WH40000 - what's your opinion?

Started by Beorning, August 09, 2014, 03:58:53 PM

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Wajin

I'm a huge fan of the WH40k, have been since I was in my pre-teens. I recently bought a Dark Angels army from a friend of mine, and have a Emperor's Children Horus Heresy army from Forge World I've been building, which currently lacks its fantastic primarch, the Phoenician Fulgrim who is currently in transit to be delivered. It is an extremely expensive hobby, but one I share with my husband. The two of us are fortunately well paid and can afford to spend a great deal of money on it. I've been a painter my entire life, so I enjoy spending hours painting a model. I think, I've so far spent in the excess of 4000$ in total on all my WH40k loot, including novels, games, miniatures, but excluding paint.

Something I noticed that Hairy didn't mention when talking about Chaos, while mentioning reasons, was the Legions of the Chaoes Marines.
Each Legion has their own motivations, and 4 of them are directly tied to one of the chaos gods, another practices worship of chaos as a whole.

I have taken the Oath of the Drake
"--But every sin...is punished, but punished by death, no matter the crime. No matter the scale of the sin. The people of the city live in silence, lest a single word earn them death for speaking out against you."

"Yes. Listen. Listen to the sound of raw silence. Is it not serene?"

Beorning

The more we talk, the more I'm willing to start sinking money into this thing :)

If I may ask: how long, on average, does painting a miniature take?

Wajin

Quote from: Beorning on August 12, 2014, 09:35:23 AM
If I may ask: how long, on average, does painting a miniature take?

It depends on how much detail you want to put in, how used to painting said model you are. Without undercoating you could be looking at an hour to two hours per mini, I usually spend around 3 or 5 hours per mini myself, but I enjoy painting a lot
I have taken the Oath of the Drake
"--But every sin...is punished, but punished by death, no matter the crime. No matter the scale of the sin. The people of the city live in silence, lest a single word earn them death for speaking out against you."

"Yes. Listen. Listen to the sound of raw silence. Is it not serene?"

consortium11

Quote from: Beorning on August 12, 2014, 09:35:23 AM
The more we talk, the more I'm willing to start sinking money into this thing :)

If I may ask: how long, on average, does painting a miniature take?

It depends on the miniature in question and how much detail you want to put in.

"Normal" figure, simple undercoat, fairly basic paint job without any real detail or finesse? Maybe 10 to 20 minutes a figure.

Complicated, large figure which you go into a lot of detail on? You're talking a couple of hours at least and maybe more if you want it to be really special.

HairyHeretic

Quote from: A Japanese Dane on August 12, 2014, 06:59:56 AM
Something I noticed that Hairy didn't mention when talking about Chaos, while mentioning reasons, was the Legions of the Chaoes Marines.
Each Legion has their own motivations, and 4 of them are directly tied to one of the chaos gods, another practices worship of chaos as a whole.

True. But if I started talking about the different Legions, then I'd have to talk about the various Chapters, Craftworlds, Clans and all the rest of it. Better to just stick with the basics and fill in specific info as requested. :)

Quote from: Beorning on August 12, 2014, 09:35:23 AM
The more we talk, the more I'm willing to start sinking money into this thing :)

It's a hobby I enjoy, and you can start without breaking the bank.

Quote from: Beorning on August 12, 2014, 09:35:23 AM
If I may ask: how long, on average, does painting a miniature take?

Depends on the level of detail you want. I'm not a great painter, I paint strictly for tabletop use. I think the most I did was an entire platoon of Imperial Guard (about 50 models) in a single day.

For basic troops, you can get an assembly line painting process done. Once everything is undercoated (let's say green for the IG, as it suits the camo), you line them up and paint one thing. The boots black. The gun silver. The face flesh. Then do the same on the next model. Same on the next. Same on the next. By the time you've done them all, the paint has dried on the first, and you can move onto the next thing you want to paint.

They won't be amazing quality, but they'll be good enough to put on the table.

Generally I'd look to do a squad of 10 or so, or a single character model / big model, in a single sitting.

I'm actually waiting on some parts to start work on my Night Lords. Planning on extensive converting for these, and doing squads to tie into the different fear aspects. Bikers done up as the Wild Hunt, a squad using sonic weapons for the fear inducing effects of ultra low frequency sound, probably some stand in berserkers for the absolute psychopaths in the army, and so on :)
Hairys Likes, Dislikes, Games n Stuff

Cattle die, kinsmen die
You too one day shall die
I know a thing that will never die
Fair fame of one who has earned it.

Beorning

Thanks for all the advice :)

Here's a crazy question regarding the game's fluff: do you find it relatable? I mean, every side of the conflict seems to be awful. Oh, the Sisters are lovely, but they do serve the Empire... which, from what I read, is a completely horrible place to live. Of course, other sides are even worse... So, how can you relate to any of this? Especially when roleplaying?

HairyHeretic

Read Dan Abnett's books. The Eisenhorn and Ravenor ones, and the Gaunts Ghosts. You'll see the Inquisition and the Imperial Guard, through the stories of individuals. Read the Path of the Eldar novels to see how the mindset of the Eldar differs from the humans. Read the Night Lords trilogy and see how Chaos Space Marines who think the worship of Chaos is for idiots feel. Read the Horus Heresy novels and see the Imperium of 10,000 years ago, the Great Crusade to reunite humanity and usher in a Golden Age, and how it was brought down.

There's plenty of relatable material. The Imperium is a horrible monolith, oiled by the spilled blood and rent flesh of it's own. But it is made up of people. Some good, some bad. Some weak, some strong. Some noble, some absolute bastards.

And those are what we can relate to in the roleplays.

The heros and the villains, the light and the darkness, and the grey that lies between them.
Hairys Likes, Dislikes, Games n Stuff

Cattle die, kinsmen die
You too one day shall die
I know a thing that will never die
Fair fame of one who has earned it.

Beorning

Hmmm. Unfortunately, buying all of these books would cost even more money...

Let's try it the other way around: what's the life of average person in the Empire like? Are all these people so utterly downtrodden?

HairyHeretic

It tends to vary from planet to planet. Some are little better than slaves, some have fairly decent lives, some are in between.
Hairys Likes, Dislikes, Games n Stuff

Cattle die, kinsmen die
You too one day shall die
I know a thing that will never die
Fair fame of one who has earned it.

Beorning

And are they content, more or less? With the Empire being awful, I can't quite get what all these people are fighting for...

HairyHeretic

You have a society which, more or less, teaches them to hate from an early age. Fear the mutant. Kill the heretic. Hate the alien. Burn the witch.

The better ones see themselves as defenders of humanity. There are plenty of alien species which will prey on humans, given the chance. Eldar would sacrafice a million human lives to save 10 eldar ones. Dark eldar live on the suffering of other races, distilled and processed. Orks just want to fight everyone. Tyranids want to eat everything.

The worse characters see hatred as a virtue. Kill all that is different because they are not us. Wipe them out to the last. You have the instilled belief in a God that wants you to wipe out his enemies, so a mixture of religious fanaticism and xenophobia.
Hairys Likes, Dislikes, Games n Stuff

Cattle die, kinsmen die
You too one day shall die
I know a thing that will never die
Fair fame of one who has earned it.

TheGlyphstone

The Sisters of Battle, interestingly enough, being one of the most rabidly fanatical bunches out there (which makes it amusing that you've somehow singled them out as a bright spot).

Beorning

Heh. Somehow, they seem interesting :)

Tell me: do people in the Empire really love their Empire? Or are they, on average, uninterested in it? Also, does the average person in the Empire really feel the hardships of the war going on? Or is the war something distant that most of the people only hear about occassionally?

TheGlyphstone

#63
All of the above.

The hardest thing to imagine about the Imperium is its size. There are over a million inhabited planets, ranging from the mega-arcology Hive Worlds, to placid farm-covered Agri-Worlds, to 'ordinary' Civilized Worlds, and all sorts of things in between. The Imperium's population is unimaginably vast - there's a few canon references to planets being forgotten about/lost because a bureaucratic clerk made a rounding error in their records - so you can find a representative population for nearly any opinion, attitude, or situation you can imagine.

Planets closer to wherever a 'front' happens to be at the time are affected more by that particular bit of war than people further away, and people at the extreme ends of the poverty scale are less affected than those in the middle. Some people pay lip service to the Imperial Creed, others are utterly devoted to it.

Inkidu

The Imperium of Man is the single largest cohesive empire in the Milky Way galaxy. The orks beat them out in terms of numbers, and the tyranids beat out everyone else but aren't from the Milky Way Galaxy (Maybe).

These are the things that put it in perspective for me: When your first option when liberating a planet from a threat is to nuke it from orbit with ordinance that literally turns it into a molten ball of slag. You have worlds to spare.

The other thing: You know that imperial ships are great miles-long floating cathedrals with religious iconography and even Gothic gargoyles. These ships are not run by technology.

They are crewed by thousands of press-ganged citizens who pull the torpedoes and missiles in by chain while being whipped. Not because the imperium couldn't make a mechanical system to do all this, but if it's one thing the imperium has it's manpower. In the Imperium of Man you are one of a 100 billion  sparks of insignificance. The best you can hope is to live a life of stout labor and die in the name of the emperor without the taint of chaos on your soul. (Not that it will stop you from going to the Warp when you die anyway).
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Wajin

Another thing to remember is that, though the imperium is largely a really, really bad place to be, it's not nearly as bad as life close to or inside the Eye of Terror. For all its flaws, the Imperium is trying its best to fight a war it is probably losing. Imagine for a moment being one of the Lord on Terra, people who know that for all intents and purposes, the Imperium is surrounded by enemies all around, and that is not an exaggeration.

From the Eastern Fringe you have the Tau, an alien race so technologically superior to you, that even your greatest minds can figure out how their ships work properly, aliens who seem perfectly content with living alongside other species and happily accepts those who wants to abandon their own species.

Then you have the Eldar, aliens so vastly old, so vastly intelligent and such great psykers that they've created a "safe" way of travelling between world, yet another piece of technology that your wisest can't explain how works, nor how it is even used.

Then you have the Orks, which are basically weeds made concious and very aggressive. Then you have the Dark Eldars who are murderous psychopaths who enjoy inflicting pain more than you enjoy being able to breathe.

Then there's the forces of Chaos, a lot of whom used to be on your side, but who now works with immortal demons, are led by Daemon Princes who used to be the Imperiums greatest champions.

And then you have the Tyranid. A race of creatures who adapt to every tactic used against you, who grows exponentially in number every time they win a battle and who seems to be getting so hard to kill that the only way to assure "Victory" when they attack seems to be to perform Exterminatus ie.
Quote from: Inkidu on August 12, 2014, 09:38:43 PM
[...] nuke it from orbit with ordinance that literally turns it into a molten ball of slag.
I have taken the Oath of the Drake
"--But every sin...is punished, but punished by death, no matter the crime. No matter the scale of the sin. The people of the city live in silence, lest a single word earn them death for speaking out against you."

"Yes. Listen. Listen to the sound of raw silence. Is it not serene?"

consortium11

As others have said, the Imperium is too vast to really answer "what is life like for the average citizen" with any reliability. I mean, if someone asked me what life was like for the average person on Earth I'd struggle to put together an accurate answer... not multiply that by near countless worlds, each differing in their environment and location. Life on a fortress world like Cadia is going to be very different to that on a hive world like Necromunda to a forge world like Antax to one of countless other types of world.

If there was one general rule, it's that life is probably better the more isolated you are... not just from the other races but also from the Imperium. That's not to say that life will be good but you're more likely to have a certain level of freedom and ability to develop your own life. Having contact with the other races is pretty self-evidently bad; their default position when it comes to humanity is pretty much kill/enslave them. They may kill them for different reasons using different methods but you're still dead at the end of the day.

Being under the Imperium's thumb doesn't necessarily make life much better. You're life is far more likely to be regimented with you assigned a duty from pretty much the moment you're born until you die without you really having much choice in the matter. Born in the aforementioned Cadia and want to be an artist or have pacifist tendencies? Bad luck... you're going to be a soldier. Born on a forge world and want to be a farmer? Bad luck... you're going to be an industrial worker. There are rare exceptions and the more privileged one's birth the more likely one is to escape being a miniscule cog in a vast machine... but you'll likely end up simply being a slightly bigger cog.

And political or religious freedom? Don't be silly. You even think of uttering a word (or sometimes even having a thought) against the Imperium or the Emperor and the best you can hope for is a quick death. Those Sister's of Battle you like? Their basic raison d'ĂȘtre is to find "heretics" (ranging from actual heretics who may be a threat to political dissidents to people who simply had a moan about their living conditions) and burning them alive. And not just them. If you happen to live on a world where someone started worshipping Chaos and put together a cult, chances are you're about six seconds away from the entire planet being nuked from orbit. Basically, the equivalent of someone killing everyone on earth because they viewed the Islamic State causing chaos in Iraq and Syria as trouble-makers and it wasn't worth the risk of just killing their forces and hoping it didn't happen again.

The 40K universe is pretty much the definition of grimdark (the term actually came from 40K) for anyone involved.

The Imperium is basically defined by two concepts. The first is an unwinnable war combined with inevitable defeat. To take what is generally presented as its most serious threat, Chaos, the Imperium cannot win. It has no way of killing the Chaos Gods, of sealing them up, of preventing their forces from attacking or its own members from being corrupted by them. These are immortal creatures who will never stop; the best the Imperium can do is slow them down. All Imperial victories over Chaos are merely avoiding defeat and thwarting their plans and in time it is pretty much inevitable that Chaos will win... maybe billions of years from the in-game date but still, a victory. And that's just Chaos. There are lots of other races who would happily destroy the Imperium.

The second concept ties into the first and what was mentioned previously. Vast, vast, vast economies of scale. The Imperium is so big, with so many planets and so many people that a whole planet's population don't really matter, let alone individuals. Pretty much everyone is just a number on a scroll. That's why the Imperium will so readily kill billions of its own citizens; in a war they can never win it is better to kill a billion (a mere nothing to the Imperium) then allowing one traitor to live, however remote the chance that he actually achieves anything.

If you're under the Imperium's thumb you're not really an individual any more. You're a statistic. And no-one cares if a statistic is wiped out.

HairyHeretic

There are a few examples of that sort of scale amongst the books.

An adept writes 78 instead of 87 and a troopship full of raw recruits gets sent to a meatgrinder rather than the training billet they were supposed to go.

People joining the Adeptus Arbites (Imperial Polce) who were born and raised in the precincts that their parents were queuing up in to have some issue dealt with.

Planets being forgotten about due to cogitator (computer) errors.

A million worlds, ranging from death worlds where everything (including the plants) is constantly trying to kill and/or eat everything else, to agri worlds where entire continents are given over to food production, Forge worlds where the Omnissiah (Emperor as God-Machine) is worshiped and the machines are held more important than the weak fleshthings that tend them, Hive worlds of city sized sky scrapers that climb 5 miles into the air, worlds given over to the Ministorum and the Ecclesiarchy that are planet sized catherdrals, shrines and masoleums. Worlds where technology is little better than skicks and stones, to worlds where people live in flying cities because the surface is a mile below the acidic chemical smog that millenia of industry has created.

The Imperium is vast and monolithic, and everything you can think of can be found there.

It is the 41st Millennium. 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 even 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 Astronomican, 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 only 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 cruelest 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.
Hairys Likes, Dislikes, Games n Stuff

Cattle die, kinsmen die
You too one day shall die
I know a thing that will never die
Fair fame of one who has earned it.

Inkidu

The best bet the 40K universe has is that if enough Eldar souls stones join the infinity circuits of the craftworlds they'll eventually be able to create a god of death who will crush the four chaos gods an ascend the eldar to the next form of existence (or somewhere thereabouts).

Even if you don't buy into the Tau brainwashing and fascism spin they've gotten they're pretty much destined for extinction because they're by 40K standards reasonable and moderate.

Though humanity can hold out that if the emperor dies he'll go into the warp and destroy it, but that probably means the Orks will win.

Though the orks have probably already won.

If enough orks believe in something it happens regardless of what physics might say.
Orks like fighting, fighting is the natural order of the ork mindset.
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

consortium11

Quote from: Inkidu on August 13, 2014, 08:59:03 AM
The best bet the 40K universe has is that if enough Eldar souls stones join the infinity circuits of the craftworlds they'll eventually be able to create a god of death who will crush the four chaos gods an ascend the eldar to the next form of existence (or somewhere thereabouts).

If I remember correctly, Ynnead's only destined to defeat Slaanesh and become the home for dead Eldar souls. The other chaos gods? Well, he might rescue Isha from Nurgle but other then that, not so much.

Inkidu

Quote from: consortium11 on August 13, 2014, 09:24:05 AM
If I remember correctly, Ynnead's only destined to defeat Slaanesh and become the home for dead Eldar souls. The other chaos gods? Well, he might rescue Isha from Nurgle but other then that, not so much.
Best doesn't mean perfect. It means better than better. :)

That's just how the 40K universe works.

Like I said, I think the Orks have already won.
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Wajin

Quote from: Inkidu on August 13, 2014, 09:26:30 AM
Best doesn't mean perfect. It means better than better. :)

That's just how the 40K universe works.

Like I said, I think the Orks have already won.

Personally, I'm betting on the 'nids :P
I have taken the Oath of the Drake
"--But every sin...is punished, but punished by death, no matter the crime. No matter the scale of the sin. The people of the city live in silence, lest a single word earn them death for speaking out against you."

"Yes. Listen. Listen to the sound of raw silence. Is it not serene?"

Beorning

The flavour text that has been quoted is, admittedly, cool :)

As for the Sisters, this Youtube tribute really makes me want to play one... or have an army of them for a wargame:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKbH3VuR2_w

Inkidu

Everyone goes on about the Cadians but I kind of like the Krieg Death Korps.

An imperial guard recruiting word so penitent about turning the Horus Heresy that they nuked themselves for centuries. Their planet is a giant ball of radioactive hell and the only thing they provide for the empire is bodies.

They're so suicidal that commissars assigned to their groups actually have to stop them from getting killed in all out death rushes. The only job where a commissar doesn't have to shoot people in the head. :)     
If you're searching the lines for a point, well you've probably missed it; there was never anything there in the first place.

Wajin

#74
Quote from: Inkidu on August 13, 2014, 12:38:02 PM
Everyone goes on about the Cadians but I kind of like the Krieg Death Korps.

An imperial guard recruiting word so penitent about turning the Horus Heresy that they nuked themselves for centuries. Their planet is a giant ball of radioactive hell and the only thing they provide for the empire is bodies.

They're so suicidal that commissars assigned to their groups actually have to stop them from getting killed in all out death rushes. The only job where a commissar doesn't have to shoot people in the head. :)     

You forgot to mention that they still use horses :P
I have taken the Oath of the Drake
"--But every sin...is punished, but punished by death, no matter the crime. No matter the scale of the sin. The people of the city live in silence, lest a single word earn them death for speaking out against you."

"Yes. Listen. Listen to the sound of raw silence. Is it not serene?"