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I'm pretty much only in the game for the fluff and the size of the player base. The models I find pretty good but they don't really have the character of skirmish games, which makes sense but still feels like a step down often. Ruleswise it might be the worst game I've played though WarmaHorde had a bunch of stuff I despised.

I've been in the book and rpg part of 40k long enough that the narrative part of creating armies kind of outweigh the fact that it's not the most fun game on the table. It being the worst balanced miniature game I've played certainly does not help it.I'm normally a tournament player but I don't think I'll play many ones for this game Narrative games is where it's at.

The models are definitely better than the story or the rules. The story started off as a form of satire, but now that they are playing it straight, the story pretty nausea inducing.

yukishiro1 wrote:
It's the Super-hero-ification of the setting that gets to me the most. The writing itself has never been of particularly high quality overall, but the tone has changed significantly since Guilliman and the Primaribros came along.

This

 jeff white wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
It's the Super-hero-ification of the setting that gets to me the most. The writing itself has never been of particularly high quality overall, but the tone has changed significantly since Guilliman and the Primaribros came along.

This

It was changing before that. It's hard to keep a satire going for 30 years.

SecondTime wrote:

 jeff white wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
It's the Super-hero-ification of the setting that gets to me the most. The writing itself has never been of particularly high quality overall, but the tone has changed significantly since Guilliman and the Primaribros came along.

This

It was changing before that. It's hard to keep a satire going for 30 years.

It wasn't hard until they decided to advance the story. As soon as 40k decided to become narritive instead of a setting it was doomed.

Even before that, they were running out of space for more things to cram into 40990s...

Fluff and I love collecting and painting the minis.

I like the fluff because it’s sooooooooooo fluid you can basically make it what you want and ignore the SM heavy approach.

The bit that annoys me is when GW decide to make a major change to the fluff without really thinking it through like primaris but again I make of it what I want

 Sim-Life wrote:
I honestly don't like 40k that much. If given the choice I'd.play nearly anything else but unfortunately my group has chosen 40k as its game du jour so I'm stuck with it. About the only aspect I like anymore is the aesthetics of non-Astartes Imperium stuff.

Currently I've been making a lot of progress and am into the last stretch of painting my not insubstantial 40k armies which is keeping me kind of interested and once I have I doubt I'll ever really pay attention to 40k again. I just never enjoyed it as much as WHFB or Malifaux or Infinity or any of the 60-odd and growing board games I own. Hell, I'd be more willing to play a game of Warmahordes at this point over 40k (as long as its a no theme game).

I too wish people would branch out more with other game systems besides GW's. I'd like to play a game of Infinity myself but can't cause no one else in the reasonable driving distance from me doe play it. Hopefully that will change one day but at least I got the hobby aspect and converison ideas to keep me busy until then.

As for the topic at hand, I dislike the rules of 40k and wish it was more simple than it is. Same with other GW games. Though it seems that Warcry is better than the other GW systems from what people on youtube have been saying about it. Though that is just their opinions. Still at least the bits are good for conversions across many different systems. The lore flips & flops depending on who is in charge of writing. Some aspects/eras get the imagination going and help excite you to create something new or revamped. The rules are the worst offender of the three sections in my opinion. They need a complete rehaul & the lore can use touch ups & edits.

I love the models. Very much enjoy the parts of the lore that appeal to me. The rules are hard to judge. The rapid turnover of design paradigms and editions has become a big turnoff.

I like almost everything they've done for 9th but the combination of needing the codexes to roll out for it to really function completely with the edition being probably over once they do has really soured my enthusiasm for it.

I've tried not to post as much as the Marine ascendancy was toxic to my enjoyment and it was definitely coming through in my interactions here.

I am somewhat heartened by the fact two loyalist Astartes books just dropped and this place hasn't imploded.

I really like the models as they are far easier to paint and look really good to compared much of the stuff I painted previously. A good portion why I started a Primaris only army was because those models are in my sweet spot for time spent per model for final result. Which I think almost always appears better than my actual painting ability.

I sorta like the lore. I have only really looked into over the last 4-5 years giving it a second chance from 10 years ago when I researched it to play some of the FF rpgs. Which at that point I wasn't interested as I wasn't interested in playing a character in the oppressive setting. Even though I only recently learned much of it, I still have a funny kind of nostalgia as I see where much of the setting is still very much a 1990s view of sci-fi built on the backs of decades earlier sci-fi.

For me, the game is good enough. All I am really looking for is something that allows me the excuse to show off some of my painted models, tell a dumb little war story, socialize with people I like to spend a couple of hours with and occasionally have barn burner of a contest, or at very least, not be able to completely predict the outcome with certainty. Which 8th ed 40k accomplished if a little overly convoluted in its approach. For the most part I played Kill Team most of the edition which I think is a far superior game even if it still have a bunch of convoluted stuff. Full 40k games are a nice change of pace on occasion though. I don't know if I would want to play it weekend after weekend for that many months though. It is definitely a game I only want to play sparely and mix other games (not always tabletop based) and hobbies with my free time.

I find myself drawn far more to Age of Sigmar. Which I think generally has better looking models (easy enough since AoS seems to be getting way more varied new stuff), the chance to develop fresh fantasy genre lore that is at least a little more fresh than any given D&D campaign pitch I have ever heard (and I have heard a lot at least back in the 1990s) and a less Rube Goldberg of a game system. Not discounting AoS's very fiddly Pile-In malarkey. Which is funny as I was so burned out from Fantasy as I had almost nothing to do with the genre for nearly 15 years.

I think 40k works fine so long as you only kinda eyeball what's good and definitely don't mathammer (and stare directly into the code of Matrix movie doing so), play enough to not forget too many of the rules though not so much that your skills get too honed and generally get too wrapped around the bend trying to win. But I don't want to come off that optimized/competitive play is BadWrongFun. I just think in terms of 40k it is recipe for disaster as I don't think the game has, does or likely will be all that great at providing it for players that do want to do optimized/competitive play. It is always going to seem like fitting a square peg into a round hole to me.

They have been knocking minis out the proverbial park left right and center recently bar some exceptions that would be more about personal taste.

The fluff.. I dunno. the more I delve into the HH the less mysterious things get and the more "it" takes itself seriously. Like it seems we need to have fluff explanations/ justifications for crazey OTT dumb units..

The game itself - *shrug*
It could really do with a LOT of improvement. I mean A LOT.

For me it's always been the setting that I love more than anything. The background of the factions, the world they existing in, and all the background culture and information is greatly appealing. What I don't like is the story telling that takes itself too seriously and undermines the setting with over the top heroics and weakening things so the heroes can triumph (instead of the no hope slaughter that war in this universe entails). The gathering storm fluff is hot garbage and reeks of GW writing plot to sell models.

Speaking of models, I like the models but it's never something I've felt as being the driving force for the hobby to me. The exception being the models I put together, customized, and painted to be personal instead of the same thing everyone else has. I also like the rank and file units more than the heroes because I feel that the setting is best represented by the unfortunate grunts that get sent into the meat grinder instead of the heroes that should have no business surviving the impossible odds (time and time again). It's one of the things I dislike about newer GW models as they focus less on customization (even the subtle things like the angle that they hold their rifle) and more on being this very "show piece" looking thing. Looks silly having an army of models where every 5th guy is vaulting over a barricade or doing the same heroic pose (instead of the usual running, shooting, standing, etc). I really dislike the focus on center piece models being this grand spectacle.

The game use to be a close 2nd to the setting but 8th edition killed the current edition for me (still like 7th, can't stand the current state of the game). Before I use to find joy in expressing myself through building an army around a theme, style, or gimmick that I wanted to go with. My Ork army was often inspired by a Blitzkrieg style theme of mass Battlewagons and dakkajets creating this AV14 wall which would unlease a full on blitz on turn 2 from tank killkannons, boyz/Gitz shooting, boyz/MANz choppin, and jets making straifing runs on vulnerable targets. Or my Tau lists with lots of Fire Warriors supported by Broadsides, Pathfinders, and Hammerheads to form a defensive line (anvil) while my crisis suits (the hammer) would strike from above into the heart of the enemy army to deal a critical blow to key elements of the enemy force resulting the enemy's forces breaking apart. Or my Space Marines that used ample amounts of landspeeder storms to essentially flash bang the enemy to become blind while my Sternguard drop podded into the enemy ranks to gun down targets of opportunity. Utilized vanguard vets to charge in with power lances to deal somewhat decisive attacks in close quarters. Point being that I often favored the unusual or less traveled path to find what could work and tried my hardest to make that theme or style work. With 8th it took all the joy out of the game with it's overly simplified gameplay, magic the gathering style "map my CP to play giant growth on my space marines", aura hammer around hero units, terrain being basically pointless, vehicles became meat boxes, removal of all niche mechanics in favor of "roll more dice to do more damage to kill things faster and reroll all the dice to be even more killy". It took a game that had a depth hidden under it's bloat and replaced it with mathhammer alpha strikes. No longer did I have interesting mechanics to work with or units with niche functionality to take advantage to try and shake up how the game was played. 9th might of sprinkled in a bit of depth beyond "alpha strike, table the enemy" but it's still an overly simplified mess that didn't do anything to help address the massive disparity in complexity between 7th and 8th.

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned h but check out Leutin09s videos on YouTube. He looks at the lore like a historian and cuts it down into bitsize chunks.

OP- here's my recommendation.

Pick ONE army. Build a 25PL Crusade. Play Crusade.

Don't worry about anyone else's army- they are in charge of policing their own rules and calling their own fouls. Tournament players believe that they have to know EVERY rule for EVERY army. It's trying to do this that overwhelms people and makes them feel the bloat. That hasn't been a realistic approach since Rogue Trader back in '87. It is true, of course, that if you get there, you will be a better player because you can anticipate your opponent. I understand why tourney players are driven to reach this lofty goal. I just don't think it's very realistic.

The thing about this hobby is that is likely to be around FOREVER. Despite the negativity in Dakka, 8th was the best selling edition of all time, and 9th will top it by the time it's done. And what that means is that IF you get in now with a 25PL Crusade and just fight your way through to having a full sized army, growing through battle a unit at a time, in another three decades, you'll be the longbeard who seems to know everything about the hobby, the armies and their fluff.

As for folks who say Chapter tactics and bespoke strats don't contribute to an army's identity, I'm not exactly sure how you can say that. Perhaps if you're a marine player, you may find that abilities are so similar- I don't know for sure; the only marines I'm really interested in are those who act as Chambers Militant for the Inquisition. But I have never known more about the identities of the Orders of the Sisters of Battle than I do now. I have never known more about the identities of the individual Kabals, Cults and Covens of the Dark Eldar. It is the bespoke strats and chapter tactics that are the best indicator for me about exactly how an army behaves on the battlefield.

GW makes use of the unreliable narrator concept in all of their fluff in order make their galaxy seem bigger. For this reason, all BL publications need the filter of rules to provide objectivity.

There was a HUGE thread in the background forum comparing Sisters of Battle to Marines. The number of people in that thread who talked about how much faster Marines are than Sisters based on the novels really surprised me. Here's a cool trick: if their movement stats are equal, no one is faster, and any BL publication that indicates otherwise is either an example of the unreliable narrator principle, or it is just plain wrong.

This is why chapter tactics and bespoke strats will always more effectively define an army's identity than any number of novels.

PenitentJake wrote:


There was a HUGE thread in the background forum comparing Sisters of Battle to Marines. The number of people in that thread who talked about how much faster Marines are than Sisters based on the novels really surprised me. Here's a cool trick: if their movement stats are equal, no one is faster, and any BL publication that indicates otherwise is either an example of the unreliable narrator principle, or it is just plain wrong.

Or alternatively, the lore is correct that Space Marines are much faster, it is just the rules that are plain wrong. In the (BL) lore it is clear that Space Marines are much faster than unaugmented humans. It is also clear that your average Space Marine would have a much longer stride length than your average SoB making their movement faster anyway, due to the physical size difference if nothing else.

PenitentJake wrote:
OP- here's my recommendation.

Pick ONE army. Build a 25PL Crusade. Play Crusade.

Don't worry about anyone else's army- they are in charge of policing their own rules and calling their own fouls. Tournament players believe that they have to know EVERY rule for EVERY army. It's trying to do this that overwhelms people and makes them feel the bloat. That hasn't been a realistic approach since Rogue Trader back in '87. It is true, of course, that if you get there, you will be a better player because you can anticipate your opponent. I understand why tourney players are driven to reach this lofty goal. I just don't think it's very realistic.

The thing about this hobby is that is likely to be around FOREVER. Despite the negativity in Dakka, 8th was the best selling edition of all time, and 9th will top it by the time it's done. And what that means is that IF you get in now with a 25PL Crusade and just fight your way through to having a full sized army, growing through battle a unit at a time, in another three decades, you'll be the longbeard who seems to know everything about the hobby, the armies and their fluff.

As for folks who say Chapter tactics and bespoke strats don't contribute to an army's identity, I'm not exactly sure how you can say that. Perhaps if you're a marine player, you may find that abilities are so similar- I don't know for sure; the only marines I'm really interested in are those who act as Chambers Militant for the Inquisition. But I have never known more about the identities of the Orders of the Sisters of Battle than I do now. I have never known more about the identities of the individual Kabals, Cults and Covens of the Dark Eldar. It is the bespoke strats and chapter tactics that are the best indicator for me about exactly how an army behaves on the battlefield.

GW makes use of the unreliable narrator concept in all of their fluff in order make their galaxy seem bigger. For this reason, all BL publications need the filter of rules to provide objectivity.

There was a HUGE thread in the background forum comparing Sisters of Battle to Marines. The number of people in that thread who talked about how much faster Marines are than Sisters based on the novels really surprised me. Here's a cool trick: if their movement stats are equal, no one is faster, and any BL publication that indicates otherwise is either an example of the unreliable narrator principle, or it is just plain wrong.

This is why chapter tactics and bespoke strats will always more effectively define an army's identity than any number of novels.

Here's another cool trick: stats are abstracted for balance and not representative of fluff.

 Reavsie wrote:
Or alternatively, the lore is correct that Space Marines are much faster, it is just the rules that are plain wrong.

I think it's obvious that choosing which flavor of existing-to-sell-plastic ancillary-product takes precedence is purely a matter of subjective opinion. The idea that the fluff is Objectively Correct, and tabletop stats represent the fluff filtered through a wargame lens, just doesn't reflect how GW actually goes about making its product- and the same goes for thinking tabletop stats are used to write fluff.

But, well, one of these two media came first and has been largely consistent on this point for some 30 years, while the other keeps escalating and retconning itself to inch Marines further into superhero territory, so if I had to pick one or the other to represent ground truth for the setting it'd have to be the former.

I will not longer play GW games but I have a great collection of Necron models that I can use for other system. The mentality of not holding on has allowed me to use the $200+ I would have been required to spend on 40K Necron upkeep on other things like awesome terrain.

Marines have never possessed extra movement. Novelizations are clearly propaganda.

Also, if marines were as good as they were in the novels, enemies would just wmd them into oblivion since if all geneseed were nuked, they couldnt be replaced. Until cawl i guess.

Burst Speed isn't the same as Marching Speed. Marines can march for a lot longer, in rougher conditions, but their bursts of speed are what make them lethal.

That's why in previous editions Guardsmen were I3, Marines were I4 and Eldar were I-Lots. Not that it mattered 90% of the time with terrain and grenades, but still.

I like the 'old fluff' before they tried applying relative values to try appealing to the current modern crowd.

What do I mean?

A Leman Russ Battle Tank is apparently 60 tonnes, and has a 120mm smoothbore Battle Cannon...

Seriously? I mean really?

An M1 Abrams is around 60 tonnes, and has a 120mm smoothbore main gun... Also the crewman can not stick his head inside the barrel (no matter how small his noggin is)... A Guardsman definitely can, so that easily makes the barrel at least 280mm (but whats the point of either value).

There were old Battlefleet Gothic stories in White Dwarf where an Imperial cruiser, the Macharius had been escorting a convoy, and one of the merchant ships was damaged during a pirate attack and started to lag behind. Eventually the ship was going to face more pirates when the cruiser turned and came to their rescue - the cruiser was described as being 30km in length - in the fluff, these ships can take a century to build, have small cities within their hulls where certain denizens are born, live their lives, die and never actually see the outside of their ship. The artwork for these ships - an immense palace, where if you were to take values inspired by Star Wars, you would have some very small palace rooms surrounded by walls and glass, tens of metres in thickness.

The Heavy Stubber is a damn Browning M2...

Bolters based on their size had this feel of a huge beefy gun, that any regular man would struggle to even lift, where each magazine only contained a small number of bolts, which were more akin to a grenade launcher than a bullet. Trying to say a Boltgun has a 30 round banana magazine is just ludicrous. Heavy Bolters look like they fire shells bigger than your fist, so I don't know many people with a 25mm fist...

The Imperium of Man's hiveworlds are supposedly home to Trillions, with individual hive cities extending into the atmosphere, having many tens of billions, even hundred billion inhabitants, in the original books. The new books imply they can have hundreds of thousands as an upper limit...

These relativistic amounts devalue the whole insanity of the grim far future, where a single life is basically worthless.

40k Model scale has never been equal for Infantry and Tanks. Tanks have always had a smaller scale.

There's always Kill Team if you don't want to play large games. All you need are a handful of models from your favorite faction.

 necrovamp wrote:
I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned h but check out Leutin09s videos on YouTube. He looks at the lore like a historian and cuts it down into bitsize chunks.

Yeah Im a big fan of his stuff.
He seems to really put in the time on some serious research. Mans got dedication! (Just dont mention the TAU)

I think most of us have a love-hate relationship with the fluff. There's some bits we like, and then some bits we don't engage with.

Personally, I like the more dystopian and parodic humor in the fluff [that is the stuff like IG propaganda full of blatant lies, the fascism, theocracy, totalitarianism, indoctrination, etc. The "real 'bad things' turned up to 11" stuff over the more "weird fantasy" stuff], and don't really engage with stuff like weirdness or existential horror.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
40k Model scale has never been equal for Infantry and Tanks. Tanks have always had a smaller scale.

I'm not sure about that. The armored vehicles of the 41st millennium are actually almost unreasonably large if you scaled them up. If we assume that they're a smaller scale, they'd be like huge.

Measured just down, an Imperial Guardsman I just had sitting here is 32mm from his foot to the top of his head. If we assume he's approximately 180cm tall, that's actually very close to 1/56 scale, which is the supposed scale of 28mm wargaming.

If we apply that scale to a tank, a Rhino [115mmx75mmx50mm] winds up as 6.44mx4.2mx2.8m. Not only does this correspond very closely with the values on lexicanum [supposedly sourced from IA2, which I don't own], it's larger than the M113 armored carrier [4.9mx2.7mx2.5m], which the Rhino is essentially inarguably based on, by about about 30% linearly [it's actually about 30% longer, 50% wider, and 12% taller] which is about the same degree of scaling that a Space Marine is large than a ordinary human.

And then there's the larger non super-heavy vehicles, which can be really stupidly big if you scale them up by 1/56.

I'm not sure about that. The armored vehicles of the 41st millennium are actually almost unreasonably large if you scaled them up. If we assume that they're a smaller scale, they'd be like huge.

They're objectively on a smaller scale. Most standard transports can fit 10 (or 12) of their faction models in them.

Give that an actual physical try. Even feel free to take the bases off.

If you really want to rub it in, try with vehicles that have seating benches in them.

---
Alternate experiment, pick up a sprue for a model with an actual pilot (at least torso, arms and head), but definitely a pilot, not a turret gunner. Put them next to a model from a standard squad for the same faction. Are they the same size?


----
In the long, long ago, GW used to talk about this sort of thing. Infantry to tank to physical distance on the table are not equivalent. They aren't even close, especially the latter. Scale was unabashedly sacrificed to gameplay when it came to distance measurements.

Voss wrote:

I'm not sure about that. The armored vehicles of the 41st millennium are actually almost unreasonably large if you scaled them up. If we assume that they're a smaller scale, they'd be like huge.

They're objectively on a smaller scale. Most standard transports can fit 10 (or 12) of their faction models in them.

Give that an actual physical try. Even feel free to take the bases off.

If you really want to rub it in, try with vehicles that have seating benches in them.

---
Alternate experiment, pick up a sprue for a model with an actual pilot (at least torso, arms and head), but definitely a pilot, not a turret gunner. Put them next to a model from a standard squad for the same faction. Are they the same size?


----
In the long, long ago, GW used to talk about this sort of thing. Infantry to tank to physical distance on the table are not equivalent. They aren't even close, especially the latter. Scale was unabashedly sacrificed to gameplay when it came to distance measurements.

The tank commanders and airplane crews are the same size as the infantry. And they made strips of guys at one time who could stand in a Valkryie up to it's full transport capacitty.

Remember, real people can pack in and don't have to permanently stand in a squat position with a like 8" thick black disk attached to their feet.

The tanks of 40k are weirdly sized. They're short and wide. But they're also like really big.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
...The tanks of 40k are weirdly sized. They're short and wide. But they're also like really big.

I suspect that's to do with the fact that 40k as a wargame takes a lot of its inspiration from WWI/WWII, back when tanks were a new development and not very efficiently constructed. A British Mk.1 tank from 1917 is roughly the same size as a modern tank (~25ft long, ~13ft wide, ~8ft tall) but weighed less than half as much (~30 tons to ~70 tons) and had twice the crew. If you wanted to make a tank that was constructed like a WWI tank (see: Land Raider) but had the protective capabilities and armament of a modern tank it'd have to be really, really big.

The tanks may be real 28mm, but the infantry are heroic 28mm to 33mm.

Definitely off scale.

 Slayer6 wrote:
Heavy Bolters look like they fire shells bigger than your fist, so I don't know many people with a 25mm fist...

Maybe like really small babies, those that get born too soon and can fit on a nurses palm? Am not finished growing and my hand is 195mm long and 95mm wide. And my hand is much smaller then my dads hand, not to mention my trainers their hands much bigger and thicker too, my grandad couldn't close his fist fully when he was still alive his hands were so big from working 70 years on a farm.