40K - Should I .... or not? Where to start?

Fantastic points!

 

Which one?

 

BANEBLADE 4 LYFE!

 

I'll guide you through them all...

SPACE MARINES are the Space-Nazis you talk about. True GW depicts them as the heroic protagonists of 40K, but they discriminate against all non-human life, so I think you could view them as evil, perhaps Lawful Evil. They are superhuman warriors clad in the heaviest armour mankind can muster and augmented with all sorts of drugs and stuff to make them really tough. Think of a cross between Starcraft Terrans (the looks), Imperial Stormtroopers (the nationalistic ideals) and the Clone Troopers from Star Wars episodes 2 and 3 (the genetic augmentation).

IMPERIAL GUARD (or ASTRA MILITARUM as GW call them now) are the main non-augmented human troops of the Imperium of Man. Think of them as the American army - hordes of cheap, expendable infantry backed up with hordes of tanks and artillery - except with more futuristic laser weaponry.

TYRANIDS (one of my favourite factions) are similar to the Zerg in some ways, but there are far far more of them (the number of them in the galaxy at the moment is probably only about 1 or 2 percent of the total number of Tyranids in the universe) and they don't have a single Overmind - instead they have the Hive Mind which consists of the voices of all the Tyranid organisms in the Universe all speaking to each other - think the Borg Collective from Star Trek. Also the Tyranids have a lot more monsters.

NECRONS (the other of my favourite factions) are the space undead robots you talk about, although they are not so much undead as robots with reanimation protocols. Originally they were designed to be unkillable Terminator-type robots who were the servants of demigods called the C'Tan, but later they were reworked into basically metal Tomb Kings in space, with the C'Tan as their slaves, which is the version I prefer because I think they are badass.

CHAOS SPACE MARINES are the Space Marines with tentacles you talk about. They are similarly nationalistic like the regular Space Marines, except they fight for Chaos rather than the Imperium of Man.

CHAOS DAEMONS are the Daemons you see in AoS, although like in Warhammer Fantasy the Daemons from all the Chaos Gods are in the one army, compared to AoS where they are all splitting up to serve their different gods.

ORKS are the space Orcs, with similarly hilarious weapons and tactics. Goblins are represented here by the diminutive Gretchin, who have better ballistic skill than their Ork masters, peculiarly. They're also called Grots, which is probably where the AoS name for Goblins and Gnoblars came from.

CRAFTWORLD ELDAR are probably one of the closest factions to being the 'good guys' of 40K - they are gradually dying out as Slaanesh hungers for their souls, so they are dying with style by doing all they can to preserve their sacred places and their floating starship Craftworlds. They are the space Elves your mates talk about that mean you 'used to have friends' as originally Craftworld Eldar were a decent army with fair strengths and weaknesses, but in 6th Edition they released the Wraithknight alongside their updated Codex, which certainly was one of the most overpowered units on the table. I don't know what it is like in 8th Edition, but I imagine it is still ridiculously difficult to kill.

DARK ELDAR are the Dark Elves your mates at GW talk about that mean you 'don't want friends'. They are the opposite of the Craftworld Eldar - sadistic, cruel and probably the most evil faction of all of them, more so than even the Chaos Marines, because they feed off the pain they inflict upon others. While the Craftworld Eldar are going extinct with style, the Dark Eldar are trying to stop themselves becoming extinct by inflicting as much pain upon other creatures as they can. Like the Craftworld Eldar, the Dark Eldar are a specialised force (there are different units for different jobs and a particular unit is rubbish at a job that isn't their speciality), but when used for the right jobs they are even more horrible to fight than the Craftworld Eldar. Certainly in 5th and 6th Editions they became tougher the more units they killed off, rendering them almost unkillable at the end of a game.

TAU (or T'AU with the arrival of the 8th Edition apostrophe) are the ultimate ranged army - their troops are useless in combat but utterly brutal at shooting, which is why your mates describe them as an army for people who 'don't have friends' because Tau can outshoot any other army in the game. Nevertheless, if assault armies like Tyranids get them in combat they die really quickly. Also their shooting can be countered - the reason they are so effective is due to a relatively weak troops choice called Pathfinders, who shine things called Markerlights on enemy targets to allow other Tau units to increase their Ballistic Skill and ignore cover saves when shooting at those units. If you kill off the Pathfinders, quite an easy feat as they are the easiest Tau troops to kill of all, the Tau's shooting becomes a lot more bearable and a lot less ridiculous.

SISTERS OF BATTLE are the space Jihadists you talk about. Think warrior nuns with big boltguns. They are one of the less popular armies but still competent.

GENESTEALER CULTS are probably the most similar thing to Starcraft's Infested Terrans - this faction consists of hybrids of humans and aliens called Genestealers which are part of the Tyranid army. Originally Genestealers were a completely separate faction from Tyranids in the ancient days of 2nd Edition, and Genestealer Cults was a completely separate, non affiliated army from Tyranids, but when 3rd Edition came round GW ditched Genestealer Cults and absorbed the Genstealers into the larger Tyranid factions, claiming that they were in fact shock troops of the Tyranids that could operate independently of the Hive Mind's synapse aura, and it's been like that ever since. Even when Genestealer Cults returned in 7th Edition GW rewrote their lore so that they are now a tool of the Hive Mind, used to bring turmoil to an Imperial World so that by the time the Tyranids themselves get there there is no organised Imperial defence as they are so busy fighting the Genestealer Cults, and thus the world becomes easy prey. The Tyranids first ally with the Cults to destroy the Loyalist Imperials before they then kill all the Genestealer Hybrids and throw them into their digestion pools along with the planet's defenders. GC consists of both Tyranid-type melee troops and missile-oriented humanoid soldiers and can even steal Imperial Guard tanks and walkers. They are also the only army that can ally with Tyranids, and can also ally with Imperial Guard , representing them joining forces with them to defeat a more threatening foe like Chaos Marines or Orks, so if a Tyranid player used some allied Genestealer Cult troops he could theoretically ally with an Imperial Guard player.

30K is the Horus Heresy, the era 10,000 years before Warhammer 40,000's main setting where the Space Marine legions that would become the Chaos Space Marine legions separated from the loyalist Space Marine legions in a big civil war. That's all I know about that.

As for Codices, you are more or less right on those. Even in 8th Edition GW have made sure you have to buy a Codex to play 40K to get as much money as possible from the 40K players. They are similar to the AoS Battletomes, especially the new 8th Edition ones as 8th Edition is quite similar to AoS in terms of gameplay. If you pick up any older Codices they will be very different to the AoS battletomes because they were designed to be more similar to the Warhammer fantasy army books, both appearance-wise and rules-wise. Currently not all armies have Codices thanks to the 8th Edition overhaul but armies that don't have codices have rules in smaller books called Index Books, although as soon as all the armies have their own Codices GW will probably phase the Index Books out.

Hope that helps!

 

No, 8th edition completely changed how the game played. Any codex or rules supplement before 8th edition has been rendered useless rules wise.

The indexes are basically temporary rules until each factions gets their codex. They only exist to give players a change to actually use their army in games. Also the indexes have nothing but rules for different models, no lore, no warlord traits, no special items. Each index also contain rules for multiple armies, and after the mentioned armies get their codex, their index rules gets rendered void.

I can't really answear because i don't play the game, but from what i've heard Tyranids and Astra militarum are top tier even without their codexes.

 

Time for some late replies.

Orcs naturally have an understanding of tech and weapons, albeit highly primitive. They basically know how too swing an axe, pull a trigger, hit the gas and press the big red button.

Some Orcs are called Mekboys. These Orcs are born with complete understanding about how to make all tech work, even things that would seem completely illogical. They can make guns out of scrap metal, tanks out of torched cars and streetlights and beer out of oil and water. These Mekboys also know how fully functional tech from the other races work just by looking at it long enough, but if they got hold of such tech, they would immediately make it more Orky.

Orks can't develop their own tech though, they must copy/orkgrade the designs from other races. Orks that have never seen any type of tech will turn primal and won't able too comprehend tech of any kind, some of these primal Orks can even die from chok by seeing a regular gun.

 

Fun trivia: The Land Raider.



The Land Raider derives its name not from its function, but after the Technoarchaoelegist that found the STC for it, Arkan Land. it's actual name is "Land's Raider-Pattern Main Battle Tank" but overtime Marines just called it the Land Raider for short.

"Technoarchaoelegist" is a archaoelegist that looks for forgotten tech and ancient STC's.

 

Hahaha... you and I are destined to disagree on just about everything! I love their old fluff far better.