. However, thanks to the abominations of Michael Bay, he will probably never speak again. Not that his VA was good or anything, mind, but that "mute who talks only in radio quotes/beeps and boops like a 60s robot" shit just gets ANNOYING.

*'''Grimlock''': A fuckmothering [[AWESOME|robot Tyrannosaurus]] that usually breaths fire. He also has a pack of other robot dinosaurs called the '''Dinobots'''. He's not exactly smart (well sometimes, he's either a stupid beast or a no nonsense leader with a speech problem), but who cares about that? HE'LL FUCKING EAT YOU. No seriously he once ripped Shockwave's arm off an ate it.

*'''Starscream''': Megatron's loud-mouthed, whiny, scheming, sneaky, backstabbing second-in-command who always wants to lead the Decepticons, but is neither strong enough to bump Megsy off and take his place, [[Sindri Myr|smart enough to trick him to his death]], or [[Eliphas|charismatic enough to persuade others he wouldn't be as bad a boss]]. Sometimes Megatron himself wonders why he keeps Starscream around, but (when the writers remember) he is actually an extremely competent air commander who just happens to have a bunch of recolored clones, including a [[Rule 63]] one. He usually turns into the latest and greatest fighter jet (unless he's turning into some Cybertronian future-jet) -- historically an F-15, F-16, or F-22. In the original cartoon, his catchphrase (delivered in the classic 80s-villain screech -- in fact, his first voice actor also voiced the similarly screechy Cobra Commander in G.I. Joe) was probably ''"Decepticons, RETREEEAT!"'' Was also voiced by fucking Tom ''"Spongebob Squarepants"'' Kenny in Animated, man is that a blow to your dignity. Nowadays, though, he's more consistently competent (and given a more menacing voice by [[Steve Blum]] in Transformers Prime). Is such a total backstabbing traitor that "The Starscream" has entered pop-culture as a term to describe someone who seems more dedicated to fucking his own team over in ostensible pursuit of power than to actually beating the guys he's supposed to fight.

*'''Soundwave''' A major character for the Decepticons as Megatron's legitimately loyal number two. Is also the biggest source of Nostalgia because he turns into a fucking tapedeck.<strike>Even though he lacks a personality</strike>'''SOUNDWAVE SUPERIOR PAGE WRITER INFERIOR''', he manages to be awesome merely through dogged determination and because he's the one guy who'll never give anyone any bullshit. He has a bunch of minions who turn into cassettes (or goddamn guitars in Animated's case), but the main ones are '''Rumble''' (Whose arms turn into piledrivers so he can cause earthquakes), '''Frenzy''' (Who has a sonic scream), '''Ravage''' (A fucking robot jaguar who turns into a cassette), '''Laserbeak''' (A robot bird), and '''Ratbat''' (a robot bat). The IDW comic gave him an origin about how he used to be homeless due to his mind reading powers until Laserbeak and Ravage found him and helped him control them.

*'''Shockwave''': The real mad scientist of the Decepticons, whose arm is a gun and also turned into a gun in G1 (a giant flying gun). While he's also pretty loyal to Megatron, he's nowhere near Soundwave levels because his true loyalty is to pure logic. Most series has him have some involvement with the Dinobots, either by creating them, or just they have major beef with him (he doesn't give a shit as he has better things to do). He's another guy who happened to be blessed by [[Steve Blum]] in the Cybertron series. The idw comics gave him an origin about how he used to be an idealistic Noblebright senator (and Optimus BFF) until he got lobotomized.

*'''Unicron''': The closest thing to a Chaos God/Elder God. He's a giant fucking transforming planet who eats other planets and will dick over anyone that betrays him. so basically the Marvel supervillain Galactus crossed with the Death Star (Marvel was heavily involed with the original toy-line so that influence is obvious). Premiered in the '86 movie, where he was voiced by the late Orson Welles, and appeared again in the animu trilogy, where he got to wrap up the first series and become the main focus of the third series as a dimensional balance. Began life in the '86 movie as an enigmatic alien figure (who was more plot device to introduce new characters and kill old ones than a villain), revealed in the next season to have been made by some crazy alien scientist who promptly got his planet nommed for it. The comics of the time instead made him a Satanic robo-god who has been hating on all life since the beginning of the universe. That fucking anime trilogy not only pulled this interpretation back, but made it "official", saying there's only one Unicorn in the entire multiverse - at least, they tried. The comics pay more attention to it, but the shows tend to avoid it; witness Prime, where Unicron is actually sleeping at the heart of Earth instead of running around eating planets.

*'''Primus''': The Emprah to Unicron's Chaos God, except he's an actual god...who actually transformed into a planet and fell asleep for a fuckton of years. In this form, he became Cybertron. Like Satan!Unicron, he hails from the 80s comics and didn't make an appearance on the screen (other than a prophetic text/pseudo-bible named the Covenant of Primus in ''Beast Wars'') until the Energon Trilogy, which is where he's stayed.

==Generation One==
The original, the alpha iteration, the place where it all to began. At the time, it was just called "The Transformers", with a cartoon by the same name for three seasons (and two more seasons in Japan) from 1984-87 and the animated film "The Transformers: The Movie" in 1986. The movie's soundtrack is awesomely 80's, and it features the amazing song "The Touch" when Optimus Prime fights Megatron. Quite literally, this movie shit all over Bay's multi-million crappers. Issue was that the movie was so good that it marked the peak for the young franchise and it began a downhill slide from there, with the show scrambling to cope with all the losses (yeah, lots of people died here. Even Optimus), while the toys began getting gimmickier without getting better.

The "Generation One" title was applied retroactively after Hasbro released the "Generation 2" line in 1993. By the way, G2 was the reason Transformers was considered dead for most of the 90's. The comic was that cheap sort of "gritty for no real reason" the 90's was infamous for and the toys had pretty much burned themselves out and no gimmick could really help them on that. There was also a shortl-ived "Transformers G2" show, but it was just G1 with new CGI openings/endings and scene changes, so it only lasted a few episodes before flopping.

Of note is that if you want to experience G1 without having to dig up the eps from some torrent or Netflix, you can get ''Transformers Devastation'', which is essentially an entire G1 Ep, except produced by Platinum Studios, the guys responsible for balls-to-the-walls hypefests like Metal Gear Rising, Bayonetta, and Wonderful 101 (aka /m/ the game). Most of the actors are present, there's murderfests and speed, and big bosses. Also you get to run idiots over (but no pedestrians). Only letdown is the short length of the game and the lack of Decepticon story and Abominus.

==Beast Wars==
The first Western-released sequel to G1 (there were two Japanese-only continuations to G1 that never got released outside of Japan and the G2 comic mentioned above), a CGI show created by Mainframe (also responsible for [[Reboot]] and [[War Planets]]). Set up as a "loose sequel" to G1, it involves new transformer races called "Maximals" (Autobots) and "Predacons" (Decepticons).

A Predacon terrorist leader styling himself after the original Megatron, including taking his name, hijacks an artifact with a mysterious connection to Megatron the first and goes on the run into deep space with a band of terrorists, planning on restarting the Great War and this time causing a Predacon victory. A Maximal deep-space exploration vessel commanded by Optimus Primal attempts to intercept, and both vessels end up stranded on a mysterious alien world, where an overabundance of raw Energon crystals forces them to adopt the forms of local fauna to preserve themselves. The two forces promptly start trying to wipe each other out and then escape the planet. There's also a sideplot involving an ancient alien civilization that ends itself just before the Season 3 finale.

They would eventually find out that this strange world was actually Earth, which was where Megatron II was trying to get all along, and they find the wreckage of the Ark of the original series, when new Megatron decides to headshot Prime in order to change the future for his benefit. It kinda flops when new Optimus takes part of old Optimus' soul, gets another upgrade and becomes sorta-truck. It inspires Megatron II to try the same trick with his namesake, turning him into a huge firebreathing dragon-bot.

Though Hasbro would mostly consign this story to oblivion after Beast Machines, the characters of Blackarachnia (sexy spider-bot who changes from evil to good thanks to love) and Waspinator (the walking punching bag who the heroes almost invariably blow up only to be fixed later), along with the concept of the Spark (essentially, Transformers' Souls) would be re-used in later eras. More importantly, this show saved the franchise after Generation 2 almost killed it.

==Beast Machines==
Sequel series to ''Beast Wars''. On returning to Cybertron, our heroes are attacked by armies of transforming cookie-cutter drones. It eventually turns out that Megatron broke free from the Maximals' prison and flew back to Cybertron before them; he infected the entire planet with a cyber-virus that put them all into comas, ripped out their hearts/souls and stashed them in some hidden bunker, and melted down their bodies to rebuild them into mindless robot slaves.

Awesomely grimdark concept, but hampered by two huge flaws. Firstly, a super-annoying green aesop, which was very clumsily handled because this is a planet of talking robots, not nature. More importantly, major character derailment -- it was made by a different team to ''Beast Wars'', and they weren't even allowed to watch the first series to familiarize themselves with how the Maximals were supposed to behave, so it'd be "more accessible".

Probably why Hasbro only recycles G1 instead of trying to do its own thing with new shows, the way these two shows did. Even though it was their own damn fault because they ''made'' this series into what it turned out being. Time has been kinder to it, though, after the initial rage and denouncement.

==Robots in Disguise==
An obscure anime that came out roughly a few months before ''Armada''. Best known for its gag dub and general comedic focus that makes it surprisingly laughable, and certainly more fun to watch than any of the ''Energon Trilogy''. Usually forgotten about, except for the fact that Megatron here has six fucking modes of transformation (ten after upgrading to Galvatron). General consensus is that is far from the best or worst series, it's just "meh."

Funnily enough, there is also another series that got the same name in 2015, this one being a bit more notable, if only because this time Prime's relegated to the Obi-Wan, while Bumblebee (once again with a voice) has to take command of an ex-con, a stickler, and slightly-smarter Grimlock in helping some kid and his dad's junkyard and detaining runaway Decepticon inmates, all of whom aren't related to the main bads, so some originality there. There was a 'con in it called Slapper. That is all.

==Energon Trilogy==
Comprised of the shows ''Armada'', ''Energon'', and ''Cybertron'', which are also called the ''Unicron Trilogy'' due to the antagonist's return to the spotlight after being virtually nonexistent since The Movie. Anime reinterpretation of G1, decaying from "poor but watchable" to "completely unwatchable dreck" for all the reasons people hate [[/a/]]: bad dubbing, overly lengthy scenes of nothing, a shift to crappy CGI, and a plot that is so terribly paced and search-questy that you'd be praying for your GM to be railroading this. On the plus-side, competent badass Starscream (who unfortunately inspired a whole generation of Linkin Park listening wannabes). On the downside, far too much focus on humans and not enough on giant robots trying to kill each other. Kicker, from the later series, is considered one of the worst human sidekicks the Transformers have ever had.

It has been said that, for all the failings of ''Beast Machines'', at least it's better than this trilogy. That at least had the mercy of ending in two half-sized seasons instead of three full-sized ones.

==Michael Bay Films==
The dark force known as Michael Bay bought Transformers back as a series of live-action + CGI movies. Considered the [[Matt Ward]] of the Transformers universe, Bay's movies are rage-inducing [[fail]]s that have far too much focus on annoying human characters and on lowbrow humor. Seriously, in the first movie, we don't get to see an Autobot for, like, 30 minutes while dealing with very bland characters who get billed way too much, and we have to facepalm our way through an awful gag about Bumblebee basically ''pissing on a guy''. The second one is no better with two black/redneck stereotypes as ''heroes'', a gag about balls, and a two-for-one gag about farting/incontinence - from a Transformer, no less. Real classy, Bay.

About the only shallow redeeming qualities it has is that the CGI Transformers look amazing (even if some neckbeards have cracked up over how they're "not accurate" to the G1 character modes), the fight scenes are suitably glorious for giant alien death-machines ripping each other to pieces, and most importantly is it has introduced Transformers to a whole new generation of fans, who can hopefully be shown the good stuff instead of thinking this garbage is the true representative of the setting.

After the trilogy Bay made a fourth movie which actually manages to make some considerable improvements (not that it was that hard), like a lot more of focus on Optimus Prime, killing the scrappy comic relief during the first part of the movie and more consistent fighting scenes, plus DINOBOTS! charging the enemy. There is also more grimdark as Optimus finally decides enough is enough after having tried to protect mankind for more than 5 years while having his whole team slaughtered by those he sworn to protect and pulls a gun against a human frakker who was teaming up with the mercenary Lockdown to kill Autobots and use their remains to make their own giant robots that turn into cars (Except this time it's like the T-1000 where they turn into nanobot swarms). On the downside, though, the humans are still pointless tagalongs (though this is a new set of humans, no Shia Lebouf to be found here), pointless stereotypes (Like Weeaboo Samurai-bot Drift, Crosshairs, who for some reason gets a fucking trenchcoat when he transforms, and Hound, who somehow has a cigar and a wire-beard), and the ridiculous need to hammer in the "us vs. them" mentality between the humans making their own Transformers and Lockdown trying to kill Optimus because he's betrayed their makers by siding with the humans.

==Animated==
G1 inspired series with notoriously unusual but smooth animation. This time, Optimus Prime and his crew are lowly space janitors who stumble across a superweapon from the Great War and have to defend it against Megatron ('''GIVING HIM A GODDAMN ENGLISH ACCENT FUCK YES'''), who seeks to use it to restart the war and this time ensure Decepticon victory. This version's Optimus is much younger and less experienced than usual; funnily enough, he was voiced by the actor who voiced Megatron in Beast Wars. Generally noted for having the best human sidekick (who turns out to really be part-transformer anyways). The other Autobots also tend to have some interesting characterizations from "Complete dumb muscle who actually knows everything about building [[Webway|Space Bridges]]" Bulkhead to "[[Weeaboo]] Robo-Ninja" Prowl to "MY EGO IS AS BIG AS MY CHIN AND MY ASSHOLEITUDE IS EVEN BIGGER!" Sentinel Prime. The Decepticons sometimes do better with the schizophrenic Blitzwing, the [[Lorgar|borderline-religiously loyal]] Lugnut, and badass robo-Clint Eastwood Lockdown.

The series was weird in that alongside the Decepticons were also some gimmicky human villains from a Shakespearean Robin Hood knockoff to a cute little girl who's a mad scientist to another mad scientist who rips off Transformer heads to replicate an old G1 gimmick. These villains were a bit ridiculous, but it helped break up the monotony of the constant 'con fighting, especially when Megatron was reduced to a state worse than [[Abaddon]] as a head. The creators came up with the idea to emphasize just how dangerous the 'cons are, compared to their Autobot opponents; when ''one'' 'con shows up, it's an emergency that takes the whole team to try and pull out a win. Hell, ''Starscream'' could beat up the entire Autobot team in his first few appearances before they figured out how to handle him.

==Cybertron Series==
There were many, MANY, video games made for every part of the Transformers, but most of them ranged from forgettable to utter shit. The closest these guys got to a good original game series (so no whining about the Movie-Games) were the games ''War for Cybertron'' and ''Fall of Cybertron'', both made by High Moon Studios.

These games act as the [[Horus Heresy]] to G1's 40K by explaining how Optimus became a leader and how Megatron became a dictator while their war and its demand eventually destroyed their homeworld. While the gameplay itself isn't much more than a basic third-person shooter, the vast amount of references to the rest of the series and the rather well-written story and characters make it stand out, ''Fall of Cybertron'' may be considered the most grimdark setting of the whole series while not being as totally ham-handed like Beast Machines. It also helps that the second game gave some bonus variety in some segments by giving you a level as a FUCKING ROBOT DINOSAUR named Grimlock, and another where you get to play as a combiner (who has an awesome helicopter-arm, but is otherwise not very memorable besides being huge). Overall great fights, no crappy human sidekicks, awesome OST and all the grimdarkness needed to make any neckbeard enjoy it quite much, also ESCALATION mode will ensure you endless hours of good bloodless carnage.

There is a third game -sorta- called ''Rise of the Dark Spark'', which decides to make the stupid decision of merging this series to the Bayformers continuity. It was released as tie in game with fourth movie and has less of budget, clearly shown with its number of glitches, lack of variety in levels (mostly just enemies till the game lets you move on) and downright ugly environments for the levels set on Earth. The only thing to remember is that the Cybertron segments are still awesome, while later parts will just shoehorn you with mutebee and Drift (who at least has an awesome special attack), with one level playing as Grimlock again and lacking any Decepticon plot post-Cybertron.

==Prime==
G1 inspired CGI series that somehow salvages the fairly decent elements of Michael Bay's crapfest movies (e.g. Peter Cullen and Frank Welker reprising their respective roles, artstyle, some character elements/background lore, [[Rip and Tear]]) and crafts an awesome show out of it. Animation is fucking amazing, with fight scenes that rival if not trump the Michael Bay films. Very dark and gritty as well, where one of the Autobots [[Awesome|(voiced by the Rock himself, mind you)]], gets wacked off in ''the first episode.'' Also, [[what|blue energon as blood.]] A few other things of note; this is where the funny "Steve the Vehicon" meme originated from and this series is known to poke fun as the old G1 series (most notably Starscream's null ray and a joke about the Dinobots).

Biggest major problem is Miko, who is tying with Kicker (from the abovementioned ''Energon Trilogy'') for the title "worst human sidekick in a Transformers show, ever!" Obnoxiously gungho and always charging off into danger, even when told not to, invariably making things worse for the Autobots in the process. Still, this series easily has some of the best human characters, most notably Agent Fowler, who trolls Starscream while getting tortured by him.

Then there's Predacons Rising; the made-for-tv movie meant to serve as a series finale... it was questionable at best. Plot holes everywhere, very little focus on the actual Predacons in the title, and characters doing stupid and random things to simply fit the plot. It was basically a segway into the next series; Robots in Disguise.

== See Also ==
While no official roleplaying or tabletop games exist, the idea of "giant robots turning into vehicles" is so cool that lots of homebrew and independent mecha RPGs include mechas or characters that are ''totally NOT the Transformers, we swear!'' For example:

* [[Giant Guardian Generation]]
* [[Horizon]] - Mechamorphosis is literally "Transformers with the serial numbers filed off, done by way of [[Dungeons & Dragons]] 3.5".
* [[Mekton]] - Extremely flexible with what it can do: the rules for transforming are simple (as far as Mekton goes anyway) and adapting to a Transformers setting, but the game's hilariously broken.
* [[Rifts]] - Some homebrew stuff floating around on the net for playing Transformers exists. Pity it relies on the godawful RIFTS mechanics...
* [[Codex: Transformers]] - A case of 1d4chan getting shit done, adapting Transformers into yet another [[Warhammer 40000]] faction.
* [[Setting:Transformers]] - A tie-in article to the above trying to develop the lore to explain why Codex: Transformers is a thing.

== External Links ==
* [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Main_Page TFWiki.net], a wiki dedicated to all things Transformers. They take a pretty laid-back, humorous approach to their material that will be familiar to readers of this wiki (although usually not so profane).

[[Category:Not related]]

Transformers

2016-04-05T10:36:10Z

2605:E000:7ECF:7F00:954D:7FE4:D7B3:9F94: /* Main Guys */

[[File:Generation 1 by DonFig.jpg|850px|thumbnail|right|And these are just your characters from G1!]]
'''Transformers''' is a series of Robot Toys created by [[Hasbro]] and Takara Tomy that typically turn into cars and other vehicles. Robots are cool, cars are cool and so they became popular. In 1984 they made some comics and a cartoon show. The comics show created a lot of toy sales and the toys kept the shows and comics popular. Over the years they changed things up to sell more toys and new series were made, some worked quite well (Beast Wars, Prime) others did not (Armada, Energon, Cybertron).

Why does this have no tabletop or role playing game? Only [[/co/|comics, cartoons,]] [[/a/|anime,]] [[/v/|and finally video games.]] So much potential. Seriously, it's a setting about sentient, shapeshifting robots fighting a war that spans motivations from political to racial to theological. Hasbro owns [[Magic: The Gathering]] and [[Dungeons & Dragons]] via [[Wizards of the Coast]], so it's not like they've never done tabletop stuff before. How the fuck has nobody realised the money-making potential there?

==Main Guys==
As the series come and go, a certain bevvy of characters seem to be archetypical to the Transformers. Not helped by the fact that, ever since the flop of ''Beast Machines'' and the riotous financial successes of the Bay, Hasbro seems to only ever stick with recycling Generation One, with some other characters jumping continuities. These are the Transformers who appear in some form or another in every iteration of the setting.

*'''Optimus Prime''': Leader of the Autobots, [[Lawful Good]] to the computer-core, the Big Red Hero-bot himself. There's always an Optimus leading the Autobots, and he usually turns into some kind of red truck or hauler. His name is the Latin words for "best" and "first", and he really is both. In the original show (and in the Michael Bay movies -- one of the decent things about them -- and Transformers Prime and the Cybertron games), he was voiced by Peter Cullen, whose awesome deep voice you probably hear in your head whenever you read any of his dialogue. Check it out: ''"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."'' Also has the record of dying the most times out of anyone ever, making one wonder how the hell the GM lets him get away with it each time.

*'''Megatron''': If there's an Optimus Prime, there's always a Megatron, the Evil (of some flavor, depending on the series) to his Lawful Good. Megsy remains pretty consistent throughout his appearances, usually varying only in what level of honor he has (which usually depends on his backstory; sometimes he started as a charismatic gladiator turned freedom fighter against the corrupt Cybertronian government -- [[Angron]], anyone? -- but sometimes he's just nuts) and/or how much of a cold-blooded psychopath he is. He used to turn into a gun (which could inexplicably shrink down to be small enough to be wielded by another Decepticon), with the barrel giving him a wicked arm cannon in robot mode, but nowadays he usually turns into a tank or a jet. He was first voiced by Frank Welker, whose versatile voice was also used for just about every other Decepticon except for Starscream (and probably at least one role in just about every cartoon ever made), though David Kaye also did a bang-up job in Beast Wars, ''yeeesss''.
**'''Galvatron''':Whenever there is a Megatron there is a Galvatron. He's everything you love about the M taken up to eleven. This guy is seriously bad news, he's probably insane and violent enough to give Doombreed pause and he's probably the strongest non-God transformer there is in G1 comics it takes a friggin time vortex to finally put him down. Originally voiced by Leonard Nimoy (that's right, Spock voiced this psycho) after a dying Megatron had a lovely chat with Unicron. He had a pretty new identity forced onto him. Didn't work for long though Galvy kind of went off the reservation pretty quickly.

*'''Bumblebee''': The yellow kid-friendly one, he's usually the main one to interact with the resident token humans. He usually turns into a sports car. Can be surprisingly badass in some adaptations -- his ''Beast Wars'' counterpart, Cheetor, went on to basically take Optimus Primal's place as leader of the Maximals in ''Beast Machines''. However, thanks to the abominations of Michael Bay, he will probably never speak again. Not that his VA was good or anything, mind, but that "mute who talks only in radio quotes/beeps and boops like a 60s robot" shit just gets ANNOYING.

*'''Grimlock''': A fuckmothering [[AWESOME|robot Tyrannosaurus]] that usually breaths fire. He also has a pack of other robot dinosaurs called the '''Dinobots'''. He's not exactly smart (well sometimes, he's either a stupid beast or a no nonsense leader with a speech problem), but who cares about that? HE'LL FUCKING EAT YOU. No seriously he once ripped Shockwave's arm off an ate it.

*'''Starscream''': Megatron's loud-mouthed, whiny, scheming, sneaky, backstabbing second-in-command who always wants to lead the Decepticons, but is neither strong enough to bump Megsy off and take his place, [[Sindri Myr|smart enough to trick him to his death]], or [[Eliphas|charismatic enough to persuade others he wouldn't be as bad a boss]]. Sometimes Megatron himself wonders why he keeps Starscream around, but (when the writers remember) he is actually an extremely competent air commander who just happens to have a bunch of recolored clones, including a [[Rule 63]] one. He usually turns into the latest and greatest fighter jet (unless he's turning into some Cybertronian future-jet) -- historically an F-15, F-16, or F-22. In the original cartoon, his catchphrase (delivered in the classic 80s-villain screech -- in fact, his first voice actor also voiced the similarly screechy Cobra Commander in G.I. Joe) was probably ''"Decepticons, RETREEEAT!"'' Was also voiced by fucking Tom ''"Spongebob Squarepants"'' Kenny in Animated, man is that a blow to your dignity. Nowadays, though, he's more consistently competent (and given a more menacing voice by [[Steve Blum]] in Transformers Prime). Is such a total backstabbing traitor that "The Starscream" has entered pop-culture as a term to describe someone who seems more dedicated to fucking his own team over in ostensible pursuit of power than to actually beating the guys he's supposed to fight.

*'''Soundwave''' A major character for the Decepticons as Megatron's legitimately loyal number two. Is also the biggest source of Nostalgia because he turns into a fucking tapedeck.<strike>Even though he lacks a personality</strike>'''SOUNDWAVE SUPERIOR PAGE WRITER INFERIOR''', he manages to be awesome merely through dogged determination and because he's the one guy who'll never give anyone any bullshit. He has a bunch of minions who turn into cassettes (or goddamn guitars in Animated's case), but the main ones are '''Rumble''' (Whose arms turn into piledrivers so he can cause earthquakes), '''Frenzy''' (Who has a sonic scream), '''Ravage''' (A fucking robot jaguar who turns into a cassette), '''Laserbeak''' (A robot bird), and '''Ratbat''' (a robot bat). The IDW comic gave him an origin about how he used to be homeless due to his mind reading powers until Laserbeak and Ravage found him and helped him control them.

*'''Shockwave''': The real mad scientist of the Decepticons, whose arm is a gun and also turned into a gun in G1 (a giant flying gun). While he's also pretty loyal to Megatron, he's nowhere near Soundwave levels because his true loyalty is to pure logic. Most series has him have some involvement with the Dinobots, either by creating them, or just they have major beef with him (he doesn't give a shit as he has better things to do). He's another guy who happened to be blessed by [[Steve Blum]] in the Cybertron series. The idw comics gave him an origin about how he used to be an idealistic Noblebright senator (and Optimus BFF) until he got lobotomized.

*'''Unicron''': The closest thing to a Chaos God/Elder God. He's a giant fucking transforming planet who eats other planets and will dick over anyone that betrays him. so basically the Marvel supervillain Galactus crossed with the Death Star (Marvel was heavily involed with the original toy-line so that influence is obvious). Premiered in the '86 movie, where he was voiced by the late Orson Welles, and appeared again in the animu trilogy, where he got to wrap up the first series and become the main focus of the third series as a dimensional balance. Began life in the '86 movie as an enigmatic alien figure (who was more plot device to introduce new characters and kill old ones than a villain), revealed in the next season to have been made by some crazy alien scientist who promptly got his planet nommed for it. The comics of the time instead made him a Satanic robo-god who has been hating on all life since the beginning of the universe. That fucking anime trilogy not only pulled this interpretation back, but made it "official", saying there's only one Unicorn in the entire multiverse - at least, they tried. The comics pay more attention to it, but the shows tend to avoid it; witness Prime, where Unicron is actually sleeping at the heart of Earth instead of running around eating planets.

*'''Primus''': The Emprah to Unicron's Chaos God, except he's an actual god...who actually transformed into a planet and fell asleep for a fuckton of years. In this form, he became Cybertron. Like Satan!Unicron, he hails from the 80s comics and didn't make an appearance on the screen (other than a prophetic text/pseudo-bible named the Covenant of Primus in ''Beast Wars'') until the Energon Trilogy, which is where he's stayed.

==Generation One==
The original, the alpha iteration, the place where it all to began. At the time, it was just called "The Transformers", with a cartoon by the same name for three seasons (and two more seasons in Japan) from 1984-87 and the animated film "The Transformers: The Movie" in 1986. The movie's soundtrack is awesomely 80's, and it features the amazing song "The Touch" when Optimus Prime fights Megatron. Quite literally, this movie shit all over Bay's multi-million crappers. Issue was that the movie was so good that it marked the peak for the young franchise and it began a downhill slide from there, with the show scrambling to cope with all the losses (yeah, lots of people died here. Even Optimus), while the toys began getting gimmickier without getting better.

The "Generation One" title was applied retroactively after Hasbro released the "Generation 2" line in 1993. By the way, G2 was the reason Transformers was considered dead for most of the 90's. The comic was that cheap sort of "gritty for no real reason" the 90's was infamous for and the toys had pretty much burned themselves out and no gimmick could really help them on that. There was also a shortl-ived "Transformers G2" show, but it was just G1 with new CGI openings/endings and scene changes, so it only lasted a few episodes before flopping.

Of note is that if you want to experience G1 without having to dig up the eps from some torrent or Netflix, you can get ''Transformers Devastation'', which is essentially an entire G1 Ep, except produced by Platinum Studios, the guys responsible for balls-to-the-walls hypefests like Metal Gear Rising, Bayonetta, and Wonderful 101 (aka /m/ the game). Most of the actors are present, there's murderfests and speed, and big bosses. Also you get to run idiots over (but no pedestrians). Only letdown is the short length of the game and the lack of Decepticon story and Abominus.

==Beast Wars==
The first Western-released sequel to G1 (there were two Japanese-only continuations to G1 that never got released outside of Japan and the G2 comic mentioned above), a CGI show created by Mainframe (also responsible for [[Reboot]] and [[War Planets]]). Set up as a "loose sequel" to G1, it involves new transformer races called "Maximals" (Autobots) and "Predacons" (Decepticons).

A Predacon terrorist leader styling himself after the original Megatron, including taking his name, hijacks an artifact with a mysterious connection to Megatron the first and goes on the run into deep space with a band of terrorists, planning on restarting the Great War and this time causing a Predacon victory. A Maximal deep-space exploration vessel commanded by Optimus Primal attempts to intercept, and both vessels end up stranded on a mysterious alien world, where an overabundance of raw Energon crystals forces them to adopt the forms of local fauna to preserve themselves. The two forces promptly start trying to wipe each other out and then escape the planet. There's also a sideplot involving an ancient alien civilization that ends itself just before the Season 3 finale.

They would eventually find out that this strange world was actually Earth, which was where Megatron II was trying to get all along, and they find the wreckage of the Ark of the original series, when new Megatron decides to headshot Prime in order to change the future for his benefit. It kinda flops when new Optimus takes part of old Optimus' soul, gets another upgrade and becomes sorta-truck. It inspires Megatron II to try the same trick with his namesake, turning him into a huge firebreathing dragon-bot.

Though Hasbro would mostly consign this story to oblivion after Beast Machines, the characters of Blackarachnia (sexy spider-bot who changes from evil to good thanks to love) and Waspinator (the walking punching bag who the heroes almost invariably blow up only to be fixed later), along with the concept of the Spark (essentially, Transformers' Souls) would be re-used in later eras. More importantly, this show saved the franchise Generation 2 almost killed it.

==Beast Machines==
Sequel series to ''Beast Wars''. On returning to Cybertron, our heroes are attacked by armies of transforming cookie-cutter drones. It eventually turns out that Megatron broke free from the Maximals' prison and flew back to Cybertron before them; he infected the entire planet with a cyber-virus that put them all into comas, ripped out their hearts/souls and stashed them in some hidden bunker, and melted down their bodies to rebuild them into mindless robot slaves.

Awesomely grimdark concept, but hampered by two huge flaws. Firstly, a super-annoying green aesop, which was very clumsily handled because this is a planet of talking robots, not nature. More importantly, major character derailment -- it was made by a different team to ''Beast Wars'', and they weren't even allowed to watch the first series to familiarize themselves with how the Maximals were supposed to behave, so it'd be "more accessible".

Probably why Hasbro only recycles G1 instead of trying to do its own thing with new shows, the way these two shows did. Even though it was their own damn fault because they ''made'' this series into what it turned out being. Time has been kinder to it, though, after the initial rage and denouncement.

==Robots in Disguise==
An obscure anime that came out roughly a few months before ''Armada''. Best known for its gag dub and general comedic focus that makes it surprisingly laughable, and certainly more fun to watch than any of the ''Energon Trilogy''. Usually forgotten about, except for the fact that Megatron here has six fucking modes of transformation (ten after upgrading to Galvatron). General consensus is that is far from the best or worst series, it's just "meh."

Funnily enough, there is also another series that got the same name in 2015, this one being a bit more notable, if only because this time Prime's relegated to the Obi-Wan, while Bumblebee (once again with a voice) has to take command of an ex-con, a stickler, and slightly-smarter Grimlock in helping some kid and his dad's junkyard and detaining runaway Decepticon inmates, all of whom aren't related to the main bads, so some originality there. There was a 'con in it called Slapper. That is all.

==Energon Trilogy==
Comprised of the shows ''Armada'', ''Energon'', and ''Cybertron'', which are also called the ''Unicron Trilogy'' due to the antagonist's return to the spotlight after being virtually nonexistent since The Movie. Anime reinterpretation of G1, decaying from "poor but watchable" to "completely unwatchable dreck" for all the reasons people hate [[/a/]]: bad dubbing, overly lengthy scenes of nothing, a shift to crappy CGI, and a plot that is so terribly paced and search-questy that you'd be praying for your GM to be railroading this. On the plus-side, competent badass Starscream (who unfortunately inspired a whole generation of Linkin Park listening wannabes). On the downside, far too much focus on humans and not enough on giant robots trying to kill each other. Kicker, from the later series, is considered one of the worst human sidekicks the Transformers have ever had.

It has been said that, for all the failings of ''Beast Machines'', at least it's better than this trilogy. That at least had the mercy of ending in two half-sized seasons instead of three full-sized ones.

==Michael Bay Films==
The dark force known as Michael Bay bought Transformers back as a series of live-action + CGI movies. Considered the [[Matt Ward]] of the Transformers universe, Bay's movies are rage-inducing [[fail]]s that have far too much focus on annoying human characters and on lowbrow humor. Seriously, in the first movie, we don't get to see an Autobot for, like, 30 minutes while dealing with very bland characters who get billed way too much, and we have to facepalm our way through an awful gag about Bumblebee basically ''pissing on a guy''. The second one is no better with two black/redneck stereotypes as ''heroes'', a gag about balls, and a two-for-one gag about farting/incontinence - from a Transformer, no less. Real classy, Bay.

About the only shallow redeeming qualities it has is that the CGI Transformers look amazing (even if some neckbeards have cracked up over how they're "not accurate" to the G1 character modes), the fight scenes are suitably glorious for giant alien death-machines ripping each other to pieces, and most importantly is it has introduced Transformers to a whole new generation of fans, who can hopefully be shown the good stuff instead of thinking this garbage is the true representative of the setting.

After the trilogy Bay made a fourth movie which actually manages to make some considerable improvements (not that it was that hard), like a lot more of focus on Optimus Prime, killing the scrappy comic relief during the first part of the movie and more consistent fighting scenes, plus DINOBOTS! charging the enemy. There is also more grimdark as Optimus finally decides enough is enough after having tried to protect mankind for more than 5 years while having his whole team slaughtered by those he sworn to protect and pulls a gun against a human frakker who was teaming up with the mercenary Lockdown to kill Autobots and use their remains to make their own giant robots that turn into cars (Except this time it's like the T-1000 where they turn into nanobot swarms). On the downside, though, the humans are still pointless tagalongs (though this is a new set of humans, no Shia Lebouf to be found here), pointless stereotypes (Like Weeaboo Samurai-bot Drift, Crosshairs, who for some reason gets a fucking trenchcoat when he transforms, and Hound, who somehow has a cigar and a wire-beard), and the ridiculous need to hammer in the "us vs. them" mentality between the humans making their own Transformers and Lockdown trying to kill Optimus because he's betrayed their makers by siding with the humans.

==Animated==
G1 inspired series with notoriously unusual but smooth animation. This time, Optimus Prime and his crew are lowly space janitors who stumble across a superweapon from the Great War and have to defend it against Megatron ('''GIVING HIM A GODDAMN ENGLISH ACCENT FUCK YES'''), who seeks to use it to restart the war and this time ensure Decepticon victory. This version's Optimus is much younger and less experienced than usual; funnily enough, he was voiced by the actor who voiced Megatron in Beast Wars. Generally noted for having the best human sidekick (who turns out to really be part-transformer anyways). The other Autobots also tend to have some interesting characterizations from "Complete dumb muscle who actually knows everything about building [[Webway|Space Bridges]]" Bulkhead to "[[Weeaboo]] Robo-Ninja" Prowl to "MY EGO IS AS BIG AS MY CHIN AND MY ASSHOLEITUDE IS EVEN BIGGER!" Sentinel Prime. The Decepticons sometimes do better with the schizophrenic Blitzwing, the [[Lorgar|borderline-religiously loyal]] Lugnut, and badass robo-Clint Eastwood Lockdown.

The series was weird in that alongside the Decepticons were also some gimmicky human villains from a Shakespearean Robin Hood knockoff to a cute little girl who's a mad scientist to another mad scientist who rips off Transformer heads to replicate an old G1 gimmick. These villains were a bit ridiculous, but it helped break up the monotony of the constant 'con fighting, especially when Megatron was reduced to a state worse than [[Abaddon]] as a head. The creators came up with the idea to emphasize just how dangerous the 'cons are, compared to their Autobot opponents; when ''one'' 'con shows up, it's an emergency that takes the whole team to try and pull out a win. Hell, ''Starscream'' could beat up the entire Autobot team in his first few appearances before they figured out how to handle him.

==Cybertron Series==
There were many, MANY, video games made for every part of the Transformers, but most of them ranged from forgettable to utter shit. The closest these guys got to a good original game series (so no whining about the Movie-Games) were the games ''War for Cybertron'' and ''Fall of Cybertron'', both made by High Moon Studios.

These games act as the [[Horus Heresy]] to G1's 40K by explaining how Optimus became a leader and how Megatron became a dictator while their war and its demand eventually destroyed their homeworld. While the gameplay itself isn't much more than a basic third-person shooter, the vast amount of references to the rest of the series and the rather well-written story and characters make it stand out, ''Fall of Cybertron'' may be considered the most grimdark setting of the whole series while not being as totally ham-handed like Beast Machines. It also helps that the second game gave some bonus variety in some segments by giving you a level as a FUCKING ROBOT DINOSAUR named Grimlock, and another where you get to play as a combiner (who has an awesome helicopter-arm, but is otherwise not very memorable besides being huge). Overall great fights, no crappy human sidekicks, awesome OST and all the grimdarkness needed to make any neckbeard enjoy it quite much, also ESCALATION mode will ensure you endless hours of good bloodless carnage.

There is a third game -sorta- called ''Rise of the Dark Spark'', which decides to make the stupid decision of merging this series to the Bayformers continuity. It was released as tie in game with fourth movie and has less of budget, clearly shown with its number of glitches, lack of variety in levels (mostly just enemies till the game lets you move on) and downright ugly environments for the levels set on Earth. The only thing to remember is that the Cybertron segments are still awesome, while later parts will just shoehorn you with mutebee and Drift (who at least has an awesome special attack), with one level playing as Grimlock again and lacking any Decepticon plot post-Cybertron.

==Prime==
G1 inspired CGI series that somehow salvages the fairly decent elements of Michael Bay's crapfest movies (e.g. Peter Cullen and Frank Welker reprising their respective roles, artstyle, some character elements/background lore, [[Rip and Tear]]) and crafts an awesome show out of it. Animation is fucking amazing, with fight scenes that rival if not trump the Michael Bay films. Very dark and gritty as well, where one of the Autobots [[Awesome|(voiced by the Rock himself, mind you)]], gets wacked off in ''the first episode.'' Also, [[what|blue energon as blood.]] A few other things of note; this is where the funny "Steve the Vehicon" meme originated from and this series is known to poke fun as the old G1 series (most notably Starscream's null ray and a joke about the Dinobots).

Biggest major problem is Miko, who is tying with Kicker (from the abovementioned ''Energon Trilogy'') for the title "worst human sidekick in a Transformers show, ever!" Obnoxiously gungho and always charging off into danger, even when told not to, invariably making things worse for the Autobots in the process. Still, this series easily has some of the best human characters, most notably Agent Fowler, who trolls Starscream while getting tortured by him.

Then there's Predacons Rising; the made-for-tv movie meant to serve as a series finale... it was questionable at best. Plot holes everywhere, very little focus on the actual Predacons in the title, and characters doing stupid and random things to simply fit the plot. It was basically a segway into the next series; Robots in Disguise.

== See Also ==
While no official roleplaying or tabletop games exist, the idea of "giant robots turning into vehicles" is so cool that lots of homebrew and independent mecha RPGs include mechas or characters that are ''totally NOT the Transformers, we swear!'' For example:

* [[Giant Guardian Generation]]
* [[Horizon]] - Mechamorphosis is literally "Transformers with the serial numbers filed off, done by way of [[Dungeons & Dragons]] 3.5".
* [[Mekton]] - Extremely flexible with what it can do: the rules for transforming are simple (as far as Mekton goes anyway) and adapting to a Transformers setting, but the game's hilariously broken.
* [[Rifts]] - Some homebrew stuff floating around on the net for playing Transformers exists. Pity it relies on the godawful RIFTS mechanics...
* [[Codex: Transformers]] - A case of 1d4chan getting shit done, adapting Transformers into yet another [[Warhammer 40000]] faction.
* [[Setting:Transformers]] - A tie-in article to the above trying to develop the lore to explain why Codex: Transformers is a thing.

== External Links ==
* [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Main_Page TFWiki.net], a wiki dedicated to all things Transformers. They take a pretty laid-back, humorous approach to their material that will be familiar to readers of this wiki (although usually not so profane).

[[Category:Not related]]

Transformers

2016-04-05T10:33:03Z

2605:E000:7ECF:7F00:954D:7FE4:D7B3:9F94: /* Animated */

[[File:Generation 1 by DonFig.jpg|850px|thumbnail|right|And these are just your characters from G1!]]
'''Transformers''' is a series of Robot Toys created by [[Hasbro]] and Takara Tomy that typically turn into cars and other vehicles. Robots are cool, cars are cool and so they became popular. In 1984 they made some comics and a cartoon show. The comics show created a lot of toy sales and the toys kept the shows and comics popular. Over the years they changed things up to sell more toys and new series were made, some worked quite well (Beast Wars, Prime) others did not (Armada, Energon, Cybertron).

Why does this have no tabletop or role playing game? Only [[/co/|comics, cartoons,]] [[/a/|anime,]] [[/v/|and finally video games.]] So much potential. Seriously, it's a setting about sentient, shapeshifting robots fighting a war that spans motivations from political to racial to theological. Hasbro owns [[Magic: The Gathering]] and [[Dungeons & Dragons]] via [[Wizards of the Coast]], so it's not like they've never done tabletop stuff before. How the fuck has nobody realised the money-making potential there?

==Main Guys==
As the series come and go, a certain bevvy of characters seem to be archetypical to the Transformers. Not helped by the fact that, ever since the flop of ''Beast Machines'' and the riotous financial successes of the Bay, Hasbro seems to only ever stick with recycling Generation One, with some other characters jumping continuities. These are the Transformers who appear in some form or another in every iteration of the setting.

*'''Optimus Prime''': Leader of the Autobots, [[Lawful Good]] to the computer-core, the Big Red Hero-bot himself. There's always an Optimus leading the Autobots, and he usually turns into some kind of red truck or hauler. His name is the Latin words for "best" and "first", and he really is both. In the original show (and in the Michael Bay movies -- one of the decent things about them -- and Transformers Prime and the Cybertron games), he was voiced by Peter Cullen, whose awesome deep voice you probably hear in your head whenever you read any of his dialogue. Check it out: ''"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."'' Also has the record of dying the most times out of anyone ever, making one wonder how the hell the GM lets him get away with it each time.

*'''Megatron''': If there's an Optimus Prime, there's always a Megatron, the Evil (of some flavor, depending on the series) to his Lawful Good. Megsy remains pretty consistent throughout his appearances, usually varying only in what level of honor he has (which usually depends on his backstory; sometimes he started as a charismatic gladiator turned freedom fighter against the corrupt Cybertronian government -- [[Angron]], anyone? -- but sometimes he's just nuts) and/or how much of a cold-booted psychopath he is. He used to turn into a gun (which could inexplicably shrink down to be small enough to be wielded by another Decepticon), with the barrel giving him a wicked arm cannon in robot mode, but nowadays he usually turns into a tank or a jet. He was first voiced by Frank Welker, whose versatile voice was also used for just about every other Decepticon except for Starscream (and probably at least one role in just about every cartoon ever made), though David Kaye also did a bang-up job in Beast Wars, ''yeeesss''.
**'''Galvatron''':Whenever there is a Megatron there is a Galvatron. He's everything you love about the M taken up to eleven. This guy is seriously bad news, he's probably insane and violent enough to give Doombreed pause and he's probably the strongest non-God transformer there is in G1 comics it takes a friggin time vortex to finally put him down. Originally voiced by Leonard Nimoy (that's right, Spock voiced this psycho) after a dying Megatron had a lovely chat with Unicron. He had a pretty new identity forced onto him. Didn't work for long though Galvy kind of went off the reservation pretty quickly.

*'''Bumblebee''': The yellow kid-friendly one, he's usually the main one to interact with the resident token humans. He usually turns into a sports car. Can be surprisingly badass in some adaptations -- his ''Beast Wars'' counterpart, Cheetor, went on to basically take Optimus Primal's place as leader of the Maximals in ''Beast Machines''. However, thanks to the abominations of Michael Bay, he will probably never speak again. Not that his VA was good or anything, mind, but that "mute who talks only in radio quotes/beeps and boops like a 60s robot" shit just gets ANNOYING.

*'''Grimlock''': A fuckmothering [[AWESOME|robot Tyrannosaurus]] that usually breaths fire. He also has a pack of other robot dinosaurs called the '''Dinobots'''. He's not exactly smart (well sometimes, he's either a stupid beast or a no nonsense leader with a speech problem), but who cares about that? HE'LL FUCKING EAT YOU. No seriously he once ripped Shockwave's arm off an ate it.

*'''Starscream''': Megatron's loud-mouthed, whiny, scheming, sneaky, backstabbing second-in-command who always wants to lead the Decepticons, but is neither strong enough to bump Megsy off and take his place, [[Sindri Myr|smart enough to trick him to his death]], or [[Eliphas|charismatic enough to persuade others he wouldn't be as bad a boss]]. Sometimes Megatron himself wonders why he keeps Starscream around, but (when the writers remember) he is actually an extremely competent air commander who just happens to have a bunch of recolored clones, including a [[Rule 63]] one. He usually turns into the latest and greatest fighter jet (unless he's turning into some Cybertronian future-jet) -- historically an F-15, F-16, or F-22. In the original cartoon, his catchphrase (delivered in the classic 80s-villain screech -- in fact, his first voice actor also voiced the similarly screechy Cobra Commander in G.I. Joe) was probably ''"Decepticons, RETREEEAT!"'' Was also voiced by fucking Tom ''"Spongebob Squarepants"'' Kenny in Animated, man is that a blow to your dignity. Nowadays, though, he's more consistently competent (and given a more menacing voice by [[Steve Blum]] in Transformers Prime). Is such a total backstabbing traitor that "The Starscream" has entered pop-culture as a term to describe someone who seems more dedicated to fucking his own team over in ostensible pursuit of power than to actually beating the guys he's supposed to fight.

*'''Soundwave''' A major character for the Decepticons as Megatron's legitimately loyal number two. Is also the biggest source of Nostalgia because he turns into a fucking tapedeck.<strike>Even though he lacks a personality</strike>'''SOUNDWAVE SUPERIOR PAGE WRITER INFERIOR''', he manages to be awesome merely through dogged determination and because he's the one guy who'll never give anyone any bullshit. He has a bunch of minions who turn into cassettes (or goddamn guitars in Animated's case), but the main ones are '''Rumble''' (Whose arms turn into piledrivers so he can cause earthquakes), '''Frenzy''' (Who has a sonic scream), '''Ravage''' (A fucking robot jaguar who turns into a cassette), '''Laserbeak''' (A robot bird), and '''Ratbat''' (a robot bat). The IDW comic gave him an origin about how he used to be homeless due to his mind reading powers until Laserbeak and Ravage found him and helped him control them.

*'''Shockwave''': The real mad scientist of the Decepticons, whose arm is a gun and also turned into a gun in G1 (a giant flying gun). While he's also pretty loyal to Megatron, he's nowhere near Soundwave levels because his true loyalty is to pure logic. Most series has him have some involvement with the Dinobots, either by creating them, or just they have major beef with him (he doesn't give a shit as he has better things to do). He's another guy who happened to be blessed by [[Steve Blum]] in the Cybertron series. The idw comics gave him an origin about how he used to be an idealistic Noblebright senator (and Optimus BFF) until he got lobotomized.

*'''Unicron''': The closest thing to a Chaos God/Elder God. He's a giant fucking transforming planet who eats other planets and will dick over anyone that betrays him. so basically the Marvel supervillain Galactus crossed with the Death Star (Marvel was heavily involed with the original toy-line so that influence is obvious). Premiered in the '86 movie, where he was voiced by the late Orson Welles, and appeared again in the animu trilogy, where he got to wrap up the first series and become the main focus of the third series as a dimensional balance. Began life in the '86 movie as an enigmatic alien figure (who was more plot device to introduce new characters and kill old ones than a villain), revealed in the next season to have been made by some crazy alien scientist who promptly got his planet nommed for it. The comics of the time instead made him a Satanic robo-god who has been hating on all life since the beginning of the universe. That fucking anime trilogy not only pulled this interpretation back, but made it "official", saying there's only one Unicorn in the entire multiverse - at least, they tried. The comics pay more attention to it, but the shows tend to avoid it; witness Prime, where Unicron is actually sleeping at the heart of Earth instead of running around eating planets.

*'''Primus''': The Emprah to Unicron's Chaos God, except he's an actual god...who actually transformed into a planet and fell asleep for a fuckton of years. In this form, he became Cybertron. Like Satan!Unicron, he hails from the 80s comics and didn't make an appearance on the screen (other than a prophetic text/pseudo-bible named the Covenant of Primus in ''Beast Wars'') until the Energon Trilogy, which is where he's stayed.

==Generation One==
The original, the alpha iteration, the place where it all to began. At the time, it was just called "The Transformers", with a cartoon by the same name for three seasons (and two more seasons in Japan) from 1984-87 and the animated film "The Transformers: The Movie" in 1986. The movie's soundtrack is awesomely 80's, and it features the amazing song "The Touch" when Optimus Prime fights Megatron. Quite literally, this movie shit all over Bay's multi-million crappers. Issue was that the movie was so good that it marked the peak for the young franchise and it began a downhill slide from there, with the show scrambling to cope with all the losses (yeah, lots of people died here. Even Optimus), while the toys began getting gimmickier without getting better.

The "Generation One" title was applied retroactively after Hasbro released the "Generation 2" line in 1993. By the way, G2 was the reason Transformers was considered dead for most of the 90's. The comic was that cheap sort of "gritty for no real reason" the 90's was infamous for and the toys had pretty much burned themselves out and no gimmick could really help them on that. There was also a shortl-ived "Transformers G2" show, but it was just G1 with new CGI openings/endings and scene changes, so it only lasted a few episodes before flopping.

Of note is that if you want to experience G1 without having to dig up the eps from some torrent or Netflix, you can get ''Transformers Devastation'', which is essentially an entire G1 Ep, except produced by Platinum Studios, the guys responsible for balls-to-the-walls hypefests like Metal Gear Rising, Bayonetta, and Wonderful 101 (aka /m/ the game). Most of the actors are present, there's murderfests and speed, and big bosses. Also you get to run idiots over (but no pedestrians). Only letdown is the short length of the game and the lack of Decepticon story and Abominus.

==Beast Wars==
The first Western-released sequel to G1 (there were two Japanese-only continuations to G1 that never got released outside of Japan and the G2 comic mentioned above), a CGI show created by Mainframe (also responsible for [[Reboot]] and [[War Planets]]). Set up as a "loose sequel" to G1, it involves new transformer races called "Maximals" (Autobots) and "Predacons" (Decepticons).

A Predacon terrorist leader styling himself after the original Megatron, including taking his name, hijacks an artifact with a mysterious connection to Megatron the first and goes on the run into deep space with a band of terrorists, planning on restarting the Great War and this time causing a Predacon victory. A Maximal deep-space exploration vessel commanded by Optimus Primal attempts to intercept, and both vessels end up stranded on a mysterious alien world, where an overabundance of raw Energon crystals forces them to adopt the forms of local fauna to preserve themselves. The two forces promptly start trying to wipe each other out and then escape the planet. There's also a sideplot involving an ancient alien civilization that ends itself just before the Season 3 finale.

They would eventually find out that this strange world was actually Earth, which was where Megatron II was trying to get all along, and they find the wreckage of the Ark of the original series, when new Megatron decides to headshot Prime in order to change the future for his benefit. It kinda flops when new Optimus takes part of old Optimus' soul, gets another upgrade and becomes sorta-truck. It inspires Megatron II to try the same trick with his namesake, turning him into a huge firebreathing dragon-bot.

Though Hasbro would mostly consign this story to oblivion after Beast Machines, the characters of Blackarachnia (sexy spider-bot who changes from evil to good thanks to love) and Waspinator (the walking punching bag who the heroes almost invariably blow up only to be fixed later), along with the concept of the Spark (essentially, Transformers' Souls) would be re-used in later eras. More importantly, this show saved the franchise Generation 2 almost killed it.

==Beast Machines==
Sequel series to ''Beast Wars''. On returning to Cybertron, our heroes are attacked by armies of transforming cookie-cutter drones. It eventually turns out that Megatron broke free from the Maximals' prison and flew back to Cybertron before them; he infected the entire planet with a cyber-virus that put them all into comas, ripped out their hearts/souls and stashed them in some hidden bunker, and melted down their bodies to rebuild them into mindless robot slaves.

Awesomely grimdark concept, but hampered by two huge flaws. Firstly, a super-annoying green aesop, which was very clumsily handled because this is a planet of talking robots, not nature. More importantly, major character derailment -- it was made by a different team to ''Beast Wars'', and they weren't even allowed to watch the first series to familiarize themselves with how the Maximals were supposed to behave, so it'd be "more accessible".

Probably why Hasbro only recycles G1 instead of trying to do its own thing with new shows, the way these two shows did. Even though it was their own damn fault because they ''made'' this series into what it turned out being. Time has been kinder to it, though, after the initial rage and denouncement.

==Robots in Disguise==
An obscure anime that came out roughly a few months before ''Armada''. Best known for its gag dub and general comedic focus that makes it surprisingly laughable, and certainly more fun to watch than any of the ''Energon Trilogy''. Usually forgotten about, except for the fact that Megatron here has six fucking modes of transformation (ten after upgrading to Galvatron). General consensus is that is far from the best or worst series, it's just "meh."

Funnily enough, there is also another series that got the same name in 2015, this one being a bit more notable, if only because this time Prime's relegated to the Obi-Wan, while Bumblebee (once again with a voice) has to take command of an ex-con, a stickler, and slightly-smarter Grimlock in helping some kid and his dad's junkyard and detaining runaway Decepticon inmates, all of whom aren't related to the main bads, so some originality there. There was a 'con in it called Slapper. That is all.

==Energon Trilogy==
Comprised of the shows ''Armada'', ''Energon'', and ''Cybertron'', which are also called the ''Unicron Trilogy'' due to the antagonist's return to the spotlight after being virtually nonexistent since The Movie. Anime reinterpretation of G1, decaying from "poor but watchable" to "completely unwatchable dreck" for all the reasons people hate [[/a/]]: bad dubbing, overly lengthy scenes of nothing, a shift to crappy CGI, and a plot that is so terribly paced and search-questy that you'd be praying for your GM to be railroading this. On the plus-side, competent badass Starscream (who unfortunately inspired a whole generation of Linkin Park listening wannabes). On the downside, far too much focus on humans and not enough on giant robots trying to kill each other. Kicker, from the later series, is considered one of the worst human sidekicks the Transformers have ever had.

It has been said that, for all the failings of ''Beast Machines'', at least it's better than this trilogy. That at least had the mercy of ending in two half-sized seasons instead of three full-sized ones.

==Michael Bay Films==
The dark force known as Michael Bay bought Transformers back as a series of live-action + CGI movies. Considered the [[Matt Ward]] of the Transformers universe, Bay's movies are rage-inducing [[fail]]s that have far too much focus on annoying human characters and on lowbrow humor. Seriously, in the first movie, we don't get to see an Autobot for, like, 30 minutes while dealing with very bland characters who get billed way too much, and we have to facepalm our way through an awful gag about Bumblebee basically ''pissing on a guy''. The second one is no better with two black/redneck stereotypes as ''heroes'', a gag about balls, and a two-for-one gag about farting/incontinence - from a Transformer, no less. Real classy, Bay.

About the only shallow redeeming qualities it has is that the CGI Transformers look amazing (even if some neckbeards have cracked up over how they're "not accurate" to the G1 character modes), the fight scenes are suitably glorious for giant alien death-machines ripping each other to pieces, and most importantly is it has introduced Transformers to a whole new generation of fans, who can hopefully be shown the good stuff instead of thinking this garbage is the true representative of the setting.

After the trilogy Bay made a fourth movie which actually manages to make some considerable improvements (not that it was that hard), like a lot more of focus on Optimus Prime, killing the scrappy comic relief during the first part of the movie and more consistent fighting scenes, plus DINOBOTS! charging the enemy. There is also more grimdark as Optimus finally decides enough is enough after having tried to protect mankind for more than 5 years while having his whole team slaughtered by those he sworn to protect and pulls a gun against a human frakker who was teaming up with the mercenary Lockdown to kill Autobots and use their remains to make their own giant robots that turn into cars (Except this time it's like the T-1000 where they turn into nanobot swarms). On the downside, though, the humans are still pointless tagalongs (though this is a new set of humans, no Shia Lebouf to be found here), pointless stereotypes (Like Weeaboo Samurai-bot Drift, Crosshairs, who for some reason gets a fucking trenchcoat when he transforms, and Hound, who somehow has a cigar and a wire-beard), and the ridiculous need to hammer in the "us vs. them" mentality between the humans making their own Transformers and Lockdown trying to kill Optimus because he's betrayed their makers by siding with the humans.

==Animated==
G1 inspired series with notoriously unusual but smooth animation. This time, Optimus Prime and his crew are lowly space janitors who stumble across a superweapon from the Great War and have to defend it against Megatron ('''GIVING HIM A GODDAMN ENGLISH ACCENT FUCK YES'''), who seeks to use it to restart the war and this time ensure Decepticon victory. This version's Optimus is much younger and less experienced than usual; funnily enough, he was voiced by the actor who voiced Megatron in Beast Wars. Generally noted for having the best human sidekick (who turns out to really be part-transformer anyways). The other Autobots also tend to have some interesting characterizations from "Complete dumb muscle who actually knows everything about building [[Webway|Space Bridges]]" Bulkhead to "[[Weeaboo]] Robo-Ninja" Prowl to "MY EGO IS AS BIG AS MY CHIN AND MY ASSHOLEITUDE IS EVEN BIGGER!" Sentinel Prime. The Decepticons sometimes do better with the schizophrenic Blitzwing, the [[Lorgar|borderline-religiously loyal]] Lugnut, and badass robo-Clint Eastwood Lockdown.

The series was weird in that alongside the Decepticons were also some gimmicky human villains from a Shakespearean Robin Hood knockoff to a cute little girl who's a mad scientist to another mad scientist who rips off Transformer heads to replicate an old G1 gimmick. These villains were a bit ridiculous, but it helped break up the monotony of the constant 'con fighting, especially when Megatron was reduced to a state worse than [[Abaddon]] as a head. The creators came up with the idea to emphasize just how dangerous the 'cons are, compared to their Autobot opponents; when ''one'' 'con shows up, it's an emergency that takes the whole team to try and pull out a win. Hell, ''Starscream'' could beat up the entire Autobot team in his first few appearances before they figured out how to handle him.

==Cybertron Series==
There were many, MANY, video games made for every part of the Transformers, but most of them ranged from forgettable to utter shit. The closest these guys got to a good original game series (so no whining about the Movie-Games) were the games ''War for Cybertron'' and ''Fall of Cybertron'', both made by High Moon Studios.

These games act as the [[Horus Heresy]] to G1's 40K by explaining how Optimus became a leader and how Megatron became a dictator while their war and its demand eventually destroyed their homeworld. While the gameplay itself isn't much more than a basic third-person shooter, the vast amount of references to the rest of the series and the rather well-written story and characters make it stand out, ''Fall of Cybertron'' may be considered the most grimdark setting of the whole series while not being as totally ham-handed like Beast Machines. It also helps that the second game gave some bonus variety in some segments by giving you a level as a FUCKING ROBOT DINOSAUR named Grimlock, and another where you get to play as a combiner (who has an awesome helicopter-arm, but is otherwise not very memorable besides being huge). Overall great fights, no crappy human sidekicks, awesome OST and all the grimdarkness needed to make any neckbeard enjoy it quite much, also ESCALATION mode will ensure you endless hours of good bloodless carnage.

There is a third game -sorta- called ''Rise of the Dark Spark'', which decides to make the stupid decision of merging this series to the Bayformers continuity. It was released as tie in game with fourth movie and has less of budget, clearly shown with its number of glitches, lack of variety in levels (mostly just enemies till the game lets you move on) and downright ugly environments for the levels set on Earth. The only thing to remember is that the Cybertron segments are still awesome, while later parts will just shoehorn you with mutebee and Drift (who at least has an awesome special attack), with one level playing as Grimlock again and lacking any Decepticon plot post-Cybertron.

==Prime==
G1 inspired CGI series that somehow salvages the fairly decent elements of Michael Bay's crapfest movies (e.g. Peter Cullen and Frank Welker reprising their respective roles, artstyle, some character elements/background lore, [[Rip and Tear]]) and crafts an awesome show out of it. Animation is fucking amazing, with fight scenes that rival if not trump the Michael Bay films. Very dark and gritty as well, where one of the Autobots [[Awesome|(voiced by the Rock himself, mind you)]], gets wacked off in ''the first episode.'' Also, [[what|blue energon as blood.]] A few other things of note; this is where the funny "Steve the Vehicon" meme originated from and this series is known to poke fun as the old G1 series (most notably Starscream's null ray and a joke about the Dinobots).

Biggest major problem is Miko, who is tying with Kicker (from the abovementioned ''Energon Trilogy'') for the title "worst human sidekick in a Transformers show, ever!" Obnoxiously gungho and always charging off into danger, even when told not to, invariably making things worse for the Autobots in the process. Still, this series easily has some of the best human characters, most notably Agent Fowler, who trolls Starscream while getting tortured by him.

Then there's Predacons Rising; the made-for-tv movie meant to serve as a series finale... it was questionable at best. Plot holes everywhere, very little focus on the actual Predacons in the title, and characters doing stupid and random things to simply fit the plot. It was basically a segway into the next series; Robots in Disguise.

== See Also ==
While no official roleplaying or tabletop games exist, the idea of "giant robots turning into vehicles" is so cool that lots of homebrew and independent mecha RPGs include mechas or characters that are ''totally NOT the Transformers, we swear!'' For example:

* [[Giant Guardian Generation]]
* [[Horizon]] - Mechamorphosis is literally "Transformers with the serial numbers filed off, done by way of [[Dungeons & Dragons]] 3.5".
* [[Mekton]] - Extremely flexible with what it can do: the rules for transforming are simple (as far as Mekton goes anyway) and adapting to a Transformers setting, but the game's hilariously broken.
* [[Rifts]] - Some homebrew stuff floating around on the net for playing Transformers exists. Pity it relies on the godawful RIFTS mechanics...
* [[Codex: Transformers]] - A case of 1d4chan getting shit done, adapting Transformers into yet another [[Warhammer 40000]] faction.
* [[Setting:Transformers]] - A tie-in article to the above trying to develop the lore to explain why Codex: Transformers is a thing.

== External Links ==
* [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Main_Page TFWiki.net], a wiki dedicated to all things Transformers. They take a pretty laid-back, humorous approach to their material that will be familiar to readers of this wiki (although usually not so profane).

[[Category:Not related]]

Iron Warriors

2016-04-05T10:22:00Z

2605:E000:7ECF:7F00:954D:7FE4:D7B3:9F94: /* Iron Warriors Character */

{{Infobox Traitor Legion
|Name = Iron Warriors
|Heraldry = [[File:Ironwarriorslogo.png|250px]]
|Battle Cry = "Iron Within, Iron Without!"
|Number = IV
|Primarch = [[Perturabo]]
|Original Homeworld = Olympia
|Current Homeworld = Medrengard
|Champion = Possibly [[Honsou]] But most likely [[Shon'tu]]
|Specialty = Artillery and offensive siege warfare
|Strength =
|Allegiance = [[Chaos Undivided]]
|Colours = Black, gold, silver
}}
Iron Warriors are a bunch of badass pricks, who are also robotic. They enjoy torturing, maiming, and burning down their old shit. Nobody at [[games Workshop|GW]] can decide on how they want to portray the Legion, like we care what they think anyway. They also have a fetish for hazard stripes, which they make liberal use of in their colour scheme. It is as though they wish to say "do not use the side of my bolter as a step."

==Combat Tactics==
A [[Chaos]] [[Space Marines|Legion]] specializing in breaking sieges (as in, taking a fortified location, though logically this should mean that they can do this ''and'' break out of a siege) which is shown in their love of artillery and greater focus on ranged combat, which stands in contrast to the other Chaos Space Marine legions who are [[Rip and tear|far more disposed to melee combat]] (that doesn't mean that Iron Warriors won't punch a few skulls out, though!). Their troops are excellent close-range fighters and close-quarters combatants, and they often make use of special weaponry.

Iron Warriors are also fond of using hordes of human conscripts as cannon fodder, no doubt recruited from conquered worlds and slave populations on Medrengard. The conscripts are described as wearing red uniforms and bits of black armor, and armed with assorted bolt action rifles, lasguns, and autoguns. The Iron Warriors basically zerg-rush thousands of them at enemy strongholds to play fun games such as "find the minefield", "absorb the gunfire" and "reveal the artillery emplacements". They are one of the few Chaos legions that do take prisoners, but only to send then in the first wave instead of their conscripted slaves, who are considered to be slightly more valuable due to their ability to dig decent trenches and mines.

They also have a lot of [[Obliterators]], which are a bunch of muscle blobs armed to the teeth on top of their heads (being Chaos guys, they have shit like that). Literally. They themselves are a walking arsenal, because they can '''MAKE WEAPONS OUT OF THEIR BODIES!'''

Iron Warriors are also the batshit insane sickfucks behind the [[Daemonculaba]]. They're the only [[Chaos Space Marines]] who don't break down in maniacal laughter constantly, as they see this as a sign of weakness. They're not terribly fond of Daemons (like the [[Word Bearers]] or the [[Black Legion]] are), though they will make use of them (unlike the [[Night Lords]] who don't even like Chaos), and they aren't [[Alpharius|closet loyalists]] like the [[Alpha Legion]].

[[File:Iwdread.jpg|450px|left|thumb|What do you mean I've shot the wrong spot!?]]

==History==
Back in the old pre-Heresy days, no legion ever got shit on more than them. They got assigned all the [[Death Korps of Krieg|dirty, exhausting trench and ditch fighting]], and got no respect for it. There is a passage when, whilst shoveling up earthworks in preparation for the Drop Site Massacre, one of the Sons of Horus literally turns to one of the Emperor's Children and asks, "Hey, why aren't the Iron Warriors doing this."

Even when they were rejoined by their [[Perturabo|Primarch]], it didn't get any better. When united with his legion for the first time, he looked upon them and saw that they were not [[derp|all they could be]] and so he decided that they needed a bout of [[Blam|decimation]] to motivate them properly. So he had 10% of his entire legion [[grimdark|beaten to death]] without honour.

This actually worked and changed the character of the legion from "work-horse" legion to "meat grinder" legion; Perturabo's trick taught them that casualties do not matter, only victory does. They became a legion of [[neckbeards|mathematicians]], where battle strategies could be determined using formula based on available weaponry and expected attrition rates. Fortunately for them, Perturabo was expertly skilled with [[Roboute Guilliman|numbers and logistics]] and organised his legion extremely efficiently, therefore his legion was able to absorb such losses due to maintaining very high numbers, second only to the [[Ultramarines|XIIIth Legion]]. In fact they could have possibly overtaken any other legion in numbers if they did not continually suffer such high casualty rates.

This casual attitude towards attrition unfortunately created an atmosphere of paranoia amongst the officer cadre, where the only way to guarantee survival is to get promoted into a position of usefulness. Therefore their officers suffered incredible [[Nerdrage]] whenever things did not go according to plan and [[That Guy|scrambled over each other]] attempting to gain the attention of their superiors.

Also, their reputation suffered amongst the allied Imperial Army auxilia, who gave the Iron Warriors the nickname ''Corpse Grinders'', as units that were assigned to them tended to get used as cannon fodder for softening up the enemy. This tendency eventually led to the [[Administratum|Council of Terra]] to only assign the Iron Warriors support from penal brigades of poor quality expendable troops, causing the reputation of the Legion to spiral further downwards.

This new-and-improved attitude still didn't endear them to their brother legions, it was this complete lack of anything remotely resembling respect from anyone at all that was the final factor in [[Perturabo|their primarch flipping his lid]].

===Iron Cage===
Taking inspiration from [[Perturabo|their primarch]], they display great facility in setting traps. The most notable of which was the "Iron Cage incident" where the Iron Warriors built a twenty square kilometer fortress on Sebastus IV at the close of the [[Horus Heresy]], with a massive fortified bunker at the center. They leaked information that allowed the [[Imperial Fists]] to track them there and [[Rogal Dorn]] himself promised to bring back Perturabo in "an iron cage". The Fists assaulted the fortress, taking huge casualties in doing so as the Iron Warriors fell back to split their advance and draw them into kill zones. Eventually the Fists expended all their ammunition and resorted to knife-fighting. When the Fists finally broke through to the central bunker, they discovered it empty save for the numerous inward-pointing guns designed to kill anyone who breached it. The entire purpose of the fortress was just to bait and exhaust the Imperial Fists' forces, turning their own legendary determination into a liability that lead to their own deaths and the humiliation of their legion (albeit one that would have required the death of Perturabo to completely wipe them out, if you believe those corpsefuckers' propaganda). [[Just As Planned]]. While the Iron Cage incident was the most notable, the Iron Warriors do plenty of other things like it on a smaller scale, such as firing fixed position guns into civilian habs to bait the enemy into counter-attacking, then evacuating through underground trenches and detonating explosives when the opposing forces comes investigating.

==Iron Warriors Today==

[[File:A0e8a4e378bf013aade7393f60d8b20a.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Iron Within... You. 'Cause I shot you with my big ass [[Autocannon]].]]

They used to be incredibly badass with special rules for having more heavy weapon options including tanks and artillery but [[Gav_Thorpe|Gav Thorpe]] (who's basically [[Matt_Ward|Matt Ward's husband]]) decided that spikey marines should be inferior to loyalists in every way possible.

The Iron Warriors have been one of the more popular legions in fluff over the past few years. While some have put this down to them being 'grittier' or more realistic than the others, the truth is probably more functional then fanciful: The Iron Warriors are for the most part ''not'' gibbering madmen. This might seem a dumb reason but it's actually important. To write a good character they need to make sense to the reader, even when we don't agree with them we need to understand why they want to do it. The other legions kinda lack that. Why did you attack that planet? 'Because it turns me on' doesn't really make for an interesting character, nor does being told to by demons, wanting to kill everything all the time or just really digging dead stuff. So that leaves the Iron Warriors as being just about the only generally sane legion who do things for reasons normal people can understand.

[[Graham McNeill]] wrote a book that was mostly about them. Called 'Storm of Iron', surprisingly, and it featured a boatload of Imperial Fists, Iron Warriors (surprisingly) and a whole load of dickery, including traitorous techpriests, countless rows of geneseed (not being used to make more Speehs Mehreens, unsurprisingly. <--- Why WH40K's so [[Grimdark]]), and a daemon prince. To cap it all off, this is where [[Honsou]] gets his start. Last but not least, countless Imperial Guard and Titans.
...Tell me again why the Imperials lost? There was a traitor on the inside, and about fifty thousand tons of badass at the gates. Baaaad combination. (McNeill then wrote a [[Horus Heresy]] prequel called 'Angel Exterminatus', featuring Fulgrim being an even bigger dick than usual and an Iron Hands Professor Farnsworth.)

Even Ward seems to think they're cool, as he has Warsmith [[Shon'tu]] one-up both Honsou and Abaddon. How? He Invades Terra! He teams up with Be’lakor (yeah, the same guy from Fantasy battles) and use Phalanx's warp door (yeah remember that from the Soul Drinkers book) to invade it hoping to take it over and bomb the Emperor's palaces. Even the combined plot armor of the Imperial Fists AND the [[Legion of the Damned]] is still just barely enough to force a stalemate.

John French, on the other hand, doesn't seem to like them much at all. This is a shame since they tend to be his go-to antagonists.

Anyway, here is [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ghs6p8inY their theme], done by [[HMKids]], which includes in the lyrics quotes from Dawn of War Chaos Space Marines for extra-flavour! They are METAL indeed!

The German Death Metal band "Debauchery" also wrote a song and video here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dqkmPI2JlM], and it is badass.

==Iron Warriors Character==

Personality-wise, the Iron Warriors are one of the most…unpleasant Traitor Legions. When the Iron Warriors go to war, everyone is expendable. Eve-ry-one. Back in the days of the Great Crusade they spent Astartes lives like bolter rounds, human lives like <s>lasbolts</s> autogun bullets, and they haven’t got better with time. Their pure, unadulterated contempt for life is such that, in the Siege of Castellax, they refer to their mortal servants simply as “flesh,” and place orders for more like fast food (battalions 3-5 were wiped out today. I’ll have four more, to go, and hold the pickles). Speaking of food, when rations started to get low, the Iron Warriors started feeding their people [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green the rendered down remains of the dead]. Yeah. Unpleasant.

The Iron Warriors are basically the very epitome of the bad boss trope. The Night Lords may send the populations of entire worlds to the skinning pits just for shits and giggles (and record it all for future shits and giggles), but even they usually respect their valuable servants, enough to even sometimes exchange friendly banter with them.

{{Template:Chaos-Official}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Chaos]][[Category:Space Marines]]

Iron Warriors

2016-04-05T09:56:00Z

2605:E000:7ECF:7F00:954D:7FE4:D7B3:9F94: /* History */

{{Infobox Traitor Legion
|Name = Iron Warriors
|Heraldry = [[File:Ironwarriorslogo.png|250px]]
|Battle Cry = "Iron Within, Iron Without!"
|Number = IV
|Primarch = [[Perturabo]]
|Original Homeworld = Olympia
|Current Homeworld = Medrengard
|Champion = Possibly [[Honsou]] But most likely [[Shon'tu]]
|Specialty = Artillery and offensive siege warfare
|Strength =
|Allegiance = [[Chaos Undivided]]
|Colours = Black, gold, silver
}}
Iron Warriors are a bunch of badass pricks, who are also robotic. They enjoy torturing, maiming, and burning down their old shit. Nobody at [[games Workshop|GW]] can decide on how they want to portray the Legion, like we care what they think anyway. They also have a fetish for hazard stripes, which they make liberal use of in their colour scheme. It is as though they wish to say "do not use the side of my bolter as a step."

==Combat Tactics==
A [[Chaos]] [[Space Marines|Legion]] specializing in breaking sieges (as in, taking a fortified location, though logically this should mean that they can do this ''and'' break out of a siege) which is shown in their love of artillery and greater focus on ranged combat, which stands in contrast to the other Chaos Space Marine legions who are [[Rip and tear|far more disposed to melee combat]] (that doesn't mean that Iron Warriors won't punch a few skulls out, though!). Their troops are excellent close-range fighters and close-quarters combatants, and they often make use of special weaponry.

Iron Warriors are also fond of using hordes of human conscripts as cannon fodder, no doubt recruited from conquered worlds and slave populations on Medrengard. The conscripts are described as wearing red uniforms and bits of black armor, and armed with assorted bolt action rifles, lasguns, and autoguns. The Iron Warriors basically zerg-rush thousands of them at enemy strongholds to play fun games such as "find the minefield", "absorb the gunfire" and "reveal the artillery emplacements". They are one of the few Chaos legions that do take prisoners, but only to send then in the first wave instead of their conscripted slaves, who are considered to be slightly more valuable due to their ability to dig decent trenches and mines.

They also have a lot of [[Obliterators]], which are a bunch of muscle blobs armed to the teeth on top of their heads (being Chaos guys, they have shit like that). Literally. They themselves are a walking arsenal, because they can '''MAKE WEAPONS OUT OF THEIR BODIES!'''

Iron Warriors are also the batshit insane sickfucks behind the [[Daemonculaba]]. They're the only [[Chaos Space Marines]] who don't break down in maniacal laughter constantly, as they see this as a sign of weakness. They're not terribly fond of Daemons (like the [[Word Bearers]] or the [[Black Legion]] are), though they will make use of them (unlike the [[Night Lords]] who don't even like Chaos), and they aren't [[Alpharius|closet loyalists]] like the [[Alpha Legion]].

[[File:Iwdread.jpg|450px|left|thumb|What do you mean I've shot the wrong spot!?]]

==History==
Back in the old pre-Heresy days, no legion ever got shit on more than them. They got assigned all the [[Death Korps of Krieg|dirty, exhausting trench and ditch fighting]], and got no respect for it. There is a passage when, whilst shoveling up earthworks in preparation for the Drop Site Massacre, one of the Sons of Horus literally turns to one of the Emperor's Children and asks, "Hey, why aren't the Iron Warriors doing this."

Even when they were rejoined by their [[Perturabo|Primarch]], it didn't get any better. When united with his legion for the first time, he looked upon them and saw that they were not [[derp|all they could be]] and so he decided that they needed a bout of [[Blam|decimation]] to motivate them properly. So he had 10% of his entire legion [[grimdark|beaten to death]] without honour.

This actually worked and changed the character of the legion from "work-horse" legion to "meat grinder" legion; Perturabo's trick taught them that casualties do not matter, only victory does. They became a legion of [[neckbeards|mathematicians]], where battle strategies could be determined using formula based on available weaponry and expected attrition rates. Fortunately for them, Perturabo was expertly skilled with [[Roboute Guilliman|numbers and logistics]] and organised his legion extremely efficiently, therefore his legion was able to absorb such losses due to maintaining very high numbers, second only to the [[Ultramarines|XIIIth Legion]]. In fact they could have possibly overtaken any other legion in numbers if they did not continually suffer such high casualty rates.

This casual attitude towards attrition unfortunately created an atmosphere of paranoia amongst the officer cadre, where the only way to guarantee survival is to get promoted into a position of usefulness. Therefore their officers suffered incredible [[Nerdrage]] whenever things did not go according to plan and [[That Guy|scrambled over each other]] attempting to gain the attention of their superiors.

Also, their reputation suffered amongst the allied Imperial Army auxilia, who gave the Iron Warriors the nickname ''Corpse Grinders'', as units that were assigned to them tended to get used as cannon fodder for softening up the enemy. This tendency eventually led to the [[Administratum|Council of Terra]] to only assign the Iron Warriors support from penal brigades of poor quality expendable troops, causing the reputation of the Legion to spiral further downwards.

This new-and-improved attitude still didn't endear them to their brother legions, it was this complete lack of anything remotely resembling respect from anyone at all that was the final factor in [[Perturabo|their primarch flipping his lid]].

===Iron Cage===
Taking inspiration from [[Perturabo|their primarch]], they display great facility in setting traps. The most notable of which was the "Iron Cage incident" where the Iron Warriors built a twenty square kilometer fortress on Sebastus IV at the close of the [[Horus Heresy]], with a massive fortified bunker at the center. They leaked information that allowed the [[Imperial Fists]] to track them there and [[Rogal Dorn]] himself promised to bring back Perturabo in "an iron cage". The Fists assaulted the fortress, taking huge casualties in doing so as the Iron Warriors fell back to split their advance and draw them into kill zones. Eventually the Fists expended all their ammunition and resorted to knife-fighting. When the Fists finally broke through to the central bunker, they discovered it empty save for the numerous inward-pointing guns designed to kill anyone who breached it. The entire purpose of the fortress was just to bait and exhaust the Imperial Fists' forces, turning their own legendary determination into a liability that lead to their own deaths and the humiliation of their legion (albeit one that would have required the death of Perturabo to completely wipe them out, if you believe those corpsefuckers' propaganda). [[Just As Planned]]. While the Iron Cage incident was the most notable, the Iron Warriors do plenty of other things like it on a smaller scale, such as firing fixed position guns into civilian habs to bait the enemy into counter-attacking, then evacuating through underground trenches and detonating explosives when the opposing forces comes investigating.

==Iron Warriors Today==

[[File:A0e8a4e378bf013aade7393f60d8b20a.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Iron Within... You. 'Cause I shot you with my big ass [[Autocannon]].]]

They used to be incredibly badass with special rules for having more heavy weapon options including tanks and artillery but [[Gav_Thorpe|Gav Thorpe]] (who's basically [[Matt_Ward|Matt Ward's husband]]) decided that spikey marines should be inferior to loyalists in every way possible.

The Iron Warriors have been one of the more popular legions in fluff over the past few years. While some have put this down to them being 'grittier' or more realistic than the others, the truth is probably more functional then fanciful: The Iron Warriors are for the most part ''not'' gibbering madmen. This might seem a dumb reason but it's actually important. To write a good character they need to make sense to the reader, even when we don't agree with them we need to understand why they want to do it. The other legions kinda lack that. Why did you attack that planet? 'Because it turns me on' doesn't really make for an interesting character, nor does being told to by demons, wanting to kill everything all the time or just really digging dead stuff. So that leaves the Iron Warriors as being just about the only generally sane legion who do things for reasons normal people can understand.

[[Graham McNeill]] wrote a book that was mostly about them. Called 'Storm of Iron', surprisingly, and it featured a boatload of Imperial Fists, Iron Warriors (surprisingly) and a whole load of dickery, including traitorous techpriests, countless rows of geneseed (not being used to make more Speehs Mehreens, unsurprisingly. <--- Why WH40K's so [[Grimdark]]), and a daemon prince. To cap it all off, this is where [[Honsou]] gets his start. Last but not least, countless Imperial Guard and Titans.
...Tell me again why the Imperials lost? There was a traitor on the inside, and about fifty thousand tons of badass at the gates. Baaaad combination. (McNeill then wrote a [[Horus Heresy]] prequel called 'Angel Exterminatus', featuring Fulgrim being an even bigger dick than usual and an Iron Hands Professor Farnsworth.)

Even Ward seems to think they're cool, as he has Warsmith [[Shon'tu]] one-up both Honsou and Abaddon. How? He Invades Terra! He teams up with Be’lakor (yeah, the same guy from Fantasy battles) and use Phalanx's warp door (yeah remember that from the Soul Drinkers book) to invade it hoping to take it over and bomb the Emperor's palaces. Even the combined plot armor of the Imperial Fists AND the [[Legion of the Damned]] is still just barely enough to force a stalemate.

John French, on the other hand, doesn't seem to like them much at all. This is a shame since they tend to be his go-to antagonists.

Anyway, here is [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ghs6p8inY their theme], done by [[HMKids]], which includes in the lyrics quotes from Dawn of War Chaos Space Marines for extra-flavour! They are METAL indeed!

The German Death Metal band "Debauchery" also wrote a song and video here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dqkmPI2JlM], and it is badass.

==Iron Warriors Character==

Personality-wise, the Iron Warriors are one of the most…unpleasant Traitor Legions. When the Iron Warriors go to war, everyone is expendable. Eve-ry-one. Back in the days of the Great Crusade they spent Astartes lives like bolter rounds, human lives like <s>lasbolts</s> autogun bullets, and they haven’t got better with time. Their pure, unadulterated contempt for life is such that, in the Siege of Castellax, they refer to their mortal servants simply as “flesh,” and place orders for more like fast food (battalions 3-5 were wiped out today. I’ll have four more, to go, and hold the pickles). Speaking of food, when rations started to get low, the Iron Warriors started feeding their people [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green the rendered down remains of the dead]. Yeah. Unpleasant.

The Iron Warriors are basically the very epitome of the bad boss trope. The Night Lords may send the populations of entire worlds to the skinning pits just for shits and giggles (and record it all for future shits and giggles), but at even they usually respect their valuable servants, enough to even sometimes exchange friendly banter with them.

{{Template:Chaos-Official}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Chaos]][[Category:Space Marines]]

Iron Warriors

2016-04-05T09:53:29Z

2605:E000:7ECF:7F00:954D:7FE4:D7B3:9F94: /* History */

{{Infobox Traitor Legion
|Name = Iron Warriors
|Heraldry = [[File:Ironwarriorslogo.png|250px]]
|Battle Cry = "Iron Within, Iron Without!"
|Number = IV
|Primarch = [[Perturabo]]
|Original Homeworld = Olympia
|Current Homeworld = Medrengard
|Champion = Possibly [[Honsou]] But most likely [[Shon'tu]]
|Specialty = Artillery and offensive siege warfare
|Strength =
|Allegiance = [[Chaos Undivided]]
|Colours = Black, gold, silver
}}
Iron Warriors are a bunch of badass pricks, who are also robotic. They enjoy torturing, maiming, and burning down their old shit. Nobody at [[games Workshop|GW]] can decide on how they want to portray the Legion, like we care what they think anyway. They also have a fetish for hazard stripes, which they make liberal use of in their colour scheme. It is as though they wish to say "do not use the side of my bolter as a step."

==Combat Tactics==
A [[Chaos]] [[Space Marines|Legion]] specializing in breaking sieges (as in, taking a fortified location, though logically this should mean that they can do this ''and'' break out of a siege) which is shown in their love of artillery and greater focus on ranged combat, which stands in contrast to the other Chaos Space Marine legions who are [[Rip and tear|far more disposed to melee combat]] (that doesn't mean that Iron Warriors won't punch a few skulls out, though!). Their troops are excellent close-range fighters and close-quarters combatants, and they often make use of special weaponry.

Iron Warriors are also fond of using hordes of human conscripts as cannon fodder, no doubt recruited from conquered worlds and slave populations on Medrengard. The conscripts are described as wearing red uniforms and bits of black armor, and armed with assorted bolt action rifles, lasguns, and autoguns. The Iron Warriors basically zerg-rush thousands of them at enemy strongholds to play fun games such as "find the minefield", "absorb the gunfire" and "reveal the artillery emplacements". They are one of the few Chaos legions that do take prisoners, but only to send then in the first wave instead of their conscripted slaves, who are considered to be slightly more valuable due to their ability to dig decent trenches and mines.

They also have a lot of [[Obliterators]], which are a bunch of muscle blobs armed to the teeth on top of their heads (being Chaos guys, they have shit like that). Literally. They themselves are a walking arsenal, because they can '''MAKE WEAPONS OUT OF THEIR BODIES!'''

Iron Warriors are also the batshit insane sickfucks behind the [[Daemonculaba]]. They're the only [[Chaos Space Marines]] who don't break down in maniacal laughter constantly, as they see this as a sign of weakness. They're not terribly fond of Daemons (like the [[Word Bearers]] or the [[Black Legion]] are), though they will make use of them (unlike the [[Night Lords]] who don't even like Chaos), and they aren't [[Alpharius|closet loyalists]] like the [[Alpha Legion]].

[[File:Iwdread.jpg|450px|left|thumb|What do you mean I've shot the wrong spot!?]]

==History==
Back in the old pre-Heresy days, no legion ever got shit on more than them. They got assigned all the [[Death Korps of Krieg|dirty, exhausting trench and ditch fighting]], and got no respect for it. There is a passage when, whilst shoveling up earthworks in preparation for the Drop Site Massacre, one of the Sons of Horus literally turns to one of the Emperor's Children and asks, "Hey, why aren't the Iron Warriors doing this."

Even when they were rejoined by their [[Perturabo|Primarch]], it didn't get any better. When united with his legion for the first time, he looked upon them and saw that they were not [[derp|all they could be]] and so he decided that they needed a bout of [[Blam|decimation]] to motivate them properly. So he had 10% of his entire legion [[grimdark|beaten to death]] without honour.

This actually worked and changed the character of the legion from "work-horse" legion to "meat grinder" legion; Perturabo's trick taught them that casualties do not matter, only victory does. They became a legion of [[neckbeards|mathematicians]], where battle strategies could be determined using formula based on available weaponry and expected attrition rates. Fortunately for them, Perturabo was expertly skilled with [[Roboute Guilliman|numbers and logistics]] and organised his legion extremely efficiently, therefore his legion was able to absorb such losses due to maintaining very high numbers, second only to the [[Ultramarines|XIIIth Legion]]. In fact they could have possibly overtaken any other legion in numbers if they did not continually suffer such high casualty rates.

This casual attitude towards attrition unfortunately created an atmosphere of paranoia amongst the officer cadre, where the only way to guarantee survival is to get promoted into a position of usefulness. Therefore their officers suffered incredible [[Nerdrage]] whenever things did not go according to plan and [[That Guy|scrambled over each other]] attempting to gain the attention of their superiors.

Also, their reputation suffered amongst the allied Imperial Army auxilia, who gave the Iron Warriors the nickname ''Corpse Grinders'', as units that typically were assigned to them tended to get used as cannon fodder for softening up the enemy. This tendency eventually led to the [[Administratum|Council of Terra]] to only assign the Iron Warriors support from penal brigades of poor quality expendable troops, causing the reputation of the Legion to spiral further downwards.

This new-and-improved attitude still didn't endear them to their brother legions, it was this complete lack of anything remotely resembling respect from anyone at all that was the final factor in [[Perturabo|their primarch flipping his lid]].

===Iron Cage===
Taking inspiration from [[Perturabo|their primarch]], they display great facility in setting traps. The most notable of which was the "Iron Cage incident" where the Iron Warriors built a twenty square kilometer fortress on Sebastus IV at the close of the [[Horus Heresy]], with a massive fortified bunker at the center. They leaked information that allowed the [[Imperial Fists]] to track them there and [[Rogal Dorn]] himself promised to bring back Perturabo in "an iron cage". The Fists assaulted the fortress, taking huge casualties in doing so as the Iron Warriors fell back to split their advance and draw them into kill zones. Eventually the Fists expended all their ammunition and resorted to knife-fighting. When the Fists finally broke through to the central bunker, they discovered it empty save for the numerous inward-pointing guns designed to kill anyone who breached it. The entire purpose of the fortress was just to bait and exhaust the Imperial Fists' forces, turning their own legendary determination into a liability that lead to their own deaths and the humiliation of their legion (albeit one that would have required the death of Perturabo to completely wipe them out, if you believe those corpsefuckers' propaganda). [[Just As Planned]]. While the Iron Cage incident was the most notable, the Iron Warriors do plenty of other things like it on a smaller scale, such as firing fixed position guns into civilian habs to bait the enemy into counter-attacking, then evacuating through underground trenches and detonating explosives when the opposing forces comes investigating.

==Iron Warriors Today==

[[File:A0e8a4e378bf013aade7393f60d8b20a.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Iron Within... You. 'Cause I shot you with my big ass [[Autocannon]].]]

They used to be incredibly badass with special rules for having more heavy weapon options including tanks and artillery but [[Gav_Thorpe|Gav Thorpe]] (who's basically [[Matt_Ward|Matt Ward's husband]]) decided that spikey marines should be inferior to loyalists in every way possible.

The Iron Warriors have been one of the more popular legions in fluff over the past few years. While some have put this down to them being 'grittier' or more realistic than the others, the truth is probably more functional then fanciful: The Iron Warriors are for the most part ''not'' gibbering madmen. This might seem a dumb reason but it's actually important. To write a good character they need to make sense to the reader, even when we don't agree with them we need to understand why they want to do it. The other legions kinda lack that. Why did you attack that planet? 'Because it turns me on' doesn't really make for an interesting character, nor does being told to by demons, wanting to kill everything all the time or just really digging dead stuff. So that leaves the Iron Warriors as being just about the only generally sane legion who do things for reasons normal people can understand.

[[Graham McNeill]] wrote a book that was mostly about them. Called 'Storm of Iron', surprisingly, and it featured a boatload of Imperial Fists, Iron Warriors (surprisingly) and a whole load of dickery, including traitorous techpriests, countless rows of geneseed (not being used to make more Speehs Mehreens, unsurprisingly. <--- Why WH40K's so [[Grimdark]]), and a daemon prince. To cap it all off, this is where [[Honsou]] gets his start. Last but not least, countless Imperial Guard and Titans.
...Tell me again why the Imperials lost? There was a traitor on the inside, and about fifty thousand tons of badass at the gates. Baaaad combination. (McNeill then wrote a [[Horus Heresy]] prequel called 'Angel Exterminatus', featuring Fulgrim being an even bigger dick than usual and an Iron Hands Professor Farnsworth.)

Even Ward seems to think they're cool, as he has Warsmith [[Shon'tu]] one-up both Honsou and Abaddon. How? He Invades Terra! He teams up with Be’lakor (yeah, the same guy from Fantasy battles) and use Phalanx's warp door (yeah remember that from the Soul Drinkers book) to invade it hoping to take it over and bomb the Emperor's palaces. Even the combined plot armor of the Imperial Fists AND the [[Legion of the Damned]] is still just barely enough to force a stalemate.

John French, on the other hand, doesn't seem to like them much at all. This is a shame since they tend to be his go-to antagonists.

Anyway, here is [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ghs6p8inY their theme], done by [[HMKids]], which includes in the lyrics quotes from Dawn of War Chaos Space Marines for extra-flavour! They are METAL indeed!

The German Death Metal band "Debauchery" also wrote a song and video here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dqkmPI2JlM], and it is badass.

==Iron Warriors Character==

Personality-wise, the Iron Warriors are one of the most…unpleasant Traitor Legions. When the Iron Warriors go to war, everyone is expendable. Eve-ry-one. Back in the days of the Great Crusade they spent Astartes lives like bolter rounds, human lives like <s>lasbolts</s> autogun bullets, and they haven’t got better with time. Their pure, unadulterated contempt for life is such that, in the Siege of Castellax, they refer to their mortal servants simply as “flesh,” and place orders for more like fast food (battalions 3-5 were wiped out today. I’ll have four more, to go, and hold the pickles). Speaking of food, when rations started to get low, the Iron Warriors started feeding their people [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green the rendered down remains of the dead]. Yeah. Unpleasant.

The Iron Warriors are basically the very epitome of the bad boss trope. The Night Lords may send the populations of entire worlds to the skinning pits just for shits and giggles (and record it all for future shits and giggles), but at even they usually respect their valuable servants, enough to even sometimes exchange friendly banter with them.

{{Template:Chaos-Official}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Chaos]][[Category:Space Marines]]

Iron Warriors

2016-04-05T09:50:26Z

2605:E000:7ECF:7F00:954D:7FE4:D7B3:9F94: /* Combat Tactics */

{{Infobox Traitor Legion
|Name = Iron Warriors
|Heraldry = [[File:Ironwarriorslogo.png|250px]]
|Battle Cry = "Iron Within, Iron Without!"
|Number = IV
|Primarch = [[Perturabo]]
|Original Homeworld = Olympia
|Current Homeworld = Medrengard
|Champion = Possibly [[Honsou]] But most likely [[Shon'tu]]
|Specialty = Artillery and offensive siege warfare
|Strength =
|Allegiance = [[Chaos Undivided]]
|Colours = Black, gold, silver
}}
Iron Warriors are a bunch of badass pricks, who are also robotic. They enjoy torturing, maiming, and burning down their old shit. Nobody at [[games Workshop|GW]] can decide on how they want to portray the Legion, like we care what they think anyway. They also have a fetish for hazard stripes, which they make liberal use of in their colour scheme. It is as though they wish to say "do not use the side of my bolter as a step."

==Combat Tactics==
A [[Chaos]] [[Space Marines|Legion]] specializing in breaking sieges (as in, taking a fortified location, though logically this should mean that they can do this ''and'' break out of a siege) which is shown in their love of artillery and greater focus on ranged combat, which stands in contrast to the other Chaos Space Marine legions who are [[Rip and tear|far more disposed to melee combat]] (that doesn't mean that Iron Warriors won't punch a few skulls out, though!). Their troops are excellent close-range fighters and close-quarters combatants, and they often make use of special weaponry.

Iron Warriors are also fond of using hordes of human conscripts as cannon fodder, no doubt recruited from conquered worlds and slave populations on Medrengard. The conscripts are described as wearing red uniforms and bits of black armor, and armed with assorted bolt action rifles, lasguns, and autoguns. The Iron Warriors basically zerg-rush thousands of them at enemy strongholds to play fun games such as "find the minefield", "absorb the gunfire" and "reveal the artillery emplacements". They are one of the few Chaos legions that do take prisoners, but only to send then in the first wave instead of their conscripted slaves, who are considered to be slightly more valuable due to their ability to dig decent trenches and mines.

They also have a lot of [[Obliterators]], which are a bunch of muscle blobs armed to the teeth on top of their heads (being Chaos guys, they have shit like that). Literally. They themselves are a walking arsenal, because they can '''MAKE WEAPONS OUT OF THEIR BODIES!'''

Iron Warriors are also the batshit insane sickfucks behind the [[Daemonculaba]]. They're the only [[Chaos Space Marines]] who don't break down in maniacal laughter constantly, as they see this as a sign of weakness. They're not terribly fond of Daemons (like the [[Word Bearers]] or the [[Black Legion]] are), though they will make use of them (unlike the [[Night Lords]] who don't even like Chaos), and they aren't [[Alpharius|closet loyalists]] like the [[Alpha Legion]].

[[File:Iwdread.jpg|450px|left|thumb|What do you mean I've shot the wrong spot!?]]

==History==
Back in the old pre-Heresy days, no legion ever got shit on more than them. They got assigned all the [[Death Korps of Krieg|dirty, exhausting trench and ditch fighting]], and got no respect for it. There is a passage when, whilst shoveling up earthworks in preparation for the Drop Site Massacre, one of the Sons of Horus literally turns to one of the Emperor's Children and asks, "Hey, why aren't the Iron Warriors doing this."

Even when they were rejoined by their [[Perturabo|Primarch]], it didn't get any better. When united with his legion for the first time, he looked upon them and saw that they were not [[derp|all they could be]] and so he decided that they needed a bout of [[Exterminatus|decimation]] to motivate them properly. So he had 10% of his entire legion [[grimdark|beaten to death]] without honour.

This actually worked and changed the character of the legion from "work-horse" legion to "meat grinder" legion; Perturabo's trick taught them that casualties do not matter, only victory does. They became a legion of [[neckbeards|mathematicians]], where battle strategies could be determined using formula based on available weaponry and expected attrition rates. Fortunately for them, Perturabo was expertly skilled with [[Roboute Guilliman|numbers and logistics]] and organised his legion extremely efficiently, therefore his legion was able to absorb such losses due to maintaining very high numbers, second only to the [[Ultramarines|XIIIth Legion]]. In fact they could have possibly overtaken any other legion in numbers if they did not continually suffer such high casualty rates.

This casual attitude towards attrition unfortunately created an atmosphere of paranoia amongst the officer cadre, where the only way to guarantee survival is to get promoted into a position of usefulness. Therefore their officers suffered incredible [[Nerdrage]] whenever things did not go according to plan and [[That Guy|scrambled over each other]] attempting to gain the attention of their superiors.

Also, their reputation suffered amongst the allied Imperial Army auxilia, who gave the Iron Warriors the nickname ''Corpse Grinders'', as units that typically were assigned to them tended to get used as cannon fodder for softening up the enemy. This tendency eventually led to the [[Administratum|Council of Terra]] to only assign the Iron Warriors support from penal brigades of poor quality expendable troops, causing the reputation of the Legion to spiral further downwards.

This new-and-improved attitude still didn't endear them to their brother legions, it was this complete lack of anything remotely resembling respect from anyone at all that was the final factor in [[Perturabo|their primarch flipping his lid]].

===Iron Cage===
Taking inspiration from [[Perturabo|their primarch]], they display great facility in setting traps. The most notable of which was the "Iron Cage incident" where the Iron Warriors built a twenty square kilometer fortress on Sebastus IV at the close of the [[Horus Heresy]], with a massive fortified bunker at the center. They leaked information that allowed the [[Imperial Fists]] to track them there and [[Rogal Dorn]] himself promised to bring back Perturabo in "an iron cage". The Fists assaulted the fortress, taking huge casualties in doing so as the Iron Warriors fell back to split their advance and draw them into kill zones. Eventually the Fists expended all their ammunition and resorted to knife-fighting. When the Fists finally broke through to the central bunker, they discovered it empty save for the numerous inward-pointing guns designed to kill anyone who breached it. The entire purpose of the fortress was just to bait and exhaust the Imperial Fists' forces, turning their own legendary determination into a liability that lead to their own deaths and the humiliation of their legion (albeit one that would have required the death of Perturabo to completely wipe them out, if you believe those corpsefuckers' propaganda). [[Just As Planned]]. While the Iron Cage incident was the most notable, the Iron Warriors do plenty of other things like it on a smaller scale, such as firing fixed position guns into civilian habs to bait the enemy into counter-attacking, then evacuating through underground trenches and detonating explosives when the opposing forces comes investigating.

==Iron Warriors Today==

[[File:A0e8a4e378bf013aade7393f60d8b20a.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Iron Within... You. 'Cause I shot you with my big ass [[Autocannon]].]]

They used to be incredibly badass with special rules for having more heavy weapon options including tanks and artillery but [[Gav_Thorpe|Gav Thorpe]] (who's basically [[Matt_Ward|Matt Ward's husband]]) decided that spikey marines should be inferior to loyalists in every way possible.

The Iron Warriors have been one of the more popular legions in fluff over the past few years. While some have put this down to them being 'grittier' or more realistic than the others, the truth is probably more functional then fanciful: The Iron Warriors are for the most part ''not'' gibbering madmen. This might seem a dumb reason but it's actually important. To write a good character they need to make sense to the reader, even when we don't agree with them we need to understand why they want to do it. The other legions kinda lack that. Why did you attack that planet? 'Because it turns me on' doesn't really make for an interesting character, nor does being told to by demons, wanting to kill everything all the time or just really digging dead stuff. So that leaves the Iron Warriors as being just about the only generally sane legion who do things for reasons normal people can understand.

[[Graham McNeill]] wrote a book that was mostly about them. Called 'Storm of Iron', surprisingly, and it featured a boatload of Imperial Fists, Iron Warriors (surprisingly) and a whole load of dickery, including traitorous techpriests, countless rows of geneseed (not being used to make more Speehs Mehreens, unsurprisingly. <--- Why WH40K's so [[Grimdark]]), and a daemon prince. To cap it all off, this is where [[Honsou]] gets his start. Last but not least, countless Imperial Guard and Titans.
...Tell me again why the Imperials lost? There was a traitor on the inside, and about fifty thousand tons of badass at the gates. Baaaad combination. (McNeill then wrote a [[Horus Heresy]] prequel called 'Angel Exterminatus', featuring Fulgrim being an even bigger dick than usual and an Iron Hands Professor Farnsworth.)

Even Ward seems to think they're cool, as he has Warsmith [[Shon'tu]] one-up both Honsou and Abaddon. How? He Invades Terra! He teams up with Be’lakor (yeah, the same guy from Fantasy battles) and use Phalanx's warp door (yeah remember that from the Soul Drinkers book) to invade it hoping to take it over and bomb the Emperor's palaces. Even the combined plot armor of the Imperial Fists AND the [[Legion of the Damned]] is still just barely enough to force a stalemate.

John French, on the other hand, doesn't seem to like them much at all. This is a shame since they tend to be his go-to antagonists.

Anyway, here is [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ghs6p8inY their theme], done by [[HMKids]], which includes in the lyrics quotes from Dawn of War Chaos Space Marines for extra-flavour! They are METAL indeed!

The German Death Metal band "Debauchery" also wrote a song and video here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dqkmPI2JlM], and it is badass.

==Iron Warriors Character==

Personality-wise, the Iron Warriors are one of the most…unpleasant Traitor Legions. When the Iron Warriors go to war, everyone is expendable. Eve-ry-one. Back in the days of the Great Crusade they spent Astartes lives like bolter rounds, human lives like <s>lasbolts</s> autogun bullets, and they haven’t got better with time. Their pure, unadulterated contempt for life is such that, in the Siege of Castellax, they refer to their mortal servants simply as “flesh,” and place orders for more like fast food (battalions 3-5 were wiped out today. I’ll have four more, to go, and hold the pickles). Speaking of food, when rations started to get low, the Iron Warriors started feeding their people [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green the rendered down remains of the dead]. Yeah. Unpleasant.

The Iron Warriors are basically the very epitome of the bad boss trope. The Night Lords may send the populations of entire worlds to the skinning pits just for shits and giggles (and record it all for future shits and giggles), but at even they usually respect their valuable servants, enough to even sometimes exchange friendly banter with them.

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[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Chaos]][[Category:Space Marines]]