I have a love hate relationship with the 40k fluff. Most of it is just amazing, I read almost every book that comes out of the black library. Unfortunately Games Workshop is run by humans and run like a business, so sometimes the shit that they put on the shelves is just awful. To be fair I probably hold them up to a higher standard, but some businesses should be so lucky to have such devoted followers.
Lets start with the good. The following is my top five favorite armies according to the fluff. How they feel, their back story, and how much they intrigue me. I won't go into how they play, imo any army can play well given the right circumstances. These are the armies that make me excited or happy when I read about them or play against them.
5 - Orks
Yes they play the role of comic relief in a very serious future, but surprisingly their back story supports it. They tell an interesting story of what it takes to survive and thrive in war torn galaxy. Intelligence, cunning, and technology can take you far but never underestimate the power of strength, fury and an effective breeding scheme. For those of you who don't know the Orks were genetically engineered as a slave race (apparently by what later became snotlings) and were given enough genetically ingrained knowledge to proliferate. They eventually became the dominant race in the relationship.
I likei them cause they always fit the fluff, fit into the universe, and are generally fun to play against.
4 - Imperial Guard
As an Army veteran I am a little partial, but I can say GW did right by the lowly trooper. They feel like an army for a massive bureaucracy should: cumbersome, faceless, and powerful. I really get the sense that as a trooper you always know you will win, but you and all your friends might be thrown into the meat grinder to achieve that victory.
As a little aside, they even move like a real army does. When leading infantry there is a natural tendency for the men to heard together, SGTs have to enforce discipline to get the men to stay spread out. Watch the next time you play against IG, watch the player start to move his guys closer together to save time. Its small but for some reason it makes it more realistic to me.
Overall I just like the way the army feels.
3 - Eldar
I will get this right out and say it, I despise the fanboy pretty space elf aspect of the army. You will be hard pressed to ever see me field an army of dancing, yellow and white painted, prissies. What I do like is The Fall. The idea of a race becoming so hedonistic that they actually create a god. It's great. And now, they are forced to live out a shallow existence running from a gruesome afterlife. They even feel like that army when you play against them. All of the aspects feel like thrown together remnants of a once great society. And the guardians feel like citizens, their guns hit hard (even against Space Marines) but they crumble when actually hit by a bolter round.
2 - Chaos Space Marines
Entropy, its what the destiny of the universe is, these guys are just the champions of it. They are dark, sinister and just plain don't give a fuck. Its not that I believe that the bad guys are right, its just that I feel that they are more natural. What makes more sense: a bunch of genetically bred supermen fighting for the betterment of humanity, or the same group of supermen roving around slaughtering everything in their path because they feel like it. I like the baseness of it. I also like the fact that they are tragic villains. They know that to win is to destroy everything including themselves, but they are cool with that.
1 - Tyranids
The apex predators. 'Nids just slightly eek out the CSM in coolness for me cause they are just so damn devoted to what they do: survive. They are a study in genetic imperative. There is not alot about them to say, they are mostly mindless killing machines, but that's all that they really need to be. A shark did not become a shark by contemplating what it is to be a shark, it just continued eating. On a galactic scale it speaks to what is really important, the winner will be the one who puts everything he has into fighting. The nids are there to do one thing eat. I spoke about the baseness of the CSM but it doesn't get more base then expanding for the purposes of hunger.
Non-coincidentally they get my vote for the "winner" in the 40k universe.
Next post, the 5 worst,
Rix
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