What the hell was that?

That was a throwaway post on some random musings related to:

Getting back into a hobby that I put on hold back in 1989-ish.

What's cool in 40K:
Assassins
Inquisition
Scouts
Infiltrators
Genestealers
Eisenhorn
Bikes
Swarms
Fluff
Lore
The imaginary universe with the most amount of wasted person-hours. [Rough paraphrase of something I saw written.]

What's not:
Imbalanced gameplay. Outdated mechanics. Non-streamlined gameplay. New people having to know everything from 15 different books to get a good game going. Mech everything. Zoom across the board and pull your favourite move, slingshot, disembark forward or whatever silliness.

What else is cool:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dan-Abnetts-Eisenhorn-trilogy-should-be-made-into-movies/320023800200
http://www.thelordinquisitor.com/
Man O' War
Dark Future
Battlefleet Gothic
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Aeronautica-Imperialis/Rules_and_Accessories/AERONAUTICA-IMPERIALIS.html
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeronautica_Imperialis
Epic 40,000
Dark Elf assassins & scouts/skirmishers
Skaven assassins & scouts/skirmishers
Lizardmen chameleons & scouts/skirmishers
Eldar Renegades jetbikes & scouts/skirmishers (btw, the whole "Dark <something>" as a name for whatever ...needs to go away, it sounds silly. Same with Spess Mehrine vs. Astartes)

Aside: I'm with Aaron Dembski-Bowden on this thing. http://aarondembskibowden.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/

• “Why do you always say ‘Astartes’ in your novels?”

Because I hate the way “Space Marines” sounds.

They’re post-humans. They’re technically a different subspecies, vaguely similar to the way a mule is different from a horse or a donkey, but has bits of both. They’re Homo Astartes (stop laughing, you at the back), not Homo Sapiens.

“Space Marines” connotes something very lame, very generic, to me. “Astartes” doesn’t.

Gorkamorka is cool, too.
Dark Heresy.
Necromunda.
Mordheim.
Blood Bowl.

Not cool:
Necrons (the me-too evil robots with skull-faces race)
Race inflation
Codex creep
Mary Sue Grey Knights with blood all over them and a dude running around the warp doing his thing whatever.
Every unit having a special rule negating another special rule or a basic rule from, you know, the rulebook?

Starting to get the point yet? Probably not as no-one will read this for a while. The point is that games are there for fun and cool and awesome stuff. I'd rather pull off a cool move with cool stuff in one of 5 games than win 10 out of 10. But that's just me. I like winning, too.

So first up, Coteaz 1000 with no GKs, no vehicles and 3 assassins. Not competitive. Not  winning. But cool as all hell and might just be tons of fun. Add some tactics, some min-maxing and you just might be able to pull something off. Rock-paper-scissors weak against (I'm guessing, here)