Monthly Archives: March 2024

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Warhammer 40k: Scratching The Surface

From my last article you might have guessed that I have now committed myself to collecting, building and painting a Warhammer 40k army with the intent to join my friends on the Warhammer 40k, 10th edition adventure.

I thought it might be useful to share my experience for those out there either considering joining the hobby for the first time, or possibly someone like me returning to the game.

I will do things in Chronological order first and foremost, but I have snuck in a few sub-sections where I think they were relevant to the experience.

Enjoy!

What got me interested?

The truth is that I have always had an eye for Warhammer 40k, its one of my origin games. What I mean by that is that, this game, along with Dungeons and Dragons, Zelda on the 8 bit Nintendo and Magic: Gathering are all games that sort of drove my early days of gaming and made me the gaming nerd I am today.

Origin games are important, they define who we are as gamers and steer the ship. Its a rare case that I meet a gamer who can’t name their origin games with little effort. We all have them. For me, Zelda was, in a word, my childhood.

In many respects, Warhammer 40k is a nostalgia thing for me and over the years even as Warhammer 40k fell out of favor, as have most of the origin games to different degree’s, its always been on my radar.

The reality is however that 6th edition was the last version of the game I played. 7th, 8th and 9th edition all, in my observation where unanimously considered problematic. All the people I knew that continued to play Warhammer 40k, despite their participation where not advocates for the game. They all voiced a lot of negative opinions about Warhammer 40k to me, if the people playing your game aren’t advocates for you, that to me, is a clear sign that there is no reason to explore it any further.

6th edition Warhammer 40k was the last edition I played. It had many very frustrating issues and Games Workshop had a lot of really poor business practices that drove me away into the arms of better games and game companies.

10th edition Warhammer 40k however has been a very different story. Suddenly people who play the game have become advocates for it and the edition is spoken in high regard among 40k players in my circles. That got me interested enough to explore and ultimately try out the game.

I felt very strongly that the assessments and reviews of the game were quite on the money, Warhammer 40k was great again and I got very excited about the prospect of returning to one of my origin games and building a new army.

That is how it started, it was pretty straightforward. Make a great game and you can have my money!

Early Exploration

Despite my enthusiasm, I took a pretty cautious route at least, cautious by my definition. After playing a couple of games using borrowed armies I settled in for a lot of reading and research on which army I wanted to play.

This was actually a lot harder than I thought. In 10th edition all armies are currently indexed, which simply means that most armies don’t have a full codex, having been re-vamped for the new edition and all of their army rules where available online. Suffice to say there was a lot to review.

My decision wasn’t going to be made based on army strength or current meta, or anything like that. I did however want to make sure that the style of play I prefered was a core function of the army I chose.

Meta Watch and GW’s commitment to keeping an eye on the health of armies is a great initiative and I’m in full support, but I neither play competitive or even outside of my local gaming circles so this information really neither impacts me or is relevant in any way. It also doesn’t reflect the strengths and weaknesses of armies in my circles which are vastly different than what is shown here. Local metas rarely match up with the official results.

My prefered style of play was to effectively have a little bit of everything. I wanted good melee options and good shooty options, but I also knew going in that I wanted to have an army with a lot of models. This didn’t necessarily mean I wanted a swarm, but very early on I ruled out elite forces style armies and focused more on armies that would allow me to field more than your average model count.

Custodes is perhaps one of the most elite armies in the game and they are very attractive, both mechanically and with their visually stunning models. I was tempted, as having individual models that are super bad ass I can imagine is also a lot of fun. I stuck to my guns however, I wanted the table overflowing with my painted models so I had to rule these guys out early on.

This narrowed my choices down to one of the Space Marine chapters, though this was very tentative and I ruled it out quickly. Orks, which I thought where really cool but a friend of mine was already collecting these so it was ruled out on that basis alone. Necrons I considered, not so much because they were meeting my “more models” criteria but because this was the last army I collected when I quit the game. I ruled them out however for that reason, I had already collected them before and I wanted something new.

Serious contenders included Astra Militarum, Tau Empire and Tyranids. It was going to be a tough choice but ultimately my decision had a relatively smooth process of elimination. I excluded Astra Militarum mainly because its basically the “modern human military army” and it just didn’t feel science-fiction enough, the models essentially looked like a normal modern army.

Astra Militarum are really cool, but if you don’t look to close, you might think these were straight out of a world war II miniature game. They are just plain “army dudes” and while I think that is cool, I already actually have armies that look like this in my collection.

Both Tau Empire and Tyranids offered a lot to like. Tau Empire was about to get its updated codex which would likely include a lot of new models and updates, which was exciting. They also look amazing on the table with a mix of modern, Robotech style models and the primitive but equally awesome Kroot. I loved them and to be honest, I was really close to picking them outright.

In my opinion The T’au Kroot are the most visually unique and among the coolest looking models GW makes. These guys alone almost made the case for running a T’au army.

In the end however I chose Tyranids for three core reasons. First and most obvious is that I’m a huge Predator and Aliens fan and Tyranids are an amazing combination of both of those science-fiction tropes. There lore also intrigued, I love Starcraft lore and they had a similar science-fiction look and feel. The fact that they had a newly released codex was also a big factor, it meant I was effectively choosing a fully support army which could not be said about most of Warhammer 40k at this stage in the 10th edition lifespan. The final thing that really tipped it over the edge is that the new crusade rules focused on Tyranid lore and I found that really exciting.

I have no regret, picking Tyranids was an awesome decision that would turn out to have other cool benefits I would discover later on.

Buying Into Tyranids

Unfortunately I had missed the boat when it comes to Tyranids as the Leviathan Box Set was out of stock and would remain so, which most regarded as one of the best starter box sets ever made for the game and it was especially good for Tyranids. I got lucky however and I met a player who had already purchased the Leviathan starter set but he was a Space Marine player and wanted to shake the Tyranids side of the box set. I ended up getting all the Tyranid Leviathan models for next to nothing, leaving me with lots of cash burning in my hands to buy more stuff.

There is no question in my mind that Tyranids is one of the coolest factions in the Warhammer 40k universe. Ever since their conception way back in the day, I have mused about collecting them, so it’s great to finally do it!

I decided against however buying a whole bunch of plastic before I have had a chance to actually play with what I already had, as honestly I wasn’t sure what to buy.

I ended up buying a bunch of painting supplies after choosing my painting scheme (more on that later) and I purchased the Tyranid Codex, The Core Rulebook and the Tyrannic War, Crusade rules supplement.

These were all great purchases. The Tyranid Codex is filled to the brim with amazing lore, well organized army rules as well as a special Crusade Rules section specific to the army. I know that many people question the validity of purchasing codexes but in my opinion, if your going to buy the army, you should buy the codex. It’s just a really nice to have, its more of a collection and atmosphere thing than a nescessity.

The Core Rulebook too is kind of a luxury purchase and not a necessity. The Core Rules are available for free online and frankly even when you play the game, using the core rulebook at the table is not really all that practical thanks to great digital support apps. Still I thought this was a great buy, less so for the rules and more so for the lore and atmosphere. It’s just fun to have something to look at when you get that Warhammer feeling.

Crusade rules have been around in Warhammer 40k for a while, but the reality is that even back in the early days of 40k people would write stories and create campaigns for their battles. In many ways, Warhammer 40k is a sort of tactical role-playing game. Its lore and the story behind the miniature game is absolutely vital to its health and image. It’s why I’m such an advocate for the narrative style of play, in fact, it’s actually competitive match play that is a foreign concept to me.

The Crusade book was simultaneously the best and worst purchase. Again the expanded lore is so good, the crusade rules are absolutely fantastic, my favorite way to play so for me this was a must have. Unfortunately much of the book (more than half) was dedicated to content that already existed in the core rulebook, like the core rules themselves. I get why this was done, technically I could have gotten away with just purchasing this book without the core rulebook and had everything I needed to play a full crusade campaign. But just be aware that you end up with a lot of duplication between the books when purchasing them. It sort of felt like this content should have been in the core rulebook and in fact, if you managed to purchase the Leviathan core rulebook that came with the Leviathan starter set, this is exactly what you would get. I don’t know why the core rulebook and crusade rules were separated in this fashion in the standard rulebook given that using the Crusade system is in my opinion, a core and fundamental part of Warhammer 40k gameplay.

Getting Modern Supplies & Picking Paint Scheme

Most people when they paint their army are going to go with something close to or exactly as depicted for their army to match up with the lore and feel of the Warhammer 40k universe. One of the luxuries of the Tyranid army is that picking a unique, one of a kind paint scheme IS the appropriate lore way to approach it.

It was a lot of fun to muse about this but ultimately what I wanted to do was paint a Leviathan army, but I wanted it to be more gritty-fleshy-meaty and in some places more colorful. I ended up using the Leviathan paint scheme as inspiration to create a more realistic variant.

Contrast paints are effectively a magic bullet in the world of miniature painting today. We minimal technique, skill or effort you can create well defined and visibly appealing painted miniatures. With more advanced techniques or combining contrast painting with other more traditional techniques you can create an amazing painted army in a third of the time.

For that job I chose to do a combination of Contrast Painting, using a blending method, toned down and a bit darker colors with some occasional hyper fluorescent vibrant colors.

I was easily able to locate all the supplies I needed and I have to say that modern painting is not only much simpler and enjoyable to use. After painting a couple of models I started to get the techniques down and though I made plenty of mistakes, it was very easy to get my painting done in no time flat.

Small sample of my army. As you can see there are blending effects, a clear dedication to the Leviathan theme with my own little flavor. These miniatures did not take long to paint at all and thanks to contrast paints and basic techniques, it wasn’t really difficult. Believe me when I tell you that I have zero natural talent and everything I know, I learned while painting these miniatures. Its not an exaggeration to say that quite literally anyone can do it.

My army isn’t 100% done at this point, but other than minor, individual flares, I know I have the method and means to fully paint my army from this point forward and it did not take a tremendous effort to get here. Its a very comforting thought to know that I will be able to paint up my army exactly like I want, get it looking really nice in a reasonable amount of time.

To The Table and Beyond

The final step of my journey was to build an army list from my constructed models and get it to the table. Now initially I was actually quite nervous about this. Warhammer 40k is a fairly complex game so far as miniature games go and while I don’t think the Tyranids are a particularly complex army to run, they do have some key synergies and a very defined style of play which requires a bit of finesse and understanding.

My first game was a 600 point match vs. Dark Angels in which I fully expected to be crushed relentlessly. It turned out that my Tyranids held up pretty well, the game went 5 rounds with a final score of 48 to 46 with Dark Angels coming out on top.

Dark Angels is another army with a released codex in 10th edition. They look amazing and my friend who is running them, loves them. He is also our best player, undefeated in our circle, which makes this the strongest army in our meta. Not so in the official meta, in fact, many argue they are terrible. Which makes the case that, what is happening at official tournaments and what’s happening at your local tables is not likely to line up.

It was a tight game from start to finish, with tons of epic moments, terrible loses and heroic triumphs. It was everything I wanted out of Warhammer 40k and more.

It was a messy game of course, I spent a lot of my time asking questions, looking up rules and trying to remember all the stuff my army could do, but I was fortunate enough to have a gracious opponent who advised me well and patiently let me figure things out. The game took more than 4 hours from start to finish and while I felt that this was pretty long for a single game my opponent assured me that games could range from 2 to 5 hours depending on the point count and circumstances of the game itself.

This means to me that Warhammer 40k is always going to border on an event style feel, which is fine by me. It means I will probably get to play less often, but the games themselves will be more memorable. More reason while I want to play this game using the Crusade rules. If we are going to spend that much time on a single match, I want it to have meaning beyond the match itself which is exactly what Crusade rules allow you to do.

My second match was against another novice player running Adepta Sororitas, aka The Battle Sisters. My friend had only recently bought into Warhammer 40k along with me and he only had a combat patrol army, which gave me an opportunity to try out The Combat Patrol rules.

Another really amazing army, these Battle Sisters look absolutely awesome on the table. Some of the models and the lore behind them especially is bizzare, its some of the craziest shit I have read in science-fiction for a very long time.

This match up probably would have been a lot tighter had my opponent had a better understanding of his army, but as a new player myself, I knew even less about The Battle Sisters than he did so I unlike my first experience against a veteran player, my opponent was not getting any of the clever advice I was guided by in my first game.

I didn’t exactly crush him, but the end score was 15 to 35 for the Tyranids which when you get right down to it, meant I had nearly doubled my opponents score. Suffice to say my opponent forgot to use a lot of special rules and strategies typical for the Battle Sisters and I think had he employed some of these advantages the game would have been a lot closer.

The Combat Patrol rules themselves where really not any different than the standard rules, certainly not enough to make a notable difference from my perspective. The biggest change was to the Detachment rules, which were unique for Combat Patrol for both armies and the units themselves which were slightly altered (In some cases better in others worse than their core rule counterparts).

There was also a static secondary objective each army chose from at the start of the match, rather than the more dynamic drawn secondary objectives of the full game.

It was a great match, very relaxed and it gave me an opportunity to try out some new strategies with different units.

The main take away from both of these matches was that the Tyranids have a lot of flexibility as individual units, meaning their roles aren’t super fixed and this army is also really great a board control.

I wish I had more, but my experience is so shallow at the moment with this game and this army, that I’m not sure I could come to any further conclusions. I do have some preferences however.

What I like and dislike about my army

I’m mostly positive about my army, all my units felt strong or alternatively useful in some capacity. While there are clearly some roles certain units have in the army, I think its big strength is the flexibility of the units.

For example The Von Ryan Leapers have many useful talents that allow them to serve multiple roles depending on the situation. They can be an advance force to slow an advance, a great melee aggressor, a unit used to steal objectives opponents in their backline and my favorite, a ploy to draw attention away from something else I’m trying to achieve by simply being a menace on the board my opponent must deal with.

I will say in both games this unit died very early on, so I may not be using it quite right, but I have enjoyed their antics.

Most of the units have a similar duality.

There is some stuff that even as a newbie to the game and army I found on. One example that sticks out like a sour thumb is the Winged Alpha Prime which is a fast moving, flying, melee leader unit. The weird thing is that they can lead other units, namely Gargoyles and Tyranid Warriors but they don’t seem to mess with either of these units particularly well.

He is a poor fit for the Gargoyle unit since the last thing you want to do with those is get into a melee fight, they are a shooty unit if they fight at all. Equally poor are the Tyranid Warriors who have half the speed of the Alpha Prime, forcing it to give up its main advantage, speed.

Strangely as a solo unit, even at its low point cost it’s not terribly useful. It’s a very strange unit, I haven’t really figured out what I’m supposed to do with as it doesn’t seem to fit any role particularly well, being a stark opposite to the rest of the army.

Grant it oddities like that are fairly rare, but there are some I think are quite obvious.

Conclusion

So far I have to admit I’m really enjoying it and I’m really enjoying the fact that I’m enjoying. What I mean by that is, I think, to some degree, I thought the hype and novelty was going to be short lived and the reality of playing a GW game was going to set it.

What has happened is that the game has surprised me at every turn.

The books are great, GW’s commitment to the game is surprising, the game rules are really well put together, with a couple of exception, the vast majority of the units in my army are very playable. Its really well put together product.

I talked about the expense of the game in my previous article so I won’t re-hash it hear, but he point stands. Its an expensive hobby, but Warhammer 40k has not been more expensive than other games I have collected. Not trying to understate the cost here, its ridiculous, but Im just saying its not more ridiculous than anything else.

Its been a fantastic trip down memory lane, but that memory has been re-written, revised and re-released. Hands down, 10th edition is the best edition of Warhammer 40k to date. Well done GW!

Gaming Articles

In Theory: Warhammer 40k 10th Edition

Back in 2016 I wrote an in-depth article about getting into miniature paint/assemble war games. This article even after nearly 10 years continues to get regular hits and comments from my readers I think in big part because when it comes to miniature war gaming, very little has changed since the 80’s, to be honest. Sure the quality of the game designs and the miniature games themselves have improved one hundredfold, but so far as advice about getting into the hobby goes, everything in this article still holds up. I wouldn’t change a word of it.

In fact that article is my mantra when it comes to miniature-war gaming and every time I get excited about a new miniature-war game, I re-read it to remind myself of all the pitfalls of the hobby. In recent years my interest in painting and assembling miniature games was revitalized thanks in part to games like X-Wing being refreshed, the fantastic Songs of Ice and Fire miniature game which I maintain is one of the best miniature games out there today and most recently I have re-connected with Warhammer 40k and the Middle Earth Battle Strategy Game thanks in large part to the new updated rules and modernization of Games Workshop.

In today’s article, I’m going to talk a little bit about Warhammer 40k 10th edition specifically and why I think Games Workshop and in particular the Warhammer line is really going through a renaissance of sorts and how and why I actually gave up on the game about 10 years ago, but now find myself coming back to it.

Warhammer 40k In The Past

I played Warhammer 40k starting with 2nd and 3rd editions and then again between the start of 5th edition through to the end of 6th edition.

I really enjoyed the game and actually, I look back on these gaming experiences with great fondness but I also recall a lot of frustration.

This is the first miniature game box I ever purchased, it was colorful, it was exciting and at the time, my friends and I had no clue what we were buying into.

The great part about the game was that the creative process of getting your army ready was invigorating and inspiring. Painting miniatures is a lot of fun and the entire hobby-craft part of the game was awesome then and it’s even more so today thanks to both the quality of miniatures and supplies, in particular, the quality of paints massively improving over time.

Once your army was painted and ready for the table however is where a lot of the problems started with Warhammer 40k and ultimately where a lot of my frustration led me to abandon the game entirely.

For one, Games Workshop was terrible at maintaining the game back in the early editions. They were very anti-online updates, in particular releasing information about the armies so printed books would be left unchanged even if they had glaring mechanical and balance issues for years at a time. I recall some codexes would go half a decade between updates. This meant that if you painted an army, that army would, depending on how long it’s been since the codex was updated, be borderline useless in actual play at the table.

All that work preparing your army, lovingly painting it only to discover that every unit you have chosen is completely useless and out of date at the table is a disheartening experience, and having to wait sometimes through entire editions of the game to get an update took a lot of energy out of the experience. Often when a new codex would come out for your army, it would be designed to sell those miniatures so then you would end up with an army that is so powerful and unbalanced in the other direction that players would not want to play against you because you had such an unfair advantage. In a way, you were screwed either way. The periods where the game and your army were in a good place, where games were fun to play were few and far in-between.

After many editions, this problem never really got any better and while I had a couple of fully painted armies, I found myself always playing with an army that was either too weak to be fun, or too powerful to be fun. The balance of the game was just terrible and I eventually gave up on Warhammer 40k altogether for greener pastures. Despite this transition, I always kept up with 40k on some level through other mediums like PC games and I think somewhere in the back of my mind I was always planning to come back eventually.

What has changed in modern Games Workshop

In general, three main events woke the company up and made them realize what was important about miniature war gaming to miniature war gamers.

First was that at the turn of the century, both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k were no longer the most popular miniature games on the market. Competition had turned out several very popular games and even at Games Workshop, they produced the Lord of the Rings miniature game later renamed The Middle Earth Battle Strategy Game which sold better than their main franchise.

What made The Middle Earth Battle Strategy Game unique was that its central focus was on re-creating the many unique battles and campaigns from the movies. The game fully supported (and still does) this approach and it makes this a far more robust and interesting game to play. It also had an excellent ruleset.

The question was why? The answer was simple. Games like Warmachine and Horde, Star Wars X-Wing and the Lord of the Rings miniature game were all just objectively better games mechanically.

To this day, ask anyone who plays Games Workshop games which is the best game they ever made, both mechanically, strategically, and narratively and you will get the same answer. Middle Earth Battle Strategy game is still considered to be the best ever made by GW.

I think at this point, sometime between 2000-2005 Games Workshop realized that while the hobby-craft part of the game they had down pact, they certainly knew how to make the best mini’s in the business, this was simply not enough to compete anymore. You also needed to have a good game, something that makes that hobby-craft effort worth doing in the first place.

The other thing I think they simultaneously realized is that while competitive play was a big part of the hobby, games like The Middle Earth Battle Strategy Game proved that narrative play, where games are more focused on story’s and events from the franchise played a huge role in what motivated purchases. Essentially, lore mattered a lot more than I think even GW realized even though I think 40k lore was always really great, I don’t think they fully recognized that this was actually a huge driving factor of the games sales and longevity of the fan base.

The second thing was that Warhammer 40k’s scale was all or nothing. This was a problem for entry into the hobby. If you wanted to play Warhammer 40k, you needed at least a 1,000-point army and most agreed that unless you had a 2,000-point army there was almost no point in playing. This meant that the entry point for Warhammer 40k was a 500-600 dollar purchase with a few hundred hours of hobby craft before you could play the game “for real”. Not a great place for the game to be given the immense focus on streamlining entry into the hobby many if not all other games where doing at the time.

This is a Tyrannid combat patrol army represents a little less than 500 points worth of an army. To get a 2,000-point army (a real army) you will need to collect and paint 4x’s this many miniatures. That is a lot to ask of a new player.

Meanwhile, games like The Middle Earth Battle Strategy Game could be played (and played well) on a wide scale from small skirmishes with only a small handful of hero’s to massive battles. This was also true about a lot of competing games like Warmachine for example that was at the time also giving Games Workshop a run for their money on the lore and miniature quality fronts.

Middle-Earth Battle Strategy Game had scenarios that required as few as a dozen models, to scenarios that would require several hundred models like the Battle of Helms Deep. Players could scale their experience and collections and grow with the game.

Finally, I think Games Workshop realized that good support with digital releases and making the core rules of the game free was no longer negotiable. The game needed to be supported with regular updates to fix balance issues, corrections, and clarifications to the rules and most importantly they needed to listen to the community and track how the game was being played. Why players where choosing and not choosing armies or certain units and doing something about it in a timely fashion.

How modern Warhammer 40k works today

Today the world of Warhammer 40k is very different from where I left it about a decade ago. A lot has changed for the better.

Combat Patrol & Entry

The most notable change is the release of “Combat Patrol” a sort of basic version of the game that supports the core concept of purchasing a single box set that is fully supported as a game with free rules.

Each army gets a combat patrol that can be purchased for around 100 dollars and the combat patrols are pre-constructed, balanced armies designed to played against each other using the same 40k rules you will play later in the full game, but with slight alterations to make the game more streamlined and easier for new players to get into.

Combat Patrols encourage players by making their collection feel complete and playable as early as their first purchase and that is important for maintaining the early interest in the game and allowing that interest to blossom over time. As far as I’m concerned, this one decision by GW probably saved the franchise because without it no sane person would ever recommend getting involved with Warhammer 40k today.

This was desperately needed in Warhammer 40k and it has turned out that not only is this format newbie friendly and welcoming for new players but quite welcome by veteran players as well as they allow for much shorter/quicker pick-up games.

Now I will say that most veteran players will still want to play a minimum of 1,000 points and 2,000 points is still the standard game. Still, it’s nice to know that when you’re starting a new army, you can play a few games with your starting forces as you work your way toward your goal of having a full army.

Crusades & Narrative Play

Another big improvement of the game is that Games Workshop has now fully committed Warhammer 40k to narrative play via the Crusade system. The Crusade system is very similar to the Middle Earth Battle Strategy narrative system which allows players to replicate key battles in the Warhammer 40k universe as well as string those famous battles into a series of campaign games as well as rules for creating your own campaigns in which player armies and army leaders can gain experience, effectively improving through experience.

This mode is supported by “story books” like the Warhammer 40k: Crusade – Tyrannic War which walks you through how to setup narrative battles and long-running narrative campaigns. Crusade mode is also supported in each codex, giving each army unique narrative advancements and campaign styles that can be run.

Narrative play is just one of several ways to enjoy the game, but personally, I think this is probably the most fun way to play the game as it offers progression, and story and provides relevance to the battles you have on the tabletop beyond determining a winner.

This is fantastic news for players who are not into the competitive scene and want to explore a less generic style of play with less focus on list building and more focus on creating stories for their games and armies.

Active Online Support & Competitive Game Focus

One massive improvement Games Workshop made was committing themselves to not only track but do something about the state of the game at any given moment, not just at the release of a new edition or the release of codexes. Regular updates to the point values of armies based on competitive results as well as rules changes that they track with a focus on ensuring that all armies meet certain win/loss ratios has resulted in a game that is generally far more balanced than ever before.

This is particularly noticeable if like me you have been away from the game for a few years and are coming back now. In the days when I played, more than half the armies at any given point were objectively and unequivocally broken and unplayable competitively, in fact, many of the armies were so bad that they would be banned from anything but official GW competitions simply because they were too weak or too strong to qualify for fair play.

The community engagement goes far beyond simply posting updates, but as strange as it may sound, this was a huge leap forward for GW who saw concepts like posting rules online or updates to codexes as a roadblock to profits. I’m glad they have woken up as I believe if it were not for their much-improved community engagement, there would be no 40k today. The absence of digital release was one of the main reasons not to play GW games.

Long gone are these days of radio silence, GW is taking a very active role in making sure the balance of the game is well taken care of. That is not to say that they automatically succeed in doing so, some armies fall below the ratios while others are a bit too good, but the ranges of balance are much closer and the time to make corrections is much quicker. Generally speaking, almost all armies at any given moment are worthy of competitive play and those that fall behind don’t have to wait for years to be fixed.

Lore Support and Writing

This is not a category that will be super important to most players, but many of us are readers and we want/need good lore and good writing to support our experience. The story is a big part for me and I have to say, after reading the core rulebook lore, the codex lore and the crusade lore, I can say unequivocally that the writing for Warhammer 40k is exceptional.

The Black Library makes GW games one of the most supported franchises in gaming. Your 40k experience can be so much more than just collecting and playing the game.

Not only that, if you crave more from the Warhammer 40k universe you have the Black Library, a virtual utopia of content that you can endlessly explore. There is so much great work for Warhammer 40k for readers and lovers of lore, that I don’t think it’s overstating it when I say that Warhammer 40k is the single best-supported lore of any miniature war game out today short of perhaps Age of Sigmar which gets similar attention from GW.

They have done an amazing job supporting the game on this front.

The Supplies Have Made It Easy

I’m not sure most people fully realize it but modern hobby-craft supplies that support the miniature game hobby today are overwhelmingly and vastly superior to anything we had 10 years ago. The technology has lowered the difficulty levels of creating beautifully, very professional (looking) armies within the grasp of even the most un-artistic people out there.

Contrast paints in particular have expedited the time it takes to put a fully painted army together by about 90%. Like, I recall just trying to get a marginally looking army of 2,000 points fully painted would take me a at least 2 years or more of daily work to put together. Today, with contrast paints not only can I do it in a quarter of the time, the result will look like I spent hundreds if not thousands of hours meticulously painting my army. Contrast paints are a miracle technology that has completely changed everything, it has made hobby-craft fun even for guys like me who don’t have an artistic bone in their body.

These are Tyranid miniatures I painted with contrast paints. Each one took about 15 minutes to get to this level of quality. I’m not saying it’s anything particularly eye-popping or demon award-worthy, but 10 years ago it would have taken me 8-12 hours per mini to get them looking this good and frankly, I don’t think I could get them looking this good without contrast paint, I simply lack the talent. Contrast paints don’t require talent, simply learning a very basic technique. Its….magic.

Painting miniatures is no longer a roadblock to creating those amazing-looking scenes we see in magazines on your tabletop. I’m here to tell you that quite literally anyone with two functioning hands and eyeballs can create an army that looks like a professional artist put it together for you. I can’t even tell you how many people look at what I paint and question whether I did it myself and when I tell them, hey that took me 15 minutes to do, they assume I’m lying because it seems like it should be impossible. It’s not, contrast paints are basically, magic.

Is it all Perfect?

By no stretch of the imagination, there are still quite a few issues in the world of Games Workshop miniature games but I would say most of the issues can be quantified as common problems with miniature games in general, rather than anything uniquely problematic with Warhammer 40k specifically. More importantly, there is more myth and propaganda than reality about the miniature gaming hobby propagated by jaded players who have been unwilling to accept the realities of the modern gaming markets.

The Cost To Play

Warhammer 40k like all miniature war games and the hobby as a whole is probably the single most expensive gaming thing you can do. I participate in just about everything from CCG’s, board games, PC and Video games, you name something gaming-related and I’m doing it and there is no question in my mind that the miniature war gaming hobby is the single most expensive thing I do and by a considerable margin. Nothing comes even close, a single miniature army typically costs more than my entire board game collection put together. It’s crazy expensive!

Between collecting the miniatures to form armies, the supplies needed to get them to the table looking good and the amount of time spent getting everything ready, it’s a financial undertaking that overshadows anything else I can think of.

I love A Songs of Ice and Fire miniature game, it’s fantastic but to claim it’s cheaper than Warhammer 40k is outlandish. It can be, if you are willing to live with limited list-building options, the equivalent of collecting 500 points of Warhammer 40k and stopping, but realistically most players will collect the shit out of it and the result is the same as any mini-game… a cash drop to make you blush.

Still, GW has always had this reputation of being overly expensive as a company compared to other miniature war games and as a guy that participates in several, I don’t believe this reputation is deserved or even remotely accurate. Yes, it’s expensive, but no, it’s not more expensive than other games.

Take for example getting started in 40k with a combat patrol which clocks in at about 1140 Swedish crowns (110 dollars). Compare that to say a Songs of Ice and Fire Targaryen starter set which comes in at 1299 Swedish Crowns (125 dollars). Both give you a basic army to start with but not enough to play the full game. A typical expansion for Tyranids like something big and awesome like a Hive Tyrant costs 450 Swedish Crowns (43 dollars) compared to say The Targaryen Mother of Dragons which comes in at 499 SEK (48 dollars).

Point is that actually when you get right down to it and you do some price comparisons, GW comes in lower most of the time. A Starter Star Wars Armada core set comes in at 1250 Swedish crowns and a Bolt Action Japanese Banzai Starter Army comes in at 1119 Swedish Crowns.

Considering that GW products are far superior quality in every measurable way and by a pretty big margin, you get a lot more bang for your buck from them. It’s true that ultimately a typical Warhammer 40k army will cost you more than say a full Songs of Ice and Fire army, but that really boils down to what you consider a “full army”. These definitions get pretty tricky when you start looking at army building and competitive meta’s. I promise you that if you want to keep up with Songs of Ice and Fire meta you will not see any savings between 40k and AsoiaF. My Soiaf Targaryan collection is worth roughly 650 dollars and I’m still missing quite a few releases for it. Anyone who claims playing something like Songs of Ice and Fire, Bolt Action or Star Wars Armada is cheaper than 40k is full of shit.

Suffice to say it is expensive either way, miniature war gaming is not for dabblers and while I would argue there are miniature games you can get into that can be cheaper if you can live with certain limitations than others, in the end, you are counting your investment in hundreds if not thousands of dollars to fully participate in this hobby regardless of which game you choose.

You may as well choose the game that produces the highest quality product and there isn’t a miniature gamer on Gods-Green-Earth who could claim that there is a higher quality miniature produced out there than those produced by Games Workshop with a straight face. Miniatures GW produced 10 years ago are of superior quality than anything any company out there is even capable of producing today, let alone the stuff they are making today. No one can compete with GW when it comes to miniatures, no one comes even close.

Edition Changes & Army Degradation

One thing that is unique with Warhammer 40k and most Games Workshop games is that they do pretty regular edition changes, typically we get a new edition every 3rd year. The result is that there is a sort of degradation of your forces and books you have purchased.

What this really means is that some units get replaced, some simply are no longer part of your army codex and over time you will end up with parts of your army you have collected and painted no longer being part of the new edition. The codex itself will also expire as will the core rulebooks and other content purchased that is connected to the current edition. This takes time to happen, usually, something you bought in one edition will still be viable and usable in the next for a while, but throughout several editions, certain parts of your army will simply no longer be part of the modern version of the game and the books will all be essentially made obsolete.

Many find this cycler process frustrating and understandably so. Imagine spending hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hobby-craft hours to put something together, only to have the company that sold you that stuff, tell you “Hey, all that stuff you have, it’s now obsolete, throw it in the garbage!”

Conclusion

I’m a veteran gamer, you would be hard-pressed to name anything tabletop or digital gaming-related that I don’t know about and most of it I will have some level of expertise in. I scuff at complexity, but I’m conscious of it and the reality is that Warhammer 40k, when it’s all said and done while approachable, is a fairly complex game. Not just as a game but as a hobby in general. Its expensive, time-consuming and pretty elaborate on all fronts.

There are much easier, far more approachable and truth be told, far better-designed miniature games than Warhammer 40k out there. In fact, off the top of my head, I could easily name 10 miniature war games I know are objectively better game designs and I doubt you would find people who would disagree with me, even the most adamant 40k fans. Like it’s not some sort of contested idea or controversial statement, most people know and understand this.

That said I think what Warhammer 40k does well and in a sense does right is that they don’t make the game experience about the rules, but rather they make the game about the atmosphere and all of the connected elements to that game which combine to make it THE most popular miniature game on the market today and for the past 50+ years.

It’s a combination of crazy good miniature quality, amazing lore, flexible game modes and epic event-level feel that combine to create a far more robust gaming experience than anything I can think of. Comparing 40k to other miniature games is a bit like comparing car brands. We can argue till the cows come home which car company makes the best cars, but driving a 40k is the equivalent of driving a fuck you looking, Ferrari. Is it a good car? I have no idea, probably not, hell it’s not even practical but you can’t help but smile and imagine what it would be like to have one.

40k is not the best game, but it’s a game that lives in excess, it’s the 1st class of games, it is crystAl on ice, and it is the one everyone hates because it demands way too much. At the end of the day, all miniature gaming fans that feast their eyes on a fully painted 3,000 point army know.. they wish they had one. That is what 40k is… its excess, plain and simple and frankly, if you can afford it, its fun to live in excess when it comes to your hobby. That is effectively what a hobby is, doing something that is clearly a waste of time and money, but its fun.