Races of Warhammer 40k

Orks

'Ere we zoggin' go, let's break sum' 'eads!

A race from Warhammer 40k. Also known as "greenskins". They have a Warhammer Fantasy equivalent, the only major differences being the more common spelling of Orc with a "c" instead of a "k", and a lower level of technology, relative to the setting. Orks are commonly believed to be stupid and superstitious by the other races of the 40k universe.

Orks could be considered *KRUMP* ARE the most successful race of the 41st millennium. They are brutal, kunnin', and brutally kunnin'. Their knowledge of technology is hardwired in their genes. Because of this, and despite their lack of any sort of structured education or training, they possess proficiency with all kinds of technology, which they inevitably utilize for their armaments (of which firearms and vehicles are the most common). Also, they like to steal vehicles and weapons of other races. DEY KAN LOOT EVERYFING! They are often very resourceful, able to construct several working vehicles and machines out of mere scrap and make them work because of latent psychic abilities. Ork weapons are massive, with both blades and guns that would turn a Necron a lovely shade of Orkish green with envy.

A large contributing factor in the Orks' success is their ability to reproduce extremely fast because of their fungal-like physiology. Depending on the edition, an Ork emits throughout his life somewhere between a lot and a shitload of spores, each of which is able to grow into another Ork (or orkoid organism, such as grot or squig; note that there are enough orkoid phenotypes to fill out an entire planet's ecosystem). Orkoids breed through asexual reproduction. The fungal physiology of the Ork is one reason that they are so tough: Orks can continue to fight and live even after relatively large portions of their bodies have been severely damaged.

Notable Orks

• Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka
• Grukk Face-Rippa
• Tuska Daemon-Killa
• Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter

Imperium of Man

The big, rotting, galaxy-spanning empire populated by humans and worshipping a corpse *BLAM* an immobilized superhuman. A shitty place to live, but still better than the stomach of some hungry xenos or the madness of Chaos.

Imperial Guard

The Imperial Guard makes up the bulk of the Imperium of Man's military. Unlike the Spess Space Marines, they are numerous, usually poorly armed, and poorly trained, and prone to dying for the Empra (whether facing towards the enemy, or not). Depending on the setting, they can either be competent and courageous, or cannon fodder that make the Space Marines look awesome in contrast.

They sometimes manage to kill the enemies of the Imperium with flashlights, but they usually use tanks. Like a shit ton of tanks. And badass grandpas. Also they fall on their heads.

Space Marines

The Space Marines are genetically engineered supersoldiers clad in powered armor, and are generally regarded as the toughest bastards to ever serve the Emprah. The average Space Marine is around eight feet tall, has bones that can repel present-day small arms fire, can breathe poisonous gas with no significant problems, is capable of spitting acid, and lives for hundreds of years.

The Space Marines themselves were created by the Emperor using genetic information from the Primarchs, who were also created by the Emperor but subsequently kidnapped by the ruinous powers of Chaos and scattered across the galaxy while still children. All but two of the original twenty Primarchs were later recovered and reunited with the Space Marine Chapters their genetic material had founded.

Space Marines are generally regarded as something of a "noob army", mainly because every twelve-year-old 40k player has a raging hard-on for them, and almost every unit in the listings has at least a 3+ armor save, making them rather hard to kill. The Ultramarines in particular are an extremely popular choice of Space Marine Chapter, and their blue design coupled with the small size of the miniatures often leads to them being referred to as "Smurfs". Thanks to Indrick Boreale, the Space Marines in general are frequently called "SPESS MEHREENS", or variations to that effect.

The Space Marines of today look very different from the glory days of Rogue Trader, where they earned the nickname "Beakie" for their fuckawesome helmets. GRIMDARK fluff was less prevalent, and Mahreens were psychotic killing machines, not monks for TEH EMPRAH.

/tg/ Space Marine Chapters

One of /tg/'s favorite pastimes is creating new and exciting Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes based on silly concepts. /tg/'s homebrew Chapters include:

• The Adeptus Orthodontus
• Angry Marines
• Bald Marines
• Lazy Marines
• Manly Marines
• Pretty Marines
• Reasonable Marines

Adeptus Mechanicus

An empire within an empire, the Adeptus Mechanicus form the technological backbone of the Imperium of Man. They control nearly every aspect of life that has to do with machines, from changing a lightbulb to building the great space ships or the mighty Titans. They practice a different religion than the rest of the Imperium, the so called "cult of the Machine God", which considers the Emperor as the "Omnissiah". Their infatuation with machinery makes them clash frequently with other branches of the Imperium, but considering it wouldn't be able to run at all without their expertise, they get a pass.

Sisters of Battle

Just hot girls in power armor? No, unfortunately. They are the fanatical elite warriors of Ecclesiarchy that use meltas and sheer RAGE to destroy any heresy they see. They are too zealous and shlick too hard to Emperor's images to let your erotic fantasies come true.

Forces of Chaos

Chaos Space Marines

Chaos Space Marines are to the Space Marines what the Dark Eldar are to the Eldar, that is to say EVIL SPACE MARINES!

One day, over 10,000 years ago, the Primarch Horus and Warmaster of the Imperial fleet got into some bad shit during The Great Crusade, being wounded by some weird weapon that put him into a coma wherein he was visited by the Chaos Gods. When he eventually decided he couldn't take the goddamn voices any more, he turned to Chaos and took about half the Imperial army with him - including half the Adeptus Mechanicus and their titan legions!

This was the Horus Heresy. They fought a big war, with the rebel marines fucking shit up all the way back to Terra. Sooo grimdark, but then the Emprah killed Horus (but not after Horus took a pretty sizeable chunk out of the Emperor). Since then, the Emperor has been down and out for the last 10,000 years in a persistent vegetative state while acting as a lighthouse, and his empire has really gone to shit (read the Horus Heresy, compare with today's Imperium). Every once in a while, they launch a Black Crusade that ends in failure... except for that last one! Sure, those 12 previous crusades were about toppling the Imperium as an overarching goal, but that's a bit of a stretch goal for each individual crusade. In the fluff, Abaddon accomplishes a few things each crusade that build up for the next one.

The remaining CSM fled to the Eye of Terror wherein they adorned all their stuff with spikes, chains and severed heads while steadily mutating. They were also busy being a continuing pain in the ass running up the bulk of the Imperium's defense budget. Though a lot of them exist in scattered warbands, they tend to be a real nuisance by engaging in piracy, starting planetary/sector uprisings and just generally engaging in the usual terrorist shit except with genetically modified super soldiers bolstered by literal magic and these fucking things...

Daemons of Chaos

Daemons are creatures from the warp made from raw emotional energy. Considering the setting for 40K, these are all necessarily and universally bad emotions, so the Daemons created by these tend to be rather evil. Like, they live only to destroy reality kind of evil. The greatest, most-powerful warp entities are the Chaos Gods Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh; they command daemons born of the most powerful concepts prevalent in 40K's reality. When fervor burns hot in a sector, warp storms happen and that usually leads to a breach in reality and then BAM! Daemon incursion. This is usually followed by literally apocalyptic events and then the Grey Knights show up and play Ghostbusters to clean up the sector. This also doesn't end well for the populace as they are either mind-scrubbed to the point of feral animals, are executed after the Daemons are repelled or perhaps they become experiments for radical inquisitors.

Additionally, proud fa/tg/uys talk of a time when Chaos Space Marines and Daemons were once part of a much larger force that included other... things. They were also a real and terrifying threat to the Imperium in cannon and on the table-top instead of stand-in punching bags for the fanboys' current favorite fap-fiction army just like all the other overtly villainous armies.

The Lost and the Damned

Not every follower of Chaos is a Space Marine or a Daemon and indeed, the gods have many normal (haha!) human followers. Basically, the Lost and the Damned are to Imperial Guard as the Chaos Space Marines are to their Loyalist brethren.

There was once a time when you could play a Lost and the Damned army back in the heady days of third edition. They were part of 4 new army lists in Codex: Eye of Terror and they were excellent, combining cultists, mutants and renegades into a single list backed up by some ordnance. Nowadays, they're available as a dataslate (in name only) or can be approximated using the new allies rules plus the Forgeworld Renegades and Heretics list from the Siege of Vraks series.

Tyranids

NOM NOM NOM!!!

OMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM Delicious Biomass, you must devour it.

Tyranids are extragalactic beings in Warhammer 40k that exist only to eat living things. They are ruled by a powerful and cunning being - Hive Mind, whos will is transferred to the dumber creatures of the Hive via Synapse creatures. They have been expected to arrive on Terra's doorstep any day now for years, being stalled by a force even more malicious then they are: GW's reluctance to move the story forward (now with painfully adorable theme song, which is totally not a Rickroll: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMWi7CLoZ2Q).

Some fa/tg/uys masturbate furiously to anthropomorphized versions of Tyranids.

Oh yeah, they like to eat GW's errors.

Tau

Get the fuck out of the way, Oldfag.

The Tau are a playable race in Warhammer 40k. When first discovered by humanity, the Tau were a barbaric and primitive people. Then their planet was trapped in a warp storm for a few thousand years and they emerged from the other side as a unified species, led by the mysterious Ethereal caste and devoted to the concept of the "Greater Good". The Tau were originally developed because Games Workshop felt their setting needed an optimistic race, making the Tau the least grimdark faction in the game. Some fluff has them sterilizing races that resist the rule of the Tau Empire, and their Codex leaves ambiguous how much of their success is due to various forms of mind control, within and outside the Tau themselves. It says something about 40k that despite this they're still the friendliest race in the setting.

They are a technologically advanced race, and have some of the most powerful ranged weaponry in the game. Tau units in general are rather weak in close combat, so they rely on alien auxiliaries such as the Kroot and Vespids who have joined the Tau Empire to bolster their strengths in this area. Fire Warrior veterans and commanders go to war wearing advanced battlesuits, allowing them to field even more firepower.

Tau unit designs were somewhat inspired by Asian culture and Japanese mecha. As a result, /tg/ declares the Tau are weeaboo. Their devotion to the philosophy of the Greater Good often leads to them being labeled as communists, too. On another note, IMMA DANCE FOR THE MOTHERLAND!

Notable Tau

• Aun'Shi
• Farsight
• Shadowsun
• Shas'o Kais
• Shlicktau
• Faptau

Eldar

TASTE THE RAINBOW MOTHERFUCKER!

Eldar are space elves. They are a dying race in the 41st Millennium but fluff sometimes doesn't agree if they are back on the uptake or are still on a downward spiral. They live on oversized (EVERYTHING IN 40K IS OVERSIZED) ships named Craftworlds, Maiden Worlds, or in the Webway. They are notable for A) Every last one of them being a psyker, and B) fucking Slaanesh into existence and being overbearing DICKS. Not like anyone else in 40k isn't a huge dick.

To help keep themselves from turning into /d/eviants, Craftworlders are extremely devoted to a culture based on various "paths", where individuals pick a job (path) and do literally nothing outside of it until they choose to leave that path, or get hopelessly obsessed with it. In crunch, this is reflected by the fact your units each do exactly one job really well. If you try to make them do something outside their intended roles, they'll suck absolute ass at it and likely get promptly face-fucked by the thing they couldn't kill properly.

Craftworld eldar have a history of being ridiculously OP on the tabletop and though they've been reigned in over the past few editions (8th and 9th), many old-guard fa/tg/uys will likely have a story or two about the "glory" days (either That Guy bragging about the cheese he abused or his victims bitter reminiscing of the experience).

Dark Eldar

Mercy? Interesting word, I always wanted to know its meaning.

The INTERSTELLAR ROCKSTAR version of the eldar, which also happens to be their polar opposite. The dark eldar are a race of evil space elves who fly around the galaxy killing, fucking and torturing anything sentient, in whatever order amuses them at the time. This is in sharp contrast with the totally hetero armies of flamboyantly dressed dudes that hang out exclusively with each other and work out, and the all-male armies of guys with father issues that live in a cosmic anus.

^This is a great description

Fun fact: Remember how we said that the Eldar race as a whole murderfucked Slaanesh into existance? The Dark Eldar didn't simply carry on their old habits; they are basically worse compared to those guys.

Necrons

......

The ancient egyptian undead robots IN SPAACE and ancient enemies of Eldar. They lived through a radical and skubtastic fluff change, making them the ones ultimately responsible for the existence of Chaos, and by extension, the reason as to why the whole galaxy is so horribad. They are almost unkillable because of being made from self-repairing Necrodermis and great technology that gives zero fucks about physics. Also they shattered and imprisoned their Star Gods and use them as big grimdark pokemons. A rapetrain on the tabletop, especially after Matt's cheesemongering practices.