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In a game as big as Warhammer, you’re going to get a lot of opinions, and some of those are going to be unpopular Warhammer 40k opinions. I have played Warhammer 40k for just about as long as it’s existed, and I’ve seen a lot of things come and a lot of things go (and then come back) and I have a lot of unpopular Warhammer 40k opinions.
To be clear, most of these are unpopular Warhammer 40k opinions on the internet–when you’re with a group of friends or even at your friendly local game store, you’re rarely going to find people who are as entrenched in the status quo as to complain about these things. But these opinions do exist and, seeing as how we’re here on the internet, it’s probably worth my time to outline my unpopular opinions.
Unpopular Warhammer 40k Opinions, In No Particular Order
#1. Drilling Your Barrels is Dumb
There are people who think that if you don’t drill your barrels then you’re only doing half the hobby, that you aren’t a true hobbyist, and that you don’t really care about your wargaming efforts.
Now there’s nothing wrong with drilling your barrels. But drilling your barrels is 100% unnecessary to anything except competition painting. If you’re playing a game–even a tournament game–and you don’t have drilled barrels, absolutely nothing bad is going to happen. Nine times out of ten, your opponent won’t notice, and of those 10% that do, only 10% of them will actually judge you for it.
Drilling your barrels is a nice little hobby trick that adds a spark more realism to your models, but when your opponent is three feet away from your models, it’s completely not going to matter. Don’t worry about it.
#2. Tournament Play Should Not Be The Focus of Warhammer 40k Rules
Just think about it: of all the games you play in a given year, how many of those games are going to be played in a tournament? The answer, for the vast majority, is VERY, VERY few. And yet Games Workshop spends so much of their time trying to balance the meta–something which I think is a fool’s errand.
The game, at least in 9th Edition, is simply not made to be balanced. There are far too many moving parts.
Errata and FAQs are fine, but when we get all up in arms (consider the recent fiasco where the Leagues of Votann were banned from tournament play before the Codex had been officially released, and they were nerfed almost immediately) then we’re fighting a losing battle. We’re foisting extra books and extra rules on casual players–who make up the VAST majority of the player base–because of the few hundred people who are competitive tournament players.
Focus your rules on the casual players.
#3. We Need More Narrative Play, Including Scenario Books and Referees
My unpopular Warhammer 40k opinion is that Warhammer 40k needs to take a page from the book of historical wargaming. We need to play games where the forces are uneven, where the terrain favors one opponent over another, where there’s fog of war and where you’re not even sure of all your objectives.
Now Warhammer 40k gets some of this in their games through the use of randomly rolled scenarios and objective cards, but I’m talking about something different. I want a 40k version of the Pegasus Bridge, or the Battle of Waterloo, or Battle of the Bulge.
I want to see forces who are positioned in strategic places where the win conditions do not come down to who killed more enemy than the other. I want five turns to capture a bunker, four turns to destroy an ammo dump, eight turns to survive until reinforcements come.
I know Games Workshop plays with this idea, but I want them to go all in.
#4. Leaks Ruin the Fun
Leaks and rumors are the lifeblood of online Warhammer discourse, and I love Chapter Master Valrak’s constant speculation of the coming of the Lion as much as anyone else. But the blurry photos that get leaked are almost assuredly coming from inside the house. Everyone has good cameras–it’s not that hard to take a non-shaky photo of a picture of World Eaters or Cadians-but that’s always what the leaked images look like. This makes me think that Games Workshop is spoon feeding them.
But I don’t mind leaked shots nearly as much as I mind leaked entire Codices. We already talked about Leagues of Votann being banned before the book had even been released, and that was because the book was leaked. We saw the stats for Angron early, and it was because they were leaked.
I don’t like the leaks. I know some do (which is why this is an unpopular Warhammer 40k opinion). But maybe Games Workshop could clamp down a little tighter.
#5. Citadel Paints Are Actually Good (And Don’t Spill As Much as People Claim)
I wrote a whole article about how I thought that Citadel miniature paints, despite being the most expensive ml for ml, were still the best. (This was before Two Thin Coats paints, which 1, I haven’t tried and 2, are more expensive.)
Citadel paints are JUST FINE. I’m sorry that you don’t get to squirt them out of dropper bottles, but is it really all that hard to pick up a little dollop on the end of your brush and plop it on the wet palette? The paint quality is really top notch, with some exceptions for whites and blacks. And seriously, while it sucks to knock over a pot of paint it’s not like it happens all the time.
I have been using Citadel paints for as long as Citadel paints have been around and I can remember exactly twice that I have knocked over a pot.
For what it’s worth, I can remember exactly the same number of times I’ve tried to squirt paint out of a Vallejo dropper bottle and the top popped off, losing half the contents on my palette.
Citadel is fine.
#6. My Dream Army for Warhammer 40k is Space Skaven
This may or may not be an unpopular Warhammer 40k opinion, but it’s true nonetheless. Now that Squats are back–something I never thought I’d see happen–I am craving the Skaven to appear in Warhammer 40k.
Sure, this is probably the silliest entry on this list, but if the Great Horned Rat can become a Chaos God, I’d love to see him take his place in the pantheon next to the other four. I can only imagine the amazing vehicles and weapons that they would come up with. With the kitbashing aspects of the Orks and the feral swarming of the Genestealer Cults, but with the technowizardry that feels at home with a low-rent Asuryani, they could be great.
#7. Games Workshop is Expensive, But Not THAT Expensive
I just got done buying my kids all of their Christmas presents. I bought my son a Playstation game that cost $60 and today, three days after Christmas, he beat it. I bought my other son Legos and they were a total of $80 in two sets, and both were built before the Christmas sun had even gone down.
The point? Games Workshop is expensive (I can just hear Discourse Miniatures raging) but they’re not THAT expensive. If you’re an adult with a job, then buying a $60 box a month to paint–a job which may take 10-20 hours, isn’t a bad investment of your time. It’s cheaper than tickets to sporting events, cheaper than a fancy dinner, cheaper than a concert.
I’m not saying it’s cheap, and I’m definitely not trying to say that less fortunate people have the same access to it that the middle class do. I’ve discussed in the past whether Warhammer should be a luxury item. I’m just saying, for my unpopular Warhammer 40k opinion, that it’s not as bad as people make it out to be.
#8. Dry Brushing is a Great Alternative to Edge Highlighting
I am all about making my models look nice, but I also have fairly unsteady hands with the occasional tremor. And I have learned that, even on models that are clean and smooth like T’au or Space Marines, gentle dry brushing can be a good exchange for edge highlighting.
Will drybrushed Space Marines win Golden Demons? No. But will they look good from a foot away? Yes. For some great instruction in dry brushing Space Marines, look at Sonic Sledgehammer’s channel.
#9. It’s Okay For Games Workshop to Protect its IP
I know there are people who have the opinion that big bad corporations that are worth many billions of dollars deserve what’s coming to them if they get their IP pirated.
Part of this is personal. I’m an intellectual property owner. Granted, I’m small potatoes. Yes, I’m a New York Times bestselling author, but that’s nothing compared to billions. But it doesn’t take a lot of sleuthing on piracy sites to see that my books have been pirated tens of thousands of times.
And maybe not all of them would have bought my book if it wasn’t available for free, but if even a tenth of them did–that’s substantial money in my pocket.
So when Games Workshop blows up The Old World and creates a much more trademarkable Age of Sigmar, I don’t begrudge them in the least. And when they crack down on content creators who are monetizing fan fiction–even if that fan fiction is funny, like TTS–I don’t have trouble seeing Games Workshop’s side.
This is a hobby that we all (mostly) love, and it would be a shame to see it torpedoed by unfought copyright infringement.
#10. Yes, the Space Marines Need More Diversity
This isn’t necessarily an unpopular Warhammer 40k opinion in some circles, but in others it’s anathema.
The Space Marines are the poster boys of the game. Space Marines ARE Warhammer 40k, and Warhammer 40k IS Space Marines. And while, yes, it’s nice to see the “coal-black skin” of the Salamanders, what’s wrong with having some black or hispanic Space Marines?
These Space Marine recruits are coming from all kinds of homeworlds where the environment likely does a real number on their melanin and skin texture. So let’s see it in the models. And not just on the fan-made models, but on the models on the official pages.
(Someone made an excellent point recently that the Emperor of Man was born somewhere around 9000 BCE in the Middle East. Does it make sense for him and all his geneseed and children to be white?)
And: female Space Marines. The arguments have been made and made and made. My only added point here is: it wouldn’t be hard. We just saw Squats come back. We saw Guilliman come back with the Primaris. The lore can change at the drop of a hat. It’s not a hard thing to do.
#11. Warhammer+ Is Fine
I support four creators on Patreon. Altogether, it’s somewhere around $28 a month that I spend supporting them. And they give me a video a week and some bonus Discord servers (which I never use).
So spending $5 a month on animated series like Hammer and Bolter, Angels of Death, Inquisitor, plus all of the Warhammer Vault, plus the battle reports and painting tutorials, doesn’t seem like a bad deal for a streaming service.
Plus, I get a model at the end of it, a model which would probably cost $36-$40, so the added cost of the Warhammer subscription seems very negligible.
#12. Games Workshop Needs to Lean Heavier Into “No Good Guys”
Look, I support Games Workshop when they push back on fascists who take the Imperium and try to make it their idolized state. I can’t believe the number of stupid tattoos of the Aquila I’ve seen. But, especially now that Henry Cavill is set to be part of a Warhammer 40k drama, we need to make it very clear that even if he plays Eisenhorn, Eisenhorn wasn’t a goodie. And Gaunt’s Ghosts wasn’t Band of Brothers.
Getting more of an emphasis that the Space Marines are NOT benevolent heroes, even the Salamanders, needs to be more of a priority. This is grimdark. Stick to grimdark.
#13. I Don’t Mind Scale Creep
When new models get released, ever since the ginned up “fiasco” of the Primaris, we always see people worried about the scale creep of new models. Most recently we saw it with the new Cadians–are they taller than old Cadians? If they are, this game sucks!
Scale creep is fine. While I’m not saying that all of Warhammer 40k needs to go the route of Star Wars Legion and Marvel Crisis Protocol, these games have proven that slightly larger scales are A-OK. In fact, they’re easier to paint, lowering the bar of entry into the hobby. I was elated to hear that new Cadians might be bigger than old Cadians, because I want to paint Cadians and the tremors in my hands make little models harder than big models.
So, scale creep is just fine.