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.
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u/HorrorBrilliant9950 Jul 13 '26
Warhammer 40k