Marshal Bohemond ⚔️⛨ | Space Marine Vtuber@HMBohemond
There needs to be a discussion about what Games Workshop wanted to do with Primaris Marines. They introduced a whole new class of Space Marines that are supposed to be "better." They had objectively better stats and wargear on tabletop. In the lore they were just better. Bigger, stronger, free of gene flaws and mutations. They immediately walk back most of the things that made them "better," like the lack of Wulfen or Black Rage. Primaris from mutation suffering chapters suffered the same mutations. This was before 8th edition was even half over.
In 9th they removed most the statline differences. Then in 10th they remove the distinction between Primaris and Firstborn in terms of rules entirely, changing it to armor type. We also learned Primaris can wear Terminator armor.
Now in 11th, we're back to armor mixing. There's effectively no distinction anymore, in terms of rules or lore. It's not that one replaced the other, it's that Games Workshop just acts like Mark X Tacticus was just an armor type. Primaris basically only get mentioned in WarCom articles. The last major 40k entry to kind of dwell on it was Space Marine 2 and barely at that. Note that Space Marine 2 would have been written around the time of late 8th edition or early 9th, even if it came out in 10th.
The question people should be asking is, "What was the point?" We're back to square one, like they never happened.
