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I've been a huge fan since around 1998. Since that time, there have been numerous times where I've seen, done or read something that's made me grin and reminds me why I waste so much money on this hobby.

I want specific examples of times you've geeked out over 40k. A recent example for me: last night I'm reading a BL book that will remain nameless for spoilers sake. A Space Marine lifted a rebel into the air and shoved a grenade into his mouth. I laughed at the sheer brutality (and impracticality) of it. My wife asked what I was laughing about and when I told her what I had just read, she replies "Wow that's pretty over the top."

Exactly.

Give me your geek moments, they need not be fluff related. The more specific and anecdotal the better.

One line from a recent, non-HH book.

"I am Alpharius."

 Psienesis wrote:
One line from a recent, non-HH book.

"I am Alpharius."

I know the book. I did something anatomically with bricks when I read that line.

I think one of my first ones was when I read about Wazdakka in the 4th edition(current) codex, and how he took out a warlord titan by driving up a mesa overlooking the titan and bike jumping to the titan, getting set on fire by the void shields, crashing into the cockpit, and while still on fire, slaughtering the crew. I just imagine a huge WAAAAAGGGHHH!! playing in my head as he flew into it.
Now that I think about it, Wazzdakka should get Titan hunter special ability in escalation...

Ben Aaronovitch´s non-warhammer novels had a Space Hulk reference. This pleases my nerd heart.

40k Nerd Moment:

When you introduce a new guy to 40k, and in his first game realise that you've memorised your codex, his codex, the rulebook, your entire army list, most of his army list, and can name nigh-any 40k model.

And then 6th ed hit, and I lost it. (mostly due to lack of play)

I get like this whenever they reveal background about some commonly known 40k thing in the HH novels- reading Angel Exterminatus at the moment and when the primarch gives the star maelstrom a new name is one such example.

A guy around where I am built a scale suit of Tactical Dreadnought Armour, and stood next to me. I suddenly realised - those guys are fekking huge. Then I think about it, the scale of the 40K universe, it is just kind of staggering (like our own universe, I suppose)

This is my desktop background, it's just so epic:

There was a fantasy book I was reading, a classic from around 5 years ago that I found in a gold mine of a place in Exeter, I'm not naming it (just in case people don't want the ending ruined for them) but right at the end on the very last page, a lone empire rifle man who was badly wounded after his army was assaulted in a forest by squigs and night goblins who were looking for a good old fight, limped over to a small pond and dropped to his knees and stared into the water, it was apparently particularly still and dark but there was a faint blue glow coming from the bottom like some sort of orb and he stared into it, there was a ripple in the water and he saw a huge bulky man, clad In blue and gold armour wielding a futuristic gun of some sort then he fainted from blood loss... I couldnt surpress a great grin as I realised it was a ultramarine!!!

The spaceship combat between the several kilometer long battleships and cruisers.

Reading about the Lion leaping over a rhino to murder about 15 Luna wolves

I have a couple off the top of my head...

Most recently when re-reading "The Emperor's Gift"... just about every moment that includes Logan Grimnar I am either smiling or laughing at how much of a bad a$$ he is and my wife is like,

Wife - "What's so funny?"

Me - "Just 40K stuff."

Wife - "Nerd."

Another? The moment the final moments before the traitors open fire during "The First Heretic"... awesome.

 conker249 wrote:
I think one of my first ones was when I read about Wazdakka in the 4th edition(current) codex, and how he took out a warlord titan by driving up a mesa overlooking the titan and bike jumping to the titan, getting set on fire by the void shields, crashing into the cockpit, and while still on fire, slaughtering the crew. I just imagine a huge WAAAAAGGGHHH!! playing in my head as he flew into it.
Now that I think about it, Wazzdakka should get Titan hunter special ability in escalation...

I KONKUR!

 gossipmeng wrote:
This is my desktop background, it's just so epic:

Here is mine.

 gossipmeng wrote:
This is my desktop background, it's just so epic:

Oh what, Hive Fleet Gorgon is my background as well!

Forgeworld tanks.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

 gossipmeng wrote:
This is my desktop background, it's just so epic:

Here is mine.

Right now I got my friend started into 40k. It's great having a close friend getting into 40k. We love talking about all that is the 40k universe.

 conker249 wrote:
Right now I got my friend started into 40k. It's great having a close friend getting into 40k. We love talking about all that is the 40k universe.

I hear that! Both my brothers and my 2 closest friends love it too. We literally just sit and talk crap about things all day sometimes. It's great


Von Chogg

Soul Hunter


Blood Reaver


Void Stalker

Seeing the Dawn of War and Space Marine trailers... for the first 50 times.
My reaction all those times looked something like this:

The band Carcass released a new album earlier this year with a song called "Captive Bolt Pistol". The Bolt Pistol part of that song title immediately made my mind jump to 40k. Hmmm...are bolt pistols that archaic that the Chaos Marines will do anything to steal them?

After reminding myself what Carcass is all about and actually reading the lyrics, I realized the song is actually about this thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_bolt_pistol

 Algorithm wrote:


I want specific examples of times you've geeked out over 40k. A recent example for me: last night I'm reading a BL book that will remain nameless for spoilers sake. A Space Marine lifted a rebel into the air and shoved a grenade into his mouth. I laughed at the sheer brutality (and impracticality) of it. My wife asked what I was laughing about and when I told her what I had just read, she replies "Wow that's pretty over the top."

Wanted: Dead or Alive (Rutger Hauer remake of a Steve McQueen film). Rutger did the same to his quarry in this film. He stuffed it in his mouth, gaff taped it and led the guy around by the pin ring because the bounty specified "alive". In the end, he stopped caring about the bonus money and just pulled the pin and walked away (everyone else scattered, too).

Not an original thing.

The ultra dystopian and hyper oppressive Imperium geeks me out. Orwell's 1984 got me into the dystopian future, then 40k just took it to the extreme.

The things I keep coming back to are some of the extremely sophisticated bits of dry humor that riff on religion that used to be more prominent until they were diluted.

1.) Orks' cargo cult plus.

To start with, the orks' zeitgeist psychic power is a great idea, and it's so well executed in so much of the literature. But the best part is ork teknology.

An ork boy sees an eldar firing a starcannon - one of the most sophisticated pieces of technology in the galaxy. They see the eldar point the weapon and then it fires. After the battle, the boy picks up the weapon, and points it like the eldar warrior did and, because he saw it happen before, it happens again. Of course, this is also predicated on the fact that other orks saw the weapon being fired, and they all agree that it's a gun that is firable. Thus, causally, conscience creates form. They are literally gods, but the best part is that they don't even know it - ork teknology becomes a superstition in itself, rather than a known fact. Then the superstition recursively churns through the machine again to produce things like mekkboyz.

Actually, no, the best part about this is that they then take this sophisticated piece of weaponry that works because they shout DAKKA enough and stick it on a buggy (that goes faster because it's painted red, and everyone agrees that red things go faster), and decide to drive around spraying gunfire at random in a high-speed clown-car chase of bonkers, pointless destruction that causes everyone to break down laughing. A liter of ultimate, cosmic, literally-god-like power poured into a thimble.

2.) Ad Mech telephone.

This one is pretty simple. You start out with someone who knows what to do, and why the steps are important. Then you remove the understanding of why the steps are important, and are left with merely the understanding that if you follow certain steps in a certain order that you get the desired results.

Then the fact that you don't know the causes for why you're doing what you're doing breeds religious superstition and faith. Meanwhile, over the millenia, copying errors, scribes acting on orders to support a certain set of beliefs, and the mere ravages of time causes the instructions for how to do something to warp over time. Those that break the system eventually die off, but those that survive invariably become more bloated.

And then, the piece de resistance as the two paths fuse. You have these scribes copying the instructions, but the scribes themselves are sacred and infallible while committing their holy duty. It's not knowledge, it's truth based on superstition. Thus, doubting the instructions that are handed to you is heresy. And to enforce that orthodoxy, we need a gigantic hierarchy.

The end result is that if you need to change a lightbulb, you wind up with a 10,000 step procedure wherein three of the steps are remove the old lightbulb, get a new one, and screw it it, but there are also 9,997 other steps, mostly of applying sacred oils, and chanting certain prayers.

I don't know if all of those steps are required to change a light bulb, but I know when I do all 10,000 of them exactly this way in this order, the light bulb is changed successfully. Plus, if I try and change it some other way, I'll be burned alive as a heretic.

3.) Dark Eldar make their own deity.

So, I'm going to sort of roll the entire fluff about the warp into this one, fairly or otherwise.

I just love the idea that, of course, gods are a creation from the minds of mortals. Except here it's with a wonderful twist. The gods in the case of 40k actually exist, and because they're made of congealed emotion that reaches a critical mass to become self-sentient, it's possible to create a god not on purpose.

A god that, as it is the pooled essence of collective consciousness (all of our souls, one could say), when it is created sucks all of said souls into itself (that is, concentrating the material of its very existence) which, of course, kills off everybody who believed in it.

Then those few miraculous survivors of the gestalt diety creation are left to find a way to prevent themselves from being absorbed. Instead of simply trying to not believe in the god, and try not to be the same kind of people that created the deity in the first place (and thus make their souls unattractive), they instead decide to double down. They make a bargain with their deity wherein they get to maintain independence of existence so long as they cause more sentient beings to feel the kinds of things of which the god itself is made.

And, in the case of Dark Eldar, because the god they created was one of sensation, the only way to do this is to cause as much sensual stimulation as possible. The way they get this most efficiently is through pain, so the only way they can stop their god from eating their souls is by torturing the entire galaxy in a devil's bargain of salvation.


The way that GW has satirized religion by the dystopian religions it creates is just so good. I wish they'd play it up more.

There was a short story I was reading an old BL book, about a village and the surrounding farms being attacked by zombies, I was reading it as a fantasy novel there was no reference to anything 40K, they were running around wearing armour and waving long swords. Then just as the settlement is about to get over run a group of SM teleport in.

 chromedog wrote:

 Algorithm wrote:


I want specific examples of times you've geeked out over 40k. A recent example for me: last night I'm reading a BL book that will remain nameless for spoilers sake. A Space Marine lifted a rebel into the air and shoved a grenade into his mouth. I laughed at the sheer brutality (and impracticality) of it. My wife asked what I was laughing about and when I told her what I had just read, she replies "Wow that's pretty over the top."

Wanted: Dead or Alive (Rutger Hauer remake of a Steve McQueen film). Rutger did the same to his quarry in this film. He stuffed it in his mouth, gaff taped it and led the guy around by the pin ring because the bounty specified "alive". In the end, he stopped caring about the bonus money and just pulled the pin and walked away (everyone else scattered, too).

Not an original thing.

Thanks Buzzkillinton. I wasn't saying it was original, I was saying it was over the top. The Marines in the scene could have easily just gunned down the rebels and it would've been much more efficient. Instead, the Marine opts for the over-the-top, hyper violent method of killing his enemy. In fact in that scene some Imperial solider bystanders are horrified by the brutality, despite the fact that the Marines had saved them. One remarks that he didn't want to be anywhere near them again.

My favorite moment where I geeked out was when I was reading "Shadowsun: The Last of Kiru's Line," Shadowsun herself took on a squadron of sentinels dashing, bouncing, and bobbing "anime" style.

SkavenLord wrote:
Seeing the Dawn of War and Space Marine trailers... for the first 50 times.
My reaction all those times looked something like this:

I know the feeling. I spent the time between 1998 and 2003 wandering in the wilderness, alone with my 40k obsession. No one I knew was into the setting, and I was such a nerd that I had a Black Templar army and no one to play with. Watching the trailer for DoW 1 was the first time I saw any sort of video of the battles I had been picturing in my head for so long, and it was perfect.

The first time I saw that dreadnought stomp into view out of the smoke, I needed a change of pants.I forced everyone I knew to watch it, and funny enough DoW is how my current tabletop group formed.