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Hey gang, here’s a thread where you can embarrassingly gush about the infamous GRIMDARK scifi setting and praise its rich and interesting lore and all that other stuff.

OR

You can take the opposite view and go on about how much it sucks a lot, feeds into ideas of toxic masculinity where everyone just kills everyone and there are no likable characters. (Or OMG 40K iz dum u guyz)

I always wanted to get into warhammer40k(the lore that is) but I dont know where to start, any recommendations?

If you're just interested in the lore, you can easily just go to a 40K wiki and read through the stuff.

Malk and Steve can probably suggest more specific stories/novels.

Storm of Iron is awesome, but you should start with the Gaunt's Ghosts trilogy. If you want to see where it all started, read the first three novels of the Horus Heresy. 

Oh look, this is here. Well, seeing as its the only thing I'd debase myself to write fanfiction for, I'd say my opinion of it is obvious.

Pff, Star Wars is Flash Gordon, Eragon is Star Wars, and Game of Thrones is a bunch of historical events with zombies and artistic liberties. just because they changed the names and hid the sources doesn't make them inherently superior works.

No, none of those are what you say they are, and none of them are fanfiction.

Sure, maybe not. But they're all markedly inspired, and that's what fanfiction is supposed to be. Eragon is similar in plot to Star Wars, but reimagined in an entirely different world and with twists and turns in its source material. A New Hope contains a lot of moments and characters from Flash (Which was the movie that Lucas wanted to make before he was turned down.) but, notably, has a load of different shit, to the point where there isn't even a "Lead" protagonist and there's a whole fucking magic system and universe built around it. Game of Thrones is a lot of historical events somewhat out of order and woven together differently, but it's Game of Thrones. That's what good Fanfiction is supposed to be, another author picking something up and doing something wildly different with it. Yes, there are bad fanfics, and yeah, not all of them tell their own story, but if something with a genuinely interesting take and a truly innovated universe rolls along, I'm not going to judge it for not flipping the names around and dusting their inspiration under the rug.

I've been researching stuff about it after Steve's story. I'd really like to get into the game but the damn miniatures are so expensive.

Unless you're really dedicated to the hobby of buying minis, building an army, painting that army and then finding people to play with, honestly I wouldn't bother unless you can find someone else to pay for the minis and paint them.

Gestapo Workshop charges an arm and a leg for their shit and then in another year they'll just come out with a new version of the rules which will then make all the old models obsolete causing you to have to go out and buy the new ones.

Though to be fair you could still play the game with old models, proxies, wooden cubes with space marine painted on them, etc but they just ban you from official tournaments and shit. And other people really into playing the game even unofficially will often get in a tizz about shit like that too. God forbid if you don't paint your models. (Which is even more time and money)

It's a big fucking money sink like Magic the Gathering or the rest of those collectable card games. I'd even suggest getting into Necromunda before 40K proper since you don't need to buy as many minis for that game and you could use it to test the waters so to speak, but I think all support got dropped for it and I'm not even sure if they make the minis for it anymore. GW has a terrible habit of suddenly dropping support for their shit.

I'd say the video games set in the universe are a better investment if you like the setting and want to play in it. Even some of the board games set in the universe are cool.

The game itself is perfectly respectable, as far as tabletop games for grognards with lots of time and disposable income go. I could see it as being something fun to do with friends, and I've seen some really artistic people go all out painting figures and building battlefields.

It's the lore and the universe itself that has no appeal for me. I need somebody likeable somewhere to become invested in a setting, and this one is just so eyerollingly and relentlessly grimdark with the constant genocide and murder murder murder everywhere you look.

I'm willing to accept I'm just not the target audience though, genocide and murder murder murder has sold them a lot of tiny plastic men so far.

(Or OMG 40K iz dum u guyz)

Is this aimed at me? This feels like it was aimed at me. Endmaster why are you such a bully. :'(

fuck u nerd

I don't like how every unit seems to have three Tolkein-sized chunks of lore and each wiki page could make a reasonably sized word doc without even getting into tactics. It feels unclean. I guess it's great that they were used in all this shit, but there's a certain point when a lore grows to such absurd expanses that it becomes less about playing the game and more about reading books. Which is fine, but I only ever wanted to play the damn game. I mean, hell, not even TWM2 did that, and that's the game that literally pulled all its shit directly from history! This is the kind of shit that people write doctorate papers about to this day, and you don't even have to sift through that much bullshit... Granted, most of Medieval warfare was based on irregular military, and most of the information easily available highly specific units like Canons of the Holy Sepulchre and a few other crusader units, the Hungarian Battlefield Assassins, the Greek Fire Guys, and Literally Everything Welsh are 15-year-old, brightly colored webpages that vaguely verify their existence as troops...

Also, the art style just... Feels wrong to me. Everything looks all clunky and impractical and... Eugh... I'm sure it's justified by the in-universe physics and shit, but, I just hate it. Giant soulderpads and chainsaw guns, while iconic and I'm sure well-designed, gets really stupid-looking when you keep adding shit and adding shit on top of it. Everyone looks like dwarfs, carrying a bunch of impractical-looking emblems around... It doesn't feel kosher to me. It's like The Witcher 3, with Geralt spinning the fuck everywhere like Crash Bandicoot. I know it should be badass and cool, but I've seen enough semi-realistic approaches before that it just looks stupid and cringey.

I played Space Marine.

Going to Necro this for the Greater Good.

What is your favorite Warhammer 40k faction? And why?

I personally like the Space Marines. Mainly because they're freaking badass, and are somewhat a "good guy". Oh, and also they're pretty easy to play as. Even though the Emperor is an ambitious bastard, the Sphess Mareens are alright in my book.

The Necrons probably.

The lore for most of the factions is pretty interesting to me except for the Eldar and Tau. Though with the Tau it isn't so much that they don't have fascinating lore it's more along the lines that I'm not a big fan of their whole "Greater Good" philosophy.

They come from that same mentality that "We know what's best for you, so if you disagree it means you're wrong, go to the nearest sterilization camp and be prepared for indoctrination."

Getting shredded by Tyranids and absorbed into the hive mother would be more preferable, at least then you're just a puddle of DNA and no longer aware of your forced assimilation.

Being beheaded by a Khorne Berserker is the best way to go. Why? They don't believe in torture, or causing you to languish for hours, because that feeds Slaanesh. If you're an unarmoured non-Astartes, a quick blade to the neck is the best you can get.

Khorne Flakes are definitely much better than giving birth to a plague demon. Tzeentch will also probably torture you.

And Slaanesh will put all kinds of things down your throat.

What, old Terminator-Servants of Eldritch Abomination Necron Lore, or Ancient Egyptian RobotsNecron Lore?

Either one is fine. Though the newer lore feels a bit more fleshed out than the older versions of them.

Eh, "Space Marines" isn't really a faction that can be worked with, because the only real traits the loyalist ones share are loyalty to the Emperor and being a space marine. Seeing as they're all based on vastly different cultures, they pretty much have to be split into groups. Ultramarines and the Codex Compliant chapters are usually what's being referred to, but everything else varies. Salamanders and Space Wolves care for civilians, while Iron Hands consider them weak and pathetic. As factions, the Vampires are vastly different to the Cyborgs to the Werewolf-Vikings. What chapter/legion do you like?

Personally, I like the Tau, Orks, Chaos and Imperial Guard in that order. The Tau because they have a lot of cool alien stuff and are probably the closest things to good guys you can find, Orks because they're hilarious and good craic, Chaos begin its so diverse and badass, though a lot of the time they're forced into "LULZ SO EVIL!" idiot villain roles, and Guard, because the image of weak humans going up against all the enemies of the Imperium in a "War is hell" tale is cool.

I like the Dark Angels. Really more of a tabletop choice, the lore is just meh.

Tau have the coolest equipment. Rifles better than anybody's else and awesome customizable battle suits are awesome.

 

I've really always found the Fallen to be way more interesting than the loyalists, to be honest.

Yep.

While I do NOT play the tabletop variants, if my choices in Dawn of War are ANY indication, I'd play the Imperial Guard. Just love that they're basically normal human beings, no special tricks, no super soldier genetics, no armor that could hold up to most things in the universe *Except Genestealer claws.* Just plain ol' Willpower and the fact that there are so damn many all at once just means as well that they are flung into a meatgrinder, its interesting to see people come out of those and seeing what happens.

The fact there's multiple worlds that people get guardsmen from is astonishing, from Cadia *A world that is perpetually fighting SOMETHING* to Catachan *A world where even the BUTTERFLIES would eat your face.*

How's it that all most of these humans with hundreds of years of independent growth all still use the same generally clunky design?  The whole bred-for-war aspect is cool and all, but...eh.  Endless murder only goes so far without at least a bit of something in between to change it (which doesn't really happen by the end of each development cycle).  For all the differences in weaponry, cultures, and internal tech it seems very...

Roundabout just to say that all soldiers must have at least 270-degree roundness.

Some time towards the end of the Heresy what essentially amounts to a demonic computer virus got loose on Mars, where the technological archives are kept. All of the information stored within was corrupt. They know how to maintain shit, but not how to build it.

Also, every new piece of tech has to be rigorously tested to make sure it actually works, and isn't a result of Tzeentch's fuckery

And let us not forget that the Mechanicus also likes to keep the good shit for themselves.

I've played the bored game a couple of times. Really fun even though it can take a long time to finish. My friend's dad had a bunch of the figure and some really well made boards. I have moved since then and haven't really played other than when I rarely visit him. I do still have a set of some well painted and put together Orks his father gave me. Fun game and his father really got me hooked on the game.

OMG 40K iz dum u guyz

Shut up, Mizal.

I prefer Warhammer: Fantasy.

Actually I probably kept up more on that setting rather than 40K since I used to play more board games involving it.

Of course WF is dead and they replaced it with that Age of Sigmar shit which I've read up on and just isn't that interesting.
 

the Crusader Kings mod Warhammer: Geheimnisnacht is based off of warhammer fantasy.