40K: Here Come the Company Level Supplemental Codices

-Apocalypse Datasheets
Stratagems for Planetstrike, Cities of Death
Altar of War

And that has me thinking.I for one love me some fluff based books and getting this level of detail is pretty cool stuff.  

There does seem to be a bit of the blurring of the lines going on here over time between the Design Studio and Black Library.  I love Black Library because it puts me inside the heads of individuals, and shows me specific events and tells me a great tale.  It can take me places I know I cant recreate on the tabletop – and that expands the 40K universe for me.

The Studio’s has always tended to give me the opposite.  We get the “thousand foot view” of things, heroic tales of an entire race, or chapter, over 10,000, with major events condensed down to a paragraph, and even the most important of individuals getting half a page of background. 

It just seems an odd choice to focus an entire supplemental codex on something so specific as a 100 man company.  In the enormity of the 40K universe, I like the anonymity of a normal codex, because I can pour my creativity into it.  I can make my selected Chapter my own and if I wish, maybe they do love fielding nothing but Vindicators and Land Speeders, even if I field more than the codex says even the Ultramarines even possess.

But at a company level, it almost has a historical gaming feel to it.  You can collect an entire company and if you wished could match them down to the man.  Should you feel odd fielding 2 Land Raiders if the company has only 1 in the picture?

It’s something new for GW and it will be interesting to see where it goes.  Should we expect these every now and then, or should we expect to see ten volumes for the Ultramarines down the road, detailing the entire chapter in intricate detail (and available in a leatherbound collector’s set for merely $1250 no doubt)?