#40k asks

[tread-ever-litely]

(( Are there any 40k muses still active? Looking to reach out again after so many months. ))

[castellankurze]

Who is your favorite Primarxh in terms of a Loyalist and a Traitor?

oh god you’re going to do this to me aren’t you

well, to get this out of the way, here’s a link to my dissertation on old-school Alpharius and why he became my favorite traitor and for many reasons, still is

I also have fond spots for Konrad Curze, Fulgrim, Magnus, Mortarion I have to stop this or I’m just going to end up listing everybody.  Suffice to say there’s stuff I like about just about every traitor primarch...and stuff I have issues with.

Probably not surprisingly, Dorn and Guilliman are my favorite loyalists, though, again, I like aspects of most of the crew, and some reservations about this or that aspect of most of their stories.  Much like above, here’s a link to my old Guilliman post.

[castellankurze]

warhammer ask: 4, 13, 40

13. How did you get interested in 40k?

A couple friends of mine in high school started playing when the game was somewhere in late 3rd/4th edition.  I followed along to Games Workshop a couple times and had fun playing around with the little plastic men.  It helped me along that one of my buddies was really into painting models, and as he moved from faction to faction trying out different stuff he agreed to hand me off an old army of Black Templars for me to use.  I played the shit out of them, although my painting skills were (and presumably still are) below bargain-basement terrible.  As the early 00s rolled around I picked up my first 40k novels and things exploded from there.  

Buffalo NY, where I grew up, is a heavily Roman Catholic area, and I found it pretty cool to find a setting that so heavily blended the iconography and mythos of Catholicism and Christianity with a sci-fi setting.  Of course, when I was starting out I didn’t really yet understand how much the setting had taken from things like Dune or Judge Dredd, but the satirical elements appealed to me as well, even though the more extensive grimdark aspects of it never really did.

Oh yeah, and I also briefly got into Battlefleet Gothic, and the similar blending of space fantasy with age of sail mechanics (and dubious competence therein) were similarly fun to fuck around with.

gotchu here on 4 and 40

[castellankurze]

For the Warhammer 40000 questions, all the multiples of 10.

10. Which is your favorite Tyranid Hive fleet?

Behemoth.  I don’t feel strongly about the Tyranids but they’ve got my favorite color scheme.  Also a cool story with them being the first official hive fleet to hit the galaxy and making a beeline for the Astronomican with Ultramar happening to be in the way.

20. What is your favorite model from GW and Forgeworld?

I thnik Ferrus Manus is possibly the best single model 40k’s ever released.  Historically speaking, I never had an especially great love for him or the Iron Hands but seriously, this model blew my mind when it first hit the scene.  I think it strikes an unbelievably good balance between the twin aesthetics of 40k and the Iron Hands in particular - that is, a sort of techno-industrial fetishism mixed with the heraldry and likeness of Greco-Roman antiquity.  And while I’ve never liked him with Forgebreaker, they made it look pretty boss.

(If we’re talking more model type rather than a single piece, my answer is Cataphractii-pattern terminators, followed closely by Imperial Knights, for much the same reasons as mentioned above.)

30. Do you attend a local gaming club? 40. How big is your bits box?

I haven’t played 40k for about a decade now, and got rid of most of my models somewhere during the multiple times I had to move in the early-mid 2000s.  Most of my visits to gaming stores since then have been to take a occasional gander at what’s changed, but I mostly keep up with 40k in the lroe department and online these days.

50. Do you Role Play in the 40K universe? Who are your OC’s?

I do indeed!  Most of my RPG characters are listed here, and hail from my participation on the various Fantasy Flight Games 40k line - Deathwatch, Black Crusade, and the like.  There’s also the kurze writes/40k tags for my fanfiction and off the cuff blurbs.

[castellankurze]

1 3 10 40k ask.

1: Space Marines or Imperial Guard?

SPESS MUHREENS.  Don’t get me wrong I love Guard stories too, but my favorites from 40K are the power-armored space knights.

3: Favorite primarch?

Guilliman and old-school Alpharius.  Also Dorn.

10: Favorite Chaos god?

Tzeentch, though Khorne is also fun to play around with.