So I was thinking of getting into Warhammer 40k after hearing about it from other table top sites. What are some basic things that I need to know not to look like an ass while playing?
The most basic things I know that Pic related are Necrons and stuff about the Imperium of Man.
>>44706589
Why do you want to get into 40k specifically? If there is a local group, telling them that you are new and interested should be enough. You can also go to lexicanum to get background information.
>>44706670
I want to get into it because I like sci fi and table top games. Everyone tells me that 40k is a very good Scifi game with lots of lore.
Also, where I am at there are 3 maybe 4 people that play it but they are elitists. I want to know what I am getting into and have some understanding of the game before I se them.
>>44706710
Can you give a quick break down of the lore you know?
My advice is first just looking at the models on the games workshop site. Then just getting a basic understanding of how each faction fits into the lore
>>44706725
The emperor leads the Imperium of man which is filled with different divisions. Their main soldiers are Space Marines, genetically altered and transformed into the Emperor's fighting legion. Their main weapons are bolt weapons. The Necrons are machines built a long time ago and have re-awokened.
I only got this off people talking about off topic stuff on other boards and websites. I had the picture saved a while ago because I thought it looked cool and not because I knew what it was.
>>44706589
Have a shit ton of money. Oh and Orks brake physics.
>>44706740
Necrons are an ancient race who done fucked up and switched over to metallic robot body's, because a majestic star god said so. This turned out to be a bad decision because Majestic stargod and his brethren ate all the necrons souls. Oh and that majestic starlord is called the Deceiver and he is a right dick. Alos look up If the Emperor had a text to speech device on youtube as they explain a lot of the fluff.
>>44706589
>What are some basic things that I need to know
The rules are absolutely 100% shit. If you don't care about that, go on ahead.
>>44706740
The other dudes covered the necrons so ill help out with a basic description of the imperium and a bit of other stuff.
The imperium was build by the emperor in 30k a long with the space marines. Half of the imperium (including half of the marines) turned evil but were defeated but the emperor was mortally wounded. Emperor was bounded to a life supporting thrown on earth where he still resides. Evil marines ran to region of space call the eye of terror (a region that's a tear in space to a dimension called the warp where evil gods and demon live and the laws of physics don't really exist). Imperium is mainly humans and space marines are very rare, there are other division with the imperium too. The imperium are the dominate power in the galaxy
Tyrannies are aliens from another galaxy that want to devour all biological matter they come across. They are essential super locus'. They are approaching the galaxy from the east and south.
Orks are a race that grow and spread like fungi, are stupid yet somehow make crappy technology work, are extremely tough and love war and get stronger by fighting. They are everywhere like a pest.
Elder are an old race that used to control the whole galaxy but there decadence and excessive pleasure created a God that ate most of their races souls so their empire collapsed. They are few in numbers and just trying to survive.
Dark elder are elder that refused to give up their decadent ways and do whatever evil shit necessary to live the way they want.
Tau are an extremely young race (about 8000 years old iirc) that has technological extremely quickly. They are located on the east of the galaxy so are in a fierce war with tyranids. They are like communists on crack (philosocially).
Chaos are the evil space marines that turned on the imperium and daemons that live in the warp. They worship gods that are more or less Satan and thus want to inflict as much pain and horror on the imperium and every as possible.
>>44706770
>>44706958
Huh.
So what everyone said about the power levels of the factions are true.
Is there many models that support this lore on the Table top?
>>44706589
Well if you're lazy and don't want to read head over to YouTube and search vaults of terra
>>44706998
Really the fluff and tabletop are different like example space marines can take on a shit ton of orks but in tabletop one marine is gonna die pretty fast
>>44706998
My post was specifically in relation to the background.
Table top is completely different.
For example in the lore, space marines are extremely rare, in the actual game, everyone uses space marines and they are the most common army you will face
>>44706770
>Alos look up If the Emperor had a text to speech device on youtube as they explain a lot of the fluff.
No, don't.
It's meme show with inaccuracies and fabrications. You don't go there unless you are familiar with the setting, unless you want to miss most of the jokes and get a bad understanding of the setting.
You want anon to think that Wraithbone is the weakness of Necrons?
>>44706958
the Eldar are linked to the Necrons as they were created by their original enemy, the old ones - who coincidently also created the Orks.
Because the Eldar are mostly psychic and the Necrons are not (being soulless robots) they hate each other.
>>44706740
Also the spess mahreens aren't really their main soldiers, that "honour" goes to the billions of guardsmen and women in the imperial guard, who regularly go toe to mutated toe against all the horrors of the universe with a essentially pointless flak vest, and balls of steel.
Space Marines are for specialist tasks, or for whenever a writer doesn't want to come up with 8,000 names to write a story about the IG doing anything other than getting slaughtered.
>>44707120
Meh he gets stuff right and really I like how they bring new information to me for stuff I wouldn't have looked for
>>44706998
Why not just play the RPGs then? They might not be 100% fluff-compliant all the time, but they come a lot closer and have the added benefit of not being written by braindead monkeys.
>>44707261
Because I played good vidya RPGs to death and none that satisfy anymore.
I heard about Warhammer off somewhere multiple times and found out it had a tabletop version. I heard some basic outline of how the game works but nothing more than that. I just want stuff about lore and how it is played so I don't look like an ass in front of someone that knows their shit.
>>44707277
No, I mean actual, real RPGs. Most video game "RPGs" have very little in common with those.
I am mentioning the 40k RPGs (Rogue Trader, Black Crusade, Only War, Dark Heresy and Deathwatch), because I found them quite enjoyable, especially Rogue Trader. They allow you to experience the setting without having to play the godawful game that is WH40k.
>>44707307
Didn't know warhammer had RPGs.
I might have a look at those, thanks anon.
>>44706740
>The emperor leads the Imperium of man
Oh boy, you got much to learn.
Bascially, it all began before humans even existed.
A species called "The old ones" or whatever became hyper intelligent and ran around the galaxy creating world and lifeforms just because they thought it was cool.
Some of the most important species they created were the Orks, the Eldar, the Necrontier and the Humans.
Orks are a crossbreed of fungus and something else. They are the ultimate killingmachines, and literally so though that you can chop off their head, staple it back onto a body, and the ork will most likely still function properly. They are also extremely strong psycers that they can create guns/weapons from any piece of scrap. It doesn't even need to be logical, all it needs is an Ork who believes that it will work, and then it does.
The Eldar are...space elves who went on a bit of a sex rampage, and this is where the story becomes interesting. They had so much sex as a species that they created a new entitiy of chaos, a new god of excess. The previous other three gods are called "Khorne", the god of violence, "Nugle", the god of decay, and "Tzeench", the god of change. "Slaanesh" was the newest addition to this foul pantheon of dark forces. The creation of Slaanesh created a massive hole in reality, known as the Eye of Terror. This hole leads to a parallel dimension, which is fueled and filled by emotions of every psycially active species. (cont)
>>44709479
>Necrontier
Necrontyr*
>>44709479
This dimension is known as the "Warp", and it is a rather hostile place for anyone who is trying not to get mind raped by demons so unimaginable that they will literally melt your brain. A Psycer can tap into the energy of that parallel dimension and use it's power to bend reality. However doing so does attract the attention of the demons in the warp, and is rather dangerous.
Anyways, a lot of the eldar died in the initial shockwave, the rest either fled into a thing called "the Webway", which allows them to travel really fucking fast, or into massive space ships they now call home.
The ones in the webway became insane and are praising Slaanesh as their new god as far as I understand. The other ones try to avoid anything related to excess.
Humans are complicated.
5.000BC a bunch of Shamans came together to kill themselves, they hoped to create a hyper powerful psycic being that would lead humanity. And they succeeded. A year after they all killed themselves a hype psycic human was born. He would live among the humans, and try to guide them to greatness, he took on roles of great leaders, politicians and sometimes even religious figures to achieve his goals, but humanity didn't listen.
Just like in every other scifi setting, science advances and creates new technology that allows cool shit to happen. In this case, science allowed for artificial reality, in the beginning of the end, man created the machine, and he thought it was good. Until the Machines began to rebel, and the previously believed to be extinct human psycers becan to pop up across the galaxy. These two happenings forced humanity to it's knees, leaving it behind in rubble, dust and blood. From the ashes of Terra, the Emperor emerged. He had lived all that time and decided that it was time to reveal his true identity to humanity. He united all of humanity under one banner in the Great Crusade. (cont)
>>44706589
Learn the basics of play, read the main rulebook and your codex as often as you can. Memorize the basic move,shoot, assault rules since those will be the most played sections. Don't fret on the specific stuff till you need to.
>>44706740
Space Marines are the elite not main soldiers, Emperor led humanity but right now he is a vegetable.
>>44709611
Thanks anon. Spelling is hard.
>>44709622
He created the 20 primarchs, his sons to lead humanity on the great crusade and take control of the Empire of Man while he turned his back to create a webway of humanity. Mainly because space travel in the 30th millenium was based on the warp. Remember that hellish place filled with demons who want to rape your brain till it's mud and blood? Jup, that place. You dive into it, have to rely on some duper psycer to get you out of there and pray that you are close to your destination. If your fields even consider flickering for a nano second demons will flood the ship and mind/anally rape everything aboard. Yes, that does include the cargo. You don't WANT to eat mindfucked bananas, mainly because they will bite back.
Anyways, the Emperor "lost" his sons, they were spread all across the galaxy and grew up on different worlds. They had to be found and brought together. BigE (The Emperor) gave each of them a Legion of Spacemarines. Superduper soldiers in duper armor.
In the 40th millenium however, Horus, one of the Primarchs, was corrupted by the forces of chaos. He decided to rebel against his father and managed to get half of the Empire (and Primarchs) to join him. This event is called the Horus Heresy, and so complex that there are literally books (plural) written about it, and countless of smaller fanfics, as well as novels and a whole lot of pictures are also drawn about it.
The gist of it:
Emperor get's majorly crippled and spends the rest of his "life" on the golden throne as a corpse kept alive by sacrificing 1000 human psycers to him every day. Empire at unrest, heretics driven back into the warp, but they are still pushing hard and may actually be about to win a major advance towards terra in the 13th dark crusade.
And all of that happened with the Orks around, these bastards who actually find war amusing and fun, all they live for is a proper WAAAGH! (cont)
>>44709622
Dark Eldars doesn´t worship or praise Slaanesh, they fear him/her just as much as the Craftworld Eldars. They do however continue with the excessive lifestyle they had before Slaanesh was born. Like Raping infants so they can live a little longer.
Think mentally disabled vampires but lives on souls instead of blood.
necron are the true ruler of the galaxy
the rest are just maggot on their way to attain the Age of Flesh and then they will shard the 4chaos God like they did for the C'Tan
>>44709780
Writing WAAAGH! without caps-lock, three As and an exclamation mark is grammatically incorrect and counts as a spelling error.
A WAAAGH! is when more than one ork decide to fight something, be it other orks, humans or anything at all. They group up and the biggest and strongest Ork becomes the WAAAAGH! boss.
He decides what to do, becuz he da biggest and da strongest ork!
Often times this WAAAGH! will attract even more orks from all over the galaxy, if it is big enough, because to orks WAAAGH!s are fun, and the bigger the WAAAGH! the more fun it is.
You can imagine that these faggots are a massive pain in the ass to deal with, especially since they are fungus and release their spores as they are killed. So if you want to make sure that there will be no more orks on a planet, you gotta burn EVERYTHING.
>>44709821
Thanks for the correction.
Anyways, then there are the Tyranids. They live to eat and eat to live. They are ever evolving creatures of pure horror from another galaxy. They are controlled by a hivemind, and feel no fear. Literally. They do not have any sense of self preservation at all. They consume all biomass on a planet, head to the next one and repeat that process again. Think the Alien, from the Alien movies, but with bioguns that shoot bugs which will eat your flesh as ammunition and billions of them.
The Necrontyr I mentioned earlier are another thing to consider, but my knowlege about them is so limited that I do not dare touch them at all.
If you want to know more, go to the Lexicanum, or the 40k wiki. Maybe pay a visit to "The Vaults of Terra" Youtube channel, for more specific information about one faction.
Also: Imperial Guard are the fist of the Emperor, anyone telling you that they are inefficient at what they do is a meme-gargler who needs to be BLAMED.
>>44709939
"For more than a hundred centuries, the Emperor has sat immobile
on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by
the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might
of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing
invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is
the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are
sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal
vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the Daemon-infested miasma
of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit
by the Astronomicon, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s
will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds.
Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the
Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades
in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary
defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the Tech-Priests
of the Adeptus Mechanicus, to name but a few. But for all their
multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present
threat from aliens, heretics, mutants—and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It
is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These
are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and
science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned.
Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the
grim, dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the
stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter
of thirsting gods."
This text is the basic introduction to 40k given in every 40k book. Love it, live it.
You're not 18 are you OP?
>>44706589
>>44706710
Warhammer 40k the tabletop miniatures wargame kind of sucks. Go read the other 40k threads and you'll see some good criticisms from people who have been playing for years. It's also ridiculously expensive. We're talking hundreds of dollars and hours of painting just to get up to your first game. Plus the game rules are re-written every couple years and so you're constantly buying new minis to keep up with the rules changes.
The 40k setting is pretty good: it's like a mashup of Dune and Star Wars with more than a little medieval europe mixed in. Lots of fiction, a very competent RPG, and some other tabletop games in that universe that are much higher quality.
So if you're asking how to get into the 40k setting and play *something* there? Then if I were you I'd join a tabletop RPG group that's playing Only War, Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader or Kill Team.
If you're thinking about collecting GW minis and playing 40k, I strongly strongly strongly suggest that you find a friend who already plays and has two or more armies, then play a few games against him using HIS figures. If you don't have such a friend, then go play something else, because getting into the hobby will be hell. Observe a few games at a local store. If after all that you still want to play, then design an army list and then price out what it will cost. If after that you STILL want to play, then go to it.
A lot of 40k players, including me, think the game and company have gone to hell.
>>44707317
Dark Heresy is probably the most commonly played. You play as Inquisition lackeys. There's also Rogue Trader, aka Donald Trump Space Pirate; Deathwatch, all about Space Marines; a chaos game I don't remember the name of; and Only War, where you play as Imperial Guard soldiers.
Slightly more in-depth Necron background for ya:
A long, long-ass time ago, there was a race called the Necrontyr. They were humanoid, with highly advanced tech and a large spacefaring empire. But since they had come up on a planet riddled with nasty radiation, they had shit genes, and all died after around 30-40 Earth years. This gave them an obsession with death and a bad attitude.
Eventually their empire got so big that, like empires do, it started to fragment. The ruler, the Silent King, decided that the best way to counter this would be to manufacture a conflict with an outside force. This did not prove to be difficult, because their next door neighbors were the Old Ones.
Not much is known about the Old Ones other than that they had everything the Necrontyr didn't. They were psychics, which didn't have any drawbacks at the time, because the Warp was still demon-free. They also lived practically forever, but had never deigned to share the means with the Necrontyr. The Silent King didn't even need an excuse, he basically just said, "Hey, let's kill those assholes and take their stuff."
Unfortunately, the war did not go well. The Necrontyr were soon beaten back to their core worlds by the Old Ones and their servant races. It looked like they'd be locked in their little corner of the galaxy forever, until they discovered the C'Tan. The C'Tan, or Star Gods, are energy beings which exist in their natural state as loose clouds of interstellar plasma. The Necrontyr called them down and sealed them into metal bodies. The C'Tan seemed to appreciate this new state, and offered to help the Necrontyr win the war. As part of the deal, they would add their knowledge to that of their new allies to create a process called biotransferance, in which a Necrontyr's mind is placed in an immortal robot body. Almost the entire Necrontyr population leaped at the chance, and the Silent King reluctantly gave the project his blessing.
(cont.)
>>44711990
Hit up Mantic Games instead.
>>44712065
It didn't take him long to realize he'd fucked up. The C'Tan ate the souls of every Necrontyr who was transferred (which ended up being every Necrontyr still living). For the nobles, this wasn't too raw of a deal. They had to deal with crushing existential depression, sure; but they were stronger, faster, and smarter than ever, and best of all could never die. For the lower castes, though, it wasn't great. There weren't enough resources to provide kickass noble bodies for all the billions of Necrontyr. Most of the citizens and soldiers were trapped in shells little better than their meat bodies, without enough circuit density to preserve their entire personalities. They were reduced to soulless, mindless drones fit only to carry out the will of their leaders. Now no longer the beings they had once been, the race would forever after be known as the Necrons.
Needless to say, the King was pissed.
Whatever the problems with biotransference, though, the war started to turn in the Necrons' favor very quickly. The C'tan, drunk on the power of so many souls, used their reality warping powers to slaughter the Old Ones, while the Necrons in their new undying bodies rolled up the servant races. In desperation the Old Ones overused their psychic abilities and created servants with psychic powers of their own, scarring the Warp in the process and turning it into the demon-infested shit pit it is today. But they couldn't hold on, and were eventually utterly defeated. Their servants scattered, the few surviving Old Ones fled for dark space. The C'tan were the new, undisputed masters of the galaxy.
For about 30 seconds.
With the C'tan exhausted from fighting, the Silent King saw his chance. He ordered weapons of cosmic magnitude turned on the Star Gods. Though they could not die, they were shattered, the shards imprisoned in inescapable pocket dimensions.
>>44706589
Skip the miniatures game and go straight for the RPG books if you like the setting.
Also, to be frank, the setting as presenting in the main rulebook and codexes and that presented in the RPG books and expansions is a little different. Fantasy Flight Games did quite a good job of fluffwork.
And if you REALLY want to wargame, just try playing Deathwatch or Only War with models, but that might get expensive as well, depending how ambitious you are.
>>44712315
With the C'tan vanquished, the Necrons were the only great power in the galaxy. Unfortunately, the galaxy was fucked. The War in Heaven, as the Eldar would later call it, had been a brutal affair. Whole sectors had been scoured of life, and there were more than a few nebulae where thriving systems had been. Seeing nothing over which to rule, and ashamed of what he had done to his people, the Silent King quietly left the galaxy. His last order before eliminating the command programs which gave him power was for the entire Necron race to go into stasis. They were to awaken when the galaxy had restored itself, to reclaim their empire and find a way back into living bodies. So the entire race retired to their Tomb Worlds, held in stasis and seen to by labor constructs, as the Silent King and his entourage followed the surviving Old Ones into exile.
Of course, no plan ever survives contact with reality. Out in dark space the Silent King ran afoul of the Tyranids. Realizing the threat they posed to his home galaxy, he rushed back to reawaken his subjects. Upon arriving he found that 60 million Terran years had passed, and everything was on fire. Dozens of Tomb Worlds had been lost to accidents or Eldar sabotage, the great artifacts and weapons of the empire had crumbled or been stolen, and humans of all beings were now the dominant species. Worst of all, many Tomb Worlds had already woken up ahead of schedule, and their Overlords had set about reclaiming their territory and squabbling with each other. Many were even using the enslaved C'tan shards as weapons.
Unable to simply command the Necrons any more, the King has since worked from the shadows, trying to coerce his fractious subjects into fighting for a common cause. It hasn't been easy. Almost every Necron who went into stasis has woken up deranged to some degree. Some are killers, some think they're still alive, but they're all hard to handle.
>>44712051
The chaos game is Black Crusade. Has options for being human heretics and Chaos Space Marines.
>>44712598
The Necron lords now fight for whatever cause is dear to them. Some want their old bodies back, some want to purge the meatbags, and other just want these darn kids off their cosmic lawn. In battle they come on silently, communicating only with each other and only via wireless signals. Their weapons fire arcs of energy which sever atomic bonds, shredding their victims in a most gruesome manner. Killing the Nercons is no defense, as even the lowliest soldier has advanced auto-repair functions which can see them up and back in the fight. Even when these are overwhelmed, the broken Necron will be teleported back to their Tomb World for full repairs. They do not suffer defeats, only setbacks.
Where they go from here is anyone's guess. But it's sure to be bloody.
The Vaults of Terra channel on YouTube is a great way to learn 40k lore.
>>44712483
Good idea. If you stick to the RPG and run skirmishes in that, then you can be playing for $100 or less even with official minis.
If you try to play the tabletop wargame, you'll be plunking down hundreds of dollars before you can do anything.
>>44712786
I found that he mostly quotes the Lexicanum on a lot of minor factions. Parts of the IG overview video are 1/1 copy/paste IIRC.
Still easier to comprehend than a wall of text.
Hey OP. I might run an Only war quest here in a few months/weeks.
I got shit to do now, but of you stick around and check the archives you might find it.
Would be a good way to learn a lot about how the Imperial Guard works.
>>44709479
Wat
Old Ones didn't create humans, the Old Ones were fuckin' around millions and millions of years before humanity even existed.
Ok so what I got from this thread:
>Table top game has gone to shit and costs a lot of money
>RPGs of Warhammer are quite good.
>The lore behind each faction spands millenia
>You don't fuck with Tyranids or Necrons
>>44714005
Yeah, I might stick around to see that.
>>44711990
This, OP. I would not encourage new people to get into 40k anymore. It's waaaay too expensive, the rules are shit, everything has gone to hell.
>>44714728
Yeah, that's about right.
I wouldn't recommend the actual wargame, but if you want to try it head out to your nearest game store and see if there is a scene there. I had a friend who lived in Israel, and he couldn't find a scene for it anywhere. I am lucky as I am 15 minutes away from a huge gamestore where they play everything, making investing in the game a much better decision.
>>44711990
This guy speaks the truth.
>>44706589
>What are some basic things that I need to know not to look like an ass while playing?
Nothing, just have fun. All the looking like an ass and hatred is reserved for arguing online about 40k.
Space wolves are the best space marines, being space werewolf vikings in space(Who may have an unhealthy fetish for furry things)
>>44711990
>ridiculously expensive
>hundreds of dollars
Get a job.
>>44709780It is Psyker not Psycer
