Warhammer is a historic gaming institution which has had ripple effects throughout so many places: Starcraft having the Zerg based on Tyranniads, the lore text and novels leading to "grimdark" sci-fi as a genre, even other games like Gears of War have a lot of inspirations from this.
With all that said it is very amusing to see the British govt create a series of stamps that commemorate a game setting that could be summed up as "religious facism with roman empire themes".
For most of its history, the Royal Mail was a public service, operating as a government department or public corporation. Following the Postal Services Act 2011, a majority of the shares in Royal Mail were floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2013. The UK government initially retained a 30% stake in Royal Mail, but sold its remaining shares in 2015, ending 499 years of state ownership [1]
> With all that said it is very amusing to see the British govt create a series of stamps that commemorate a game setting that could be summed up as "religious facism with roman empire themes".
While I don't at all doubt that it goes over the head of some of the fanbase, I don't get the sense that the existence of a religious fascist empire in the game is really an endorsement of that as a political philosophy...
It certainly isn't, and that's especially obvious considering the origin of some of the lore figures like the "Dark Angels" led by "Lion El Johnson," or the heroic stronghold planet of "Caliban" being named after a gay club located down the street from the pub where the setting's original creators would hang out.
Part of the point of 40k (which certainly DOES go over the head of some of the fanbase) is that the humans really are the bad guys. I mean, so are lots of other factions, but that's the dark future of the 41st millenium for you.
IMO the fact that everyone is a bad guy, essentially, in 40k makes the satire less obvious. Because it is just a crap sack universe, the bad guy stuff they the Imperium does is too easy to write off as just necessary.
IMO they should have made the Tau not evil (make the mind control vibes just imperial propaganda that is the result of actually encountering people motivated to do good).
As it is, the Orks seem to be the least evil faction.
According to their creator, the Tau are basically Tony Blair in space [1]:
> As a bit of an analog for late 20th century / early 21st century western interventionist culture I've always assumed that the Greater Good is ultimately for the benefit of the T'au and if others get something out of that's just a bonus. The fact that they are even willing to work with other species is pretty unique and progressive among the factions of 40K, rather than rampant genodical, xenophobic armies. The thing about the Great Good is that it is, in the long term, as inflexible and authoritarian as the Imperial Creed or the all-consuming Tyranids. It still comes down to the Greater Good or Death (tm). I've tried not to make it too sinister being within the T'au sphere, though in the original Apocalypse book I introduced a variety of NATO-style innocuous three-letter-acronym formations, like Mobilised Hunter cadre, Dispersed Retaliation Cadre and Forward Commitment Contingent. None of them say 'battle' or 'war'... I cazn imagine the news back home is quite a sanitised version of the reality - like when we watched videos of 'smart' bombs and gun cameras blowing up stuff in Iraq but were totally unaware of what was really happening on the ground.
You're right about the Orks, of course. They're just out there living their best life! #GreenBoySummer
A lot of the stuff the Imperium does is not just evil but also stupidly counterproductive. Planets starving due to rounding errors in the filing system is hard to take as an endorsement. And I couldn't disagree more with the Tau, if anything I wish they had made them more sinister. Having a whole faction of non-tragic good guys in the setting really spoils the vibe.
But the Orks - agree so hard. There's a quote in a Codex somewhere from an Eldar philosopher waxing on the point that the Orks are thriving and living their true lives, while the Eldar are decaying as a result of their own corruption and therefore the Orks are morally superior, and it rings quite true.
> IMO the fact that everyone is a bad guy, essentially, in 40k makes the satire less obvious. Because it is just a crap sack universe, the bad guy stuff they the Imperium does is too easy to write off as just necessary.
Well, it is written off like that in lore too. "We do bad things because war machine needs to be fed, because our entire existence depends on it" is recurring theme.
Even the "good" Tau are pretty fucking bad when you start looking into their practices of casual eugenics...
Frankly only non-evil-at-core one would be Tyranids which are only hungry
I really like the Tau being evil being even in the lore, they're not often seen this way by common imperial troops (at least the less brainwashed ones). Its like every faction has a special ability, and for Tau its fantastic PR.
Strange as it sounds, imo the least evil faction is the Tyranids. Though they're (or I guess technically it, because they don't have individual minds) intelligent, its an entirely different form of intelligence which makes them more like a force of nature, no more evil than a tornado is.
40k was intentionally a satirical setting by the authors. Even so it's legitimate to ask why so many people (including those who understand it's satirical/critical nature) enjoy dwelling in a fantasy world of this sort. It is clearly very appealing - there are books and video games, and many people don't even play the table-top game but still collect and build the figures. Why? What is so appealing about theocratic fascism that people would choose to spend their free time and disposable income to dwell within it?
IMHO it's no coincidence that the first human civilizations were autocratic. It's basically the default form of government. This is a very important, if uncomfortable truth. Too often liberal societies fool themselves into thinking that liberty "just happens" and is "inevitable", a feature of the natural world, requiring no effort from the individuals that compose it. This is not just foolish but destructive. It is why, for example, that fascism rises in democracies like the US even though the vast majority do not support it: the majority doesn't bother to vote, thinking they don't have to.
For the most part, it's likely just the allure of roleplaying as the black hat, same as the GTA games. When some friends and I were really into Dawn of War for awhile, we often had a good laugh speaking to each other in the absolutist language of the Imperium.
Perhaps there is also something a bit alluring in the fantasy of being a zealot, though. To be untroubled by the nuances of a complicated world, serving only as an extension of the Emperor's glorious might, has a certain perverse simplicity to it.
> What is so appealing about theocratic fascism that people would choose to spend their free time and disposable income to dwell within it?
Yiu might as well ask "why people choose playing bad guy in (c)RPG" ? Because it is something different than the usuall
Also it's most about cool shit the whatever faction you like do. The misery of the world is only a background to show the unimaginable scale of the conflict in the world where a seed of chaos or genestealers in a small community can lead to entire planet being doomed if not handled appropriately. The stakes are massive and the conflict is on awesome scale.
> IMHO it's no coincidence that the first human civilizations were autocratic. It's basically the default form of government. This is a very important message to spread because too often liberal societies fool themselves into thinking that liberty "just happens" and is "inevitable", a feature of the natural world, requiring no effort from the individuals that compose it. This is not just foolish but destructive. It is why, for example, that fascism rises in democracies like the US even though the vast majority do not support it: they don't even bother to vote, thinking they don't have to.
I think that's spot on; also most people don't really want to be bothered to run the bigger scale as long as their lives are fine enough (from their perspective, as they might not know any better).
Like society when everyone is involved in every decision on wider area (let's say small city) would be obnoxious enough, every fucking day there would be half a dozen issues to decide upon so that would naturally evolve to deciding to pick (and pay for their trouble) some people to deal with some kind of issue and as it is hard to know who would be good at, the most charismatic one wins...
Check out David Graeber and David Winslow's book, The Dawn of Everything regarding the autocratic default form of government assumption. Of course the books suggestions and conclusions are arguable, but I found it interesting.
The fact that the Salamanders are praised because they think of the people before nuking a planet really does tell you quite a lot about the shining beacon of Humanity that the Adeptus Astartes are supposed to be.
> I mean, so are lots of other factions, but that's the dark future of the 41st millenium for you.
Basically, it’s a setting where there are no good guys. Except maybe the Tau, but nobody likes them anyway.
The fact that humans are actually quite terrible from a moral perspective, and that most other factions have aspects you can sympathise with is actually very interesting, and makes the universe compelling. For example Nurgle followers really are benevolent good guys from their perspective, and that is very well documented. There is basically only the Drukhari (and tyranids, but that’s different because they have no moral compass whatsoever) that are really purely evil, even from their point of view.
Ehhh... maybe that was the satirical intent in the 80s, but it's pretty clearly not true anymore. The Imperium as a whole kinda sucks, but Roboute Guilliman is simply a protagonist, there's no subtlety that the fanbase is missing.
One of the first things the Rowboat does after coming out of his princess Aurora sleep is to dissolve democracy and replace it with a military dictatorship because he gets sick of free people not just following his opinion. This happens in the plague war trilogy by the way, and don’t worry, it’s not a major spoiler in any way. I guess some people can paint that as a good thing, but I think that for most people its pretty evil. It also plays a small part, however, with the bigger points of sarcasm and critical tone moving on to things like organised religion, fake news and manipulation of hearts and minds.
I do agree that some, maybe even most, of the sarcasm targeting Reaganism that was the foundation for the lore back in the 80ies is weaker in the new official lore. But I think that is just because the current writers are moving on to make fun of more modern things like the anti-intellectuals you see on the far-right today. I do think they are much more successful with that in Age or Sigmar than in 40K, but I don’t think they are writing the imperium to be the good guys either. Sure some people will see “humans” as the good guys, and sure, a lot of the anti-fascism is going to be lost on some people, but it honestly always has been.
But as a stronger statement, I don't think the Imperium is even presented as an evil faction anymore. The Inquisition is the darkest traditional faction, but look at their presentation in something new like Darktide. It's at worst morally comparable to a "grey" protagonist like the Punisher in other media.
“Humans are the bad guys” does not imply that all humans are bad. Just that overall they are really not good. So pointing out one archetypal white knight type is not a refutation of the point.
It is not benevolent at all. The rulers have no qualm sacrificing entire stellar systems. There are strong “kill them all, God will know his own” vibes, and the Inquisition is nobody’s idea of the good guys.
The empire of man is cruel in its indifference to individuals and humanity's future is certainly grim. But the work is ostensibly being done to preserve the existence of man.
Whole factions you can play as an army, no. But there are the Jokaero, who are techno-savant orang-utans who float about the universe in inexplicable spaceships making gadgets.
> the heroic stronghold planet of "Caliban" being named after a gay club located down the street from the pub where the setting's original creators would hang out
This appears to be an urban myth. Nobody has ever managed to find any evidence that there was a gay club called Caliban or The Rock in Nottingham, or that anything was named after one.
> which certainly DOES go over the head of some of the fanbase
Most times it's played as a joke. I mean I doubt there is a single living being that goes "yeah 40k imperium is such nice place to live as a normal human".
Some people actually get pretty invested in fictional facism and real Facists sometimes get invested in fictional facism because of the Facism. There are people for example on /empiredidnothingwrong that take it seriously.
Artists can put significant effort into showing an ideology or something as "clearly the bad guys" and people will choose to ignore that. See for example, all the people yelling that Tom Morello is "getting political" and how the original star wars film was intentionally an anti-vietnam film.
It's a Starship Troopers problem. Most people recognize it as satire and have fun with it. A few loud people don't, and end up occasionally making the whole fanbase look bad as a result.
I think the humans in Starship Troopers (even in the (first) movie) are the good guys. What do you expect a humanity fighting an existential war to look like exactly? Current-day Ukraine under what is pretty much martial law is not exactly a liberal utopia.
My reading of the film was that the aliens did not pose an existential threat to humanity, UCF propaganda just made it seem that way. Verhoeven draws clear parallels between Earth's military government and Nazi Germany throughout the movie.
Endorsement always happens at the aesthetic level, there's never anything explicitly political about fascist work.
Take Fight Club which you're 'supposed to' take as criticism of explosive violence but it still basks in it. Or superficially anti-war movies like Black Hawk Down which are basically war porn aesthetically. The Young Pope is another good recent example. Superficially it's satire but on every other level obviously sympathetic to what it portrays.
Sort of like how the second half of The Wall album by Pink Floyd isn't supposed to endorse national socialism, but Roger Waters was recently investigated for inciting hatred, so...ya know.
Oh, I always assumed they were based on the arachnids from Starship Troopers? And likewise, the Terran marines in StarCraft are clearly very similar to the Mobile Infantry in Starship Troopers…
Warhammer 40k took a bunch of influences like Dune, Foundation, Starship Troopers, The Eternal Champion, A Death World Triology, and more.
StarCraft was definitely based on 40k with Zerg being tyranids, Terrans being the imperium with their marine unit looking like an ultramarine, and Protoss being like the elder because employees at blizzard wanted to make warhammer games and tried to get games workshop to license it. They altered it just enough to be different when games workshop declined. You can see some of that in Warcraft as well with their orcs being green
Tyranids are based on the arachnids from Starship Troopers [1]. Space Marines are based on Star Wars Stormtroopers. Not to say Darth Vader himself. Have a gander at their helmets!
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[1] My source for that is the first novel in the Horus Heresy series. In one episode, some marines are on a far-away planet fighting a race of "megarachnids" which are very clearly some kind of forward force of the Tyranids. "Very clearly" given that the Marines are basically slaughtered. They get better.
The internet tells me the planet was called Murder. The internet also is categorical that the megarachnid are a different species than the tyranids, but far as I can tell nobody has any real reason to say that, they all seem to just state it as a fact without further justification. So I says they were early 'nids.
Well, Starship Troopers (the novel) came out in 1959. Warhammer didn't arrive till 1983.
But I guess it's plausible that the depiction of the Arachnids in the 1990s film adaptation took some inspiration from the Tyranids. Which, in turn, might have been inspired by the novel's Arachnids...
StarCraft owes more than just the zerg to 40k, the marine design is very space Marine and the protoss are very Eldar. One thing StarCraft did was turn away from the grimdark outlook and tell a very human (if operatic) story.
If one wanted to dip their toes into Warhammer books, where would they get started? I always liked the sound of the universe when I see it discussed but was never sure where to even start.
assuming you mean 40K, I recommend starting with the Ian Watson novels (Inquisitor, Harlequin, Chaos Child, Space Marine), then the longer series like Horus Heresy, then Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts, etc.
After WW2, post offices around the world discovered philately, in particular, the penchant for philatelists to collect "mint" stamps. The post office could literally mint stamps in endless variety and sell them to the suckers (philatelists) who think they're collectible. Since these are never affixed to envelopes and mailed, it's free money for the post office. Imagine that, you print up a sheet of paper and sell it for $10 to $100.
Ok, they are collectible, but they're still worthless as having value beyond the postage value. Sort of like NFTs.
If you want to collect stamps with any collectible value, ya gotta go before 1940.
Aren't the pre-1940 stamps just "pieces of paper, and free money for the post office if they were never used (which is desirable if you're looking for mint specimens)"?
I agree with your initial point, but don't follow your distinction at the end.
Yes, absolutely. It's just that the post offices did not recognize the money-making potential of releasing endless varieties of commemorative stamps. Once they did, however, it was game over for philately.
Warhammer is so much fun but the pieces are just so ridiculously expensive. Especially Warhammer Fantasy which has races that can require a hundred individual units to field a 2000 point army.
I was recently introduced to Kill Team, which is a complete game with two "teams", terrain, rules and so on. A team is 6-14 models, sold in one box, so if your friend has the main game the cost to join is just those models; £40 or so.
That's comparable to a high quality board game, computer game, Lego set etc.
Depends what you mean by rich, and what you mean by MTG. There are so many ways to play the game, many of them without spending too much.
For example, my friends and I play Pauper [0]. A format where only common cards are allowed. You can get a strong on-meta deck for between USD24-USD90. It has a huge card pool going almost back to the beginning, so you can build really nice decks!
Even in USD1000 formats like Modern or Pioneer. There are "cheaper" decks like 8-Whack, or Mono-blue Tempo respectively. I think around USD100.
At least it's clear from the get go that Minifig based games are not just pay to win, but pay to even come to the table. Magic tries to pretend that it isn't gacha with clear metas that cost a thousand bucks.
Miniatures games aren't really play-to-win, though. You have to spend (lots of) money to be able to play, but you can't spend arbitrary further money to increase your chance of winning. The size of your army is limited by the points cost of the units, and the composition is limited by various rules, so you can't just buy twenty super-duper battle robots and steamroller everyone.
I don't think it's even reliable that the point-for-point best units are the most financially expensive ones. With 40k, i believe the most expensive stuff is often obscure Forge World models that usually have terrible rules.
Some find their own minigame in this. One good friend of mine is apparently in it to produce the most powerful deck at the lowest cost - usually via second-hand purchases.
Others just fish for foil cards, which apparently are measurably heavier than normal ones and with a precision scale it's possible to tell whether a booster has one.
I'm not a collector, so I stopped buying them when power creep rendered a second deck of mine useless already.
There's playable game in playing what essentially amounts to no longer "legal" rule sets, but that requires finding a niche partner in an already niche game.
That was one thing I was thinking 3d printing would gut with respect to that type of gaming. But from what I have seen it did not really stop and the 3d printed stuff is looked down upon.
3D printing will get there but at the moment it is much worse than GW’s plastic on basically every metric. They look great in renders but are very disappointing in person. Details are not that sharp, things get warped, printing leaves a lot of imperfections that are often difficult to hide or remove.
GW’s minis are expensive but they are good, fantastic even. They don’t have a monopoly, several other companies also sell very good minis, but injection moulding is expensive so scale matters here.
So sure, printed minis are better than Warhammer minis from 20 years ago, but none come anywhere near the good recent ones. The main thing going for printed minis apart from price is that it’s easier to have different poses and add some variety.
Right now, yes. It’s getting better but without significant work they really are not as smooth with crisp tiny details. It’s going to the right direction, so it might change in the future, though.
Lots of people do print. And there are third-party minature makers who compete partly on cost. But only a tiny number of people who play 40k have access to 3D printers.
Also, a lot of people play games hosted in GW stores, and i believe GW have a policy that you can only use their minis in their stores.
Tabletop, or computer? On my computer I had lots of fun with "Dawn of War", many years ago, and with "Chaos Gate - Demonhunters" recently (last year).
Demonhunters features the Grey Knights who are a secret chapter of psychic Space Marines who fight the forces of chaos etc etc. It's a nice game, but with a seriously shitty UI. I still enjoyed it.
I've played a bit a couple of others: "Warhammer Total War" (now in v. III) and "Spacehulk: Deathwing", "Battlefleet Gothic: Armada" etc but those were meh-so-and-so. I think the majority of WH games tend to be.
My personal fave is Blood Bowl. A really tightly designed game that plays in 150 minutes (and has turn timers so this is pretty reliable), works just fine if you don't know the lore (but will bring you in), and doesn't require buying additional models in the same way most of the others do. I think it got a reprint semi-recently too.
If you like X-COM, Mechanicus is similar but also different enough to not just be a reskin. Also it has the best opening cutscene of any game I've ever seen
Get one of the Battlefleet: Gothic games so you can tell a giant cathedral manned by zealots in 40 F150s worth of armor to suicide ram a giant space whale made of evil meat.
At one of our startups, we had a dinosaur theme for internal codenames, and one day we floated around the idea of stockpiling a bunch of dinosaur postage stamps, so that we could make that our thing for company mail, using them long after those stamps were no longer available from USPS.
But we soon decided that beating inflation with USPS Forever stamps probably wasn't the best ROI of investor funds.
(Codename Raptor (Velociraptor) was an awesome internal app, for eviscerating counterfeiters with swarms of fast-moving iPhones.)
Yes, or hiring appeal, or marketing (another factor to A/B test for paper mails, which we did use in some of our B2B and enterprise approaches).
IMHO, dinos (including a team break to brainstorm a suitable next codename) are better for morale than many packaged corporate team-building activities.
If it's not on postcards they want to keep, friends' kids might have fun collecting the stamps as free little art, if they knew how to soak off and press canceled stamps.
With all that said it is very amusing to see the British govt create a series of stamps that commemorate a game setting that could be summed up as "religious facism with roman empire themes".