You know, I've been seeing all these comments on the Warhammer 40,000 Facebook page where you have these superfans who think they know the IP better than Games Workshop. In some cases, they probably do...but in most cases, these are people who are simply pretentious and full of themselves. They cherry-pick facts or probably read a small bit of the lore here and there, and suddenly they pretend to be experts on the lore. I see this particularly in the posts about Death Korps of Krieg.
Am I an expert? No. Of course not. I don't claim to know the lore better than Games Workshop or any of the fans. In fact, I probably know a lot less than most of you. I love reading, yes, and I would like to think that I read a lot, but I am aware that there's a lot that I do not know about. Elysians, for example. Aeldari. Xenos stuff. Chaos. I am not an expert on any of these. Hell, I know next to nothing about Space Marines. I don't read much about them. I'm not even that well versed in my favorite armies like Imperial Knights, Imperial Guard and Adeptus Mechanicus. I read as much as I can, enjoy the Black Library novels, and that's about it. But I'm certainly no expert and I will never claim to know more about them than the writers, Games Workshop or other fans.
So if it turns out that I know that you're blatantly wrong, that's saying something.
Nonetheless, here are the common misconceptions that lots of so-called fans of Death Korps of Krieg like to spout. They claim to know the lore, but they don't. Not really. Most of them probably read a few pages of The Siege of Vraks, but they didn't read the novels and short stories by Steve Lyons, most notably Dead Men Walking. They probably didn't read about the Kriegers in Graham McNeill's Ultramarine series where they showed up to fight Tyranids. They just either watched Youtube videos or read a bit of The Siege of Vraks or maybe even a wiki article (1d4chan?) and then they claim to know Krieg lore better than Games Workshop or the company that made them.
Misconception 1: Death Korps of Krieg do not use bionics.
Wrong. Colonel Tyborc from the 261st Siege Regiment did. He's literally in The Siege of Vraks, so how did you miss that? Also, in Dead Men Walking, you literally had quartermasters not only stripping the dead of weapons, ammunition, armor and other things for salvage, to reuse them for new troops, you also had them stripping bionics, if I'm not mistaken. Kriegers do use bionics because it helps them continue fighting the enemies of the Emperor. Where the hell did people even come up with this misconception?
Misconception 2: You can't join the Death Korps of Krieg if you're not vat born.
Wrong. While it is true that the core regiments of the Death Korps of Krieg are drawn from vat-born and cloned soldiers that apparently would drive the Adeptus Mechancus mad if they find out about it (heretek!), the Death Korps of Krieg do recruit from local populaces of the planets they are dispatched to. In Dead Men Walking, the Death Korps of Krieg forcibly conscripted from the local population, essentially abducting them and bringing them to brutal training camps and indoctrinating them. One of the major characters in Dead Men Walking is a local, and by the end of the book, he has bought into the whole Krieg tradition, picked up a hellgun from a dead Krieg grenadier and attempted to solo a Necron tomb all by himself because of that indoctrination and despair. It's all very grimdark, but my point is that Death Korps of Krieg are not limited only to vat-born soldiers. They don't give a feth if you're vat born or not. If you want to join them, they will be more than happy to enlist you, then throw you against the enemy because you're just another expendable body for them to use.
Misconception 3: Death Korps of Krieg are all numbers.
I'm not sure if this comes down to conflicting canon, because in some books Kriegers have no names. They are all known by numbers. And then you have Graham McNeil's Ultramarine books or Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain books, as well as The Siege of Vraks, where Kriegers do have names. The officers, in particular. So...yeah. But don't get surprised when you see an actual name for Kriegers and you start going, "how dare Games Workshop screw up the lore! Kriegers don't have names! They are all numbers!" Well, some of them at least have names. There has been precedents. So...yeah.
Misconception 4: All Death Korps of Krieg are fearless and suicidal.
Not exactly. In fact, during the Siege of Vraks, there was one regiment who got routed and fled when hit by daemon engines. In the end, Kriegers are still humans. They might be cold, callous and seemingly emotionless, but they are still only human, not transhuman Space Marines. They can still feel fear. And Krieg commanders don't just simply sacrifice their men for war. They know when to retreat and regroup. Hell, against the Necrons in Dead Men Walking, after they lost the war, the Death Korps of Krieg simply abandoned the planet to its fate and left, dispatching their regiments elsewhere. They didn't intend to throw away all the Krieg lives in an attempt to kill the Necrons and reclaim the planet for the Emperor. They understand a lost cause when they see one and simply redeploy their forces elsewhere, where they can be more useful.
So it is very amusing to see an arrogant prick of a commenter telling off Games Workshop with "you might want to know more about the universe than your ip lawyers, just saying" when these so-called IP lawyers clearly do not seem to know the lore as well as they think they do. It's very ironic that they claim to be experts and overrule stuff that's being revealed by saying Krieg doesn't have this or that, only to be outed for their ignorance when I bring stuff up from Dead Men Walking or another of Steve Lyons's books. Or Graham McNeil's books. Or even from Sandy Mitchell's Ciaspha Cain books. Or The Siege of Vraks. You know, the lore of the Death Korps of Krieg isn't limited to what you've only read off the Internet or wikis or watched from Youtube videos. There's quite a few novels on them, about them or featuring them (even if they aren't the main characters or main regiment, they provide quite a lot of insight into how other regiments interact with them). Might want to read up on those before telling the Warhammer Community team about how wrong they are about the lore, only to make yourself look like a fool.
By the way, the new Kill Team box will be out for preorders starting August 14th, and the preorder window will be open for 2 weeks until August 28th. That means we'll be getting the box on September 4th, if I'm not mistaken. Yay!
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