Since no one knows much about those Tau antitribu, who can say?
The huge battlestations, fleets of ships and ground troops are probably a mere courtesy detail.
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Good for Games Workshop to come out with this statement.
Unrelatedly, a group of gamers I used to game with decided to play WH40k-based RPGs (not miniatures, just standard tabletop roleplaying), which I had already through other experiences decided not to not play, but I gave them a good going away present – I made up a new character, one of the huge, tough races that, I noticed, could play a cleric. So I did – a quoting-from-the-source-material like it was a holy text good guy, who cast healing spells and cure disease at his attackers, who died in his first battle serving as a distraction while the rest of the team pulled off their heist. According to friends in that group, the chracter became a recurring encounter, being resurrected, reanimated, possessed by puppeteer worms, and so on for several campaigns. When I pointed out that he was just a good character trying to good things in a bad world, the usual response was something like “that is what made him so terrifying.”
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I’m glad that GW finally has done something about this. This isn’t a new thing for them, or their tournaments, and they spent literally decades portraying the Imperium as “awesome.” They, up until recently, ran with the excuse that “our tournaments and leagues are run by our fans and it’s up to them to choose their associations thoughtfully”, but now that they’ve discovered more money in running these things have decided to stop the imagery.
It’s nice to see , finally.
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Warhammer Fantasy RPG and Warhammer 40K are two completely different games, sat in the same universe tens of thousands of years apart. WFRPG is a grimdark D&D game, with less dice rolling and more roleplaying. W40K is a war game.
I watched a 40K game once, and had no interest in playing, even though it meant I wouldn’t have to
because I love the miniatures, and the universe, but I like RPGs, not wargaming. (disclaimer: I was once part of an 8-year Warhammer campaign.)
I can see how 40K would get Nazis & associated bigots wanting to play. WFRPG, not so much, unless the GM was a Nazi too, but I never ran into Nazis in tabletop RPGs.
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Way to go, GW…
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There are, apparently, still people who believe that Paul Verhoeven’s “Starship Troopers” isn’t a blatant satire of militarism. Also, there are folk who feel that Judge Dredd isn’t a blatant satire of police brutality. 
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“No, Otto. Death to the False Emperor!”
“Oh good, Hans, I was just checking. Death to the False Emperor!”
“Those Khorne jerks, Otto; they are baddies.”
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Skaven, you say?
Yes, it’s gay porn.
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40k (and OG Warhammer to a lesser extent), was in large part inspired by the same anti-Thatcher sentiment as was Judge Dredd and the rest of 2000AD during the 80’s and 90’s.
(The irony being that almost all the kids who could actually afford to play 40k, came from middle- and upper-class families who probably did ok from Thatcher’s policies).
I guess some people over the years haven’t noticed the (really fucking obvious) element of satire.
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The Universality of Poe’s Law: Case Studies in Popular Culture.
Someone needs to write this thesis.
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I was heavily into the role-playing scene, much of it already GW stuff, when 40k came out, and fair enough, it simply wasn’t my thing (didn’t wargame much anyway, 99% RPGs). That’s fine, different strokes etc.
But it amazed me how damn fast it took off, because it just seemed such HARD WORK, lore-wise… deep and dark and heavy, pseudo-Latin everywhere with complicated insignia and battalion backstories and militaristic minutiae and whatnot. I get there’s humour there and I’m sure the gameplay is solid and it scratches the collect/paint/whatever itches, but wow, it really exploded; in mere months it seemed to be the only thing ever featured in White Dwarf magazine, for a start. That publication was owned by GW of course and naturally when you’ve got a winner, you’re gonna run with it (and market it), totally their prerogative. But the uptake and interest by the nerd in the street was incomprehensible, to this nerd. It felt like depressing history homework.
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Certainly in the UK, I feel that it was the fact that GW put money in to creating their high-street stores that allowed their games to explode. I think that 40k was an easier sell to passing nerds; iconic cardboard cutouts of big guys in power armour are very eye catching.
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It is a mostly forgotten fact that the two sides in chess represent the Army of the Ice Ghouls and the Army of the Void Demons, respectively.
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Ice Ghouls are totally OP. I’m waiting for the new Void Demons Codex to come out and see if there is a counter to the Ice Ghouls abilities to always go first.
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Yes, Tyranids (the aforementioned space bugs) are a playable faction. You can also play Genestealer Cults, who are, well, cults of human-alien (the “genestealers”) hybrids, who prepare worlds for the coming of their Star Gods who shall eat everyone. In one of the grimdark ironies of the setting, the GSCs have an easy time recruiting non-hybridized people, because life in the giant hive cities of Imperium’s industrial worlds is incredibly shitty, and the cult genuinely offers you hope and support and meaning… until the Tyranids get near, and the cult shifts into “Let’s have an apocalyptic uprising!” mode in preparation of their arrival.
And yes, Necrons (the zombie robots) are also playable. They are the result of the ancient Necrontyr civilization mass uploading themselves (largely but not entirely voluntarily), and finding out that existence as undead machines is not what they were told. Rank-and-file Necrons are pretty robotic, but the dynastic leaders (who got better-grade bodies) retain their personalities and memories and so on. The problem here is that a) they’re still stuck as undead machines, and b) after millions of years of hibernation, a lot of them are suffering from glitches in the system, meaning that a lot of them are eccentric at best, and downright demented at worst. As such, their motivations and attitudes vary a lot; some are fairly benign as far the 40k universe goes, conquering human worlds but keeping the civilians as subjects (because what’s the point of being a ruler if you don’t have subjects?); others engage in high-tech mad science in the hopes of either fixing or reversing their techno-undead state; yet others have lost their grip on the universe and think they’re fighting ancient wars that were over while humanity’s ancestors were still in the trees; and some have just decided that the only thing that makes sense anymore is to kill everything and then destroy themselves.
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The “Armageddon Codex” actually evens out the play somewhat. The Armageddon Chess - literally what it is called - that they play as a tie-breaker at the Chess World Cup gives stalemates to black, er, The Void Demons.
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It doesn’t surprise me. But what keeps such fascists coming into the fandom is that there are some definite pro-fascist messaging in the content whether satirical or not. For example, Slaanesh is as queer as Christopher Street was back in the day and many lgbt fans of the WH40k and WH Fantasy aren’t shy about their love/hate for the Prince of Pleasure. It’s nice to have some representation in game. It’s clear that Slaanesh much like all the chaos gods isn’t good at all and that allows those who are more fans of the ridiculous space/fantasy Catholics in the Imperial faction to just go whole hog on their fascist tendencies. So it’s little wonder to me to see such fascists gush over the Imperium all the time without any sense of satire or legitimate irony.
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Maybe they should have a good guy instead of forcing everyone to be bad?
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It’s Warhammer40,000, not Warhammer40,000/s
When I saw Trump supporters using God Emperor to refer to Trump I was like “Seriously, you really don’t want to live in that universe…”
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