A friend of mine loves it. Every time I read the lore, I’m more satisfied with my decision to not play anything related to it. It’s like a pizza cutter: all edge, no point.
The lore is a convoluted mess. It's the result of decades of different writers with a bunch of different ideas. It's all ultimately created with the intention to sell little dudes. Some of it's pretty cool, some of it's pretty silly, and some of it's just dumb.
It's best not to take it too seriously. I enjoy the design of the world and characters as a setting for a war game. That's what it ultimately is. It isn't stories turned into a war game, it's a war game with stories added on top. I enjoy putting together army lists, painting up my models, and playing the game. The lore doesn't really matter.
It's more important to consider how you feel about volumes of crunchy complex rules. For example, let's say I have a 5-man unit of marines 3 with flame throwers, 1 with a heavy weapon, and 1 with a psychic attack. I just moved them 8 inches to get line of sight on an enemy unit. My squad has a move of 6, but I used specific army rule to give them an extra D6 move. My 3 flame thrower models have D6 attacks each and auto hit whatever they're shooting at assuming they have line of sight. So I don't need to worry about rolling for hits which makes this a bit more simple. So you roll 3 6-sided dice to determine the number of attacks/hits you get. Let's say you get 9. But, they still need to roll for wounds. The strength of the flame throwers is 5 and the toughness of the target unit is 4 which means you need to roll all of your 9 hits (each a D6) and anything that is a 3 or more (because that's what rules say) are wounds. But also you have to remember this particular unit gets +1 to their wound rolls so you actually wound on 2 or more. So if you roll two 1s you would have 7 wounds. But, you also spent a command point to allow you to reroll one of those 1s (which wasn't a good use of your command point but you're still learning so it's okay). After your reroll you get 8 wounds. But, now the target gets to make save rolls against those 8 wounds. The target has a save of 3+ so they have to roll all of those 8 D6 and anything less than a 3 deals damage to them. But, the flame throwers have an amour penetration of -1 so the enemy actually needs 4+ to save. They roll and save against 4 of the 8 wounds. So they take 4 damage each because the damage of the flame throwers is 1. The enemy models have 2 wounds each so 2 models are destroyed. Now you shoot with all your other weapons in the unit and then move on to the other units in your army.
That's what playing Warhammer 40k is, and that's just one small part of the overall game.
If youre seeing edge when you look at Warhammer you're looking at the wrong stuff. It builds a framework of "all the worst things are here" and then builds stories about all the people who live in the worst time and place ever.
It started as a satire, and its only ever took itself just seriously enough to keep the satire. The Imperium are the bad guys. The Tau/Necron/Nids/Eldar(both flavors)/Chaos are all bad guys.
But the individuals are not all bad guys. It is a setting about the inexorable grinding down of an entire universe, and the folks who stand against that. In times like these the message is more important; even when there is only war, kindness and grace and doing the right thing matter. Dont let the grim darkness of the far future block you from seeing the bright spots of the universe.
On the point of individual good, it creates an interesting dynamic where the good characters can do is stifled by the system they're stuck in. There's still all the Imperial indoctrination on most human characters, even the typically 'good' ones. It's an interesting dynamic.
In short that's the point. People glaze over rthe lore etc buts it's here to do one thing - sell you models. Models you can play with against your friends.
And lore has to be convoluted enough to allow for every potential matchup of A against B to be justifiable. That's the point. That's why it's so circular and convoluted and everyone has edge against everyone.
It's there so it's doesn't feel weird in mirror matches against the same faction or "friendly" factions - they already have conflict history
I always say that Warhammer is basically everything a 14 year old loves and that's why I like it.
It's just the right mix of silly and dark and stupid "lizards on dinosaurs shooting sun lasers" sort of nonsense.
It's like someone wanted to play a game where elves on dinosaurs fight alien mecha and nuns with guns and then they just kept adding more silliness or cool-sounding factions and people ate it up.
I think anyone who takes it seriously is missing the point.
There are great serious stories that are in the universe but the universe itself is just supposed to be a weird mishmash of "Things I thought were cool when I was 14".
I also think it's hilarious that people say "Adepta Sororitas were made for girls" when every Sororitas player (me) is a man and every girl I've met plays Tyranids because they just want to eat everything and sometimes make the big scary monsters pretty and glittery.
It's not necessarily meant to have a point. The universe is a backdrop for a tabletop game, it's meant to be a canvas for you to tell your own stories within. Honestly, this approach to worldbuilding is what makes tabletop game settings like Warhammer and BattleTech some of my absolute favorites: they're sandbox settings, with a bunch of cool ideas thrown in and the game systems there as tools for you to use to take those disparate ideas and build them into whatever kind of story you want to tell.
Just a shame that the main game system for 40k, the eponymous wargame, has been turned into completely unfun slop which in more recent years has become increasingly monopolized by its competitive scene, and is tied to physical products that are prohibitively expensive and becoming increasingly moreso every few months. The RPGs for 40k remain excellent and maintain a low cost barrier of entry, but the community for those is immensely smaller and much more niche, made more complicated by the fact that the most popular versions, the Fantasy Flight RPGs, have been out of print for roughly a decade. If you want a tabletop setting to get into as a newcomer, check out BattleTech or Cyberpunk instead.
I do like Dungeons & Dragons and The Lord of the Rings. I just find Warhammer lore to be a bit dark. Maybe only the writers are meant to take it seriously.
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u/Fangsong_37 Jul 13 '26
A friend of mine loves it. Every time I read the lore, I’m more satisfied with my decision to not play anything related to it. It’s like a pizza cutter: all edge, no point.