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Hi all I have been interested in playing 40k for a long time I originally bought the assault on black reach and got the SM built but not painted as that part was intimidating at the time, I have never painted. But before long I had forgotten about them but I always loved the lore around 40k and have started to become more interested in a tabletop game again.

I wanted to make a Salamander army and I was wondering besides the SM:codex and 7th ed rules to be able to have access to all the chapter rules what if any other books I should get?

I know there are chapter tactics but I think I seen some about chapter master rules for different chapters, are they in the codex or another book? Also I think I have seen rules for Tu'Shan but not sure in what context and if I can use him at all.

Also I have seen some threads saying GW is not doing well and other games that are better ect. Now I also play WoW and I’ve see oh the sky is falling type all the time but I wanted to ask since it’s a lot of money to invest should I be worried about this?

I am always willing to try another game but it’s the lore that pulled me into 40k and all I would ever want to play is a friendly game nothing to serous.

Perhaps one thing to consider would be the games your friends are playing or whether your local gaming shop has more opportunities for 40k or for other games. This would limit you in the short term more than anything. If there are no ready 40k players, even if the prices were cheap, it wouldn't help your desire for a game.

As for whether GW will be gone soon, you get all kinds of opinions on the internet. But no one can predict for sure and asking in Dakka may not give you the definite answer you are looking for. If you are concerned, perhaps you can just get the codex for now. I believe Chapter Tactics for Salamanders should be in the SM codex but I don't own one so I cannot answer that conclusively. And you already have AoBR so there is less investment for now.

Finally, if you really like the lore, other games may not give you the same satisfaction. But you can also explore the lore of other games. If they work for you too, you might want to start those instead. But bear in mind the players you can get around you.

Chapter Tactics and Vulkan He'Stan are in the codex, Second Company Captain Mir'San and Venerable Dreadnaught Bray'Arth Ashmantle are in Imperial Armor Volume 10 with some Seige Space Marine rules. But I can't find a purely Salamander section in what I have access to. I wouldn't worry about buying Imperial Armor for just those two Special Characters.

People have been saying GW was going under for over ten years. Don't worry about it. Every time someone is unhappy, a few hundred more people are also unhappy for the same reason and doomsday calls are set off. It's been that way Edition after Edition and GW is still around and strong.

Painting is the easy part tbh it's just time consuming if you want to make it look nice.

Some guys paint like 4 colors total after spray primer and that's good enough. Some guys will spend hours and use several to make a single squad of guys.

If I wanted too I could paint the rest of my army in an afternoon. I choose to see it through to make it noticeably more presentable.


But regardless of the route you take you will never get em painted just sitting there worrying about it. Buy a can of spray primer and some bright green and hit the town!

The space marine codex and 7th ed rules should be all you need to run Salamanders.

A colored primer, and a wash does wonders for getting a lot of models done table stop standard quickly.

For getting more models. I recommend the new Space Marine Strike Force.

I think telling this new player that everything's perfectly alright would be disingenuous.
There are people who know the business field much better than most of us with no axe to grind saying the GW could be in very serious trouble.
Here's a well written article with lots of insight and documented facts showing that its not all roses and balloons.
http://masterminis.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-future-of-games-workshop-part-14.html
How long does GW? One year? Ten years? Can't say. But if things continue as they are, they will go under. The question is, will they pull up in time?

rj35267b wrote:Also I have seen some threads saying GW is not doing well and other games that are better ect. Now I also play WoW and I’ve see oh the sky is falling type all the time but I wanted to ask since it’s a lot of money to invest should I be worried about this?

No.

Like in any situation like this, it's just anger projecting entering an echo chamber until it becomes groupthink.

As for starting salamanders, you're on the right track with books. I don't know if there are any BL fiction works you might be interested in. Also, one of the things you might consider doing is going to the internet and "finding" a copy of some of the older space marine codices. That way you can read the fluff sections and pick up on stuff that the newer one missed. Also, consider asking the 40k background forum for other sources of material.

That and look at some pictures of salamander armies, and start thinking about how you want to paint stuff.

Here's the bottom line:

Do you have a regular group of people (club, etc.) to play with? If yes, then 40k can work fine. If you're going to just be going down to the local game shop every Wednesday night to play whoever shows up, then 40k is pretty poor as a game overall. Also keep in mind that it's VERY expensive. The rules alone run almost $150, more if you buy supplements. A basic army runs a couple of hundred dollars (scouring ebay for deals aside), and in general if you pick units that you like there's a 50/50 chance they'll be really good or really bad.

You can have fun with 40k, nobody has denied that. The thing is that 40k has a lot of issues: Insane startup cost, unbalanced forces, very large and time consuming among them. Those are pretty major tradeoffs.

You mentioned WoW (I also play WoW, semi-retired right now until Warlords): Imagine if Death Knights could oneshot everyone except Paladins, who could in turn oneshot them, if Rogues were so weak that they couldn't do anything without a Mage as a teammate (PVP), and if Warlocks needed a specific trinket to do anything. That's how 40k feels sometimes - some armies are better than everyone else, some have a lot of bad units and a handful of good ones, and some are just average, some need to buy multiple supplements and expensive kits to be good.

The GW collapsing stuff comes largely from diminishing sales as more people are leaving 40k and GW thinks the way to combat this is by raising prices. Anyone with business sense knows that you can only raise prices and slash value for so long before you hit the breaking point. You shouldn't be worried in the sense that they're going to go out of business tomorrow, but they are on the decline while their competitors are on the rise. As a WoW player, take that as you will. There is no "40k killer" yet, but 40k is losing players.

Imagine WoW where nothing is balanced (in all honestly WoW classes tend to be fairly close with some exceptions), the most powerful class changes every couple of months but you can buy a class change for $100, the subscription fee gets raised every time they lose subscriptions, and every month they release a new dungeon but you need to buy the key for $25 on the store if you want to run it. There would be people who would jump on a game like that, and a lot that would say no thanks and quit.

That's essentially how 40k is; it's very much "pay to win". Again, you can have fun but you can't treat it as a game where you're being competitive or where you're doing anything other than having fun with the models. Someone else said it best: 40k is a great game if you aren't a gamer.