Top 10 Reasons 40k is Still an Awesome Game

[DrBored]

I hear a lot of complaints ALL over the Internet about how Warmahordes is more balanced and competitive, X-Wing is cheaper and pre-painted, Fantasy is venerable, 30k is new and shiny and prestigious, and a dozen other games are more attractive... and it's all in reference to how those games are better than 40k.

So, if you have cheaper options, more balanced options, more competitive options, and even options where the models are already painted for you, why is 40k still at the top of the charts?

Here's what I perceive to be the top 10 reasons to pick up 40k and run with it. After all, we need a little perspective once in a while...

1. Background - 40k still has one of the largest and most well developed backgrounds of the Sci-Fi genre. Star Wars and Star Trek may have more, but all held within a single galaxy, Warhammer 40k is incredibly deep. You can find histories of planets, chapters going back thousands of years! What's even better than that? You can add your own, and it'll generally be very well accepted as long as it's thought out. There is room for more, GW has designed the background in this way to help players play the kind of army they want to play. Which brings me to...

2. Variety - Yes, Space Marines may get the most attention, but you can't deny that even within the Space Marines, there is variety. Tyranids, Tau, Eldar, Chaos Daemons and Marines, Imperial Guard, and a constantly growing variety of formations and other factions. With the advent of allies, you can play the kind of army that you want to play. With the openness of the community, you can convert what you want to convert, and play that kind of army. Want to keep it simple and play Ultramarines? You can do that too. There are no wrong options, though many in the community might say there are... which leads me to...

3. Community - The Warhammer 40k community is excitable. On the Internet, new rumors are gobbled up and rancor gets spit out, but when you go to your FLGS or GW shop, I imagine the feeling is a bit different. You don't just sit around with your friends and spit bile at the models on the shelves, you talk about what you want to do, the positive things, the ideas you have for your army and the things you might need to get to make it happen. You get in touch with your local meta, and most importantly, that's where you actually PLAY THE GAME.

4. Flexibility - This may seem like variety, but now I'm talking about the kinds of games you can play. When it comes to games like X-Wing and Warmachine, a lot of the games degrade into the exact same scenario, with a slightly different orientation of asteroids. With 40k, you not only have control over points levels, but also mission objectives and map type, and a wide variety of terrain, depending on your imagination or budget.

5. Scale - 40k is at a great scale in army size. With things like Epic, you lose sense of how powerful individual models really are, whereas in 40k, you have those moments were your Power Fist Sarge somehow punches out a Carnifex, or where your Battlewagon slices through a whole squad of dudes on the other side of the table with lots of dakka. You feel when one of your models pulls through with something impressive, and you feel it when units start taking casualties. That scales all the way down to 200 points with Kill Team, and it scales all the way up to Apocalypse when you can bring your entire collection onto the table, plus some extra big toys. The models aren't so small that you lose appreciation for them on the table, and they're not so big that they become unwieldy between pieces of terrain.

6. Expansion - You can make a full Ultramarines Chapter. The entire Chapter. All 1000 marines and accompanying weapon systems, vehicles, and variety of suits. You can make that Chapter all the way down to fluff, and then field the entire thing in one massive game of Apocalypse. You can add in a whole Imperial Knight house, and a Warhound, and a couple of Fellblades. You can make a huge 30k army and still field it in 40k. You can add in Forgeworld rules, Planetstrike, Cities of Death, Escalation, Stronghold Assault. You can do all of those things and there are rules for it. You can get excited, plan these games out with your friends, and then make it happen. No outside rules sources, minimal house-rules. As a collector, these sorts of things make me very happy, and keep me buying into 40k.

7. Updated - We're in 6th Edition of 40k. That means there were 5 editions before that, along with various expansions that have also been updated. We've had a Space Marine Codex for each edition and at this point we have most of the armies in 40k fully updated to at least 5th edition, and soon those leftover will be up to 6th as well. As much as people complain about their personal army not having an update, really, truly, only Sisters of Battle players have any cause to complain at this point. Orks are coming up, and Blood Angels and Space Wolves will be shortly after that, and then Necron, Dark Eldar, and Grey Knights will come into the fold at their time. 40k is in a constant state of being updated, appended, and added onto, and while we may lose some things along the line, typically the game grows.

8. Quality - Yes, yes, there are plenty of other companies with some pretty models, and they're constantly nipping at GW's heels for market share, but GW does have great models, and they are constantly one-upping themselves in quality and detail. Finecast might have been a mistake, but as we've seen, they're phasing it out for all-plastic, and the plastic models they're producing are not only beautiful, but fun to put together, and perfect to paint. Though older kits may show their age, GW's models are still of a fine quality, and when they're not... return them! GW and Forgeworld have nice return policies. A buddy of mine got a Plague Hulk missing it's gun arm. Forgeworld sent a whole new Plague Hulk. I myself got a bad batch of plastic glue, and when my FLGS shop keeper informed GW that my Raptors were falling apart because of it, they sent me a whole Forgefiend model! They not only push their design teams to make bigger and better kits, they keep their customer service sharp.

9. Breadth - 40k is simply the biggest. Surveys show it. 40k is the game on top, it's the game that other games want to beat. That's why we have all these articles and people jumping ship to other games and complaining about 40k. GW can't stop competition from happening, but they can continue making a great miniature, and provide a fun game. And that's what 40k is, it's a fun game when you get rid of the tournaments, the politics, and the Internet loud-mouths. I've been beaten to a pulp in Warmachine and hated it. I've had fun battles in X-Wing and loved it, but with the models already made and painted, they sit in a box. I keep coming back to 40k because all my other friends have armies, and it's the game that people go to when they want to pick up a miniature game. Often, the above reasons are what draw people in...

10. No Bad Guys - 40k has no bad guys. It has no good guys either. I left this one for last because it's unique. Video games struggle to find this sort of balance, and in most other games there are clear good guys and bad guys. In 40k, there are no good guys or bad guys, and even factions of the same race will war against each other over an ideal or a single planet. This makes the Chaos player feel justified, the Ork player excited to play Orks, and the Space Marine player happy to be a loyalist. In their eyes, their army is simply the best army out there. That's why they spent the money to collect it, spent the time to paint it, and put in the effort to learn it!

So, to all ye unfaithful, all those that will call me a GW fanboi or what have you, I still think that 40k is an awesome game, and I'm looking forward to seeing what unfolds in the future. The models keep getting better, the lore keeps getting more exciting, the battles get bigger, and the games are more fun to me now than they were 5 years ago.

To those who haven't played 40k, give it a shot, why don't you? Once you get past all the rancor and Internet hate, you'll find a community that is actually quite engaging, deep, and happy to have you along.

[jd2x.pacman]

Awesome post! I am a relatively new player (started soon after 6th) so I didnt have any preconceptions as to how the rules should be, and have really enjoyed nearly every minute with the hobby. I love my first army, the Space Wolves, and my new additions the Eldar. I have been beaten to a pulp quite a few times already vs our resident Tau, but when I finally beat him it was an awesome feeling.
Anyway, its good to see a positive post on here- lets just enjoy the game!

[ElectricPaladin]

I want to thank you for writing this. I mean, I'm going to react to what you wrote, and possibly even try to poke holes in some of your points, but the fact is that 40k and I have a strange but ongoing relationship. Other games have risen and fallen in my eyes, and while 40k is unlikely to ever be my only game - or even my main game - it will always have a very special place in my heart. The negativity can often be quite painful. It's one thing to point out the flaws in the game - that's fair and just - but sometimes it feels like there are people who would rather hate on the game than find ways to enjoy it, a practice that seems entirely perverse to me.

For me, 40k is like an old girlfriend. I get away from it once in a while, driven away by the flaws I can't ignore, but then I run into 40k in the mall, and we get to talking, and I remember the old days... and the next thing you know it's 2 AM and I'm in my underwear at the dining room table, painting assault terminators and loving every second of it. Ah, 40k... why can't I quit you?

For a while, I focused on 40k's flaws, which eternally drove me away from the game, but now I realize that that's only one side of the coin. 40k also has enormous merits which eternally draw me back in. I will keep on playing until GW finally goes under - may that dark day never arrive - in the hope that the things I don't like will fade away and the things I enjoy multiply until they fill the game.

That said...

1. Background - 40k still has one of the largest and most well developed backgrounds of the Sci-Fi genre. Star Wars and Star Trek may have more, but all held within a single galaxy, Warhammer 40k is incredibly deep. You can find histories of planets, chapters going back thousands of years! What's even better than that? You can add your own, and it'll generally be very well accepted as long as it's thought out. There is room for more, GW has designed the background in this way to help players play the kind of army they want to play. Which brings me to...

I agree with you here, but only to a point. Sometimes I wish 40k would dial it back a little. There's a reason that "grimdark" has become a term of mockery and derision in the broader geek community. It gets to be a little too much, when everything is covered in skulls and everything is hopeless and anything good, or strong, or noble has actually required the bloody sacrifice of ten thousand innocents, at least nine hundred and ninety-nine of which were babies. Really cute babies. There's a point at which the game becomes an absurd mockery of itself, and I feel that 40k has crossed that line.

However, I do think that inside the 40k that we all play, buried under layers of purple prose, is an extremely deep and rich setting. I certainly can't argue with you there. And while other game worlds might strike a better balance of dark and light, you certainly can't beat the sheer amount of stuff in the world of Warhammer 40k. I myself play a rather obscure little chapter, and it's great fun to put on my 40k hipster glasses (tinted red, of course, with the blood of innocent virgins) and tell everyone all the tidbits I've gleaned from various sources and the awesome personal fluff I've written to compliment it.

2. Variety - Yes, Space Marines may get the most attention, but you can't deny that even within the Space Marines, there is variety. Tyranids, Tau, Eldar, Chaos Daemons and Marines, Imperial Guard, and a constantly growing variety of formations and other factions. With the advent of allies, you can play the kind of army that you want to play. With the openness of the community, you can convert what you want to convert, and play that kind of army. Want to keep it simple and play Ultramarines? You can do that too. There are no wrong options, though many in the community might say there are... which leads me to...

There's certainly something to this. 40k offers the most opportunities for awesome conversions. Sometimes companies make better models, and many companies make cheaper models, but when push comes to shove, nobody makes big, meaty kits with tons of extra bits that I can sit down and just... screw with. My dreadnought doesn't have to - and in fact, doesn't - look like anyone else's, and I love that.

3. Community - The Warhammer 40k community is excitable. On the Internet, new rumors are gobbled up and rancor gets spit out, but when you go to your FLGS or GW shop, I imagine the feeling is a bit different. You don't just sit around with your friends and spit bile at the models on the shelves, you talk about what you want to do, the positive things, the ideas you have for your army and the things you might need to get to make it happen. You get in touch with your local meta, and most importantly, that's where you actually PLAY THE GAME.

Eh... I gotta disagree with you here. I've found the Warhammer 40k community to be extremely small-minded, petty, and unpleasant. My buddies at my FLGS are all princes among men, of course (except for that one guy...), and a lot of the people here on this forum I count as real friends, even if we've never met. However, the broader online community seems to be full of trolls, jerks, and butt-hats. This just isn't true of WarmaHordes or Firestorm Armada or Dropzone... I don't know why, but that's how it seems to be.

4. Flexibility - This may seem like variety, but now I'm talking about the kinds of games you can play. When it comes to games like X-Wing and Warmachine, a lot of the games degrade into the exact same scenario, with a slightly different orientation of asteroids. With 40k, you not only have control over points levels, but also mission objectives and map type, and a wide variety of terrain, depending on your imagination or budget.

This! This is definitely true. My FLGS has run, in order, the following "narrative campaigns": xenos-only Killteams, Cities of Death (with a special Killteam mission as the penultimate event!), and is starting an inquisition war event that will mix ordinary games and inquisitor-and-warband-only Killteam games... and this is in addition to their regular tournament-style "narrative events" that also formed a campaign and culminated in an enormous multiplayer Apocalypse blowout! The other games I play, awesome as they are, just don't support this kind of play.

5. Scale - 40k is at a great scale in army size. With things like Epic, you lose sense of how powerful individual models really are, whereas in 40k, you have those moments were your Power Fist Sarge somehow punches out a Carnifex, or where your Battlewagon slices through a whole squad of dudes on the other side of the table with lots of dakka. You feel when one of your models pulls through with something impressive, and you feel it when units start taking casualties. That scales all the way down to 200 points with Kill Team, and it scales all the way up to Apocalypse when you can bring your entire collection onto the table, plus some extra big toys. The models aren't so small that you lose appreciation for them on the table, and they're not so big that they become unwieldy between pieces of terrain.

I'm not sure I agree with you here. The boards are starting to look kind of crowded to me (says the guy is going to order a freaking fellglaive before the sun sets...). I sometimes think that the huge centerpiece model thing was kind of a mistake.

6. Expansion - You can make a full Ultramarines Chapter. The entire Chapter. All 1000 marines and accompanying weapon systems, vehicles, and variety of suits. You can make that Chapter all the way down to fluff, and then field the entire thing in one massive game of Apocalypse. You can add in a whole Imperial Knight house, and a Warhound, and a couple of Fellblades. You can make a huge 30k army and still field it in 40k. You can add in Forgeworld rules, Planetstrike, Cities of Death, Escalation, Stronghold Assault. You can do all of those things and there are rules for it. You can get excited, plan these games out with your friends, and then make it happen. No outside rules sources, minimal house-rules. As a collector, these sorts of things make me very happy, and keep me buying into 40k.

Very true, though I feel like you wander off-topic here into variety territory. I can't disagree, beacause as I already said, I love how many ways there are to play this game. That said, you forgot my personal favorite way to play that I've never actually tried... spearhead!

Again, says the guy who just bought a glaive!

7. Updated - We're in 6th Edition of 40k. That means there were 5 editions before that, along with various expansions that have also been updated. We've had a Space Marine Codex for each edition and at this point we have most of the armies in 40k fully updated to at least 5th edition, and soon those leftover will be up to 6th as well. As much as people complain about their personal army not having an update, really, truly, only Sisters of Battle players have any cause to complain at this point. Orks are coming up, and Blood Angels and Space Wolves will be shortly after that, and then Necron, Dark Eldar, and Grey Knights will come into the fold at their time. 40k is in a constant state of being updated, appended, and added onto, and while we may lose some things along the line, typically the game grows.

Eh... I don't think this is really true anymore. Other companies really have GW beat in terms of the speed and responsiveness of their updates. Some companies release new rules for free on their websites so nobody has to wait potentially years (says the bitter Blood Angels 'dex player) for new rules that make their armies play as they should. Check out Firestorm Armada and their fleet documents, Corvus Belli and their entire freaking rules set, and Privateer and their "new edition rulebook that includes the stats for all the basic models right there in the back." GW is not the fastest or most responsive company. Far from it - the slow speed and clumsiness of their updates is one of their biggest challenges.

8. Quality - Yes, yes, there are plenty of other companies with some pretty models, and they're constantly nipping at GW's heels for market share, but GW does have great models, and they are constantly one-upping themselves in quality and detail. Finecast might have been a mistake, but as we've seen, they're phasing it out for all-plastic, and the plastic models they're producing are not only beautiful, but fun to put together, and perfect to paint. Though older kits may show their age, GW's models are still of a fine quality, and when they're not... return them! GW and Forgeworld have nice return policies. A buddy of mine got a Plague Hulk missing it's gun arm. Forgeworld sent a whole new Plague Hulk. I myself got a bad batch of plastic glue, and when my FLGS shop keeper informed GW that my Raptors were falling apart because of it, they sent me a whole Forgefiend model! They not only push their design teams to make bigger and better kits, they keep their customer service sharp.

Eh... I like GW ok. I think that some other companies are exceeding them in terms of the quality of their sculpts. I do agree that GW and Forgeworld have great replacement policies... but frankly, everyone in this business behaves that way, at least if they want to stay in business.

9. Breadth - 40k is simply the biggest. Surveys show it. 40k is the game on top, it's the game that other games want to beat. That's why we have all these articles and people jumping ship to other games and complaining about 40k. GW can't stop competition from happening, but they can continue making a great miniature, and provide a fun game. And that's what 40k is, it's a fun game when you get rid of the tournaments, the politics, and the Internet loud-mouths. I've been beaten to a pulp in Warmachine and hated it. I've had fun battles in X-Wing and loved it, but with the models already made and painted, they sit in a box. I keep coming back to 40k because all my other friends have armies, and it's the game that people go to when they want to pick up a miniature game. Often, the above reasons are what draw people in...

Agreed. 40k has the makings of a great beer-and-pretzels game, though I do think that they need to tighten up the rules. Tight rules are even more important in a play-for-fun, beer-and-preztels environment than they are in tournament play, since in a tournament I can always call for a TO. With a buddy, I really want the rules to cover that for me so I can focus on having fun.

10. No Bad Guys - 40k has no bad guys. It has no good guys either. I left this one for last because it's unique. Video games struggle to find this sort of balance, and in most other games there are clear good guys and bad guys. In 40k, there are no good guys or bad guys, and even factions of the same race will war against each other over an ideal or a single planet. This makes the Chaos player feel justified, the Ork player excited to play Orks, and the Space Marine player happy to be a loyalist. In their eyes, their army is simply the best army out there. That's why they spent the money to collect it, spent the time to paint it, and put in the effort to learn it!

This is kind of true, though as I wrote about "grimdark" above, I do think that the setting is a bit "one note." A little more variety in terms of darkness - even if that meant a little more clarity about heroes and villains - would make the setting deeper and more attractive to me.

[DarkLink]

Yeah, not particularly impressed with 40k universe. It's 25 years of accumulated rip-offs from a dozen other sources, with just enough original material to keep it fresh. There's some cool stuff, to be sure, but I've never been particularly impressed with the "depth".

The models are definitely good, and GW does have the best large plastic kits on the market, but I don't care for a lot of their ascetic, and there are several companies that absolutely blow them out of the water when it comes to individual sculpt quality, and those companies are becoming more and more common.

The game itself is pretty fun, but it's very shallow compared to a lot of other games out there and a huge portion of the gameplay amounts to rolling a ton of dice only to have very little happen. Nowadays you're rerolling basically everything, doing a million shots and a million wounds for a million rerollable saves and a million look out sirs, and it gets kind of boring. They really need to tighten up the rules, and they need to streamline a lot of stuff, because a lot of those aforementioned deeper games are also better casual games, too.

So, yeah, 40k is still a lot of fun, and well worth playing, but it's neither the only nor the best game on the market.

[DrBored]

Yeah, not particularly impressed with 40k universe. It's 25 years of accumulated rip-offs from a dozen other sources, with just enough original material to keep it fresh. There's some cool stuff, to be sure, but I've never been particularly impressed with the "depth".

I'm sorry, whenever I hear this sort of argument, about something being a ripoff of something else, I point to Henry Ford:

“I invented nothing new. I simply assembled into a car the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work….Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.”

Nothing new is invented, it's just rearranged into something a bit different, under a different name. 40k, in my mind, reassembles their ideas beautifully.

[DarkLink]

And I don't really care. If they'd done something really impressive with it, sure. I'm not really impressed. Ford took an incoherent bundle of technologies and put them together into something that fundamentally changed the world. There are plenty of other, similar examples (the core plot of Star Wars is intentionally a huge tribute to the Hero of a Thousand Faces). None of the fiction or BL books I've read have registered as more than average. Plus, there's a subtle difference between 'rip off' and 'inspired by'. GW's fluff trends too closely to the former, not that it doesn't have a fair amount of the latter.

[Prindlehaven]

I just registered an account on BOLS, something I've been meaning to do but putting off, to thank you for writing this. I'm really sick of all the negativity directed at 40k, and it's great to see some well-thought-out positivity for a change. No, the game isn't perfect, but it's still the best. So, thanks.

[kharne690]

I for one am just happy to see a positive post. Love 40k or hate it is entirely up to you, but if you hate it don't waste your time or mine complaining. Its like any of my hobbies, guns, fast cars, and 40k. There will always be people with different opinions no matter the hobby but if your just here to complain get out.

[StingrayP226]

Ok I'm more of an outsider who is slowly re poking his way back in...

Lore (I have only scrapped the surface): It has its ups and downs.... I find Orks humorous and great for silliness and bashes. I like some of the ideas of Chaos just honestly I do not like how the models/looks go with them (I think the Demonettes should go back to looking more beautiful/less ugly. In general I think Slaneesh should have an army of beautiful looking people and machines of death.... Tzeentch should be changing all the time but with purpose and planning not pure chaos. Nurgle/Khorne are fine). Honestly I do not like the lore behind the Imperials much at all... I would like them more than frothing at the mouth religious fanatics who die for a dying dude. I have no problem with the Space Marines being that way (its their thing) but honestly the IG could do without it... make it more about having to protect their homes, families, and everything they hold dear from unspeakable alien and corrupted horrors.

Community: Looking at your first sentences then this one makes me grin a little... I will say the converters and painters in the 40k community are amazing though. Also the devotion to the game is great, and honestly I feel this devotion is the only thing keeping GW from self inducted bankruptcy

Updates: Honestly bragging about the amount of updates is silly.... it should be able quality not quantity. If each new edition builds on what is good in the old one while fixing what is wrong with the old one this is great... if its almost a whole new rule set that flips around balance and rules for no explainable reason. Not so much...

Quality: Yes GW has this down well... problem is like Electric said is that others have caught up or are almost there... for cheaper and with better quality rule sets that they don't have to use the "casual game" excuse.

No Bad Guys: Ummmm ya.... pretty much everyone is a bad guy (except Tau)... just this guy is Hilter bad and this other guy is mass murderer bad. There are lots of games with shades of grey instead of clear bad guys in it, and actually I feel other games do it better as well.



Your last sentence... um price... to start up I need to drop $80 on a rule book $50 on a codex (lord forbid I need a supplement) so that is $130 BEFORE I buy miniatures. Starter armies seem to be 125-200 range so being new I would likely start with that so looking $255 to $315. Now I still need to fill out my army so I can play with the local players so lets say that is $150 (but likely its a **** of a lot more) so now I'm down $405 at least to try it with my own army. With $400 I would easily try 2 to 3 other games on the market. This is honestly the LARGEST issue with 40k is that initial hurdle to get in, and Games Workshop is not helping themselves with some of their pricing methods (Scions should be cheaper or 10 to a box... just saying).



That said I do like the army scale and its got some great designs/support. Also remember this is the internet, and people love to complain on the internet including myself.

[Nabterayl]

I agree with you here, but only to a point. Sometimes I wish 40k would dial it back a little. There's a reason that "grimdark" has become a term of mockery and derision in the broader geek community. It gets to be a little too much, when everything is covered in skulls and everything is hopeless and anything good, or strong, or noble has actually required the bloody sacrifice of ten thousand innocents, at least nine hundred and ninety-nine of which were babies. Really cute babies. There's a point at which the game becomes an absurd mockery of itself, and I feel that 40k has crossed that line.

However, I do think that inside the 40k that we all play, buried under layers of purple prose, is an extremely deep and rich setting. I certainly can't argue with you there. And while other game worlds might strike a better balance of dark and light, you certainly can't beat the sheer amount of stuff in the world of Warhammer 40k. I myself play a rather obscure little chapter, and it's great fun to put on my 40k hipster glasses (tinted red, of course, with the blood of innocent virgins) and tell everyone all the tidbits I've gleaned from various sources and the awesome personal fluff I've written to compliment it.

The setting actually is why I remain interested in 40K. I hear what DarkLink is saying - it's hard to think of anything that GW has written that is actually good (in my opinion, Dan Abnett consistently comes close, but never quite crosses the line between "You're a really good writer" and "You have written something really good").

But ... there is a special potential I feel in the 40K setting that inspires me with the possibilities for telling stories I care about and resonate with. Maybe GW isn't particularly interested in telling those stories, and/or isn't interested in telling those stories as well as I would like, but that resonance is not something I find in very many settings, even ones that you would think have similar hooks. And that resonance is quite special, I think, wherever you find it.