What you love about Warhammer 40,000

[Guiltysparc]

I love the aesthetic of the universe.  That you can look at a piece of art and know immediately, that's warhammer!  The over the top grimdark stuff is great, especially when sprinkled by the humor that Wargamer mentioned.

 

I like the hobby/game complex also.  I find it far more engaging than most other games and really enjoy playing it with friends.

[Marshal Rohr]

I liked that the Imperium was experiencing a Gotterdammerung with the 13th Black Crusade.

[Midgard]

For me, the general feel/vibe of the setting is probably the biggest attraction. This includes the classic grimdark owing much to my own introduction to the genre decades ago with the novels of Michael Moorcock, the visual style which is both very distinctive and very characterful, and the kind of stories that can be told in this setting.

 

To dig a little deeper, I find the Warhammer 40,000 (as well as its 30K counterpart) to be more than a little reminiscent of various mythologies, which again created a feeling of certain familiarity but with a distinct twist. All the hallmarks are there - larger-than-life characters often defined by specific archetypes and concepts, morality defined by "might makes right" rather than by absolute terms (i.e. compare the Emperor's decrees to, say, Zeus or Odin, who operate on the similar concept of "right" defined as "deity said so"), the sense of impending doom as defined by (potentially true) prophecy. More than that, the struggles of the mortal (or semi-mortal, in cases of primarchs and Astartes and other characters who just would not die) beings in the face of all that.

 

If I were to give a succinct summary of why I enjoy the WH40K setting, I would say that it takes the most memorable parts from various other settings I have enjoyed, and mashes them up in a way that somehow creates something new, an amalgam that somehow ends up being more than the sum of its parts. It is about the visual style, the stories, the characters, and, most of all, the atmosphere that has not been successfully replicated by any other science fiction or science fantasy setting I have come across so far.

[Closet Skeleton]

I liked Warhammer fantasy and painted some Tyranids because they sold them in the same shops.

 

Then at university I found that getting 40k games was a lot easier than finding fantasy players so I bought some loyalists and have unfortunately not yet managed to stop.

 

 

In Star Wars, you could make the argument that the Empire actually maintains order in the galaxy and keeps people safe.

 

Not really, since the only time you see a civilian population interact with the empire its either a crime ridden dump the Storm Troopers have no interest in fixing as they walk through it or a privately owned mining outpost they override the sovereignty of on a whim. The best argument you can make for the Empire is that "there might be somewhere nicer off screen". "They're only coming down harshly on subversives to maintain order" doesn't hold water when they ignore the giant green drug smuggler in the room (and are prepared to sell prisoners to said drug pusher).

[Knight of the Raven]

I played a Twi'lek inquisitor so drunk on the Light Side of the Force she's probably embarrassing the rest of the Dark Council, for what it's worth. But I'm only familiar with the Old Republic's Sith Empire and even then only partly, so I can't speak for the one(s?) in the movies.

 

But yeah, that's not Warhammer-related so I'll shut up before I derail yet one more thread.

 

Thanks everyone for the contributions and for staying civil.

 

I've thought a little more about what I love in Warhammer, which didn't prove very fruitful since I never really ever knew why I liked something, but browsing TVTropes made me have a light bulb moment.

 

I love the ham.

 

Yeah, most of the 'put the ham back in Warhammer' moments I'm aware of come from the Dawn of War series, but damn I wish I could come up with such scenery-chewing.