Warhammer 40k appears to be losing its unique charm; here’s why we think the rule of cool is fading, and ideas on how to still keep the hobby enjoyable.
Updated on May 6th, 2025, by Rob Baer with the latest thoughts on Warhammer’s slow progression.
Warhammer 40k used to be the hobby where anything went, as long as it looked cool doing it. Now? It’s starting to feel like a bland assembly line. Forge World is drying up, terrain looks more like board game props than battlefield wreckage, and the rule of cool—the heart and soul of 40k—is fading into the background.
If you’ve noticed armies looking more copy-paste and less wild masterpiece, you’re not alone. Let’s talk about why the game’s unique charm is slipping away—and how you can still keep the hobby fun, creative, and gloriously messy.
What Has Happened to Warhammer 40k?
Back when you could make a tank from a bottle.
Once upon a time (ok, like in the 1990s), Warhammer 40k was a wild, glorious mess. You’d show up at the game store with a half-painted tank covered in baroque nonsense, and nobody would blink. If anything, you’d get high-fives. The rule of cool reigned supreme: if it looked awesome, it was awesome. Strategy? Secondary. Vibes? Immaculate.
These days? Not so much.
The Age of Sameness
Fast forward to now, and something feels…off. Warhammer 40k has gotten a bit too clean. Army lists are starting to look like copy-paste jobs. Terrain has been flattened into sad little 2D doodles. And those beautiful, weird, janky models from Forge World?
Disappearing faster than snacks at a tournament.
These are literally all the bits in the entire Fulgrim kit.
It’s not just old grognards moaning into the void either. The game itself has been streamlined into “one profile fits all.” No extra points for loadout tweaks means everyone just picks the best gear. Why bring a heavy bolter when a plasma cannon costs the same and does more? There’s no hard choice anymore, no “I picked this because it looks rad” moment.
It’s efficient. It’s balanced. It’s boring.
Forge World Is Fading, But Hobbyists Aren’t
Meanwhile, the slow death of Forge World and the random cool minis of yore aren’t helping. The crazier kits, the weird resin nightmares, the esoteric characters — they’re quietly vanishing from official support lists. Multi-part kits packed with random bits have shrunk into mono-pose starters with barely enough spares to even lose.
But here’s the thing: this doesn’t mean the hobby is dead. It just means the power’s back in your hands.
Meta Lists and the Death of Creativity
Once a winning list hits the internet, it spreads like wildfire. Suddenly, every table starts to look the same. The days of seeing someone’s totally bonkers triple-Dreadnought Iron Hands list or that weird “all Ratlings” Astra Militarum army are getting rarer. This also affects terrain, as most terrain rules have been consolidated into a few categories, and many of the previously super cool terrain options have given way to simple ruined walls.
People are optimizing, and it makes sense — nobody wants to lose on purpose. But when everyone’s chasing the same “optimal” builds, it leaves a lot less room for weirdness and personal flair. The whole vibe starts feeling less like a hobby and more like prepping for standardized testing.
3D Printing and Converting Are the New Rule of Cool
3D printing miniatures has exploded. Got a dream for a squad of flying Librarians with wings made of lightning? There’s a file for that. Need a Primarch sculpted mid-guitar solo on top of a dead Titan? You can probably find someone to print it.
And don’t forget good old-fashioned converting miniatures. Grab your hobby knife, some green stuff, and whatever weird bits you find in your junk drawer. Kitbashing is alive and kicking — honestly, it’s thriving more now because the official options have shrunk.
Making the Hobby Yours Again
Worried about official events? No sweat. Just keep your conversions clear and roughly model-sized, and nobody reasonable is going to turn their nose up. Casual games? Bring your wildest ideas to the table. Build armies that look like they stepped out of a metal album cover — because in Warhammer 40k, cool still wins hearts even when it doesn’t win games.
The rule of cool isn’t gone. It’s just no longer pre-packaged for you. You have to build it yourself — and honestly? That’s way more fun.
See How Forge World Was Slow Rebranded
Do you think Warhammer 40k has been losing the rule of cool lately?
The issue isn’t that the lists are trying to be bland, it’s that they are trying to be “fair and balanced” and the easiest way to be “fair and balanced” is to be the same, which is necessarily bland.
This type of fairness comes about because of a “tournament mentality” where players care more about outcome than about path (narrative) and catering to the tournament scene (because it sells miniatures) isn’t new. I’ve bemoaned this issue since at least 2003. However, it’s only been since 2017 that Games Workshop seems to have lost its last internal opposition to the game trading fun for fairness.
Over powered meta-lists have always been a problem. For those of a certain vintage, “Rhino Rush” and “Iyanden Wraithguard” lists in earlier editions were a plague.
However, the problem of the meta-list comes about only because players will do whatever it takes to win. They will sell off an old army and buy a new one (that is better) and that sells miniatures and GW will cater to it. GW’s official lists have, since 3rd edition, tried to move to making armies equal, but equal is bland. If an Aeldari warrior is just a guardsman with pointy ears having the same stats the two are totally fair, but also rather boring. However, if you make them have different stats, they are more fun, but not as fair.
The push of 40K armies to sameness has always been there (OK maybe 5th edition pushed back – but we all know how that went). However, what was also there was a pushback usually in the form of a clear alternative to tournament play. This is what Forgeworld was. It was a pushback to the tournament mentality. An alternative narrative that said “screw fairness – big tank cool.” Apocalypse originally did the same basically saying that volume was cool in itself. Lots or fans loved it, GW didn’t. However, it was successful enough and had enough internal support to force GW to accept it because it made business sense to do so.
This died at GW around 2017. I don’t know why. I always presume it’s because it lost its champion.
The last Forgeworld model released for 40K was the Super Heavy Marine Astraeus, which was released in 2017 IIRC (and there is a pretty big gap – I want to say about a year – between that and the immediately prior released 40K model). Everything done since then is 30K models that were also given 40K rules (and that practice expressly won’t be done anymore). The 2019 Apocalypse rules tried to make Apocalypse a fair tournament system (read the GW news releases from the time).
The bright light was that Forgeworld still hung on (and sold well), but it was because of 30K whose success is ultimately what killed it. Meanwhile the 2019 version of Apocalyspe is appropriately relegated to the dustbin of history because fans hated it and good Apocalypse games will never, ever, be fair.
What has happened since 2017 is that 40K has become so much more fair. It’s a much better tournament system than it ever was, but its boring and instead of coming up with play alternatives, GW implicitly suggests you play something else (30K – which is actually headed down the 40K path, sadly, Necromunda, or now Old World). That way, 40K can’t go off the rails again (like it did when Forgeworld was more popular than the main studio).
The only pushback left is The Grand Narrative event, and its pushing back pretty hard, but it’s one thing and its swimming upstream. Yes, getting to play all the broken stuff is cool, but playing it to win games against those playing crazy narrative stuff isn’t fair or fun and you don’t have to read much player banter to see it happening all the time. Go look up the fish god issues with the last Grand Narrative, that’s what that was all about. Further, anybody who went to the last Grand Narrative, I think, saw the strain. Regardless of what they say, GW more tolerates it than supports it. The business case for narrative isn’t there anymore.
I’ve written my own article here. If you don’t like the blandness, you have to fight it and the way to do so is to play for fun. To do that, you only need to do one thing. Don’t play to win, play cool. I don’t mean don’t try to win, I mean go to a tournament with a list you didn’t chose because it was good, but because you liked it. Build your next kit (heck, your next 20) based on how the model looks and before even reading it’s rules, and then play it true WYSIWYG.