Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

My knowledge about 40K is strictly limited to a few beginners gaming rule books and I have no clue how the space marines began and why the emperor is a corpse on a throne. I would like to read up and start from beginning to present, focused of course on the space marines. I am hoping to either purchase the books or be able to download it so that I may read about it. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Well... start with the BRB, and then Codex: Space Marines, and then Codex: Chaos Space Marines, and then go through each codex in any order you want, because the other factions are not in any way "chronologically important". That is, it doesn't really matter that much if you read about Necrons before you read about Orks.

Or, go to Lexicanum and just keep clicking "Random Article".

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Emperor_of_Mankind#.UvwgobR_JCA

Read that, and then from there, explore what interests you. His history is particularly important, it is the origins of the Imperium. Then you can go back and look at the previous Ages.

yeah the base rules book as a ton of stuff, if you're just a novel reader that's a good question.

What NOVEL would be the best intro to 40k?

Dax415 wrote:
My knowledge about 40K is strictly limited to a few beginners gaming rule books and I have no clue how the space marines began and why the emperor is a corpse on a throne. I would like to read up and start from beginning to present, focused of course on the space marines. I am hoping to either purchase the books or be able to download it so that I may read about it. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Buy the Space Marines short story collection by the Black Library. It's a great way to start yourself off in the fluff. It's over eight hundred pages and has numerous stories on the Astartes (Chaos and Loyalist) along with a comic by Dan Abnett.

My experience is that, for starter, one can gain significant amount of fluff knowledge by just going to Lexicanum, exhaust all relevant topics on the following subjects:
Dark Age of Technology
Age of Strife
Age of the Imperium

After getting the general idea of one the most central figure in the fluff, you can probably read the HH books, Namely the first three: Horus Rising (by Dan Abnett), False Gods (by Graham McNeil), and Galaxy in Flames (by Ben Counter). These books should show you the big picture, though the rest of the series has their values as well, they are not mandatory IMO for a starter.

Of course the BRB and Codexes are good for a quick study, but there are details it won't go into -- personally I think the Eldar/Dark Eldar codexes (4th and 5th Edition respectively, which are rather old, and hopefully Codex Eldar 4E will be a bit cheaper now; I won't cross my fingers tho) are rather detailed in their cultures and customs, lores, etc.

The WD SoB "codex" has some information on the Age of Apostasy, but since it's so hard to find a legitimate copy you may as well read the relevant Lexicanum article, or buy the BL digital codex if you feel like it.

Chaos... I don't think there is a better way to understand them other than reading both the CSM and the Daemons codexes, but I can be wrong (in fact I'm almost certain that I'm wrong on that aspect).

I suppose anything can find for the rest of the ball is as good as any; I've been told there are a couple pretty good Tau novels concerning Shadowsun and Farsight, but I've never read them. And the Orks and the Tyrandis... I can't recall any novel that actually go into the details about them, so probably just the codexes.

Hope this helps...

Save yourself a bunch of money and browse through the 40K wikis online. There's some older/retconned stuff but you'll get the gist of the whole setting with as much or as little detail as you like, and all it will cost you is time.

 Wyzilla wrote:

Dax415 wrote:
My knowledge about 40K is strictly limited to a few beginners gaming rule books and I have no clue how the space marines began and why the emperor is a corpse on a throne. I would like to read up and start from beginning to present, focused of course on the space marines. I am hoping to either purchase the books or be able to download it so that I may read about it. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Buy the Space Marines short story collection by the Black Library. It's a great way to start yourself off in the fluff. It's over eight hundred pages and has numerous stories on the Astartes (Chaos and Loyalist) along with a comic by Dan Abnett.

Does anybody know those books that are a collection of short stories? I vaguely remember them being praised.

MarsNZ wrote:
Save yourself a bunch of money and browse through the 40K wikis online. There's some older/retconned stuff but you'll get the gist of the whole setting with as much or as little detail as you like, and all it will cost you is time.

The wikis are either poorly sourced or sparse on information. The Black Library novels are affordable and provide a far greater insight.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 StarTrotter wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

Dax415 wrote:
My knowledge about 40K is strictly limited to a few beginners gaming rule books and I have no clue how the space marines began and why the emperor is a corpse on a throne. I would like to read up and start from beginning to present, focused of course on the space marines. I am hoping to either purchase the books or be able to download it so that I may read about it. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Buy the Space Marines short story collection by the Black Library. It's a great way to start yourself off in the fluff. It's over eight hundred pages and has numerous stories on the Astartes (Chaos and Loyalist) along with a comic by Dan Abnett.

Does anybody know those books that are a collection of short stories? I vaguely remember them being praised.

Bolter and Chainsword.

Let the Galaxy Burn is probable one of the best sources of short stories you can get.

Here's a sample .pdf of one of its stories and one of my favourites

http://www.blacklibrary.com/Downloads/Product/PDF//m/maelstrom.pdf

Yah I'd say read thru the Heresy books BL puts out, starting with Galaxy In Flames.

It's how I got into 40k back in the day.

 Wyzilla wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:
Save yourself a bunch of money and browse through the 40K wikis online. There's some older/retconned stuff but you'll get the gist of the whole setting with as much or as little detail as you like, and all it will cost you is time.

The wikis are either poorly sourced or sparse on information. The Black Library novels are affordable and provide a far greater insight.

Yeah... in some cases, they're even erroneously sourced. At least one page claims to have taken information from a page of a codex that just has a single image on it - and the image is not of the thing the wiki was talking about!

 Wyzilla wrote:

 StarTrotter wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

Dax415 wrote:
My knowledge about 40K is strictly limited to a few beginners gaming rule books and I have no clue how the space marines began and why the emperor is a corpse on a throne. I would like to read up and start from beginning to present, focused of course on the space marines. I am hoping to either purchase the books or be able to download it so that I may read about it. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Buy the Space Marines short story collection by the Black Library. It's a great way to start yourself off in the fluff. It's over eight hundred pages and has numerous stories on the Astartes (Chaos and Loyalist) along with a comic by Dan Abnett.

Does anybody know those books that are a collection of short stories? I vaguely remember them being praised.

Bolter and Chainsword.

You mean Hammer and Bolter. Bolter and Chainsword is an awesome resource for Space Marine fans though.

Get hold of the yellow 40k Compendium from Rogue Trader, then the 2nd ed Codex Imperialis.

Failing the finding of the yellow compendium, the red one will work just as well.

It can even be found as a pdf if you know where to look for it.

What worked in my case...

1) Rulebook. It has a lot of fluffy meat.
2) WH40K 4chan...yeah, I know, strange...but its retelling of key event is sometimes much more immersing than traditional wiki, especially when some mixes official fluff with fanfiction. 4chan is not main source, but good secondary source for fluff.
3) Abnett. And Gaunt Ghosts...for me were first few novels much better for getting into world than Horus Rising - which is IMO freat book for those who already know the fluff.
4) Codexes. All of them. AAAALL! No, really, borrow them, they are not on same level of quality but from fluff perspective its vivid painting of universe.
4) Avoid idiotic bolter porn. You wrote you like SM, thats good, but avoid bolter porn with heroic SM slaughtering enemies by thousands, hopping from tank to tank...its not grimdark, its not fun, its not quality...its just time and money lost in immature blabbering