Lion? If you’re a human in 40k you’re more likely to be a mangy street cat forced to work in a factory processing other cats into fancy feast. Fuck yeah I’ll be the Taus little pet over that, I can work in at a space turnip farm or something, maybe they’ll give me little human treats.
“I’m a lion” I tell myself as I work another 18 hour shift in the poison covered bullshit factory. I don’t know what natural daylight looks like and the closest thing I know to recreation time is sleep. I eat poison and corpses. Every single box of bullshit I make is going to end up lost when someone in the Administratum forgets to carry the 4. I have never experienced serotonin or dopamine
I wish this only applied to 40k lmao
that was 40k?
Definitely not in the bank
145 comments on a warhammer 40k post
Hexbear not beating the
allegationsHow could we resist a post that’s about both Dorkhammer and cats? Surely everyone on the site enjoys at least one of the two.
If I had that person as a coworker I would never be able to stop calling them “the lion” as sarcastically as possible.
“The Tau are secretly evil because they are really ruled by the Ethereal cast from behind a curtain of mystery” I say before getting my brains blown out by a commissar for not repeating the litany of sacrifice for the emperor for the 20th time of that day.
yeah living off corpse starch on the 58th basement floor of a hiveworld and having your planet destroyed by your own side is totally “lion” behavior
Average American experience in 2040
Your coworker would be one of the underhive peasants living off of scrape for his entire existence
Okay that was fucking disgusting.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Indoor housecats have like double the lifespan of a lion and have way happier lives.
The only thing holding housecats back is their kidneys.
Unite meowlitariat of the world, the only thing holding you back is your kidneys
And arthritis.
Humans are temporarily embarrassed Space Marines
Lion propaganda is insane. 20th century carnivores tried to universalize their ideology by imposing it on nature. First of all these motherfuckers are bald. 2ndly theyre lazy af, they get like 1 kill a month and sleep the rest to save on energy.
you’re kinda selling me on the lion lifestyle ngl
2ndly theyre lazy af, they get like 1 kill a month and sleep the rest to save on energy.
Umm, boss, I think it’s an HR violation to post my performance review in public like that.
I wonder how many 40k fans have actually played any of the miniatures games at this point. 40k the game has been deeply unfun in every aspect for maybe 10+ years, the models are ridiculously priced and all suffer from way too much detail that is reasonable for anyone who isn’t a very dedicated painter to look good in a normal amount of time. The prices have always been a little gougey but at least as a kid I managed to put together a 3000 point skaven army (120+ miniatures!) for like 100 quid by strategically swapping the starter sets with people. The last major purchase I made for 40k was in 2015 when AdMech came out and I bought about 2000 points for £300-ish, and half of that was buying 3 of the battle box sets.
I have found that generally the people who still play 40k these days are all annoying tournament obsessed fun police. Anyone else has either moved on to much cheaper and accessible wargames or is playing 5th edition or lower.
I recently started trying to play, but the scene is exactly like you said. Everyone that plays seems to be focused on only winning tournaments and doesn’t care about fun. The barrier to entry is so immense that I gave up. It’s not fun getting stomped every single time I play.
I refer to the late Jervis Johnson on this matter
Glazer’s Creek is a hell of a scenario name.
40k the game was always just a vehicle to sell the models but I swear they’ve gotten particularly blatant about it in recent years with adjusting rules to drive model sales. Every new model is completely broken upon announcement/release and only gets nerfed when they’ve made the initial wave of sales.
I just wanna play casual Warhammer with some friends, maybe try some of the older more fluffy editions, but everyone I know insists on playing the newest rules and using the sweatiest tryhard tourney lists. And if I’m stubborn & bring anything but a meta list that’s won a tourney I get tabled turn 2 or 3
I’ve been meaning to play some with local friends but I really don’t fw the idea of the tournament scene. I’ve been very slowly collecting since around 2019 with the genestealers and managed to get a small army together, but I’m probably just going to play kill team with friends since it has a much lower barrier to entry for everyone involved
The tourney scene and associated rules churn really put me off 40k. I played fairly rarely, maybe once every month or two, and it felt like every time I had to read up on new FAQ’s, errata, updates, and other adjustments. I just want a casual game where we roll some dice and see what our little toy soldiers do.
I’ve slowly been building up my imperial guard force but between new models being cost-prohibitive (thank you wargames Atlantic for selling reasonable troops) and adjustments to the faction/game (free wargear was a terrible addition to the game) I don’t have any desire to actually set up a game of 40k any time soon
Killteam is the only remotely fun mode any more. Other than playing some of the more jank historical editions or weird kitbash rules.
And really it is only the Mechanicus books, some Inquisitor books, Caiphus Cain and the Horus Heresy books that are any good lore wise.
Most 40k fans are… about as questionably literate as anyone in the Imperium is. Which is a shame because the lore is extremely good.
I honestly can’t take a tabletop game that uses I go you go seriously. Maybe it’s bias since I’ve only played games with alternating activations but igyg seems so much worse. Like oh boy my opponent took one turn and I lost half my army before even being able to use them
Yes Alternating Activations is a better system. Although my absolute favourite is the rare “Everyone goes at once” which requires a 3rd party GM but is great for stuff like naval wargames.
Diplomacy my beloved.
Even if all the anti-tau propaganda is true (ethereal mind control, human sterilization, etc) I’d still rather defect to the tau than live as a prole in the Imperium. In every depiction of human life under the tau everything seems chill as far as the circumstances allow.
I can’t fucking stand people who are unironic imperium fans. This is what happens when GW saw that unironic adoration of fascism was profitable as fuck. They can say it’s satire all they want, and occasionally individual authors will remember that, but so much of 40k media/lore is just praising the fascist theocratic zelot child soldiers because they have cool armour and sell a lot of models
I can’t fucking stand people who are [nazis]
there you go, i used ai to improve your sentence
I hate it when Abominable Intelligence is correct
The issue is that they have some pretty fucking cool phrases, if they were only used to you know, do good things as opposed to just crush any and all hope from humanity for the sake of order.
Abominable Intelligence does go fucking hard, too bad the second you use any 40k coded phrases you get a bunch of chuds screaming about xenos, mutants, and heretics
Every now again the “It was then that I understood the weakness of my flesh and substituted it for the certainty of steel.” line goes through my head. Stupid, yes. Badass, also yes.
if I was born into rome-collapsed-into-mannorialism, i would definitely be a totally jacked warrior knight studying literature and making it with hot booba babes.
i definitely wouldn’t be an illiterate feral mud eater that has his skull drilled by the local doctor for having sex with the village standing stone after i was warned. twice.
local doctor
Oh, you’ll live in a wealthy village that can afford a doctor!
No the super jacked warrior knights are all impotent and asexual
Life in the Tau Empire is not utopian (only the Craftworld Eldar kind of get that), but its potentially above what the average American gets. Im sure the Tau offer free healthcare and a decent amount of individual freedom. As far as I know, many Imperials are still allowed to worship the Emperor. On top of that, Im pretty sure that if you ever become part of their military, they actually use tactics, retreats, and proper combined arms. War is still hell on earth, but the Tau often wage it with superior gear and powerful allied auxiliaries.
EDIT Also, at their core, Tau ideology and society are xenophilic (though perhaps not ideal, since there are clear elements of colonization within it). The Tau will almost always attempt to peacefully integrate species into their Empire and actively pursue diplomatic solutions with any civilization that is receptive to them.
its potentially above what the average American gets.
lol, i expdected “40k inhabitant” but you went for the jugular.
yeah T’au life is unironically better than much of the modern planet Earth, let alone the hell of the 41st century
Yeah they’re the only faction in this scifi universe to figure out that using swords when lasers exist is dumb.
I love a power sword but still have to admit that the plasma minigun is usually the better close combat weapon
Now when you combine the two…
I mean the fact of the matter is everyone uses lasers too but the swords are still better at killing the things you encounter in 40k who give zero shits about lasers
“Oi I don’t fancy deez shiny red lights, blue gitz say they can burns yah, but I don’t believe that toss, and they ain’t do nothin to me!”
They use the Kroot for close combat and the Vespid for speed, I wonder what tactical niche humans fill in this. I imagine it would be pretty easy to just make them part of a gunline and put them on a flank, or perhaps as a reserve of semi-close combat capable linebreakers or counterassaulters.
Doing undercover shit on Imperial worlds, to be sure. Now I’m imagining a secret Tau-backed Red Army Faction accidentally discovering a fledgeling genestealer cult and having to wage a clandestine war while dodging the authorities.
Now I’m imagining a secret Tau-backed Red Army Faction accidentally discovering a fledgeling genestealer cult and having to wage a clandestine war while dodging the authorities.
This single sentence is more interesting and has more potential than 99% of the recent GW warzones/scenarios that boil down to Named Character X faces off against Named Space Marine Y. Tau-backed insurgents having to fight genestealers while both are being hunted by local Imperium forces? Now that sounds like a sick scenario, hell if GW wasn’t afraid of making boxes that don’t include an imperium side Tau Gue’vesa vs Genestealer Cult would make a hell of a killteam box
Tau are afaik smaller and lighter than humans they have also have worse eyesight and reflexes than humans…which mind you doesnt matter often since Tau usually have much more powerful weaponry. But you are right that humans probably could act as shock troops within the Tau forces for city combat as an example.
I guess from their perspective it’s like having a detachment of armored machine gun apes, which would be horrifying to watch clear a building
Humans basically join the fire cast I think.
(only the Craftworld Eldar kind of get that)
Y’all ever utopia so hard that your collective bdsm energy spawns a new god?
Once
What’s that? I can’t hear you over the galaxy spanning psychic scream…
what’s their true name?
You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it. Imagine the sound of a million ball gags gagging, millions of cheeks clapping and you may begin to comprehend but the first syllable.
well at least that’s safe for you
If by some astronomical anomaly these “lions” even managed to find themselves in the Imperial Guard (which is the best they could possibly hope for), the likely fate waiting for them, is going to look a little like this excerpt from one of the better Imperial Guard novels
spoiler
“Where is your weapon? Where is your issued weapon, trooper?” Sobile shouted.
Boulder suddenly realised that the commissar was speaking to him. He looked around and blinked. His hands were empty, and they’d been empty for a long time, and he hadn’t noticed. The last time Criid had seen Boulder’s rifle, he’d been busy dropping it in the shell hole. It was probably still there.
“I think I dropped it,” Boulder began. He tried to curl his lips into a smile, but the full, trademark laugh wouldn’t come.
No, no, no, Criid thought. Boulder had no idea what he was heading for. He wasn’t thinking. You didn’t drop your rifle. You didn’t lose your rifle. A Guardsman protected the rifle issued to him with his life, and vice versa. It was basic and fundamental.
“Gross infringement, article 155,” Sobile said and shot Boulder through the head.
Boulder jerked as if he’d been told surprising news. It obviously wasn’t funny news, because he didn’t laugh. He pitched over, slack and heavy, and hit his sagging head against the gulley wall on his way down. - The Armour of Contempt
Not really relevant but wow those prose are rough :|
Most of the 40k novels are hot garbage but I’ve heard some of them are decent, like the Ciaphas Cain ones and the ones with Trazyn the Infinite
I’ve enjoyed a lot of garbage books in my life but I can’t imagine making it through a book
where every, single sentence. Is made of, three to four word. Fragments.
And paragraphs, normally longer, are two sentences long. Filled with, mundane, details.
It feels like reading in stop motion, no flow. They’re contracted out right? so presumably there are authors that are more and less skilled.
TBH while I am impressed by Jane Austin’s elegant and impassioned prose, and enjoy getting lost in the dreamlike world of Gene Wolfe diving through layers of meaning, most of the books I’ve got the most joy from are pulp SciFi. I’m just a sucker for overwrought and supererogatory phrasing :p jack Vance for example, or Rodger Zelanzy. I went through appendix N a few years back and had a blast.
I should clarify that the “stop-motion” effect is largely an artifact of that specific half of the book where the narrative is largely internal dialogue with the POV character actively dissociating while experiencing a full-blown planetary assault for the first time
I think Abett was trying to do a ‘Saving Private Ryan Beach’ scene but in literary form, gruesome details interwoven with the POV’s reactions, with occasional dialogue from the Commissar and commanding sergeant characters interrupting
The other half of the book that follows the actual main cast reverts to the more natural dialogue-heavy form Abett’s known for, where he typically keeps detail paragraphs siloed to their own parts of a chapter
The difference in form between the two halves of the book was definitely noticeable in the audiobook and to my ears gave the book a cinematic feel
I don’t want to shit in your cereal. My love of purple prose is heretical in the modern age so I am standing on a hill of shit and sneering down :p
Critiquing a random passage in isolation is just about the laziest form of literary criticism there is anyway.
My love of purple prose is heretical in the modern age
It’s one of those things that can really improve a work when done well but is so, so damn easy to screw up and just make things borderline unreadable.
That’s the mainstream opinion but imho even when a narrative dissolves into weird flowery prose poetry I am here for it as long as it’s moving.
I just love watching people do weird shit with language.
You’re not writing licensed slop if you’re good enough to sell your own original stuff
Idk, you might. It’s pretty brutual trying to get an established fan base that’s large enough to make a living from, or even to break even on the cost of writing a book.
Plenty of people who could run their own business work for someone else just for the stability and ease. I imagine ghost and contract writing is simular, although I’m sure there also talentless people.
They’re contracted out right? so presumably there are authors that are more and less skilled.
Yes. You’ve got some real stinkers who are writing bolterporn fanfic and other ones who can actually write. I like Dan Abnett’s Eisenhorn/Ravenor novels because they are very much written to be 40k neo-noir.
E) I wouldn’t mind knowing, from more discerning 40k readers, if Infinite and the Divine is actually worth reading or if people just like the meme of the two old uncles feuding.
The lore slop YouTuber i watch sometimes has said it’s pretty good
It’s functional and punchy; that’s the best you can hope for when it comes to 40K writing
I would say stiff and repetitive but opinions and arseholes.
My wife is suuuuuper into 40k books, they’re basically the only books she reads. I live in hope she’ll enjoy something more literary one day but I had no idea they were written that poorly. I figured they were like military fiction fluid action stuff.
Weird to think that pulp SciFi paid-by-the-word can churn out more interesting phrasing.
I tried to get into 40k books ten years ago, and the only ones I enjoyed were commissar Cain series.
The Infinite and The Divine is fun, because it’s about two immortal robot grandpas in a petty feud that’s being going on for hundreds of thousands of years.
Are “Criid” and “Boulder” two names for the same person, or are they separate personalities in one body, or is the writer doing two POVs in the same paragraph?
Two separate characters, Criid is the POV for that section of the book, a kid fresh out of boot camp thrown into the deep end and in that scene witnessing one of the bootcamp bullies (Boulder) getting domed by a commissar
huh. maybe it’s more obvious when it’s in context because to me it looked like it started out in Boulder’s POV until suddenly there’s a second POV character with another name
Yeah I think the redditer who transcribed the scene from the book probably cut off a few contextual sentences
That or my sneaking suspicion that Dan Abett deliberately writes with the audiobook adaptation in mind
Kirk jerked as if he’d been told surprising news. It obviously wasn’t funny news, because he didn’t laugh. He pitched over, slack and heavy, and hit his sagging head against the stage floor on his way down.
so they cost themselves a green but otherwise living soldier to set an example and this the the tactical prowess that stands above all other factions?
Commissars in 40k are like if all Nazi/western propaganda about WW2 Soviet political officers was actually real. They shoot men over the slightest infraction, shoot men to “encourage” the rest to charge, shoot men for falling back without orders, they’re basically the dudes shooting the retreating Soviets in Enemy At The Gates.
There are more “reasonable” ones like Gaunt and Cain, but they’re exceptions to the rule. Most of the time 40k commissars are exactly that, a spectre of death shooting their own men for the smallest reasons
i’ve been meaning to read about the eastern front, is osprey a good source?
That’s a good question, I’ll admit I’m not super familiar with WW2 beyond the basics or Osprey Publishing as a good source (I assume that’s what you were asking about). I remember there was a Russian documentary series you can find on YouTube called Soviet Storm, for a while there was an English dub but it’s been a while since I checked. As far as I can remember it was pretty decent & didn’t buy into the whole “human wave” thing
The ones around get a buff on their dice rolls. Statistically it works out in groups larger than 6 or something.
That was one of the tamer scenes in the book, in terms of counterproductive shenanigans; that specific Commissar’s idea of motivation and leadership is to just whip them, a unit of half punishment detail/half kids out of basic
The book is pretty much an examination of how the Imperium is always its own worst enemy
spoiler
Sobile saw Criid approach along with other stragglers, and cracked his whip at them agitatedly.
“Watch the unit and stay together, you worthless morons! Stay together and stay focused! How can we achieve our objectives if we don’t have unit cohesion?”
Criid wanted to answer back. He wanted to ask how they were supposed to achieve their objectives if they didn’t know what their objectives were. He wanted to ask if Sobile had a fething clue what the objectives were himself. Criid had a long list of questions.
One of Sobile’s petulant whip cracks caught him across the right shoulder and the corner of his jaw and he forgot about his questions and his lists. The corded leather sliced right through his jacket and drew blood along his collar bone. It felt like his jaw had been dislocated.
“Get up!” Sobile ordered, generally disinterested in Criid’s plight. The pain was so sharp that Criid could barely move. His eyes filled with hot tears. “Get up!” Sobile snarled and then turned to the others.
“I’ll damn well skin the next moron who forgets to focus. Are we clear?”
He coiled up his whip and glanced at Sergeant Kexie. Kexie was rubbing a scratch on his gnarled cheek. The troopers were all gathered in the shadow of the gulley, panting, trying to draw breath. Some were sobbing.
“Sergeant?” Sobile said.
“Break into squads, advance that way across the yard,” Kexie said, indicating with his lasrifle.
“Come at the nearest emplacement from the side, see if we can’t storm it and shut it down.”
“Instructions are clear, 137,” Sobile thundered. “Get into position!”
- Armour of Contempt
Edit: replied to the wrong comment.
When did it become normal to be into warhammer? That was the final boss of being a nerd until like 2 years ago
A lot of fun video games came out that made it a lot more popular. Most 40K fans today have probably never even seen a miniature in person or know anything about the tabletop game. (Good honestly, it’s overpriced plastic crap, only good part about the miniatures is painting them)
There’s also this weird “loreification” of media in the past few years, where stories become less about what they make you feel or make you think, and more about the “deep lore” going on in the setting, and 40K has always been the final boss of that as well. So you get a ton of lore channels talking about it and since it has just so much fucking lore it’s easy for them to crank out videos endlessly.
There’s also this weird “loreification” of media in the past few years, where stories become less about what they make you feel or make you think, and more about the “deep lore” going on in the setting
Its kind of wild that Hasbro decided to forgo that obvious cash-cow with Magic The Gathering and instead just turned it into a slopfest. They could’ve done so much with their own IPs (Ravnica seems ripe for some sort of RPG, Phyrexia would be an awesome boomer-shooter) but that would require doing more than the bare minimum, so…
The main reasons:
- Covid lock downs gave people a lot of time at home to work on hobbies.
- A change in leadership at GW (Tom Kirby was replaced by Kevin Roundtree).
- The collapse of their main competitors shitting the bed (everyone is still flabbergasted how hard Warmachine and X-Wing shit the bed).
- Video games, fan content, and other secondary materials.
- Popularity of the Horus Heresy series.
But yeah. In high school, I had no problem if my peers thought we were playing Pokémon in the cafeteria at lunch (we were playing Magic). I would not be caught dead, however, talking about 40k.
I think fan wikis and YouTube have lowered the barrier for entry for getting into the lore so much that it’s really not as unusual as someone having, say, good Star Trek lore knowledge these days. I’ve met pretty normie ass people who nonetheless know who like Chaos Gods and Space Marines are, same way a normie person is probably familiar with like Captain Picard and the Enterprise.
Fan wikis have been a thing for a while now tho. Something really recent happened specifically with 40k. YouTube algorithm has shown me it’s big enough to have been part of a South Park episode. It just seems super sudden and fairly recent.
I’m deeply familiar with a lot of super nerdy shit, I am a massive star trek and Tolkien nerd and working my way there with Gundam. I dont know what Chaos God is and barely know what a Space Marine is. I even used to play a lot of tabletops and forever Warhammer was kinda its own separate thing with a small but really into fan base. It got really mainstream recently and I dont really get it. My main connection is via the band Bolt Thrower and if everyone is listening to World Eater now that is sick
Really it was “If The Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device” blowing up on YouTube, imo, which spent alot of time shitting on the state of the Fandom and Games Workshop at the time (specifically voicing the absurdity of worshipping the Space Marines (fucking blueberries)). It got a lot of normal people I knew into the lore, which then cascaded into the wider public knowledge.
Unfortunately, because of Games Workshop vaguely gesturing at sueing all fan made content, they no longer do those videos. The good part is that instead they are doing parody/extremely intense drama around Hunter:The Gathering (which is Vampire: The Masquerade from the perspective of humans that know that there is more to the world), which is amazing and so fucking good.
it’s the heap of video games. which is about as mainstream as a ‘franchise’ gets before a movie/tvshow. it helps that the games are allegedly pretty good recently.
While everyone’s bringing up good points about the videogames and YouTube videos, the biggest reason is that the public opinion on “nerd culture” finally fully flipped some time in the early 2010’s, after the Star Wars and LotR movies started moving the needle in the 00’s. All the nerd “final bosses” of the 80’s and 90’s were turning out to actually be quite good, or at least fun, so audiences were more willing to engage with things that had previously been socially off-limits, like Anime, D&D, and Warhammer. Between them being made more accessible for the new audiences and the stigma fading away all the old nerd hobbies are becoming mainstream.
Maybe the video games have helped?
As a Star Trek nerd I’ll say normies are way more familiar with Kirk than picard
